Now, as Peter Stuyvesant had a singular inclination to govern the province by his individual will, his first move, on his return, was to put a stop to this gratuitous legislation. Accordingly, one evening, when an inspired cobbler was holding forth to an assemblage of the kind, the intrepid Peter suddenly made his appearance, with his ominous walking-staff in his hand, and a countenance sufficient to petrify a mill-stone. The whole meeting was thrown into confusion,—the orator stood aghast, with open mouth and trembling knees, while “horror! tyranny! liberty! rights! taxes! death! destruction!” and a host of other patriotic phrases were bolted forth before he had time to close his lips. Peter took no notice of the skulking throng, but strode up to the brawling bully-ruffian, and pulling out a huge silver watch, which might have served in times of yore as a town clock, and which is still retained by his descendants as a family curiosity, requested the orator to mend it, and set it going. The orator humbly confessed it was utterly out of his power, as he was unacquainted with the nature of its construction. “Nay, but,” said Peter, “try your ingenuity, man: you see all the springs and wheels, and how easily the clumsiest hand may stop it, and pull it to pieces; and why should it not be equally easy to regulate as to stop it?” The orator declared that his trade was wholly different,—that he was a poor cobbler, and had never meddled with a watch in his life,—that there were men skilled in the art, whose business it was to attend to those matters; but for his part, he should only mar the workmanship and put the whole in confusion. “Why, harkee, master of mine,” cried Peter,—turning suddenly upon him, with a countenance that almost petrified the patcher of shoes into a perfect lapstone,—“dost thou pretend to meddle with the movements of government,—to regulate, and correct, and patch, and cobble a complicated machine, the principles of which are above thy comprehension, and its simplest operations too subtle for thy understanding, when thou canst not correct a trifling error in a common piece of mechanism, the whole mystery of which is open to thy inspection?—Hence with thee to the leather and stone, which are emblems of thy head; cobble thy shoes, and confine thyself to the vocation for which Heaven has fitted thee. But,” elevating his voice until it made the welkin ring, “if ever I catch thee, or any of thy tribe, meddling again with the affairs of government, by St. Nicholas, but I’ll have every mother’s bastard of ye flayed alive, and your hides stretched for drumheads, that ye may thenceforth make a noise to some purpose!” [Illustration: “‘NAY, BUT,’ SAID PETER, ‘TRY YOUR INGENUITY, MAN.’” ]