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Excerpt from Behind Manhattan Gables: A Story of New Amsterdam 1663-1664 To all readers interested in American, English, and Dutch history, let me say this prefatory word. I have had a special purpose in writing this book, though in the form of a story. It is well to go back to beginnings, the seed of things. I am to tell about a seed so very small - the seed, the beginning of a grand city. One autumn morning, from the deck of a Sound steamer, after passing beneath Brooklyn Bridge, I looked for Trinity Church spire. There was the church at the head of Wall Street. The little fragment of New York between Wall Street and the Battery was New Amsterdam - New York in seed. How short a walk the Dutchman of 1663 took to go around the beloved borders of his island city! With profound interest I have gone through some of the old streets of colonial days still in existence. I walked along Bridge Street, or De Brug Straat of olden time. I shut my eyes and imagined that I saw the Katryne and Geertruyd of this story, in their picturesque Dutch dress, coming to meet me. In Broad Street, once De Heeren Graft, I thought of the canal that pierced it, a fond memorial of old Holland. I looked down and saw in fancy the clumsy barges bringing cargoes from vessels in the stream. I passed Stone Street, and the next must be the old-time Beaver Street, I said, De Bever Graft. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.