it of knowledge, soon gained for the place the
name of "Dog's Misery," by which it continues to be known even at the
present day.

It is in knowledge as in swimming: he who flounders and splashes on the
surface makes more noise, and attracts more attention, than the
pearl-diver who quietly dives in quest of treasures to the bottom. The
vast acquirements of the new Governor were the theme of marvel among the
simple burghers of New Amsterdam; he figured about the place as learned
a man as a Bonze at Pekin, who had mastered one-half of the Chinese
alphabet, and was unanimously pronounced a "universal genius!" ...

Thus end the authenticated chronicles of the reign of William the Testy;
for henceforth, in the troubles, perplexities and confusion of the
times, he seems to have been totally overlooked, and to have slipped
forever through the fingers of scrupulous history....

It is true that certain of the early provincial poets, of whom there
were great numbers in the Nieuw Nederlandts, taking advantage of his
mysterious exit, have fabled that, like Romulus, he was translated to
the skies, and forms a very fiery little star somewhere on the left claw
of the Crab; while others, equally fanciful, declare that he had
experienced a fate similar to that of the good King Arthur, who, we are
assured by ancient bards, was carried away to the delicious abodes of
fairy-land, where he still exists in pristine worth and vigor, and will
one day or another return to restore the gallantry, the honor and the
immaculate probity which prevailed in the glorious days of the Round
Table.

All these, however, are but pleasing fantasies, the cobweb visions of
those dreaming varlets, the poets, to which I would not have my
judicious readers attach any credibility. Neither am I disposed to
credit an ancient and rather apocryphal historian who asserts that the
ingenious Wilhelmus was annihilated by the blowing down of one of his
windmills; nor a writer of latter times, who affirms that he fell a
victim to an experiment in natural history, having the misfortune to
break his neck from a garret window of the stadthouse in attempting to
catch swallows by sprinkling salt upon their tails. Still less do I put
my faith in the tradition that he perished at sea in conveying home to
Holland a treasure of golden ore, discovered somewhere among the haunted
regions of the Catskill Mountains.

The most probable account declares that, what with the constant tr