complacency to the fourth class of my readers, who are men, or,
if possible, women after my own heart; grave, philosophical, and
investigating; fond of analyzing characters, of taking a start from first
causes, and so haunting a nation down, through all the mazes of innovation
and improvement. Such will naturally be anxious to witness the first
development of the newly-hatched colony, and the primitive manners and
customs prevalent among its inhabitants, during the halcyon reign of Van
Twiller, or the Doubter.

I will not grieve their patience, however, by describing minutely the
increase and improvement of New Amsterdam. Their own imaginations will
doubtless present to them the good burghers, like so many painstaking and
persevering beavers, slowly and surely pursuing their labors--they will
behold the prosperous transformation from the rude log hut to the stately
Dutch mansion, with brick front, glazed windows, and tiled roof; from the
tangled thicket to the luxuriant cabbage garden; and from the skulking
Indian to the ponderous burgomaster. In a word, they will picture to
themselves the steady, silent, and undeviating march of prosperity,
incident to a city destitute of pride or ambition, cherished by a fat
government, and whose citizens do nothing in a hurry.

The sage council, as has been mentioned in a preceding chapter, not being
able to determine upon any plan for the building of their city, the cows,
in a laudable fit of patriotism, took it under their peculiar charge, and
as they went to and from pasture, established paths through the bushes, on
each side of which the good folks built their houses; which is one cause
of the rambling and picturesque turns and labyrinths, which distinguish
certain streets of New York at this very day.

The houses of the higher class were generally constructed of wood,
excepting the gable end, which was of small black and yellow Dutch bricks,
and always faced on the street, as our ancestors, like their descendants,
were very much given to outward show, and were noted for putting the best
leg foremost. The house was always furnished with abundance of large doors
and small windows on every floor, the date of its erection was curiously
designated by iron figures on the front, and on the top of the roof was
perched a fierce little weathercock, to let the family into the important
secret which way the wind blew. These, like the weathercocks on the tops
of our steeples, pointed so ma