"
Great was the terror of the good old women of the Manhattoes. They
gathered their children together, and took refuge in the cellars;
after having hung a shoe on the iron point of every bed-post, lest it
should attract the lightning. At length the storm abated: the thunder
sunk into a growl; and the setting sun, breaking from under the
fringed borders of the clouds, made the broad bosom of the bay to
gleam like a sea of molten, gold.
The word was given from the fort, that a ship was standing up the bay.
It passed from mouth to mouth, and street to street, and soon put the
little capital in a bustle. The arrival of a ship, in those early
times of the settlement, was an event of vast importance to the
inhabitants. It brought them news from the old world, from the land of
their birth, from which they were so completely severed: to the yearly
ship, too, they looked for their supply of luxuries, of finery, of
comforts, and almost of necessaries. The good vrouw could not have her
new cap, nor new gown, until the arrival of the ship; the artist
waited for it for his tools, the burgomaster for his pipe and his
supply of Hollands, the school-boy for his top and marbles, and the
lordly landholder for the bricks with which he was to build his new
mansion.
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