Colonial days in old New York

								

IV. TOWN LIFE                                                         70
V. DUTCH TOWN HOMES                                                   98
VI. DUTCH FARMHOUSES                                                 115
VII. THE DUTCH LARDER                                                128
VIII. THE DUTCH VROUWS                                               154
IX. THE COLONIAL WARDROBE                                            172
X. HOLIDAYS                                                          185
XI. AMUSEMENTS AND SPORTS                                            204
XII. CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS                                          227
XIII. CHURCH AND SUNDAY IN OLD NEW YORK                              261
XIV. “THE END OF HIS DAYS”                                           293

                             COLONIAL DAYS

                                   IN

                              OLD NEW YORK

                               CHAPTER I



                           THE LIFE OF A DAY

At the first break of day, every spring and summer morn, the quiet
Dutch sleepers in the old colonial town of Albany were roused by three
loud blasts of a horn sounded far and wide by a sturdy cow-herd; and
from street and dooryard came in quick answer the jingle-jangle, the
klingle-klangle of scores of loud-tongued brass and iron bells which
hung from the necks of steady-going hungry Dutch cows who followed the
town-herder forth each day to pastures green.
On the broad town-commons or the fertile river-meadows Uldrick Heyn
and his “chosen proper youngster,” his legally appointed aid, watched
faithfully all day long their neighbors’ cattle; and as honest herdsmen
earned well their sea-want and their handsel of butter, dallying not
in tavern, and drinking not of wine, as they were sternly forbidden
by the schepens, until when early dews were falling they quit their
meadow grasses mellow, for “at a quarter of an hour before the sun goes
down the cattle shall be delivered at the church.” Thence the patient
kine slowly wandered or were driven each to her own home-stall, her
protecting cow-shed.
In New Amsterdam the town’s cow-herd was Gabriel Carpsey; and when his
day’s work was done, he walked at sunset through the narrow lanes and
streets of the little settlement, sounding at each dooryard Gabriel’s
horn, a warning note of safe return and milking-time.
Until mid-November did the morning cow-horn waken the burghers and
their vrouws at sunrise; and when with cold winter the horn lay
silent, they must have sorely missed their unfailing eye-opener.
Scarce had the last cow departed in the early morn from her master’s
dooryard, before there rose in the gray light from each vast-throated
chimney throughout the little town a faint line of pale, wavering
smoke blown up in increasing puffs with skilful bellows from last