nly by reason of his
poems has his name lived. He built for himself a house beside the
little canal where Steendam walked in the night, just where now
Exchange Street touches Broad, and here, with his two motherless
daughters and one son, he lived more luxuriously than had yet been
seen. For he had brought with him from Holland heavy plate of rich
design, more plate than was in all the town beside; solid, carved
furniture and rare hangings; and on winter nights his guests sat down
to a table laden with blue and white china ornamented with strange
Chinese pictures, and drank their tea, alternately biting lumps of
sugar, from the tiniest china cups, and altogether were entertained
with all the pomp and circumstance he had known in The Hague. At these
evening entertainments De Sille read his poems in such perfect style
as to win much applause, and doubtless it was the reading of these, as
well as his courtly manner and great wealth, that very soon won for
him the love of fair Tryntie Croegers.

[Illustration: De Sille's House]

And then one day there was a grand gathering in the stone church
inside the fort--on the wedding-day of Nicasius De Sille and Mistress
Tryntie Croegers. Into the church went the friends: women, some with
petticoats of red cloth, some with skirts of blue or purple silk set
off with rare lace, all with silken hoods over much befrizzled hair,
and their fingers covered with glittering rings, and with great
lockets of gold on their bosoms. Each had a Bible fastened to her
girdle by links of gold--not the plain, strongly bound Bibles used by
Jacob Steendam and his friends, but elaborately wrought in silver,
with golden clasps. The men were just as gaily dressed as the women,
for they wore long coats adorned with shining buttons and pockets
trimmed with lace, and colored waistcoats, knee-breeches of velvet,
silk stockings, and low shoes set off by silver buckles. Outside the
fort among the townspeople of lower degree it was, too, quite a
holiday. Men with coarse frocks and leather aprons, women in homespun
gowns, turbaned negresses, swarthy negro slaves, dusky Indians,--all
made merry in their several ways as though glad of an excuse. And the
motley throng outside the fort and the elegant gathering within all
made way for the wrinkled little bell-ringer, who carried the cushions
from the Stadt Huys for the burgomasters and the schepens, who
insisted on every bit of their dignity, come what would, on this