ow, as Peter Stuyvesant had a singular inclination to govern the province
by his individual will, his first move on his return, was to put a stop to
this gratuitous legislation. Accordingly, one evening, when an inspired
cobbler was holding forth to an assemblage of the kind, the intrepid Peter
suddenly made his appearance with his ominous walking staff in his hand,
and a countenance sufficient to petrify a millstone. The whole meeting was
thrown into confusion--the orators stood aghast, with open mouth and
trembling knees, while "Horror!" "Tyranny!" "Liberty!" "Rights!" "Taxes!"
"Death!" "Destruction!" and a host of other patriotic phrases, were bolted
forth before he had time to close his lips. Peter took no notice of the
skulking throng, but strode up to the brawling, bully-ruffian, and pulling
out a huge silver watch, which might have served in times of yore as a
town-clock, and which is still retained by his descendants as a family
curiosity, requested the orator to mend it and set it going. The orator
humbly confessed it was utterly out of his power, as he was unacquainted
with the nature of its construction. "Nay, but," said Peter, "try your
ingenuity, man; you see all the springs and wheels and how easily the
clumsiest hand may stop it, and pull it to pieces, and why should it not
be equally easy to regulate as to stop it?" The orator declared that his
trade was wholly different--that he was a poor cobbler, and had never
meddled with a watch in his life--that there were men skilled in the art
whose business it was to attend to those matters, but for his part he
should only mar the workmanship, and put the whole in confusion. "Why,
harkee, master of mine," cried Peter, turning suddenly upon him with a
countenance that almost petrified the patcher of shoes into a perfect
lapstone, "dost thou pretend to meddle with the movements of government to
regulate, and correct, and patch, and cobble a complicated machine, the
principles of which are above thy comprehension, and its simplest
operations too subtle for thy understanding, when thou canst not correct a
trifling error in a common piece of mechanism, the whole mystery of which
is open to thy inspection?--Hence with thee to the leather and stone,
which are emblems of thy head; cobble thy shoes, and confine thyself to
the vocation for which Heaven has fitted thee; but," elevating his voice
until it made the welkin ring, "if ever I catch thee, or any of thy tribe,
meddli