In this manner did the profound council of NEW AMSTERDAM smoke, and doze, and ponder, from week to week, month to month, and year to year, in what manner they should construct their infant settlement;—meanwhile, the town took care of itself, and like a sturdy brat which is suffered to run about wild, unshackled by clouts and bandages, and other abominations by which your notable nurses and sage old women cripple and disfigure the children of men, increased so rapidly in strength and magnitude, that before the honest burgomasters had determined upon a plan, it was too late to put it in execution,—whereupon they wisely abandoned the subject altogether. =Chapter IX.= HOW THE CITY OF NEW AMSTERDAM WAXED GREAT UNDER THE PROTECTION OF ST. NICHOLAS AND THE ABSENCE OF LAWS AND STATUTES—HOW OLOFFE THE DREAMER BEGAN TO DREAM OF AN EXTENSION OF EMPIRE, AND OF THE EFFECT OF HIS DREAMS. There is something exceedingly delusive in thus looking back through the long vista of departed years, and catching a glimpse of the fairy realms of antiquity. Like a landscape melting into distance, they receive a thousand charms from their very obscurity, and the fancy delights to fill up their outlines with graces and excellences of its own creation. Thus loom on my imagination those happier days of our city, when as yet New Amsterdam was a mere pastoral town, shrouded in groves of sycamores and willows, and surrounded by trackless forests and wide-spreading waters, that seemed to shut out all the cares and vanities of a wicked world.