from
the honored wife of his bosom, who was one of that class of females, sent
upon the earth a little after the flood, as a punishment for the sins of
mankind, and commonly known by the appellation of knowing women. In fact,
my duty as an historian obliges me to make known a circumstance which was
a great secret at the time, and consequently was not a subject of scandal
at more than half the tea tables in New Amsterdam, but which, like many
other great secrets, has leaked out in the lapse of years; and this was,
that Wilhelmus the Testy, though one of the most potent little men that
ever breathed, yet submitted at home to a species of government, neither
laid down in Aristotle or Plato; in short, it partook of the nature of a
pure, unmixed tyranny, and is familiarly denominated petticoat government.
An absolute sway, which, although exceedingly common in these modern days,
was very rare among the ancients, if we may judge from the rout made about
the domestic economy of honest Socrates, which is the only ancient case on
record.

The great Kieft, however, warded off all the sneers and sarcasms of his
particular friends, who are ever ready to joke with a man on sore points
of the kind, by alleging that it was a government of his own election, to
which he submitted through choice; adding, at the same time, a profound
maxim which he had found in an ancient author, that "he who would aspire
to govern should first learn to obey."

CHAPTER III.

Never was a more comprehensive, a more expeditious, or, what is still
better, a more economical measure devised than this of defeating the
Yankees by proclamation--an expedient, likewise, so gentle and humane,
there were ten chances to one in favor of its succeeding; but then, there
was one chance to ten that it would not succeed. As the ill-natured Fates
would have it, that single chance carried the day! The proclamation was
perfect in all its parts, well constructed, well written, well sealed, and
well published; all that was wanting to insure its effect was, that the
Yankees should stand in awe of it; but, provoking to relate, they treated
it with the most absolute contempt, applied it to an unseemly purpose,
and thus did the first warlike proclamation come to a shameful end--a fate
which I am credibly informed has befallen but too many of its successors.

So far from abandoning the country, those varlets continued their
encroachments, squatting along the green banks of