The shortness of the females’ dress, which had continued in fashion ever since the days of William Kieft, had long offended his eye; and though extremely averse to meddling with the petticoats of the ladies, yet he immediately recommended that every one should be furnished with a flounce to the bottom. He likewise ordered that the ladies, and indeed the gentlemen, should use no other step in dancing than “shuffle and turn,” and “double trouble”; and forbade, under pain of his high displeasure, any young lady thenceforth to attempt what was termed “exhibiting the graces.” These were the only restrictions he ever imposed upon the sex; and these were considered by them as tyrannical oppressions, and resisted with that becoming spirit manifested by the gentle sex whenever their privileges are invaded. In fact, Antony Van Corlear, who, as has been shown, was a sagacious man, experienced in the ways of women, took a private occasion to intimate to the governor that a conspiracy was forming among the young vrouws of New Amsterdam; and that, if the matter were pushed any further, there was danger of their leaving off petticoats altogether; whereupon the good Peter shrugged his shoulders, dropped the subject, and ever after suffered the women to wear their petticoats and cut their capers as high as they pleased,—a privilege which they have jealously maintained in the Manhattoes unto the present day. =Chapter III.= HOW TROUBLES THICKENED ON THE PROVINCE—HOW IT IS THREATENED BY THE HELDERBERGERS, THE MERRYLANDERS, AND THE GIANTS OF THE SUSQUEHANNA. In the last two chapters I have regaled the reader with a delectable picture of the good Peter and his metropolis during an interval of peace. It was, however, but a bit of blue sky in a stormy day; the clouds are again gathering up from all points of the compass, and, if I am not mistaken in my forebodings, we shall have rattling weather in the ensuing chapters. It is with some communities as it is with certain meddlesome individuals: they have a wonderful facility at getting into scrapes; and I have always remarked that those are most prone to get in who have the least talent at getting out again. This is doubtless owing to the excessive valor of those states; for I have likewise noticed that this rampant quality is always most frothy and fussy where most confined; which accounts for its vaporing so amazingly in little states, little men, and ugly little women more especially. Such is the case with this little province of the Nieuw Nederlandts; which, by its exceeding valor, has already drawn upon itself a host of enemies; has had fighting enough to satisfy a province twice its size; and is in a fair way of becoming an exceedingly forlorn, well-belabored, and woe-begone little province. All which was providentially ordered to give interest and sublimity to this pathetic history.