NEW YORK.
 

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CHAPTER V.

In which the Author discourses very ingenuously
of himself—After which is to be found much
interesting history about Peter the Headstrong
and his followers.

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 ad¬
venturers, we should join hands, bury all dif¬
ferences, and swear to stand by one another,
in weal or woe, to the end of the enterprize. My
readers must doubtless perceive, how complete¬
ly 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, in 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 theni. This is just my way-—