th
a store of bear-skins, or a Lapland belle with a plenty of reindeer. The
ladies, therefore, were very anxious to display these powerful attractions
to the greatest advantage; and the best rooms in the house, instead of
being adorned with caricatures of Dame Nature, in water-colors and
needlework, were always hung round with abundance of homespun garments,
the manufacture and the property of the females; a piece of laudable
ostentation that still prevails among the heiresses of our Dutch villages.

The gentlemen, in fact, who figured in the circles of the gay world in
these ancient times, corresponded in most particulars with the beauteous
damsels whose smiles they were ambitious to deserve. True it is, their
merits would make but a very inconsiderable impression upon the heart of a
modern fair; they neither drove their curricles nor sported their tandems,
for as yet those gaudy vehicles were not even dreamt of; neither did they
distinguish themselves by their brilliancy at the table, and their
consequent rencontres with watchmen, for our forefathers were of too
pacific a disposition to need those guardians of the night, every soul
throughout the town being sound asleep before nine o'clock. Neither did
they establish their claims to gentility at the expense of their tailors
for as yet those offenders against the pockets of society, and the
tranquillity of all aspiring young gentlemen were unknown in New
Amsterdam; every good housewife made the clothes of her husband and
family, and even the goede vrouw of Van Twiller himself thought it no
disparagement to cut out her husband's linsey-woolsey galligaskins.

Not but what there were some two or three youngsters who manifested the
first dawning of what is called fire and spirit, who held all labor in
contempt, skulked about docks and market-places, loitered in the sunshine,
squandered what little money they could procure at hustle cap and chuck
farthing; swore, boxed, fought cocks, and raced their neighbor's horses;
in short, who promised to be the wonder, the talk, and abomination of the
town, had not their stylish career been unfortunately cut short by an
affair of honor with a whipping post.

Far other, however, was the truly fashionable gentleman of those days; his
dress, which served for both morning and evening, street and drawing-room,
was a linsey-woolsey coat, made, perhaps, by the fair hands of the
mistress of his affections, and gallantly bedecked with abundan