ietors of the province, the Dutch West
India Company, to send from Holland a schoolmaster or "rector" for
the children of their town of New Amsterdam, and the Company had sent
over Dominie Curtius.

The Heer Governor had entertained great hopes of what the new
schoolmaster was to do, and now to find him a subject of complaint
from both the parents of the scholars and the officials of the town
made the hasty Governor doubly dissatisfied. The Dominie's intrusion,
therefore, at just this stage of all his perplexities gave the Heer
Governor a most convenient person on whom to vent his bad feelings.

"Yes, sirrah, a craven and a miser!" continued the angry Governor,
stamping upon the floor with both wooden leg and massive cane. "You,
who can neither govern our children nor pay your just dues to the
town, can be no fit master for our youth. No words, sirrah, no words,"
he added, as the poor dominie tried to put in a word in his defence,
"no words, sir; you are discharged from further labour in this
province. I will see that one who can ride wisely and pay his just
dues shall be placed here in your stead."

Protests and appeals, explanations and arguments, were of no avail.
When the Heer Governor Stuyvesant said a thing, he meant it, and it
was useless for any one to hope for a change. The unpopular Dominie
Curtius must go--and go he did.

But, as he left, the delegation of boys, headed by young Patem
Onderdonk, came into the fort and sought to interview the Heer
Governor.

The sentry at the door would have sent them off without further ado,
but, hearing their noise, the Heer Governor came to the door.

"So, so, young rapscallions," he cried, "you, too, must needs disturb
the peace and push yourself forward into public quarrels! Get you
gone! I will have none of your words. Is it not enough that I must
needs send the schoolmaster a-packing, without being worried by
graceless young varlets as you?"

"And hath the Dominie Curtius gone indeed, Heer Governor?" Patem dared
to ask.

"Hath he, hath he, boy?" echoed the Governor, turning upon his
audacious young questioner with uplifted cane. "Said I not so, and
will you dare doubt my word, rascal? Begone from the fort, all of you,
ere I do put you all in limbo, or send word to your good folk to give
you the floggings you do no doubt all so richly deserve."

Discretion is the better part of valour, and the boyish delegation
hastily withdrew. But when once they were safely