while, in the meantime, its cunning neighbors stepped
in and picked his pockets. In a word, we may
ascribe the commencement of all the woes of this great
province and its magnificent metropolis to the tranquil
security, or, to speak more accurately, to the unfortunate
honesty of its government. But as I dislike to
begin an important part of my history towards the
end of a chapter; and as my readers, like myself, must
doubtless be exceedingly fatigued with the long walk
we have taken, and the tempest we have sustained,
I hold it meet we shut up the book, smoke a pipe,
and having thus refreshed our spirits, take a fair
start in a new chapter.
That my readers may the more fully comprehend the
extent of the calamity at this very moment impending
over the honest, unsuspecting province of Nieuw Nederlandts
and its dubious governor, it is necessary that I should
give some account of a horde of strange barbarians
bordering upon the eastern frontier.
Now so it came to pass that, many years previous to
the time of which we are treating, the sage Cabinet
of England had adopted a certain national creed, a
kind of public walk of faith, or rather a religious
turnpike, in which every loyal subject was directed
to travel to Zion, taking care to pay the toll-gatherers
by the way.
Albeit a certain shrewd race of men, being very much
given to indulge their own opinions on all manner
of subjects (a propensity exceedingly offensive to
your free governments of Europe), did most presumptuously
dare to think for themselves in matters of religion,
exercising what they considered a natural and unextinguishable
right-the liberty of conscience.
As, however, they possessed that ingenuous habit of
mind which always thinks aloud—which rides
cock-a-hoop on the tongue, and is for ever galloping
into other people’s ears—it naturally
followed that their liberty of conscience likewise
implied liberty of speech, which being freely indulged,
soon put the country in a hubbub, and aroused the pious
indignation of the vigilant fathers of the Church.
The usual methods were adopted, to reclaim them, which
in those days were considered efficacious in bringing
back stray sheep to the fold; that is to say, they
were coaxed, they were admonished, they were menaced,
they were buffeted—line upon line, precept
upon precept, lash upon lash, here a little and there
a great deal, were exhausted without mercy and without
success; until worthy pastors of the Church, wearied
out by their unparalleled stubbornness, were driven
in the excess of their tender mercy to adopt the Scripture
text, and literally to “heap live embers on their
heads.”
Nothing, however, could subdue that independence of
the tongue which has ever distinguished this singular
race, so that, rather than subject that heroic member
to further tyranny, they one and all embarked for the
wilderness of America, to enjoy, unmolested, the inestimable
right of talking. And, in fact, no sooner did
they land upon the shore of this free-spoken country,
than they all lifted up their voices, and made such
a clamor of tongues, that we are told they frightened
every bird and beast out of the neighborhood, and
struck such mute terror into certain fish, that they
have been called dumb-fish ever since.
