Breeches made a dreadful clattering about his ears, and battered and belabored him with hard words and sound arguments, yet Tough Breeches hung on most resolutely to the last. They parted, therefore, as is usual in all arguments where both parties are in the right, without coming to any conclusion;—but they hated each other most heartily forever after, and a similar breech with that between the houses of Capulet and Montague did ensue between the families of Ten Breeches and Tough Breeches. [Illustration: THE ARGUMENT] I would not fatigue my reader with these dull matters of fact, but that my duty as a faithful historian requires that I should be particular; and in truth, as I am now treating of the critical period when our city, like a young twig, first received the twists and turns which have since contributed to give it its present picturesque irregularity, I cannot be too minute in detailing their first causes. After the unhappy altercation I have just mentioned, I do not find that anything further was said on the subject worthy of being recorded. The council, consisting of the largest and oldest heads in the community, met regularly once a week, to ponder on this momentous subject; but, either they were deterred by the war of words they had witnessed, or they were naturally averse to the exercise of the tongue, and the subsequent exercise of the brains,—certain it is, the most profound silence was maintained,—the question as usual lay on the table,—the members quietly smoked their pipes, making but few laws, without ever enforcing any,—and in the meantime the affairs of the settlement went on—as it pleased God. [Illustration: THE SECRETARY.] As most of the council were but little skilled in the mystery of combining pot-hooks and hangers, they determined most judiciously not to puzzle either themselves or posterity with voluminous records. The secretary, however, kept the minutes of the council, with tolerable precision, in a large vellum folio, fastened with massy brass clasps; the journal of each meeting consisted but of two lines, stating in Dutch, that “the council sat this day, and smoked twelve pipes, on the affairs of the colony.” By which it appears that the first settlers did not regulate their time by hours, but pipes, in the same manner as they measure distances in Holland at this very time: an admirably exact measurement, as a pipe in the mouth of a true-born Dutchman is never liable to those accidents and irregularities that are continually putting our clocks out of order.