THE BURGHERS 107

A shrewd observer has said that luxury implies
waste while comfort lives in thrift. We are safe
in assuming that comfort rather than luxury pre-
vailed in New Netherland and that the highly
colored pictures of elegant life on the shores of the
Hudson represent a very late phase, when the
Dutch influence still prevailed under English pro-
tection. The earlier settlers were a far simpler
people, whose floors were scrubbed and sanded
instead of carpeted, who used hour-glasses instead
of clocks, and who set their four-poster beds in the
rooms where visitors were formally received.

It was of course the "great burghers" who set
the social as well as the official tone in New Am-
sterdam. * It was they who owned the finest houses,

1 In 1657 the burgomasters and sckepens were authorized to create
a great burger-recht the members of which should be in a sense a
privileged class. It was set forth that "whereas in all beginnings some
thing or person must be the first so that afterward a distinction may
take place, in like manner it must be in establishing the great and
small citizenship." For which reason the line of great burghers was
drawn as follows: first, those who had been members of the supreme gov-
ernment; second, the burgomasters and schepens of the city past and
present; third, ministers of the gospel; fourth, officers of the militia
from the staff to the ensign included. The privileges of this caste
were open to the male descendants of each class; but as they could be
secured by others outside the sacred circle on payment of fifty guilders
it is difficult to understand wherein the exclusiveness lay. The small
burghers were decreed to be those who had lived in the city for a year
and six weeks and had kept fire and light, those born within the town,