ing about our city in a broad-skirted coat with
huge buttons, a cocked hat stuck on the back of his head, and a cane as
high as his chin. His face was broad, but his features were sharp; his
cheeks were scorched into a dusky red by two fiery little gray eyes, his
nose turned up, and the corners of his mouth turned down, pretty much
like the muzzle of an irritable pug-dog.

I have heard it observed by a profound adept in human physiology, that
if a woman waxes fat with the progress of years, her tenure of life is
somewhat precarious, but if haply she withers as she grows old, she
lives forever. Such promised to be the case with William the Testy, who
grew tough in proportion as he dried. He had withered, in fact, not
through the process of years, but through the tropical fervor of his
soul, which burnt like a vehement rush-light in his bosom, inciting him
to incessant broils and bickerings. Ancient tradition speaks much of his
learning, and of the gallant inroads he had made into the dead
languages, in which he had made captive a host of Greek nouns and Latin
verbs, and brought off rich booty in ancient saws and apothegms, which
he was wont to parade in his public harangues, as a triumphant general
of yore his _spolia opima_. Of metaphysics he knew enough to confound
all hearers and himself into the bargain. In logic he knew the whole
family of syllogisms and dilemmas, and was so proud of his skill that he
never suffered even a self-evident fact to pass unargued. It was
observed, however, that he seldom got into an argument without getting
into a perplexity, and then into a passion with his adversary for not
being convinced gratis.

He had, moreover, skirmished smartly on the frontiers of several of the
sciences, was fond of experimental philosophy, and prided himself upon
inventions of all kinds. His abode, which he had fixed at a Bowerie or
country-seat at a short distance from the city, just at what is now
called Dutch Street, soon abounded with proofs of his ingenuity: patent
smoke-jacks that required a horse to work them; Dutch ovens that roasted
meat without fire; carts that went before the horses; weathercocks that
turned against the wind; and other wrong-headed contrivances that
astonished and confounded all beholders. The house, too, was beset with
paralytic cats and dogs, the subjects of his experimental philosophy;
and the yelling and yelping of the latter unhappy victims of science,
while aiding in the pursu