I sought the Superintendent’s office. To him, ignominiously but cheerfully ensconced in the cellar-like basement, I descended, where glimmered a light so dim, so humid, that I had a sense of being in subaqueous rather than subterranean depths, and I was struck with the civic humor that placed the Superintendent subter omnia.
He really knew nothing about these records, but there was a man in the Library who would know. Through underground tunnels and cemented passages and up a narrow staircase, I reached the noble aboveground abode of our municipal corporation.
Here all was radiant with prosperity. No lean and hungry race filled those corridors and chambers; jocund and ruddy were all, as were our city fathers of yore who drank vast tuns of sack-posset and ale. Well may we say when on those men and on these we gaze: Nobly wert thou named Manhattan!—the place where all drank together!
Mighty is Manhattan and great even the reflection of her power. Neither poverty-stricken nor meagre of flesh am I, but I shrank into humble insignificance before those well-fed aggrandizations of the city’s glory and prosperity who bourgeoned through the corridors of our modern Stadt Huys; and I fain would have saluted them with respectful mien and words as of yore as “Most Worshipful, Most Prudent, and Very Discreet, their High Mightinesses,”—not Burgomasters and Schepens, but Aldermen and Councilmen,—but the tame conventionalities of modern life kept me silent.
In the Library the sought-for man sent me to the Clerk of the Common Council, who in turn bade me be seated while he lured from an adjoining “closet,” as old Pepys called his office, one who would be glad to tell me all about everything relating to those ancient days.
Here was something tangible. Glad to tell me! In truth he was. Never have I seen such a passion for talking. Forth poured a flood of elaborate Milesian eloquence, in which intricate suggestions, noble patriotic sentiments, ardent historical interest, warm sympathy in my researches, and unbounded satisfaction and glowing pride over New York’s honorable preservation of the records of her ancestors all joined. Nevertheless and notwithstanding, when I ran my fat but sly and agile political fox to earth, and made him answer me directly, I simmered down merely this one solid fact: “If ye go to Mr. De Lancy’s office in the Vanderbilt Building, he can tell ye where thim ricords is, an’ no one ilse in this city can.”
I tendered as floriated and declamatory a farewell expression of gratitude as my dull tongue could command to my city authority, who was, I am led to believe from the tablet on the office from which he emerged, a common councilman, but who might have been a score of glorious aldermen distilled and expressed and condensed into one, so rotund, so ruby-colored, so shining, so truly grand was he, so elegant, albeit loose, of attire, so glittering with gold and precious stones. As I thanked him in phrases sadly etiolated in comparison with his own glowing pauses, “Madam,” said he, “are you satisfied, and may I ask your name and residence?” “You may,” said I, “I came to study history, and I was sent to the Satisfaction Clerk, and I found satisfaction, though not in the wonted legal form.” “But ye haven’t told me yer name,” said he. “I have not,” said I; “good day.”