“WAS TO MOUNT THE ROOF, WHENCE HE CONTEMPLATED WITH RUEFUL ASPECT THE HOSTILE SQUADRON” 328 “METAMORPHOSING PUMPS INTO FORMIDABLE SOLDIERS” 331 A PUBLIC MEETING IN FRONT OF THE STADTHOUSE 335 THE DEATH OF ANTONY VAN CORLEAR 341 “APOLLO PEEPING OUT NOW AND THEN FOR AN INSTANT” 344 DETERMINED COCK 352 “A LEGION OF BRITISH BEEF-FED WARRIORS POURED INTO NEW AMSTERDAM” 357 “CONDUCTED EVERY STRAY HOG OR COW IN TRIUMPH TO THE POUND” 362 “ON APRIL FOOL’S ERRANDS FOR PIGEON’S MILK” 365 “‘WELL, DEN!—HARDKOPPIG PETER BEN GONE AT LAST!’” 369 [Illustration: Black and white sketch of a man in a nightcap drinking from a large mug.] [Illustration: A pen-and-ink drawing of several small sailboats with passengers on a calm sea, with a large fish tail splashing in the foreground.] =Book IV.= (_Continued._) CONTAINING THE CHRONICLES OF THE REIGN OF WILLIAM THE TESTY. [Illustration: Black and white sketch of a man with a wooden peg leg seen from behind, walking with a cane and his hands clasped at his back.] A HISTORY OF NEW YORK =Chapter VII.= GROWING DISCONTENTS OF NEW AMSTERDAM UNDER THE GOVERNMENT OF WILLIAM THE TESTY. It has been remarked by the observant writer of the Stuyvesant manuscript, that under the administration of William Kieft the disposition of the inhabitants of New Amsterdam experienced an essential change, so that they became very meddlesome and factious. The unfortunate propensity of the little governor to experiment and innovation, and the frequent exacerbations of his temper, kept his council in a continual worry; and the council being to the people at large what yeast or leaven is to a batch, they threw the whole community in a ferment; and the people at large being to the city what the mind is to the body, the unhappy commotions they underwent operated most disastrously upon New Amsterdam,—insomuch that, in certain of their paroxysms of consternation and perplexity, they begat several of the most crooked, distorted, and abominable streets, lanes, and alleys with which this metropolis is disfigured.