r sat enthroned the five kinds of courage described by
Aristotle, and had the philosopher enumerated five hundred more, I verily
believed he would have possessed them all. As to that better part of valor
called discretion, it was too cold-blooded a virtue for his tropical
temperament.

Summoning, therefore, to his presence his trusty follower, Antony Van
Corlear, he commanded him to hold himself in readiness to accompany him
the following morning on this his hazardous enterprise.

Now Antony the Trumpeter was by this time a little stricken in years, yet
by dint of keeping up a good heart, and having never known care or sorrow
(having never been married), he was still a hearty, jocund, rubicund,
gamesome wag, and of great capacity in the doublet. This last was ascribed
to his living a jolly life on those domains at the Hook, which Peter
Stuyvesant had granted to him for his gallantry at Fort Casimir.

Be this as it may, there was nothing that more delighted Antony than this
command of the great Peter, for he could have followed the stout-hearted
old governor to the world's end, with love and loyalty--and he moreover
still remembered the frolicing, and dancing, and bundling, and other
disports of the east country, and entertained dainty recollections of
numerous kind and buxom lasses, whom he longed exceedingly again to
encounter.

Thus then did this mirror of hardihood set forth, with no other attendant
but his trumpeter, upon one of the most perilous enterprises ever
recorded in the annals of knight-errantry. For a single warrior to venture
openly among a whole nation of foes--but, above all, for a plain,
downright Dutchman to think of negotiating with the whole council of New
England!--never was there known a more desperate undertaking! Ever since I
have entered upon the chronicles of this peerless, but hitherto
uncelebrated, chieftain, has he kept me in a state of incessant action and
anxiety with the toils and dangers he is constantly encountering. Oh, for
a chapter of the tranquil reign of Wouter Van Twiller, that I might repose
on it as on a feather-bed!

Is it not enough, Peter Stuyvesant, that I have once already rescued thee
from the machinations of these terrible Amphictyons, by bringing the
powers of witchcraft to thine aid? Is it not enough that I have followed
thee undaunted, like a guardian spirit, into the midst of the horrid
battle of Fort Christina? That I have been put incessantly to my trumps to
k