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One day the great patriots, John Dickinson and Cæsar Rodney, riding past Christina together, stopped for dinner, and sent their watches in to be cleaned meantime. "'Minuit, said Rodney, 'you are a devil with a time-keeper! "'Nay, Minuit, said Dickinson, 'thou art the gentlest custodian of time in our parts. I would some one could regulate these States and times like thee.
In 1626 the West India Company sent out a settlement under Gov. Peter Minuit. He landed on the island of Manhattan, and soon entered into a trade with the Indians, buying from them the entire island of Manhattan, fourteen thousand acres in size, for twenty-four dollars' worth of scarlet cloth, brass buttons, and other trinkets.
Suddenly he caught sight of some words pencilled on the stern-post of the boat, and by the merest chance refrained from calling Stanley's attention to them. Drawing nearer, he could read them easily enough. Minuit vingt-six. "It certainly looks," he said rising, "as if the boat had been in the water, but it may be that the dampness is merely owing to heavy dew. The boat wants painting, I think."
One of the first acts of Governor Minuit was to buy the Island of Manhattan from the Indians, giving them in exchange some beads, some brass ornaments, some bits of glass and some strips of colored cloth; all of which seemed a rich treasure to the Indians, but were in reality worth just twenty-four dollars. As soon as Minuit had bought the island, he organized a government.
Minuit, it was observed, never used a tuning-fork in church, like all leaders of religious music, but cast his eyes down a moment towards his heart, and tapped his foot, and then, as if catching the pitch somewhere from within, he raised the tune and carried it forward with an exquisite sense of rhythm.
Only the groom wore an anxious face as he led her into his tidy home, now for the first time blessed with a mistress. "The night of the nuptials came softly down, as nowhere else except upon the skies of the Delaware and Chesapeake, and Minuit was happy.
"'My child, said Minuit, 'I accept thee wholly, sharing thy griefs! Weep, but on the breast of one who loves thee! "The village of Christina rejoiced when its broad-faced, dimpled friend came home with a bride so fair and well-descended. They dressed the sign before his door with flowers.
But can this be the river whose virtues are extolled by: Virgil, Horace, Martial, Statius, Propertius, Strabo, Pliny, Varro and Coramella? What a constellation of names around these short-lived waters! Truly, minuit praesentia famam, as Boccaccio says of the once-renowned Sebethus. Often have I visited this site and tried to reconstruct its vanished glories.
We are not fully informed respecting all the first instructions given to Governor Minuit when he came hither with Pennsylvania's original colony in 1637-38, but there is every reason to infer that they strictly corresponded to those given to his successor, Governor Printz, five years afterward, on his appointment in 1642, about which there can be no question.
"The daughter of Captain Lum was named Lois, and she was the junior of Fithian Minuit by several years, a slender, beautiful girl, with hair and eyes of the softest brown, and household ways, daughterly and endearing.
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