OTHER THINGS ABOUT TOWN
A thing which displeased me, though perhaps I was easily put out by anything Director Stuyvesant did, was that he should have set up the gallows in front of the stone tavern built by Master Kieft, after it had been turned into the town hall.
To me that instrument of justice was a blot on the fair building, even though it be something necessary in all towns; the whipping-post and the stocks seem to be there by right, and do not cast such a horror upon him who passes them, but to have ever in sight that which had been built for the taking away of men's lives is, in a way, brutal.
The hooft, or city dock, was ever a pleasant lounging place to me, particularly when there were many ships in the roadstead. It was pleasing to sit there idle, thinking Master Tienhoven was poring over my accounts when the day was so fair that one enjoyed being in the sunshine, and to watch the ships or the small boats that flitted to and fro. It was enough to make one believe that in the days to come this New Amsterdam of ours might grow to be even as large as Amsterdam in Holland.
Then could I, and all others who had a part in the building of the town, look back with pride upon our life-work, save that in it should be something of shame and crime, as in the case of Master Kieft, who, I may say here, was drowned in a shipwreck on his way back to Holland to answer to the Company for his misdeeds.