And at last, one day after thirteen years, the sight of a ship
preparing to sail for Holland so overcame him that almost within the
hour he had bidden farewell and had sailed with her, leaving to the
townspeople his memory and his verse.

But by the time of his going there had come forward another poet to
take his place, by name Nicasius De Sille. There was a vast difference
between the first poet and the second. Steendam was a poor man, and in
his verses sought always to touch those who had never grasped the
skirts of fleeting Fortune. The second was a man of wealth, a kind of
"society poet." For even in that small circle, in the first
half-century of its existence, there were marked differences in
wealth, birth, and reputation, which were to develop with the passing
years into the distinctions of to-day.

The aristocracy of those times centred about the family of the Dutch
Governor, Peter Stuyvesant. Mrs. Stuyvesant had been, before her
marriage, Judith Bayard, the daughter of a Paris divine. Mrs. Bayard,
the sister of Peter Stuyvesant, had married Mrs. Stuyvesant's brother,
and when left a widow with three infant sons she followed her brother
when he became Governor of New Netherland. These two women had lived
in ease and refinement, and in coming to the colony well knew that
there they would find a life of comparative hardship. Yet they came
willingly enough, following husband and brother, and brought with them
an atmosphere of intellectual and social culture that left its impress
for all time. By the time Steendam returned to his boyhood home, a few
ambitious folk had gathered themselves about the Stuyvesants. There
was Oloff Van Cortlandt, a thriving merchant and one of the richest
men in New Netherland; there were Hendrick Kip and his three sons;
there were Dr. La Montagne and his daughters, and Govert Loockermans,
and others.

It was to this well-to-do-set that Nicasius De Sille belonged, and
after the going of Steendam he became the only literary man in the
colony. He also had come over in the service of the Dutch West India
Company, but in a far different capacity from Steendam. For he came,
when Stuyvesant's rule had run eight years of its course, as a
Councillor in the provincial government, and his life was thenceforth
closely connected with that of the Governor. He came, heralded as a
statesman, as a lawyer, as a man of deep learning, as a man of wealth.
But with not one word of his being a poet--yet o