ion: THE TESTY WILLIAM ISSUED FORTH LIKE A WRATHFUL SPIDER]

The immediate effect of the edict of William the Testy was a popular
commotion. A vast multitude, armed with pipes and tobacco boxes and an
immense supply of ammunition, sat themselves down before the governor's
house and fell to smoking with tremendous violence. The Testy William
issued forth like a wrathful spider, demanding the reason of this
lawless fumigation. The sturdy rioters replied by lolling back in their
seats and puffing away with redoubled fury, raising such a murky cloud
that the governor was fain to take refuge in the interior of his
castle.

A long negotiation ensued through the medium of Antony the Trumpeter.
The governor was at first wrathful and unyielding, but was gradually
smoked into terms. He concluded by permitting the smoking of tobacco,
but he abolished the fair long pipes used in the days of Wouter Van
Twiller, denoting ease, tranquillity and sobriety of deportment; these
he condemned as incompatible with the dispatch of business; in place
whereof he substituted little captious short pipes, two inches in
length, which he observed could be stuck in one corner of the mouth or
twisted in the hat-band, and would never be in the way. Thus ended this
alarming insurrection, which was long known by the name of The Pipe
Plot, and which, it has been somewhat quaintly observed, did end, like
most plots and seditions, in mere smoke.

But mark, O reader! the deplorable evils which did afterward result. The
smoke of these villainous little pipes, continually ascending in a cloud
about the nose, penetrated into and befogged the cerebellum, dried up
all the kindly moisture of the brain, and rendered the people who used
them as vaporish and testy as the governor himself. Nay, what is worse,
from being goodly, burly, sleek-conditioned men, they became, like our
Dutch yeomanry who smoke short pipes, a lantern-jawed, smoke-dried,
leathern-hided race.

Nor was this all. From this fatal schism we may date the rise of parties
in Nieuw Nederlandts. The rich burghers, who could afford to be lazy,
adhered to the ancient fashion and were known as _Long Pipes_; while the
lower order were branded with the plebeian name of _Short Pipes_.

PETER THE HEADSTRONG

Peter Stuyvesant was the last, and, like the renowned Wouter Van
Twiller, the best, of our ancient Dutch governors, Wouter having
surpassed all who preceded him, and Pieter or Piet, as he was socia