NEW YORK.                                 209
 

CHAPTER VII.
 

How these singular barbarians turned out to be
notorious squatters. How they built air castles,
and attempted to initiate the JVederlanders in
the mystery of bundling.

In the last chapter I have given a faithful and
unprejudiced account of the origin of that singular
race of people, inhabiting the country eastward of
the Nieuw-Nederlandts; but I have yet to mention
certain peculiar habits which rendered them ex¬
ceedingly obnoxious to our ever honoured Dutch
ancestors.

The most prominent of these was a certain ramb¬
ling propensity, with which, like the sons of Ish-
mael, they seem to have been gifted by heaven,
and which continually goads them on, to shift their
residence from place to place, so that a Yankee
farmer is in a constant state of migration; tarrying
occasionally here and there; clearing lands for
other people to enjoy, building houses for others
to inhabit, and in a manner may be considered the
wandering Arab of America.

His first thought, on coming to the years of man¬
hood, is to settle himself in the world—which means

nothing more nor less than to begin his rambles.

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