The ancient mansion of his forefathers was still kept up, but
instead of being a little yellow-fronted Dutch house in a garden,
it now stood boldly in the midst of a street, the grand house of
the neighborhood; for Wolfert enlarged it with a wing on each
side, and a cupola or tea room on top, where he might climb up
and smoke his pipe in hot weather; and in the course of time the
whole mansion was overrun by the chubby-faced progeny of Amy
Webber and Dirk Waldron.
As Wolfert waxed old and rich and corpulent, he also set up a
great gingerbread-colored carriage drawn by a pair of black
Flanders mares with tails that swept the ground; and to
commemorate the origin of his greatness he had for a crest a
fullblown cabbage painted on the pannels, with the pithy motto
_Alles Kopf_ that is to say, ALL HEAD; meaning thereby that he
had risen by sheer head-work.
To fill the measure of his greatness, in the fullness of time the
renowned Ramm Rapelye slept with his fathers, and Wolfert Webber
succeeded to the leathern-bottomed arm-chair in the inn parlor at
Corlears Hook; where he long reigned greatly honored and
respected, insomuch that he was never known to tell a story
without its being believed, nor to utter a joke without its being
laughed at.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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