sting Ceremony, 282

THE VON TOODLEBURGS,

OR THE

History of a very Distinguished Family.

CHAPTER I.

ANCIENT HEADS OF THE FAMILY.

Not more than a mile from the brisk little town of Nyack, on the Hudson
river, and near where the road makes a sharp turn and winds up into the
mountain, there lived, in the year 1803, an honest old farmer of the
name of Hanz Toodleburg. Hanz was held in high esteem by his neighbors,
many of whom persisted in pronouncing his name Toodlebug, and also
electing him hog-reef every year, an honor he would invariably decline.
He did this, he said, out of respect to the rights of the man last
married in the neighborhood. It mattered not to Hanz how his name was
pronounced; nor did it ever occur to him that some of his more ambitious
descendants might be called on in a court of law to explain the
circumstances under which their name was changed. I speak now of things
as they were when the old settlers around Nyack were honest and
unsuspecting, before Fulton had astonished them with his steamboat, or
those extravagant New Yorkers had invaded the town, building castles
overlooking the Tappan Zee, and school-houses where the heads of honest
Dutch children were filled with wicked thoughts.

Hanz Toodleburg was short and stout of figure, had a full, round face, a
large blunt nose, and a small gray eye. Indeed, there was no mistaking
his ancestors, in whose language he spoke whenever the Dominie paid him
a visit, which he did quite often, for Hanz had always good cheer in the
house; and a bed for a stranger. In short, it was a boast of Hanz that
no traveller ever passed his house hungry, if he knew it. And it
increased his importance with his neighbors that he raised more bushels
to the acre than any of them, and sent better vegetables to the New York
market. More than that, he would tell all the big folks in the village,
with a nod of his head, that he owed no man a stiver he could not pay
before the sun set, and in such a way as to convey a sly hint that it
was more than they could do. The neighbors consulted Hanz concerning
their worldly affairs, and, indeed, received his opinions as good
authority. In fine, Hanz and the Dominie were called in to settle nearly
all the disputes arising between the country folks for miles around. And
it was said by these simple minded people that they got their rights
quicker and less expensively in this way than when they wen