oise and attracts more attention than the pearl diver
who quietly dives in quest of treasures to the bottom. The vast
acquirements of the new governor were the theme of marvel among the simple
burghers of New Amsterdam; he figured about the place as learned a man as
a Bonze at Pekin, who has mastered one-half of the Chinese alphabet; and
was unanimously pronounced a "universal genius!"

I have known in my time many a genius of this stamp; but, to speak my mind
freely, I never knew one who, for the ordinary purposes of life, was worth
his weight in straw. In this respect a little sound judgment and plain
common sense is worth all the sparkling genius that ever wrote poetry or
invented theories. Let us see how the universal acquirements of William
the Testy aided him in the affairs of government.

CHAPTER II.

No sooner had this bustling little potentate been blown by a whiff of
fortune into the seat of government than he called his council together to
make them a speech on the state of affairs.

Caius Gracchus, it is said, when he harangued the Roman populace,
modulated his tone by an oratorical flute or pitch pipe. Wilhelmus Kieft,
not having such an instrument at hand, availed himself of that musical
organ or trump which nature has implanted in the midst of a man's face; in
other words, he preluded his address by a sonorous blast of the nose; a
preliminary flourish much in vogue among public orators.

He then commenced by expressing his humble sense of his utter unworthiness
of the high post to which he had been appointed, which made some of the
simple burghers wonder why he undertook it, not knowing that it is a point
of etiquette with a public orator never to enter upon office without
declaring himself unworthy to cross the threshold. He then proceeded, in a
manner highly classic and erudite, to speak of government generally, and
of the governments of ancient Greece in particular; together with the wars
of Rome and Carthage, and the rise and fall of sundry outlandish empires
which the worthy burghers had never read nor heard of. Having thus, after
the manner of your learned orators, treated of things in general, he came
by a natural roundabout transition to the matter in hand, namely, the
daring aggressions of the Yankees.

As my readers are well aware of the advantage a potentate has of handling
his enemies as he pleases in his speeches and bulletins, where he has the
talk all on his own side, they may