Colonial days in old New York

								

night’s brands upon the hearth. And quickly the slender line of smoke
grew and grew to a great cloud over each steep-roofed house, and soon
with the smell of the burning brush and light pine that were coaxing
into hot flames the sturdy oak back and fore logs, were borne forth
also appetizing odors of breakfast to greet the early morn, telling of
each thrifty huys-vrouw who within the walls of her cheerful kitchen
was cooking a good solid Dutch breakfast for her mann.
Cans of buttermilk or good beer, brewed perhaps by the patroon, washed
down this breakfast of suppawn and rye-bread and grated cheese and
sausage or head-cheese; beer there was in plenty, in ankers, even in
tuns, in every household. Soon mynheer filled his long pipe with
native tobacco, and departed with much deliberation of movement; a
sturdy, honest figure, of decent carriage, neatly and soberly and
warmly clad, with thrift and prosperity and contentment showing in
every curve of his too-well-rounded figure. Adown the narrow street
he paused to trade in peltries or lumber, if he were middle-aged
and well-to-do; and were he sturdy and young, he threshed grain on
the barn-floor, or ground corn at the windmill, or felled wood on
the hillside; or perchance, were he old or young, he fished in the
river all day long,--a truly dignified day’s work, meet for any sober
citizen, one requiring much judgment and skill and reflection.
And as he fished, again he smoked, and ever he smoked. “The Dutch are
obstinate and incessant smokers,” chronicles the English clergyman
Wolley, Chaplain of Fort James, New York, in 1678, “whose diet,
especially of the boorish sort, being sallets and brawn and very often
picked buttermilk, require the use of that herb to keep their phlegm
from coagulating and curdling.” The word “boorish” was not a term of
reproach, nor was the frequent appellation “Dutch bore,” over which
some historians of the colony have seen fit to make merry, both boor
and bore meaning simply boer, or farmer. “Knave meant once no more
than lad; villain than peasant; a boor was only a farmer; a varlet was
but a serving-man; a churl but a strong fellow.”
What fishing was to the goodman of the house, knitting was to the
goodwife,--a soothing, monotonous occupation, ever at hand, ever
welcome, ever useful. Why, the family could scarce be clothed in
comfort without these clicking needles! A goodly supply of well-knit,
carefully dyed stockings was the housekeeper’s pride; and well they
might be, for little were they hidden. The full knee-breeches of father
and son displayed above the buckled shoes a long expanse of sturdy
hosiery, and the short petticoats of mother and daughter did not hide
the scarlet clocks of their own making. From the moment when the farmer
gave the fleece of the sheep into the hands of his women-kind, every
step of its transformation into stockings (except the knitting) was so