rest assured that William the Testy did
not let such an opportunity escape of giving the Yankees what is called "a
taste of his quality." In speaking of their inroads into the territories
of their High Mightinesses, he compared them to the Gauls, who desolated
Rome; the Goths and Vandals, who overran the fairest plains of Europe; but
when he came to speak of the unparalleled audacity with which they at
Weathersfield had advanced their patches up to the very walls of Fort Goed
Hoop, and threatened to smother the garrison in onions, tears of rage
started into his eyes, as though he nosed the very offence in question.

Having thus wrought up his tale to a climax, he assumed a most belligerent
look, and assured the council that he had devised an instrument potent in
its effects, and which he trusted would soon drive the Yankees from the
land. So saying, he thrust his hand into one of the deep pockets of his
broad-skirted coat and drew forth, not an infernal machine, but an
instrument in writing, which he laid with great emphasis upon the table.

The burghers gazed at it for a time in silent awe, as a wary housewife
does at a gun, fearful it may go off half-cocked. The document in question
had a sinister look, it is true; it was crabbed in text, and from a broad
red ribbon dangled the great seal of the province, about the size of a
buckwheat pancake. Herein, however, existed the wonder of the invention.
The document in question was a proclamation, ordering the Yankees to
depart instantly from the territories of their High Mightinesses, under
pain of suffering all the forfeitures and punishments in such case made
and provided. It was on the moral effect of this formidable instrument
that Wilhelmus Kieft calculated; pledging his valor as a governor that,
once fulminated against the Yankees, it would in less than two months
drive every mother's son of them across the borders.

The council broke up in perfect wonder, and nothing was talked of for some
time among the old men and women of New Amsterdam but the vast genius of
the governor and his new and cheap mode of fighting by proclamation.

As to Wilhelmus Kieft, having dispatched his proclamation to the
frontiers, he put on his cocked hat and corduroy small clothes, and,
mounting a tall, raw-boned charger, trotted out to his rural retreat of
Dog's Misery. Here, like the good Numa, he reposed from the toils of
state, taking lessons in government, not from the nymph Egeria, but