Showing the Nature of History in General,-further- more, the Universal Acquirements of William the Testy, and how a man may learn so much as to render himself good for nothing,- Dirk Schuiler and the Valiant Peter, Description of the powerful Army that assembled at the City of New-Amsterdam-together with the interview between Peter the Headstrong and Gene- Of Peter Stuyvesant's Expedition into the East Country, showing that though an Old Bird, he did How the People of New-Amsterdam were thrown into a great Panic by the news of a threatened In- vasion, and the manner in which they fortified The troubles of New-Amsterdam appear to thicken, showing the bravery in time of Peril of a People How Peter Stuyvesant relieved the Sovereign Peo- ple from the burden of taking care of the Nation- with sundry particulars of his conduct in time of Showing the great difficulty Philosophers have had in peopling America-and how the Aborigines BEAUTIES OF WASHINGTON IRVING. THE INN KITCHEN. DURING a journey that I once made through the Netherlands, I had arrived one evening at the Pome d'Or, the principal inn of a small Flemish village. It was after the hour of the table d'hote, so that I was obliged to make a solitary supper from the reliques of its ampler board. The weather was chilly; I was seated alone in one end of a great gloomy dining-room, and my repast being over, I had the prospect before me of a long dull evening, without any visible means of enlivening it. I summoned mine host, and requested something to read; he brought me the whole literary stock of his household, a Dutch family-bible, an almanac in the same language, and a number of old Paris newspapers. As I sat dozing over one of the latter, reading old news and stale criticisms, my ear was now and then struck with bursts of laughter which seemed to proceed from the kitchen. Every one that has travelled on the continent must know how favourite a resort the kitchen of a country inn is to the middle and inferior order of travellers; particularly in that equivocal kind of weather, when a fire becomes agreeable towards evening. I threw aside. the newspaper, and explored my way to the kitchen, to take a peep at the group that appeared to be so merry. It was composed partly of travellers who had arrived some hours before in a diligence, and partly of the usual attendants and hangers-on of inns. They were seated round a great burnished stove, that might have been mistaken for an altar, at which they were worshipping. It was covered with various kitchen vessels of resplendent brightness: among which steamed and hissed a huge copper tea-kettle. A large lamp threw a strong mass of light upon the group, bringing out many odd features in strong relief. Its yellow rays partially illumined the spacious kitchen, dying duskily away into remote corners; except where they settled into mellow radiance on the broad side of a flitch of bacon, or were reflected back from wellscoured utensils, that gleamed from the midst of obscurity. A strapping Flemish lass, with long golden pendants in her ears, and a necklace with a golden heart suspended to it, was the presiding priestess of the temple. Many of the company were furnished with pipes, and most of them with some kind of evening potation. I found their mirth was occasioned by anecdotes, which a little swarthy Frenchman, with a dry weazen face and large whiskers, was giving of his love adventures; at the end of each of which, there was one of those bursts of honest unceremonious laughter, in which a man indulges in that temple of true liberty, an inn. As I had no better mode of getting through a tedious blustering evening, I took my seat near the stove, and listened to a variety of travellers' tales, some very extravagant, and most very dull. All of them, however, have faded from my treacherous memory except one, which I will endeavour to relate. I fear, however, it derived its chief zest from the manner in which it was told, and the peculiar air and appearance of the narrator. He was a corpulent old Swiss, who had the look of a veteran traveller. He was dressed in a tarnished green travelling jacket, with a broad belt round his waist, and a pair of overalls, with buttons from the hips to the ankles. He was of a full rubicund countenance, with a double chin, aquiline nose, and a pleasant twinkling eye. |