Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete eBook
Washington Irving
Now so it happened, that among his officers was a
sturdy veteran named Keldermeester, who had cherished,
through a long life, a mop of hair not a little resembling
the shag of a Newfoundland dog, terminating in a queue
like the handle of a frying-pan, and queued so tightly
to his head that his eyes and mouth generally stood
ajar, and his eyebrows were drawn up to the top of
his forehead. It may naturally be supposed that
the possessor of so goodly an appendage would resist
with abhorrence an order condemning it to the shears.
On hearing the general orders, he discharged a tempest
of veteran, soldier-like oaths, and dunder and blixums—swore
he would break any man’s head who attempted
to meddle with his tail—queued it stiffer
than ever, and whisked it about the garrison as fiercely
as the tail of a crocodile.
The eelskin queue of old Keldermeester became instantly
an affair of the utmost importance. The commander-in-chief
was too enlightened an officer not to perceive that
the discipline of the garrison, the subordination and
good order of the armies of the Nieuw-Nederlands, the
consequent safety of the whole province, and ultimately
the dignity and prosperity of their High Mightinesses
the Lords States General, imperiously demanded the
docking of that stubborn queue. He decreed, therefore,
that old Keldermeester should be publicly shorn of
his glories in presence of the whole garrison—the
old man as resolutely stood on the defensive-whereupon
he was arrested and tried by a court-martial for mutiny,
desertion, and all the other list of offences noticed
in the articles of war, ending with a “videlicet,
in wearing an eelskin queue, three feet long, contrary
to orders.” Then came on arraignments,
and trials, and pleadings; and the whole garrison
was in a ferment about this unfortunate queue.
As it is well known that the commander of a frontier
post has the power of acting pretty much after his
own will, there is little doubt but that the veteran
would have been hanged or shot at least, had he not
luckily fallen ill of a fever, through mere chagrin
and mortification—and deserted from all
earthly command, with his beloved locks unviolated.
His obstinacy remained unshaken to the very last moment,
when he directed that he should be carried to his
grave with his eelskin queue sticking out of a hole
in his coffin.
This magnanimous affair obtained the general great
credit as a disciplinarian; but it is hinted that
he was ever afterwards subject to bad dreams and fearful
visitations in the night, when the grizzly spectrum
of old Keldermeester would stand sentinel by his bedside,
erect as a pump, his enormous queue strutting out
like the handle.
FOOTNOTES:
[46] Ballad of Dragon of Wantley.
BOOK VI.
CONTAINING THE SECOND PART OF THE REIGN OF PETER THE
HEADSTRONG, AND HIS GALLANT ACHIEVEMENTS ON THE DELAWARE.
