ng was to be seen but knots of
politicians with their thumbs to their noses. In the meantime the fierce
feud between William the Testy and Killian Van Rensellaer, which at first
had menaced deadly warfare, gradually cooled off, like many other war
questions, in the prolonged delays of diplomacy.

Still, to this early affair of Rensellaersteen may be traced the remote
origin of those windy wars in modern days which rage in the bowels of the
Helderberg, and have well nigh shaken the great patroonship of the Van
Rensellaers to its foundation: for we are told that the bully boys of the
Helderberg, who served under Nicholas Koorn, the wacht-meester, carried
back to their mountains the hieroglyphic sign which had so sorely puzzled
Anthony Van Corlear and the sages of the Manhattoes; so that to the
present day, the thumb to the nose and the fingers in the air is apt to be
the reply of the Helderbergers whenever called upon for any long arrears
of rent.

CHAPTER XII.

It was asserted by the wise men of ancient times who had a nearer
opportunity of ascertaining the fact, that at the gate of Jupiter's palace
lay two huge tuns, one filled with blessings, the other with misfortunes;
and it would verily seem as if the latter had been completely overturned,
and left to deluge the unlucky province of Nieuw Nederlandts; for about
this time, while harassed and annoyed from the south and the north,
incessant forays were made by the border chivalry of Connecticut upon the
pig-sties and hen-roosts of the Nederlanders. Every day or two some
broad-bottomed express rider, covered with mud and mire, would come
floundering into the gate of New Amsterdam, freighted with some new tale
of aggression from the frontier; whereupon Anthony Van Corlear, seizing
his trumpet, the only substitute for a newspaper in those primitive days,
would sound the tidings from the ramparts with such doleful notes and
disastrous cadence, as to throw half the old women in the city into
hysterics; all which tended greatly to increase his popularity, there
being nothing for which the public are more grateful than being frequently
treated to a panic--a secret well known to modern editors.

But oh, ye powers! into what a paroxysm of passion did each new outrage of
the Yankees throw the choleric little governor! Letter after letter,
protest after protest, bad Latin, worse English, and hideous Low Dutch,
were incessantly fulminated upon them, and the four-and-twen