The colonists were impatient of insulting actions as well as words. Sampson said in “Romeo and Juliet,” “I will bite my thumb at them, which is a disgrace to them _if they bear it_;” so “finger-sticking” was a disgrace in colonial times _if unresented_, and it was actionable in the courts. The man or woman who pointed the finger of scorn at a neighbor was pretty sure to have the finger of the law pointed at him. The curious practice of the Dutch settlers alluded to--the giving of nicknames--may be partly explained by the fact that in some cases the persons named had no surname, and the nickname was really a distinguishing name. These nicknames appear not only in the records of criminal cases, but in official documents such as the patents for towns, transfers of estates, civil contracts, etc. In Albany, in 1655 and 1657, we find Jan the Jester, Huybert the Rogue, Jacobus or Cobus the Looper, squint-eyed Harmen, the wicked Domine. On Long Island were John the Swede, Hans the Boor, Tunis the Fisher. In Harlem was Jan Archer the Koop-all (or buy-all). In New York, in English days, in 1691, we find Long Mary, Old Bush, Top-knot Betty, Scarebouch. These names conveyed no offence, and seem to have been universally adopted and responded to. It would appear to a casual observer glancing over the court-records of those early years of New York life under Dutch supremacy, that the greater number of the cases brought before the magistrates were these slander and libel cases. We could believe that no other court-room ever rang with such petty personal suits; to use Tennyson’s words, “it bubbled o’er with gossip and scandal and spite.” But in truth slander was severely punished in all the colonies, in New England, Virginia, Pennsylvania; and it is not to the detriment of the citizens of New Netherland that they were more sharp in the punishment of such offences, for it is well known, as Swift says, that the worthiest people are those most injured by slander. The slander cases of colonial times seem most trivial and even absurd when seen through the mist of years. They could scarce reach the dignity of Piers Plowman’s definition of slanders:-- “To bakbyten, and to bosten, and to bere fals witnesse To scornie and to scolde, sclaundres to make.”