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Page 44
Communipaw, it is true, has the glory of originating this conspiracy;
and it was hatched and reared in the House of the Four Chimneys; but it
has spread far and wide over ancient Pavonia, surmounted the heights of
Bergen, Hoboken, and Weehawk, crept up along the banks of the Passaic
and the Hackensack, until it pervades the whole chivalry of the country
from Tappan Slote in the north to Piscataway in the south, including the
pugnacious village of Rahway, more heroically denominated Spank-town.
Throughout all these regions a great "in-and-in confederacy" prevails,
that is to say, a confederacy among the Dutch families, by dint of
diligent and exclusive intermarriage, to keep the race pure and to
multiply. If ever, Mr. Editor, in the course of your travels between
Spank-town and Tappan Slote, you should see a cosey, low-eaved
farm-house, teeming with sturdy, broad-built little urchins, you may set
it down as one of the breeding places of this grand secret confederacy,
stocked with the embryo deliverers of New-Amsterdam.
Another step in the progress of this patriotic conspiracy, is the
establishment, in various places within the ancient boundaries of the
Nieuw-Nederlands, of secret, or rather mysterious associations, composed
of the genuine sons of the Nederlanders, with the ostensible object of
keeping up the memory of old times and customs, but with the real object
of promoting the views of this dark and mighty plot, and extending its
ramifications throughout the land.
Sir, I am descended from a long line of genuine Nederlanders, who,
though they remained in the city of New-Amsterdam after the conquest,
and throughout the usurpation, have never in their hearts been able to
tolerate the yoke imposed upon them. My worthy father, who was one of
the last of the cocked hats, had a little knot of cronies, of his own
stamp, who used to meet in our wainscoted parlor, round a nut-wood fire,
talk over old times, when the city was ruled by its native burgomasters,
and groan over the monopoly of all places of power and profit by the
Yankees. I well recollect the effect upon this worthy little conclave,
when the Yankees first instituted then New-England Society, held their
"national festival," toasted their "father land," and sang their foreign
songs of triumph within the very precincts of our ancient metropolis.
Sir, from that day, my father held the smell of codfish and potatoes,
and the sight of pumpkin pie, in utter abomination; and whenever the
annual dinner of the New-England Society came round, it was a sore
anniversary for his children. He got up in an ill humor, grumbled and
growled throughout the day, and not one of us went to bed that night,
without having had his jacket well trounced, to the tune of "The Pilgrim
Fathers."
You may judge, then, Mr. Editor, of the exaltation of all true patriots
of this stamp, when the Society of Saint Nicholas was set up among us,
and intrepidly established, cheek by jole, alongside of the society of
the invaders. Never shall I forget the effect upon my father and his
little knot of brother groaners, when tidings were brought them that the
ancient banner of the Manhattoes was actually floating from the window
of the City Hotel. Sir, they nearly jumped out of their silver-buckled
shoes for joy. They took down their cocked hats from the pegs on which
they had hanged them, as the Israelites of yore hung their harps upon
the willows, in token of bondage, clapped them resolutely once more upon
their heads, and cocked them in the face of every Yankee they met on the
way to the banqueting-room.
The institution of this society was hailed with transport throughout the
whole extent of the New-Netherlands; being considered a secret foothold
gained in New-Amsterdam, and a flattering presage of future triumph.
Whenever that society holds its annual feast, a sympathetic hilarity
prevails throughout the land; ancient Pavonia sends over its
contributions of cabbages and oysters; the House of the Four Chimneys is
splendidly illuminated, and the traditional song of St. Nicholas, the
mystic bond of union and conspiracy, is chaunted with closed doors, in
every genuine Dutch family.
I have thus, I trust, Mr. Editor, opened your eyes to some of the grand
moral, poetical, and political phenomena with which you are surrounded.
You will now be able to read the "signs of the times." You will
now understand what is meant by those "Knickerbocker Halls," and
"Knickerbocker Hotels," and "Knickerbocker Lunches," that are daily
springing up in our city and what all these "Knickerbocker Omnibuses"
are driving at. You will see in them so many clouds before a storm; so
many mysterious but sublime intimations of the gathering vengeance of a
great though oppressed people. Above all, you will now contemplate
our bay and its portentous borders, with proper feelings of awe and
admiration. Talk of the Bay of Naples, and its volcanic mountains! Why,
Sir, little Communipaw, sleeping among its cabbage gardens, "quiet as
gunpowder," yet with this tremendous conspiracy brewing in its bosom is
an object ten times as sublime (in a moral point of view, mark me) as
Vesuvius in repose, though charged with lava and brimstone, and ready
for an eruption.
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