Edwin Brothertoft Author:Theodore Winthrop Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II. Bluff is the bow and round as a pumpkin is the stern of the Dutch brig, swinging to its anchor in the bay of New York. It is the new arrival from England,... more » this sweet autumn day of 1665. The passengers land. Colonel. Brother- toft and family ! Welcome, chivalric gentleman, to this raw country! You and your class are needed here. And now disembark a great company of Lincolnshire men, old tenants or old soldiers of the Colonel's. Their names are thorough Lincolnshire. Here come Wrangles, Swinesheads, Timberlands, Mumbys, Bilsbys, Hogsthorpes, Swillingores, and Galsworthys, old and young, men and women. These land, and stare about forlornly, after the manner of emigrants. They sit on their boxes, and wish they were well back in the old country. They see the town gallows, an eminent object on the beach, and are taught that where man goes, crime goes also. A frowzy Indian paddles ashore with clams to sell; atthis vision, their dismayed scalps tremble on their sinciputs. A sly Dutchman, the fatter prototype of to-day's emigrant runner, stands before them and says, seductively, " Bier, Schnapps! " They shake their heads firmly, and respond, " Nix!" Colonel Brothertoft was received with due distinction by Governor Nicolls and Mayor Willet. Old Peter Stuyvesant was almost consoled that Hollanders were sent to their Bouweries to smoke and grow stolid, if such men as this new-comer were to succeed them in power. The Colonel explored that " great brave river " which Connecticut Winthrop had celebrated in his letter. Its beautiful valley was " all before him where to choose." Dutch land-patents were plenteous in market as villa sites after a modern panic. Crown grants were to be had from the new proprietary, almost for the asking. The lord of old Brothertoft Manor selected...« less