- Puff - puff - Peter Stuyvesant knew better what to
do with his money than to bury it - puff - I know the Stuyvesant
family - puff - every one of them - puff - not a more respectable family in
the province - puff - old standers - puff - warm householders - puff - none
of your upstarts - puff - puff - puff. - Don't talk to me of Peter
Stuyvesant's walking - puff - puff - puff - puff."
Here the redoubtable Ramm contracted his brow, clasped up his mouth,
till it wrinkled at each corner, and redoubled his smoking with such
vehemence, that the cloudly volumes soon wreathed round his head, as
the smoke envelopes the awful summit of Mount Etna.
A general silence followed the sudden rebuke of this very rich man. The
subject, however, was too interesting to be readily abandoned. The
conversation soon broke forth again from the lips of Peechy Prauw Van
Hook, the chronicler of the club, one of those narrative old men who
seem to grow incontinent of words, as they grow old, until their talk
flows from them almost involuntarily.
Peechy, who could at any time tell as many stories in an evening as his
hearers could digest in a month, now resumed the conversation, by
affirming that, to his knowledge, money had at different times been dug
up in various parts of the island. The lucky persons who had discovered
them had always dreamt of them three times beforehand, and what was
worthy of remark, these treasures had never been found but by some
descendant of the good old Dutch families, which clearly proved that
they had been buried by Dutchmen in the olden time.
