And the housewife had her beloved and homelike poultry. Flocks of snowy geese went waddling slowly down the town streets, seeking the water-side; giving rich promise of fat holiday dinners and plumper and more plentiful feather-beds; comfortable and thriving looking as geese always are, and ever indicative of prosperous, thrifty homes, they comported well with the pipe-smoking burgher and his knitting _huys-vrouw_ and their homelike dwelling. There was one element of beauty and picturesqueness which idealized the little town and gave it an added element of life,-- “Over all and everywhere The sails of windmills sink and soar Like wings of sea-gulls on the shore.” The beauty of the windmills probably was not so endearing to the settlers as their homelikeness. They made the new strange land and the new little towns seem like the Fatherland. The Indians greatly feared them; as one chronicler states, “they durst not come near their long arms and big teeth biting the corn in pieces.” Last, and not least in the minds of the thrifty Dutch, the windmills helped to turn to profit the rich harvests of grain which were the true foundation of the colony’s prosperity,--not the rich peltries of beaver, as was at first boastfully vaunted by the fur-traders. As the day wore on, the day’s work was ended, and a neighborly consultation and exchange of greetings formed the day’s recreation. The burgher went to the little market-house, and with his neighbors and a few chance travellers, such as the skippers on the river-sloops, he smoked again his long pipe and talked over the weighty affairs of the _colonie_. In the summer-time goodman and goodwife both went from stoop to stoop of the close-gathered houses, for a _klappernye_, or chat all together. This was a feature of the colony, architectural and social, and noted by all travellers,--“the benches at the door, on which the old carls sit and smoke.” Here the goodwife recounted the simple events of the day,--the number of skeins of yarn she had spun; the yards of linen she had woven; the doings of the dye-pot; the crankiness of the churning, to which she had sung her churning charm,-- “Buitterchee, buitterchee, comm Alican laidlechee tubichee vall.” Perhaps she told her _commeres_, her gossips, of a fresh suspicion of a betrothal, or perhaps sad news of a sick neighbor or a funeral. This was never scandal, for each one’s affairs were every one’s affairs; in the weal or woe of one the whole community joined, and in many of the influences or effects of that weal or woe all had a part. It was noted by historians that the Dutch were most open in discussion of all the doings of the community, and had no dread of publicity of every-day life. Of this habit of colonial neighborliness, Mrs. Anne Grant wrote in her “Memoir of an American Lady”--Madam Schuyler--from contemporary knowledge of early life in Albany:--