s--threw
it in the face of the nearest burgomaster--broke his pipe over the head
of the next--hurled his spitting-box at an unlucky schepen, who was just
retreating out at the door; and finally prorogued the whole meeting _sine
die_, by kicking them downstairs with his wooden leg.

As soon as the burgomasters could recover from their confusion, and had
time to breathe, they called a public meeting, where they related at full
length, and with appropriate coloring and exaggeration, the despotic and
vindictive deportment of the governor, declaring that, for their own
parts, they did not value a straw the being kicked, cuffed, and mauled by
the timber toe of his excellency, but that they felt for the dignity of
the sovereign people, thus rudely insulted by the outrage committed on the
seat of honor of their representatives. The latter part of the harangue
came home at once to that delicacy of feeling and jealous pride of
character vested in all true mobs; who, though they may bear injuries
without a murmur, yet are marvelously jealous of their sovereign dignity;
and there is no knowing to what act of resentment they might have been
provoked, had they not been somewhat more afright of their sturdy old
governor than they were of St. Nicholas, the English, or the d----l
himself.

CHAPTER XI.

There is something exceedingly sublime and melancholy in the spectacle
which the present crisis of our history presents. An illustrious and
venerable little city--the metropolis of a vast extent of uninhabited
country--garrisoned by a doughty host of orators, chairmen, committee-men,
burgomasters, schepens, and old women--governed by a determined and
strong-headed warrior, and fortified by mud batteries, palisadoes, and
resolutions--blockaded by sea, beleaguered by land, and threatened with
direful desolation from without; while its very vitals are torn with
internal faction and commotion! Never did historic pen record a page of
more complicated distress, unless it be the strife that distracted the
Israelites during the siege of Jerusalem, where discordant parties were
cutting each other's throats at the moment when the victorious legions of
Titus had toppled down their bulwarks, and were carrying fire and sword
into the very _sanctum sanctorum_ of the temple!

Governor Stuyvesant having triumphantly put his grand council to the rout,
and delivered himself from a multitude of impertinent advisers, despatched
a categorical repl