t Philip was about to attack them, the inhabitants were
thrown into a violent alarm. Some ran to furbish up their arms; others
rolled stones to build up the walls; everybody, in short, was employed,
and everybody in the way of his neighbor. Diogenes alone could find
nothing to do; whereupon, not to be idle when the welfare of his country
was at stake, he tucked up his robe, and fell to rolling his tub with
might and main up and down the Gymnasium." In like manner did every
mother's son in the patriotic community of New Amsterdam, on receiving the
missives of Peter Stuyvesant, busy himself most mightily in putting things
in confusion, and assisting the general uproar. "Every man," said the
Stuyvesant manuscript, "flew to arms!" by which is meant that not one of
our honest Dutch citizens would venture to church or to market without an
old-fashioned spit of a sword dangling at his side, and a long Dutch
fowling-piece on his shoulder; nor would he go out of a night without a
lantern, nor turn a corner without first peeping cautiously round, lest he
should come unawares upon a British army; and we are informed that Stoffel
Brinkerhoff, who was considered by the old women almost as brave a man as
the governor himself, actually had two one-pound swivels mounted in his
entry, one pointing out at the front door, and the other at the back.

But the most strenuous measure resorted to on this awful occasion, and one
which has since been found of wonderful efficacy, was to assemble popular
meetings. These brawling convocations, I have already shown, were
extremely offensive to Peter Stuyvesant; but as this was a moment of
unusual agitation, and as the old governor was not present to repress
them, they broke out with intolerable violence. Hither, therefore, the
orators and politicians repaired, striving who should bawl loudest, and
exceed the others in hyperbolical bursts of patriotism, and in resolutions
to uphold and defend the government. In these sage meetings it was
resolved that they were the most enlightened, the most dignified, the most
formidable, and the most ancient community upon the face of the earth.
This resolution being carried unanimously, another was immediately
proposed--whether it were not possible and politic to exterminate Great
Britain? upon which sixty-nine members spoke in the affirmative, and only
one arose to suggest some doubts, who, as a punishment for his treasonable
presumption, was immediately seized by