so many Christian troopers.

Though descended from a family which suffered much injury from the losel
Yankees of those times, my great-grandfather having had a yoke of oxen and
his best pacer stolen, and having received a pair of black eyes and a
bloody nose in one of these border wars; and my grandfather, when a very
little boy tending pigs, having been kidnaped and severely flogged by a
long-sided Connecticut schoolmaster--yet I should have passed over all
these wrongs with forgiveness and oblivion--I could even have suffered
them to have broken Everett Ducking's head; to have kicked the doughty
Jacobus Van Curlet and his ragged regiment out of doors; to have carried
every hog into captivity, and depopulated every hen-roost on the face of
the earth with perfect impunity--but this wanton attack upon one of the
most gallant and irreproachable heroes of modern times is too much even
for me to digest, and has overset, with a single puff, the patience of the
historian and the forbearance of the Dutchman.

Oh, reader, it was false! I swear to thee, it was false! If thou hast any
respect to my word, if the undeviating character for veracity, which I
have endeavored to maintain throughout this work, has its due weight with
thee, thou wilt not give thy faith to this tale of slander; for I pledge
my honor and my immortal fame to thee, that the gallant Peter Stuyvesant
was not only innocent of this foul conspiracy, but would have suffered his
right arm, or even his wooden leg, to consume with slow and everlasting
flames, rather than attempt to destroy his enemies in any other way than
open, generous warfare. Beshrew those caitiff scouts that conspired to
sully his honest name by such an imputation!

Peter Stuyvesant, though haply he may never have heard of a knight errant,
had as true a heart of chivalry as ever beat at the round table of King
Arthur. In the honest bosom of this heroic Dutchman dwelt the seven noble
virtues of knighthood, flourishing among his hardy qualities like wild
flowers among rocks. He was, in truth, a hero of chivalry struck off by
Nature at a single heat, and though little care may have been taken to
refine her workmanship, he stood forth a miracle of her skill. In all his
dealings he was headstrong perhaps, but open and above board; if there was
anything in the whole world he most loathed and despised, it was cunning
and secret wile; "straight forward" was his motto, and he at any time
rather run his