American wit and humor; Caricatures and cartoons -- United States; United States -- History -- Humor
Then trouble sprang up between the Dutch and the Swedes on the Delaware
over the possession of Manhattan, and when the two tribes got to
conversing with each other over their rights, using the mother-tongue on
both sides, it reminded one of the Chicago wheat market when business
is good. The English on the Connecticut also saw that Manhattan was
going to boom as soon as the Indians could be got farther west, and that
property would be high there.
[Illustration: STUYVESANT'S VISION.]
Peter Stuyvesant was the last Dutch governor of New York. He was a
relative of mine. He disliked the English very much. They annoyed him
with their democratic ideas and made his life a perfect hell to him. He
would be sorry to see the way our folks have since begun to imitate the
English. I can almost see him rising in his grave to note how the
Stuyvesants in full cry pursue the affrighted anise-seed bag, or with
their coaching outfits go tooling along 'cross country, stopping at the
inns on the way and unlimbering their portable bath-tubs to check them
with the "clark."
Pete, you did well to die early. You would not have been happy here now.
While Governor Stuyvesant was in hot water with the English, the Swedes,
and the Indians, a fleet anchored in the harbor and demanded the
surrender of the place in the name of the Duke of York, who wished to
use it for a game preserve. After a hot fight with his council, some of
whom were willing even then to submit to English rule and hoped that the
fleet might have two or three suits of tweed which by mistake were a fit
and therefore useless to the owners, and that they might succeed in
swapping furs for these, the governor yielded, and in 1664 New York
became a British possession, named as above.
The English governors, however, were not popular. They were mostly
political hacks who were pests at home and banished to New York, where
the noise of the streets soon drove them to drink. For nine years this
sort of thing went on, until one day a Dutch fleet anchored near the
Staten Island brewery and in the evening took the town.
However, in the year following, peace was restored between England and
Holland, and New Amsterdam became New York again, also subject to the
Tammany rule.
Andros was governor for a time, but was a sort of pompous tomtit, with a
short breath and a large aquiline opinion of himself. He was one of the
arrogant old pie-plants whose growth was fostered by the beetle-bellied
administration at home. He went back on board the City of Rome one day,
and did not return.
New York had a gleam of hope for civil freedom under the rule of the
Duke of York and the county Democracy, but when the duke became James
II. he was just like other people who get a raise of salary, and refused
to be privately entertained by the self-made ancestry of the American.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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