ge sails, are easily
upset or blown out of their course; so was it with William the Testy, who
was prone to be carried away by the last piece of advice blown into his
ear. The consequence was that though a projector of the first class, yet,
by continually changing his projects, he gave none a fair trial; and by
endeavoring to do everything, he, in sober truth, did nothing.

In the meantime the sovereign people, having got into the saddle, showed
themselves, as usual, unmerciful riders; spurring on the little governor
with harangues and petitions, and thwarting him with memorials and
reproaches, in much the same way as holiday apprentices manage an unlucky
devil of a hack-horse; so that Wilhelmus Kieft was kept at a worry or a
gallop throughout the whole of his administration.

CHAPTER IX.

If we could but get a peep at the tally of Dame Fortune, where like a
vigilant landlady she chalks up the debtor and creditor accounts of
thoughtless mortals, we should find that every good is checked off by an
evil; and that however we may apparently revel scot-free for a season, the
time will come when we must ruefully pay off the reckoning. Fortune, in
fact, is a pestilent shrew, and, withal, an inexorable creditor; and
though for a time she may be all smiles and courtesies, and indulge us in
long credits, yet sooner or later she brings up her arrears with a
vengeance, and washes out her scores with our tears. "Since," says good
old Boethius, "no man can retain her at his pleasure, what are her favors
but sure prognostications of approaching trouble and calamity?"

This is the fundamental maxim of that sage school of philosophers, the
Croakers, who esteem it true wisdom to doubt and despond when other men
rejoice, well knowing that happiness is at best but transient; that the
higher one is elevated on the see-saw balance of fortune, the lower must
be his subsequent depression; that he who is on the uppermost round of a
ladder has most to suffer from a fall, while he who is at the bottom runs
very little risk of breaking his neck by tumbling to the top.

Philosophical readers of this stamp must have doubtless indulged in
dismal forebodings all through the tranquil reign of Walter the Doubter,
and considered it what Dutch seamen call a weather-breeder. They will not
be surprised, therefore, that the foul weather which gathered during his
days should now be rattling from all quarters on the head of William the
Testy.

Th