tion,
are quietly suffered to remain as dead letters, and never enforced when
awake. In a word, your fair, round-bellied burgomaster, like a full-fed
mastiff, dozes quietly at the house-door, always at home, and always at
hand to watch over its safety; but as to electing a lean, meddling
candidate to the office, as has now and then been done, I would as lief
put a greyhound to watch the house, or a racehorse to draw an ox-wagon.

The burgomasters then, as I have already mentioned, were wisely chosen by
weight, and the schepens, or assistant aldermen, were appointed to attend
upon them, and help them eat; but the latter, in the course of time, when
they had been fed and fattened into sufficient bulk of body and drowsiness
of brain, became very eligible candidates for the burgomasters' chairs,
having fairly eaten themselves into office, as a mouse eats his way into a
comfortable lodgment in a goodly, blue-nosed, skimmed milk, New England
cheese. Nothing could equal the profound deliberations that took place
between the renowned Wouter and these his worthy compeers, unless it be
the sage divans of some of our modern corporations. They would sit for
hours smoking and dozing over public affairs, without speaking a word to
interrupt that perfect stillness so necessary to deep reflection. Under
the sober sway of Wouter Van Twiller and these his worthy coadjutors, the
infant settlement waxed vigorous apace, gradually emerging from the swamps
and forests, and exhibiting that mingled appearance of town and country
customary in new cities, and which at this day may be witnessed in the
city of Washington; that immense metropolis, which makes so glorious an
appearance on paper.

It was a pleasing sight in those times to behold the honest burgher, like
a patriarch of yore, seated on the bench at the door of his whitewashed
house, under the shade of some gigantic sycamore or overhanging willow.
Here would he smoke his pipe of a sultry afternoon, enjoying the soft
southern breeze and listening with silent gratulation to the clucking of
his hens, the cackling of his geese, and the sonorous grunting of his
swine; that combination of farmyard melody, which may truly be said to
have a silver sound, inasmuch as it conveys a certain assurance of
profitable marketing.

The modern spectator, who wanders through the streets of this populous
city, can scarcely form an idea of the different appearance they presented
in the primitive days of the