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Some years ago, when Jacob Alrichs was our director, I helped to build this great warehouse with my own hands. They were good men, then, in charge of New Amstel's government. Thieves and jealous rogues have succeeded them. Would you think it, they suspect even me, and ordered Nanking to whip me with the cat!
Leave here thy rum and presents, and return to thy patrons, Alrichs and Beeckman, bearing our English gratitude, and thou shalt wear a beautiful hat, such as the King of England allows only his jester to put upon his head." Nanking felt very much obliged to these kind gentlemen. They made the hat of the red cloth he had brought.
Beeckman and Alrichs were interested in the largest brewery, and their beer was sent by Appoquinimy in great hogsheads to the English of Maryland in exchange for butts of tobacco. As Nanking walked into the big room where fifty men were drinking, his prodigious red hat rose almost to the ceiling, and was greeted by roars of laughter. "Goeden avond! Hoe yaart gij! How do you do, my bully?"
A little way off was the fine residence of Peter Alrichs, with a balcony on the roof where the family sat of evenings, smoking their pipes and seeing starlight come out on the river and the flag drop at sunset from Fort Casimir; or hearing the roll of drums as they changed the guard or fired a gun to overhaul a vessel.
Before Nanking could climb the ladder again, it was sailing through the air, magnificent as a ship, toward its winter pastures on the bay of Chisopecke. "He! Zoo!" exclaimed the soldiers. "Foei! weg!" cried the fishermen. Only three persons said "Ach! helas!" the Widow Cloos, pretty Elsje, and Nanking. "Thy stork is a savage bird!" cried Peter Alrichs.
Then, besides, little Elsje Alrichs might let me be her sweetheart and carry her doll!" Elsje was the daughter of Peter Alrichs, the late great director's son, whose father slept in the graveyard of the little log church on Sand Hook, beside Dominie Welius, the holy psalm-tune leader.
Proclamation was made that New Amstel should for all the future be named New-castle, and that Gerrit Van Swearingen, the refractory schout, should yield up his noble property to Captain John Carr, of the invaders, and Peter Alrichs lose every thing for the benefit of the fortunate William Tom. The English soldiery proceeded to make barracks of the Amsterdam warehouse.
"Humph!" said Peter Alrichs, "you are not the big idiot I took you for!" An extraordinary story, some say the recital of a dream, or scenes in somnambulism, is that of Andrew Waples, of Horntown, Va.
"Dunder and blitzen!" swore Peter Alrichs, "hast thou lost all our provision and made fools of us, too?" They struck the dunce's cap off Nanking's head with their staves, and threw their beer in his face. "Two hundred guilders are we out of pocket," cried both these great men. "Was ever such a brainless dolt in our possessions?"
I believe it is true," they said to each other. "They were burning him at the stake and he did not know it. Yes, his feeble mind saved him!" "Not at all," protested Nanking. "It was because I thought no evil of anybody." "Hearken, Nanking!" said Peter Alrichs, very soberly. "And you, Mother Cloos, come hither too. This boy can make our fortunes if we can make him fully comprehend us."
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