HISTORY OF BROOKLYN. 225

build a cellar-kitcben under said house, and to furnish the wood for itto wit, beams and frame timber. There must be made two door-frames and two circular frames with windows therein, with a stairway to enter it, and to line the stairs in the cellar round about with boards, with a chimney mantel in the kitchen, and to groove and plane the ceiling. Egbert must excavate the cellar at his own expense. The carpenters must furnish the nails. For this work one hundred guilders (forty dollars) are promised, together with one whole good otter skin. Moreover, Egbert must deliver all the flat wood-work required for the house—to wit, boards and wainscotting.

Dated 26th April, 1655, at New Amsterdam.
(Signed) “JAN CORNELISEN CLEYN.
“‘X,’ The Mark of Egbert Van Borsum.”

“The word ‘betste,’ equivalent to the present ‘bedstead,’ which occurs in this contract,” says the source from which we extract the foregoing document, “requires some explanation, as its modern signification is very different from that which it had in those days. The ‘betste’ was then a part of the house, being constructed like a cupboard in a partition, with doors closing upon it when unoccupied, so that the sleeping apartment of an inn could accommodate several travellers with sleeping accommodations, and yet, in the daytime, the room would answer for a public room, and afford a neat and unencumbered appearance. In houses of more humble pretensions, the ‘slaap-banck,’ or ‘bunk’ of modern parlance, was the place of sleeping for travellers.

“To illustrate in a manner which, we doubt not, will give a fair idea of the customs of the Dutch taverns of New Netherlands, such as Van Borsum's, we give the following extract from the journal of one of our citizens,(1) who, as a matter of curiosity, visited a part of the Netherlands, where customs have not changed for centuries.

“It was the business of the good vrow, or her maid, to show up the traveller, and open the doors in the smooth partition of the box which was to receive his weary limbs for the night, and which otherwise he might not be able to discover, and after he crept into it, to come back again and blow out the candle, and in the morning

1 Hon. Henry C. Murphy, of Brooklyn.