far be it from me to counteract its sovereign will.  Besides, I cannot consent to venture my armies with a commander whom they despise, nor to trust the welfare of my people to a champion whom they distrust.  Retire therefore, my friend, from the irksome toils and cares of public life, with this comforting reflection—­that if guilty, you are but enjoying your just reward—­and if innocent, you are not the first great and good man who has most wrongfully been slandered and maltreated in this wicked world—­doubtless to be better treated in a better world, where there shall be neither error, calumny, nor persecution.  In the meantime, let me never see your face again, for I have a horrible antipathy to the countenances of unfortunate great men like yourself.”

FOOTNOTES: 

   [50] This was likewise a great seal of the New Netherlands, as
        may still be seen in ancient records.

   [51] Besides what is related in the Stuyvesant MS., I have found
        mention made of this illustrious patroon in another manuscript,
        which says, “De Heer (or the squire) Michael Paw, a Dutch
        subject, about 10th Aug., 1630, by deed purchased Staten Island. 
        N.B.—­The same Michael Paw had what the Dutch call a colonie at
        Pavonia, on the Jersey shore, opposite New York:  and his
        overseer, in 1636, was named Corns.  Van Vorst, a person of the
        same name, in 1769, owned Pawles Hook, and a large farm at
        Pavonia, and is a lineal descendant from Van Vorst.”

   [52] So called from the Navesink tribe of Indians that inhabited
        these parts.  At present they are erroneously denominated the
        Neversink, or Neversunk, mountains.

   [53] Since corrupted into the Wallabout, the bay where the
        navy-yard is situated.

   [54] Now spelt Brooklyn.

CHAPTER VI.

As my readers and myself are about entering on as many perils as ever a confederacy of meddlesome knights-errant wilfully ran their heads into it is meet that, like those hardy adventurers, we should join hands, bury all differences, and swear to stand by one another, in weal or woe, to the end of the enterprise.  My readers must doubtless perceive how completely I have altered my tone and deportment since we first set out together.  I warrant they then thought me a crabbed, cynical, impertinent little son of a Dutchman; for I scarcely ever gave them a civil word, nor so much as touched my beaver, when I had occasion to address them.  But as we jogged along together on the high road of my history, I gradually began to relax, to grow more courteous, and occasionally to enter into familiar discourse, until at length I came to conceive a most social, companionable kind of regard for them.  This is just my way—­I am always a little cold and reserved at first, particularly to people whom I neither know nor care for and am only to be completely won by long intimacy.