James Fenimore Cooper

Satanstoe; Or, the Littlepage Manuscripts.

PREFACE.

Every chronicle of manners has a certain value. When customs are connected with principles, in their origin, development, or end, such records have a double importance; and it is because we think we see such a connection between the facts and incidents of the Littlepage Manuscripts, and certain important theories of our own time, that we give the former to the world.

It is perhaps a fault of your professed historian, to refer too much to philosophical agencies, and too little to those that are humbler. The foundations of great events, are often remotely laid in very capricious and uncalculated passions, motives, or impulses. Chance has usually as much to do with the fortunes of states, as with those of individuals; or, if there be calculations connected with them at all, they are the calculations of a power superior to any that exists in man.

We had been led to lay these Manuscripts before the world, partly by considerations of the above nature, and partly on account of the manner in which the two works we have named, "Satanstoe" and the "Chainbearer," relate directly to the great New York question of the day, ANTI-RENTISM; which question will be found to be pretty fully laid bare, in the third and last book of the series. These three works, which contain all the Littlepage Manuscripts, do not form sequels to each other, in the sense of personal histories, or as narratives; while they do in that of principles. The reader will see that the early career, the attachment, the marriage, &c. of Mr. Cornelius Littlepage are completely related in the present book, for instance; while those of his son, Mr. Mordaunt Littlepage, will be just as fully given in the "Chainbearer," its successor. It is hoped that the connection, which certainly does exist between these three works, will have more tendency to increase the value of each, than to produce the ordinary effect of what are properly called sequels, which are known to lessen the interest a narrative might otherwise have with the reader. Each of these three books has its own hero, its own heroine, and its own—-picture—of manners, complete; though the latter may be, and is, more or less thrown into relief by its pendants.

We conceive no apology is necessary for treating the subject of anti-rentism with the utmost frankness. Agreeably to our views of the matter, the existence of true liberty among us, the perpetuity of the institutions, and the safety of public morals, are all dependent on putting down, wholly, absolutely, and unqualifiedly, the false and dishonest theories and statements that have been boldly advanced in connection with this subject. In our view, New York is at this moment, much the most disgraced state in the Union, notwithstanding she has never failed to pay the interest on her public debt; and her disgrace arises from the fact that her laws are trampled underfoot, without any efforts, at all commensurate with the object, being made to enforce them. If words and professions can save the character of a community, all may yet be well; but if states, like individuals, are to be judged by their actions, and the "tree is to be known by its fruit," God help us!

For ourselves, we conceive that true patriotism consists in laying bare everything like public vice, and in calling such things by their right names. The great enemy of the race has made a deep inroad upon us, within the last ten or a dozen years, under cover of a spurious delicacy on the subject of exposing national ills; and it is time that they who have not been afraid to praise, when praise was merited, should not shrink from the office of censuring, when the want of timely warnings may be one cause of the most fatal evils. The great practical defect of institutions like ours, is the circumstance that "what is everybody's business, is nobody's business;" a neglect that gives to the activity of the rogue a very dangerous ascendency over the more dilatory correctives of the honest man.

CHAPTER I.

  "Look you,

  Who comes here: a young man, and an old, in solemn talk."

  As You Like it.

It is easy to foresee that this country is destined to undergo great and rapid changes. Those that more properly belong to history, history will doubtless attempt to record, and probably with the questionable veracity and prejudice that are apt to influence the labours of that particular muse; but there is little hope that any traces of American society, in its more familiar aspects, will be preserved among us, through any of the agencies usually employed for such purposes. Without a stage, in a national point of view at least, with scarcely such a thing as a book of memoirs that relates to a life passed within our own limits, and totally without light literature, to give us simulated pictures of our manners, and the opinions of the day, I see scarcely a mode by which the next generation can preserve any memorials of the distinctive usages and thoughts of this. It is true, they will have traditions of certain leading features of the colonial society, but scarcely any records; and, should the next twenty years do as much as the last, towards substituting an entirely new race for the descendants of our own immediate fathers, it is scarcely too much to predict that even these traditions will be lost in the whirl and excitement of a throng of strangers. Under all the circumstances, therefore, I have come to a determination to make an effort, however feeble it may prove, to preserve some vestiges of household life in New York, at least; while I have endeavoured to stimulate certain friends in New Jersey, and farther south, to undertake similar tasks in those sections of the country. What success will attend these last applications, is more than I can say, but, in order that the little I may do myself shall not be lost for want of support, I have made a solemn request in my will, that those who come after me will consent to continue this narrative, committing to paper their own experience, as I have here committed mine, down as low at least as my grandson, if I ever have one. Perhaps, by the end of the latter's career, they will begin to publish books in America, and the fruits of our joint family labours may be thought sufficiently matured to be laid before the world.

It is possible that which I am now about to write will be thought too homely, to relate to matters much too personal and private, to have sufficient interest for the public eye; but it must be remembered that the loftiest interests of man are made up of a collection of those that are lowly; and, that he who makes a faithful picture of only a single important scene in the events of single life, is doing something towards painting the greatest historical piece of his day. As I have said before, the leading events of my time will find their way into the pages of far more pretending works than this of mine, in some form or other, with more or less of fidelity to the truth, and real events, and real motives; while the humbler matters it will be my office to record, will be entirely overlooked by writers who aspire to enrol their names among the Tacituses of former ages. It may be well to say here, however, I shall not attempt the historical mood at all, but content myself with giving the feelings, incidents, and interests of what is purely private life, connecting them no farther with things that are of a more general nature, than is indispensable to render the narrative intelligible and accurate. With these explanations, which are made in order to prevent the person who may happen first to commence the perusal of this manuscript from throwing it into the fire, as a silly attempt to write a more silly fiction, I shall proceed at once to the commencement of my proper task.

I was born on the 3d May, 1737, on a neck of land, called Satanstoe, in the county of West Chester, and in the colony of New York; a part of the widely extended empire that then owned the sway of His Sacred Majesty, George II., King of Great Britain, Ireland, and France; Defender of the Faith; and, I may add, the shield and panoply of the Protestant Succession; God bless him! Before I say anything of my parentage, I will first give the reader some idea of the locus in quo, and a more precise notion of the spot on which I happened first to see the light.

A "neck," in West Chester and Long Island parlance, means something that might be better termed a "head and shoulders," if mere shape and dimensions are kept in view. Peninsula would be the true word, were we describing things on a geographical scale; but, as they are, I find it necessary to adhere to the local term, which is not altogether peculiar to our county, by the way. The "neck" or peninsula of Satanstoe, contains just four hundred and sixty-three acres and a half of excellent West Chester land; and that, when the stone is hauled and laid into wall, is saying as much in its favour as need be said of any soil on earth. It has two miles of beach, and collects a proportionate quantity of sea-weed for manure, besides enjoying near a hundred acres of salt-meadow and sedges, that are not included in the solid ground of the neck proper. As my father, Major Evans Littlepage, was to inherit this estate from his father, Capt. Hugh Littlepage, it might, even at the time of my birth, be considered old family property, it having indeed, been acquired by my grandfather, through his wife, about thirty years after the final cession of the colony to the English by its original Dutch owners. Here we had lived, then, near half a century, when I was born, in the direct line, and considerably longer if we included maternal ancestors; here I now live, at the moment of writing these lines, and here I trust my only son is to live after me.

Before I enter into a more minute description of Satanstoe, it may be well, perhaps, to say a word concerning its somewhat peculiar name. The neck lies in the vicinity of a well-known pass that is to be found in the narrow arm of the sea that separates the island of Manhattan from its neighbour, Long Island, and which is called Hell Gate. Now, there is a tradition, that I confess is somewhat confined to the blacks of the neighbourhood, but which says that the Father of Lies, on a particular occasion, when he was violently expelled from certain roystering taverns in the New Netherlands, made his exit by this well-known dangerous pass, and drawing his foot somewhat hastily from among the lobster-pots that abound in those waters, leaving behind him as a print of his passage by that route, the Hog's Back, the Pot, and all the whirlpools and rocks that render navigation so difficult in that celebrated strait, he placed it hurriedly upon the spot where there now spreads a large bay to the southward and eastward of the neck, just touching the latter with the ball of his great toe, as he passed Down-East; from which part of the country some of our people used to maintain he originally came. Some fancied resemblance to an inverted toe (the devil being supposed to turn everything with which he meddles, upside-down,) has been imagined to exist in the shape and swells of our paternal acres; a fact that has probably had its influence in perpetuating the name.

Satanstoe has the place been called, therefore, from time immemorial; as time is immemorial in a country in which civilized time commenced not a century and a half ago: and Satanstoe it is called to-day. I confess I am not fond of unnecessary changes, and I sincerely hope this neck of land will continue to go by its old appellation, as long as the House of Hanover shall sit on the throne of these realms; or as long as water shall run and grass shall grow. There has been an attempt made to persuade the neighbourhood, quite lately, that the name is irreligious and unworthy of an enlightened people, like this of West Chester; but it has met with no great success. It has come from a Connecticut man, whose father they say is a clergyman of the "standing order;" so called, I believe, because they stand up at prayers; and who came among us himself in the character of a schoolmaster. This young man, I understand, has endeavoured to persuade the neighbourhood that Satanstoe is a corruption introduced by the Dutch, from Devil's Town; which, in its turn, was a corruption from Dibbleston; the family from which my grandfather's father-in-law purchased having been, as he says, of the name of Dibblee. He has got half-a-dozen of the more sentimental part of our society to call the neck Dibbleton; but the attempt is not likely to succeed in the long run, as we are not a people much given to altering the language, any more than the customs of our ancestors. Besides, my Dutch ancestors did not purchase from any Dibblee, no such family ever owning the place, that being a bold assumption of the Yankee to make out his case the more readily.

Satanstoe, as it is little more than a good farm in extent, so it is little more than a particularly good farm in cultivation and embellishment. All the buildings are of stone, even to the hog-sties and sheds, with well-pointed joints, and field walls that would do credit to a fortified place. The house is generally esteemed one of the best in the Colony, with the exception of a few of the new school. It is of only a story and a half in elevation, I admit; but the rooms under the roof are as good as any of that description with which I am acquainted, and their finish is such as would do no discredit to the upper rooms of even a York dwelling. The building is in the shape of an L, or two sides of a parallelogram, one of which shows a front of seventy-five, and the other of fifty feet. Twenty-six feet make the depth, from outside to outside of the walls. The best room had a carpet, that covered two-thirds of the entire dimensions of the floor, even in my boyhood, and there were oil-cloths in most of the better passages. The buffet in the dining-room, or smallest parlour, was particularly admired; and I question if there be, at this hour, a handsomer in the county. The rooms were well-sized, and of fair dimensions, the larger parlours embracing the whole depth of the house, with proportionate widths, while the ceilings were higher than common, being eleven feet, if we except the places occupied by the larger beams of the chamber floors.

As there was money in the family, besides the Neck, and the Littlepages had held the king's commissions, my father having once been an ensign, and my grandfather a captain, in the regular army, each in the earlier portion of his life, we always ranked among the gentry of the county. We happened to be in a part of Westchester in which were none of the very large estates, and Satanstoe passed for property of a certain degree of importance. It is true, the Morrises were at Morrisania, and the Felipses, or Philipses, as these Bohemian counts were then called, had a manor on the Hudson, that extended within a dozen miles of us, and a younger branch of the de Lanceys had established itself even much nearer, while the Van Cortlandts, or a branch of them, too, dwelt near Kingsbridge; but these were all people who were at the head of the Colony, and with whom none of the minor gentry attempted to vie. As it was, therefore, the Littlepages held a very respectable position between the higher class of the yeomanry and those who, by their estates, education, connections, official rank, and hereditary consideration, formed what might be justly called the aristocracy of the Colony. Both my father and grandfather had sat in the Assembly, in their time, and, as I have heard elderly people say, with credit, too. As for my father, on one occasion, he made a speech that occupied eleven minutes in the delivery,—a proof that he had something to say, and which was a source of great, but, I trust, humble felicitation in the family, down to the day of his death, and even afterwards.

Then the military services of the family stood us in for a great deal, in that day it was something to be an ensign even in the militia, and a far greater thing to have the same rank in a regular regiment. It is true, neither of my predecessors served very long with the King's troops, my father in particular selling out at the end of his second campaign; but the military experience, and I may add the military glory each acquired in youth, did them good service for all the rest of their days. Both were commissioned in the militia, and my father actually rose as high as major in that branch of the service, that being the rank he held, and the title he bore, for the last fifteen years of his life.

My mother was of Dutch extraction on both sides, her father having been a Blauvelt, and her mother a Van Busser. I have heard it said that there was even a relationship between the Stuyvesants and the Van Cortlandts, and the Van Bussers; but I am not able to point out the actual degree and precise nature of the affinity. I presume it was not very near, or my information would have been more minute. I have always understood that my mother brought my father thirteen hundred pounds for dowry (currency, not sterling), which, it must be confessed, was a very genteel fortune for a young woman in 1733. Now, I very well know that six, eight, and ten thousand pounds sometimes fall in, in this manner, and even much more in the high families; but no one need be ashamed, who looks back fifty years, and finds that his mother brought a thousand pounds to her husband.

I was neither an only child, nor the eldest-born. There was a son who preceded me, and two daughters succeeded, but they all died in infancy, leaving me in effect the only offspring for my parents to cherish and educate. My little brother monopolised the name of Evans, and living for some time after I was christened, I got the Dutch appellation of my maternal grandfather, for my share of the family nomenclature, which happened to be Cornelius—Corny was consequently the diminutive by which I was known to all the whites of my acquaintance, for the first sixteen or eighteen years of my life, and to my parents as long as they lived. Corny Littlepage is not a bad name, in itself, and I trust they who do me the favour to read this manuscript, will lay it down with the feeling that the name is none the worse for the use I have made of it.

I have said that both my father and grandfather, each in his day, sat in the assembly; my father twice, and my grandfather only once. Although we lived so near the borough of West Chester, it was not for that place they sat, but for the county, the de Lanceys and the Morrises contending for the control of the borough, in a way that left little chance for the smaller fishes to swim in the troubled water they were so certain to create. Nevertheless, this political elevation brought my father out, as it might be, before the world, and was the means of giving him a personal consideration he might not have otherwise enjoyed. The benefits, and possibly some of the evils of thus being drawn out from the more regular routine of our usually peaceable lives, may be made to appear in the course of this narrative.

I have ever considered myself fortunate in not having been born in the earlier and infant days of the colony, when the interests at stake, and the events by which they were influenced, were not of a magnitude to give the mind and the hopes the excitement and enlargement that attend the periods of a more advanced civilization, and of more important incidents. In this respect, my own appearance in this world was most happily timed, as any one will see who will consider the state and importance of the colony in the middle of the present century. New York could not have contained many less than seventy thousand souls, including both colours, at the time of my birth, for it is supposed to contain quite a hundred thousand this day on which I am now writing. In such a community, a man has not only the room, but the materials on which to figure; whereas, as I have often heard him say, my father, when he was born, was one of less than half of the smallest number I have just named. I have been grateful for this advantage, and I trust it will appear, by evidence that will be here afforded, that I have not lived in a quarter of the world, or in an age, when and where, and to which great events have been altogether strangers.

My earliest recollections, as a matter of course, are of Satanstoe and the domestic fireside. In my childhood and youth, I heard a great deal said of the Protestant Succession, the House of Hanover, and King George II.; all mixed up with such names as those of George Clinton, Gen. Monckton, Sir Charles Hardy, James de Lancey, and Sir Danvers Osborne, his official representatives in the colony. Every age has its old and its last wars, and I can well remember that which occurred between the French in the Canadas and ourselves, in 1744. I was then seven years old, and it was an event to make an impression on a child of that tender age. My honoured grandfather was then living, as he was long afterwards, and he took a strong interest in the military movements of the period, as was natural for an old soldier. New York had no connection with the celebrated expedition that captured Louisbourg, then the Gibraltar of America, in 1745; but this could not prevent an old soldier like Capt. Littlepage from entering into the affair with all his heart, though forbidden to use his hand. As the reader may not be aware of all the secret springs that set public events in motion, it may be well here to throw in a few words in the way of explanation.

There was and is little sympathy, in the way of national feeling, between the colonies of New England and those which lie farther south. We are all loyal, those of the east as well as those of the south-west and south; but there is, and ever has been, so wide a difference in our customs, origins, religious opinions, and histories, as to cause a broad moral line, in the way of feeling, to be drawn between the colony of New York and those that lie east of the Byram river. I have heard it said that most of the emigrants to the New England states came from the west of England where many of their social peculiarities and much of their language are still to be traced, while the colonies farther south have received their population from the more central counties, and those sections of the island that are supposed to be less provincial and peculiar. I do not affirm that such is literally the fact, though it is well known that we of New York have long been accustomed to regard our neighbours of New England as very different from ourselves, whilst, I dare say, our neighbours of New England have regarded us as different from themselves, and insomuch removed from perfection.

Let all this be as it may, it is certain New England is a portion of the empire that is set apart from the rest, for good or for evil. It got its name from the circumstance that the English possessions were met, on its western boundary by those of the Dutch, who were thus separated from the other colonies of purely Anglo-Saxon origin, by a wide district that was much larger in surface than the mother country itself. I am afraid there is something in the character of these Anglo-Saxons that predisposes them to laugh and turn up their noses at other races; for I have remarked that their natives of the parent land itself, who come among us, show this disposition even as it respects us of New York and those of New England, while the people of the latter region manifest a feeling towards us, their neighbours, that partakes of anything but the humility that is thought to grace that Christian character to which they are particularly fond of laying claim.

My grandfather was a native of the old country, however, and he entered but little into the colonial jealousies. He had lived from boyhood, and had married in New York, and was not apt to betray any of the overweening notions of superiority that we sometimes encountered in native-born Englishmen, though I can remember instances in which he would point out the defects in our civilization, and others in which he dwelt with pleasure on the grandeur and power his own island. I dare say this was all right, for few among us have ever been disposed to dispute the just supremacy of England in all things that are desirable, and which form the basis of human excellence.

I well remember a journey Capt. Hugh Littlepage made to Boston, in 1745, in order to look at the preparations that were making for the great expedition. Although his own colony had no connection with this enterprise, in a military point of view, his previous service rendered him an object of interest to the military men then assembled along the coast of New England. It has been said the expedition against Louisbourg, then the strongest place in America, was planned by a lawyer, led by a merchant, and executed by husbandmen and mechanics; but this, though true as a whole, was a rule that had its exceptions. There were many old soldiers who had seen the service of this continent in the previous wars, and among them were several of my grandfather's former acquaintances. With these he passed many a cheerful hour, previously to the day of sailing, and I have often thought since, that my presence alone prevented him from making one in the fleet. The reader will think, I was young, perhaps, to be so far from home on such an occasion, but it happened in this wise: My excellent mother thought I had come out of the small-pox with some symptoms that might be benefited by a journey, and she prevailed on her father-in-law to let me be of the party when he left home to visit Boston in the winter of 1744-5. At that early day moving about was not always convenient in these colonies, and my grandfather travelling in a sleigh that was proceeding east with some private stores that had been collected for the expedition, it presented a favourable opportunity to send me along with my venerable progenitor, who very good-naturedly consented to let me commence my travels under his own immediate auspices.

The things I saw on this occasion have had a material influence on my future life. I got a love of adventure, and particularly of military parade and grandeur, that has since led me into more than one difficulty. Capt. Hugh Littlepage, my grandfather, was delighted with all he saw until after the expedition had sailed, when he began to grumble on the subject of the religious observances that the piety of the Puritans blended with most of their other movements. On the score of religion there was a marked difference; I may say there is still a marked difference between New England and New York. The people of New England certainly did, and possibly may still, look upon us of New York as little better than heathens; while we of New York assuredly did, and for anything I know to the contrary may yet, regard them as canters, and by necessary connection, hypocrites. I shall not take it on myself to say which party is right; though it has often occurred to my mind that it would be better had New England a little less self-righteousness, and New York a little more righteousness, without the self. Still, in the way of pounds, shillings and pence, we will not turn our backs upon them any day, being on the whole rather the most trustworthy of the two as respects money; more especially in all such cases in which our neighbour's goods can be appropriated without having recourse to absolutely direct means. Such, at any rate, is the New York opinion, let them think as they please about it on the other side of Byram.

My grandfather met an old fellow-campaigner, at Boston, of the name of Hight, Major Hight, as he was called, who had come to see the preparations, too; and the old soldiers passed most of the time together. The Major was a Jerseyman, and had been somewhat of a free-liver in his time, retaining some of the propensities of his youth in old age, as is apt to be the case with those who cultivate a vice as if it were a hot-house plant. The Major was fond of his bottle, drinking heavily of Madeira, of which there was then a good stock in Boston, for he brought some on himself; and I can remember various scenes that occurred between him and my grandfather, after dinner, as they sat discoursing in the tavern on the progress of things, and the prospects for the future. Had these two old soldiers been of the troops of the province in which they were, it would have been "Major" and "Captain" at every breath; for no part of the earth is fonder of titles than our eastern brethren; 1 whereas, I must think we had some claims to more true simplicity of character and habits, notwithstanding New York has ever been thought the most aristocratical of all the northern colonies. Having been intimate from early youth, my two old soldiers familiarly called each other Joey and Hodge, the latter being the abbreviation of one of my grandfather's names, Roger, when plain Hugh was not used, as sometimes happened between them. Hugh Roger Littlepage, I ought to have said, was my grandfather's name.

"I should like these Yankees better, if they prayed less, my old friend," said the Major, one day, after they had been discussing the appearances of things, and speaking between the puffs of his pipe. "I can see no great use in losing so much time, by making these halts to pray, when the campaign is fairly opened."

"It was always their way, Joey," my grandfather answered, taking his time, as is customary with smokers. "I remember when we were out together, in the year '17, that the New England troops always had their parsons, who acted as a sort of second colonels. They tell me His Excellency has ordered a weekly fast, for public prayers, during the whole of this campaign."

"Ay, Master Hodge, praying and plundering; so they go on," returned the Major, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, preparatory to filling it anew; an employment that gave him an opportunity to give vent to his feelings, without pausing to puff.—"Ay, Master Hodge, praying and plundering; so they go on. Now, do you remember old Watson, who was in the Massachusetts Levies, in the year '12?—old Tom Watson; he that was a sub under Barnwell, in our Tuscarora expedition?"

My grandfather nodded his head in assent, that being the only reply the avocation of smoking rendered convenient, just at that moment, unless a sort of affirmatory grunt could be construed into an auxiliary.

"Well, he has a son going in this affair; and old Tom, or Colonel Watson, as he is now very particular to be called, is down here with his wife and two daughters, to see the ensign off. I went to pay the old fellow a visit, Hodge; and found him, and the mother and sisters, all as busy as bees in getting young Tom's baggage ready for a march. There lay his whole equipment before my eyes, and I had a favourable occasion to examine it at my leisure."

"Which you did with all your might, or you're not the Joe Hight of the year '10," said my grandfather, taking his turn with the ashes and the tobacco-box.

Old Hight was now puffing away like a blacksmith who is striving to obtain a white heat, and it was some time before he could get out the proper reply to this half-assertion, half-interrogatory sort of remark.

"You may be sure of that," he at length ejaculated; when, certain of his light, he proceeded to tell the whole story, stopping occasionally to puff, lest he should lose the "vantage ground" he had just obtained. "What d'ye think of half-a-dozen strings of red onions, for one item in a subaltern's stores!"

My grandfather grunted again, in a way that might very well pass for a laugh.

"You're certain they were red, Joey?" he finally asked.

"As red as his regimentals. Then there was a jug, filled with molasses, that is as big as yonder demijohn;" glancing at the vessel which contained his own private stores. "But I should have thought nothing of these, a large empty sack attracting much of my attention. I could not imagine what young Tom could want of such a sack; but, on broaching the subject to the Major, he very frankly gave me to understand that Louisbourg was thought to be a rich town, and there was no telling what luck, or Providence—yes, by George!—he called it Providence!—might throw in his son Tommy's way. Now that the sack was empty, and had an easy time of it, the girls would put his bible and hymn-book in it, as a place where the young man would be likely to look for them. I dare say, Hodge, you never had either bible or hymn-book, in any of your numerous campaigns?"

"No, nor a plunder-sack, nor a molasses-jug, nor strings of red onions," growled my grandfather in reply.

How well I remember that evening! A vast deal of colonial prejudice and neighbourly antipathy made themselves apparent in the conversation of the two veterans; who seemed to entertain a strange sort of contemptuous respect for their fellow-subjects of New England; who, in their turn, I make not the smallest doubt, paid them off in kind—with all the superciliousness and reproach, and with many grains less of the respect.

That night, Major Hight and Capt. Hugh Roger Littlepage, both got a little how-come-you-so, drinking bumpers to the success of what they called "the Yankee expedition," even at the moment they were indulging in constant side hits at the failings and habits of the people. These marks of neighbourly infirmity are not peculiar to the people of the adjacent provinces of New York and of New England. I have often remarked that the English think and talk very much of the French, as the Yankees speak of us; while the French, so far as I have been able to understand their somewhat unintelligible language—which seems never to have a beginning nor an end—treat the English as the Puritans of the Old World. As I have already intimated, we were not very remarkable for religion in New York, in my younger days; while it would be just the word, were I to say that religion was conspicuous among our eastern neighbours. I remember to have heard my grandfather say, he was once acquainted with a Col. Heathcote, an Englishman, like himself, by birth, and a brother of a certain Sir Gilbert Heathcote, who was formerly a leading man in the Bank of England. This Col. Heathcote came among us young, and married here, leaving his posterity behind him, and was lord of the manor of Scarsdale and Mamaroneck, in our county of West Chester. Well, this Col. Heathcote told my grandfather, speaking on the subject of religion, that he had been much shocked, on arriving in this country, at discovering the neglected condition of religion in the colony; more especially on Long Island, where the people lived in a sort of heathenish condition. Being a man of mark, and connected with the government, The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, applied to him to aid it in spreading the truths of the bible in the colony. The Colonel was glad enough to comply; and I remember my grandfather said, his friend told him of the answer he returned to these good persons in England. "I was so struck with the heathenish condition of the people, on my arriving here," he wrote to them, "that, commanding the militia of the colony, I ordered the captains of the different companies to call their men together, each Sunday at sunrise, and to drill them until sunset; unless they would consent to repair to some convenient place, and listen to morning and evening prayer, and to two wholesome sermons read by some suitable person, in which case the men were to be excused from drill." 2 I do not think this would be found necessary in New England at least, where many of the people would be likely to prefer drilling to preaching.

But all this gossip about the moral condition of the adjacent colonies of New York and New England is leading me from the narrative, and does not promise much for the connection and interest of the remainder of the manuscript.

1 (return)

[ It will be remembered Mr. Littlepage wrote more than seventy years ago, when this distinction might exclusively belong to the East; but the West has now some claim to it, also.]

2 (return)

[ On the subject of this story, the editor can say he has seen a published letter from Col. Heathcote, who died more than a century since, at Mamaroneck, West Chester Co., in which that gentleman gives the Society for the propagation of the gospel an account of his proceedings, that agrees almost verbatim with the account of the matter that is here given by Mr. Cornelius Littlepage. The house in which Col. Heathcote dwelt was destroyed by fire, a short time before the revolution; but the property on which it stood, and the present building, belong at this moment to his great-grandson, the Rt. Rev. Wm. Heathcote de Lancey, the Bishop of Western New York. On the subject of the plunder, the editor will remark, that a near connection, whose grandfather was a Major at the taking of Louisbourg, and who was subsequently one of the first Brigadiers appointed in 1775, has lately shown him a letter written to that officer, during the expedition, by his father; in which, blended with a great deal of pious counsel, and some really excellent religious exhortation, is an earnest inquiry after the plunder.—EDITOR.]

CHAPTER II.

  "I would there were no age between ten and three-and-twenty;

  or that youth would sleep out the rest."

  Winter's Tale.

It is not necessary for me to say much of the first fourteen years of my life. They passed like the childhood and youth of the sons of most gentlemen in our colony, at that day, with this distinction, however. There was a class among us which educated its boys at home. This was not a very numerous class, certainly, nor was it always the highest in point of fortune and rank. Many of the large proprietors were of Dutch origin, as a matter of course; and these seldom, if ever, sent their children to England to be taught anything, in my boyhood. I understand that a few are getting over their ancient prejudices, in this particular, and begin to fancy Oxford or Cambridge may be quite as learned schools as that of Leyden; but, no Van, in my boyhood, could have been made to believe this. Many of the Dutch proprietors gave their children very little education, in any way or form, though most of them imparted lessons of probity that were quite as useful as learning, had the two things been really inseparable. For my part, while I admit there is a great deal of knowledge going up and down the land, that is just of the degree to trick a fellow-creature out of his rights, I shall never subscribe to the opinion, which is so prevalent among the Dutch portion of our population, and which holds the doctrine that the schools of the New England provinces are the reason the descendants of the Puritans do not enjoy the best of reputations, in this respect. I believe a boy may be well taught, and made all the honester for it; though, I admit, there may be, and is, such a thing as training a lad in false notions, as well as training him in those that are true. But, we had a class, principally of English extraction, that educated its sons well; usually sending them home, to the great English schools, and finishing at the universities. These persons, however, lived principally in town, or, having estates on the Hudson, passed their winters there. To this class the Littlepages did not belong; neither their habits nor their fortunes tempting them to so high a flight. For myself, I was taught enough Latin and Greek to enter college, by the Rev. Thomas Worden, an English divine, who was rector of St. Jude's, the parish to which our family properly belonged. This gentleman was esteemed a good scholar, and was very popular among the gentry of the county; attending all the dinners, clubs, races, balls, and other diversions that were given by them, within ten miles of his residence. His sermons were pithy and short; and he always spoke of your half-hour preachers, as illiterate prosers, who did not understand how to condense their thoughts. Twenty minutes were his gauge, though I remember to have heard my father say, he had known him preach all of twenty-two. When he compressed down to fourteen, my grandfather invariably protested he was delightful.

I remained with Mr. Worden until I could translate the two first AEneids, and the whole of the Gospel of St. Matthew, pretty readily; and then my father and grandfather, the last in particular, for the old gentleman had a great idea of learning, began to turn over in their minds, the subject of the college to which I ought to be sent. We had the choice of two, in both of which the learned languages and the sciences are taught, to a degree, and in a perfection, that is surprising for a new country. These colleges are Yale, at New Haven, in Connecticut, and Nassau Hall, which was then at Newark, New Jersey, after having been a short time at Elizabethtown, but which has since been established at Princeton. Mr. Worden laughed at both; said that neither had as much learning as a second-rate English grammar-school; and that a lower-form boy, at Eton or Westminster, could take a master's degree at either, and pass for a prodigy in the bargain. My father, who was born in the colonies, and had a good deal of the right colony feeling, was nettled at this, I remember; while my grandfather, being old-country born, but colony educated, was at a loss how to view the matter. The captain had a great respect for his native land, and evidently considered it the paradise of this earth, though his recollections of it were not very distinct; but, at the same time, he loved Old York, and West Chester in particular, where he had married and established himself at Satan's Toe; or, as he spelt it, and as we all have spelt it, now, this many a day, Satanstoe. I was present at the conversation which decided the question, as regarded my future education, and which took place in the common parlour, around a blazing fire, about a week before Christmas, the year I was fourteen. There were present Capt. Hugh Roger, Major Evans, my mother, the Rev. Mr. Worden, and an old gentleman of Dutch designation and extraction, of the name of Abraham Van Valkenburgh, but who was familiarly called, by his friends, 'Brom Follock, or Col. Follock or Volleck, as the last happen to be more or less ceremonious, or more or less Dutch. Follock, I think, however was the favourite pronunciation. This Col. Van Valkenburgh was an old brother-soldier of my father's, and, indeed, a relation, a sort of a cousin through my greatgrandmother, besides being a man of much consideration and substance. He lived in Rockland, just across the Hudson, but never failed to pay a visit to Satanstoe at that season of the year. On the present occasion, he was accompanied by his son, Dirck, who was my friend, and just a year my junior.

"Vell, den,"—the colonel commenced the discourse by saying, as he tapped the ashes out of his pipe for the second time that evening, having first taken a draught of hot flip, a beverage much in vogue then, as well as now,—"vell, den, Evans, vat is your intention as to ter poy? Vill he pe college-l'arnt, like as his grant-fat'er, or only school-l'arnt, like as his own fat'er?" The allusion to the grandfather being a pleasantry of the colonel's, who insisted that all the old-country born were "college-l'arnt" by instinct.

"To own the truth, 'Brom," my father answered, "this is a point that is not yet entirely settled, for there are different opinions as to the place to which he shall be sent, even admitting that he is to be sent at all."

The colonel fastened his full, projecting, blue eyes on my father, in a way that pretty plainly expressed surprise.

"Vat, den, is dere so many colleges, dat it is hart to choose?" he said.

"There are but two that can be of any use to us, for Cambridge is much too distant to think of sending the boy so far. Cambridge was in our thoughts at one time, but that is given up."

"Vhere, den, ist Camprige?" demanded the Dutchman, removing his pipe to ask so important a question, a ceremony he usually thought unnecessary.

"It is a New England college—near Boston; not half a day's journey distant, I fancy."

"Don't sent Cornelius dere," ejaculated the colonel, contriving to get these words out alongside of the stem of the pipe.

"You think not, Col. Follock," put in the anxious mother; "may I ask the reason for that opinion?"

"Too much Suntay, Matam Littlepage—the poy wilt be sp'ilt by ter ministers. He will go away an honest lat, and come pack a rogue. He will l'arn how to bray and to cheat."

"Hoity toity! my noble colonel!" exclaimed the Rev. Mr. Worden, affecting more resentment than he felt. "Then you fancy the clergy, and too much Sunday, will be apt to convert an honest youth into a knave!"

The colonel made no answer, continuing to smoke very philosophically, though he took occasion, while he drew the pipe out of his mouth, in one of its periodical removals, to make a significant gesture with it towards the rising sun, which all present understood to mean "down east," as it is usual to say, when we mean to designate the colonies of New England. That he was understood by the Rev. Mr. Worden, is highly probable; since that gentleman continued to turn the flip of one vessel into another, by way of more intimately blending the ingredients of the mixture, quite as coolly as if there had been no reflection on his trade.

"What do you think of Yale, friend 'Brom?" asked my father, who understood the dumb-show as well as any of them.

"No tifference, Evans; dey all breaches and brays too much. Goot men have no neet of so much religion. Vhen a man is really goot, religion only does him harm. I mean Yankee religion."

"I have another objection to Yale," observed Capt. Hugh Roger, "which is their English."

"Och!" exclaimed the Colonel—"Deir English is horriple! Wuss dan ast to us Tutch."

"Well, I was not aware of that," observed my father. "They are English, sir, as well as ourselves, and why should they not speak the language as well as we?"

"Why toes not a Yorkshireman, or a Cornishman, speak as veil as a Lonnoner? I tell you what, Evans, I'll pet the pest game-cock on ter Neck, against the veriest tunghill the parson hast, ter Presitent of Yale calls p e e n, pen, ant roof, ruff—and so on."

"My birds are all game," put in the divine; "I keep no other breed."

"Surely, Mr. Worden, you do not countenance cock-fights by your presence!" my mother said, using as much of reproach in her manner as comported with the holy office of the party she addressed, and with her own gentle nature. The Colonel winked at my father, and laughed through his pipe, an exploit he might have been said to perform almost hourly. My father smiled in return; for, to own the truth, he had been present at such sports on one or two occasions, when the parson's curiosity had tempted him to peep in also; but my grandfather looked grave and much in earnest. As for Mr. Worden himself, he met the imputation like a man. To do him justice, if he were not an ascetic, neither was he a whining hypocrite, as is the case with too many of those who aspire to be disciples and ministers of our blessed Lord.

"Why not, Madam Littlepage?" Mr. Worden stoutly demanded. "There are worse places than cock-pits; for, mark me, I never bet—no, not on a horse-race, even; and that is an occasion on which any gentleman might venture a few guineas, in a liberal, frank, way. There are so few amusements for people of education in this country, Madam Littlepage, that one is not to be too particular. If there were hounds and hunting, now, as there are at home, you should never hear of me at a cock-fight, I can assure you."

"I must say I do not approve of cock-fights," rejoined my mother meekly; "and I hope Corny will never be seen at one. No—never—never."

"Dere you're wrong, Matam Littlepage," the Colonel remarked, "for ter sight of ter spirit of ter cocks wilt give ter boy spirit himself. My Tirck, dere, goes to all in ter neighbourhood and he is a game-cock himself, let me tell you. Come, Tirck—come—cock-a-doodle-doo!"

This was true all round, as I very well knew, young as I was. Dirck, who was as slow-moving, as dull-seeming, and as anti-mercurial a boy to look at as one could find in a thousand, was thorough game at the bottom, and he had been at many a main, as he had told me himself. How much of his spirit was derived from witnessing such scenes I will not take on me to affirm; for, in these later times, I have heard it questioned whether such exhibitions do really improve the spectator's courage or not. But Dirck had pluck, and plenty of it, and in that particular, at least, his father was not mistaken. The Colonel's opinion always carried weight with my mother, both on account of his Dutch extraction, and on account of his well-established probity; for, to own the truth, a text or a sentiment from him had far more weight with her than the same from the clergyman. She was silenced on the subject of cock-fighting for the moment, therefore, which gave Capt. Hugh Roger further opportunity to pursue that of the English language. The grandfather, who was an inveterate lover of the sport, would have cut in to that branch of the discourse, but he had a great tenderness for my mother, whom everybody loved by the way, and he commanded himself, glad to find that so important an interest had fallen into hands as good as those of the Colonel. He would just as soon be absent from church as be absent from a cock-fight, and he was a very good observer of religion.

"I should have sent Evans to Yale, had it not been for the miserable manner of speaking English they have in New England," resumed my grandfather; "and I had no wish to have a son who might pass for a Cornish man. We shall have to send this boy to Newark, in New Jersey. The distance is not so great, and we shall be certain he will not get any of your round-head notions of religion, too, Col. 'Brom, you Dutch are not altogether free from these distressing follies.

"Debble a pit!" growled the Colonel, through his pipe; for no devotee of liberalism and latitudinarianisrn in religion could be more averse to extra-piety than he. The Colonel, however, was not of the Dutch Reformed; he was an Episcopalian, like ourselves, his mother having brought this branch of the Follocks into the church; and, consequently, he entered into all our feelings on the subject of religion, heart and hand. Perhaps Mr. Worden was a greater favourite with no member of the four parishes over which he presided, than with Col. Abraham Van Valkenburgh.

"I should think less of sending Corny to Newark," added my mother, "was it not for crossing the water."

"Crossing the water!" repeated Mr. Worden. "The Newark we mean, Madam Littlepage, is not at home: the Jersey of which we speak is the adjoining colony of that came."

"I am aware of that, Mr. Worden; but it is not possible to get to Newark, without making that terrible voyage be tween New York and Powles' Hook. No, sir, it is impossible; and every time the child comes home, that risk will have to be run. It would cause me many a sleepless night!"

"He can go by Tobb's Ferry, Matam Littlepage," quietly observed the Colonel.

"Dobb's Ferry can be very little better than that by Powles' Hook," rejoined the tender mother. "A ferry is a ferry; and the Hudson will be the Hudson, from Albany to New York. So water is water."

As these were all self-evident propositions, they produced a pause in the discourse; for men do not deal with new ideas as freely as they deal with the old.

"Dere is a way, Evans, as you and I know py experience," resumed the Colonel, winking again at my father, "to go rount the Hudson altoget'er. To pe sure, it is a long way, and a pit in the woots; but petter to untertake dat, than to haf the poy lose his l'arnin'. Ter journey might be made in two mont's, and he none the wuss for ter exercise. Ter Major and I were never heartier dan when we were operating on the he't waters of the Hutson. I will tell Corny the roat."

My mother saw that her apprehensions were laughed at, and she had the good sense to be silent. The discussion did not the less proceed, until it was decided, after an hour more of weighing the pros and the cons, that I was to be sent to Nassau Hall, Newark, New Jersey, and was to move from that place with the college, whenever that event might happen.

"You will send Dirck there, too," my father added, as soon as the affair in my case was finally determined. "It would be a pity to separate the boys, after they have been so long together, and have got to be so much used to each other. Their characters are so identical, too, that they are more like brothers than very distant relatives."

"Dey will like one anot'er all de petter for pein' a little tifferent, den," answered the Colonel, drily.

Dirck and I were no more alike than a horse resembles a mule.

"Ay, but Dirck is a lad who will do honour to an education—he is solid and thoughtful, and learning will not be thrown away on such a youth. Was he in England, that sedate lad might get to be a bishop."

"I want no pishops in my family, Major Evans; nor do I want any great l'arnin'. None of us ever saw a college, and we have got on fery vell. I am a colonel and a memper; my fat'er was a colonel and a memper; and my grand-fet'er woult have peen a colonel and a memper, but dere vast no colonels and no mempers in his time; though Tirck, yonter can be a colonel and a memper, wit'out crosting dat terriple ferry that frightens Matam Littlepage so much."

There was usually a little humour in all Col. Follock said and did, though it must be owned it was humour after a very Dutch model; Dutch-built fun, as Mr. Worden used to call it. Nevertheless, it was humour; and there was enough of Holland in all the junior generations of the Littlepages to enjoy it. My father understood him, and my mother did not hear the last of the "terriple ferry" until not only I, but the college itself, had quitted Newark; for the institution made another remove to Princeton, the place where it is now to be found, some time before I got my degree.

"You have got on very well without a college education, as all must admit, colonel," answered Mr. Worden; "but there is no telling how much better you would have got on, had you been an A. M. You might, in the last case, have been a general and a member of the King's council."

"Dere ist no yeneral in ter colony, the commander-in-chief and His Majesty's representatif excepted," returned the colonel. "We are no Yankees, to make yenerals of ploughmen."

Hereupon, the colonel and my father knocked the ashes out of their pipes at the same instant, and both laughed,—a merriment in which the parson, my grandfather, my dear mother, and I myself joined. Even a negro boy, who was about my own age, and whose name was Jacob, or Jaap, but who was commonly called Yaap, grinned at the remark, for he had a sovereign contempt for Yankee Land, and all it contained; almost as sovereign a contempt as that which Yankee Land entertained for York itself, and its Dutch population. Dirck was the only person present who looked grave; but Dirck was habitually as grave and sedate, as if he had been born to become a burgomaster.

"Quite right, Brom," cried my father; "colonels are good enough for us; and when we do make a man that, even, we are a little particular about his being respectable and fit for the office. Nevertheless, learning will not hurt Corny, and to college he shall go, let you do as you please with Dirck. So that matter is settled, and no more need be said about it."

And it was settled, and to college I did go, and that by the awful Powles' Hook Ferry, in the bargain. Near as we lived to town, I paid my first visit to the island of Manhattan the day my father and myself started for Newark. I had an aunt, who lived in Queen Street, not a very great distance from the fort, and she had kindly invited me and my father to pass a day with her, on our way to New Jersey, which invitation had been accepted. In my youth, the world in general was not as much addicted to gadding about as it is now getting to be, and neither my grandfather nor my father ordinarily went to town, their calls to the legislature excepted, more than twice a year. My mother's visits were still less frequent, although Mrs. Legge, my aunt, was her own sister. Mr. Legge was a lawyer of a good deal of reputation, but he was inclined to be in the opposition, or espoused the popular side in politics; and there could be no great cordiality between one of that frame of mind and our family. I remember we had not been in the house an hour, before a warm discussion took place between my uncle and my father, on the question of the right of the subject to canvass the acts of the government. We had left home immediately after an early breakfast, in order to reach town before dark; but a long detention at the Harlem Ferry, compelled us to dine in that village, and it was quite night before we stopped in Queen Street. My aunt ordered supper early, in order that we might get early to bed, to recover from our fatigue, and be ready for sight-seeing next day. We sat down to supper, therefore, in less than an hour after our arrival; and it was while we were at table that the discussion I have mentioned took place. It would seem that a party had been got up in town among the disloyal, and I might almost say, the disaffected, which claimed for the subject the right to know in what manner every shilling of the money raised by taxation was expended. This very obviously improper interference with matters that did not belong to them, on the part of the ruled, was resisted by the rulers, and that with energy; inasmuch as such inquiries and investigations would naturally lead to results that might bring authority into discredit, make the governed presuming and prying in their dispositions, and cause much derangement and inconvenience to the regular and salutary action of government. My father took the negative of the proposition, while my uncle maintained its affirmative. I well remember that my poor aunt looked uneasy, and tried to divert the discourse by exciting our curiosity on a new subject.

"Corny has been particularly lucky in having come to town just as he has, since we shall have a sort of gala-day, to-morrow, for the blacks and the children."

I was not in the least offended at being thus associated with the negroes, for they mingled in most of the amusements of us young people; but I did not quite so well like to be ranked with the children, now I was fourteen, and on my way to college. Notwithstanding this, I did not fail to betray an interest in what was to come next, by my countenance. As for my father, he did not hesitate about asking an explanation.

"The news came in this morning, by a fast-sailing sloop, that the Patroon of Albany is on his way to New York, in his coach-and-four, and with two out-riders, and that he may be expected to reach town in the course of to-morrow. Several of my acquaintances have consented to let their children go out a little way into the country, to see him come in; and, as for the blacks, you know, it is just as well to give them permission to be of the party, as half of them would otherwise go without asking it."

"This will be a capital opportunity to let Corny see a little of the world," cried my father, "and I would not have him miss it on any account. Besides, it is useful to teach young people early, the profitable lesson of honouring their superiors and seniors."

"In that sense it may do," growled my uncle, who, though so much of a latitudinarian in his political opinions never failed to inculcate all useful and necessary maxims for private life; "the Patroon of Albany being one of the most respectable and affluent of all our gentry. I have no objections to Corny's going to see that sight; and, I hope, my dear, you will let both Pompey and Caesar be of the party. It won't hurt the fellows to see the manner in which the Patroon has his carriage kept and horses groomed."

Pompey and Caesar were of the party, though the latter did not join us until Pompey had taken me all round the town, to see the principal sights; it being understood that the Patroon had slept at Kingsbridge, and would not be likely to reach town until near noon. New York was certainly not the place, in 1751, it is to-day; nevertheless, it was a large and important town, even when I went to college, containing not less than twelve thousand souls, blacks included. The Town Hall is a magnificent structure, standing at the head of Broad Street; and thither Pompey led me, even before my aunt had come down to breakfast. I could scarcely admire that fine edifice sufficiently; which, for size, architecture and position, has scarcely now an equal in all the colonies. It is true, that the town has much improved, within the last twenty years; but York was a noble place, even in the middle of this century! After breakfast, Pompey and I proceeded up Broadway, commencing near the fort, at the Bowling Green, and walking some distance beyond the head of Wall Street, or quite a quarter of a mile. Nor did the town stop here; though its principal extent is, or was then, along the margin of the East River. Trinity Church I could hardly admire enough either; for, it appeared to me, that it was large enough to contain all the church-people in the colony. 3 It was a venerable structure, which had then felt the heats of summer and the snows of winter on its roofs and walls, near half a century, and it still stands a monument of pious zeal and cultivated taste. There were other churches, belonging to other denominations, of course, that were well worthy of being seen; to say nothing of the markets. I thought I never should tire of gazing at the magnificence of the shops, particularly the silversmiths'; some of which must have had a thousand dollars' worth of plate in their windows, or otherwise in sight. I might say as much of the other shops, too, which attracted a just portion of my admiration.

About eleven, the number of children and blacks that were seen walking towards the Bowery Road, gave us notice that it was time to be moving in that direction. We were in the upper part of Broadway, at the time, and Pompey proceeded forthwith to fall into the current, making all the haste he could, as it was thought the traveller might pass down towards the East River, and get into Queen Street, before we could reach the point at which he would diverge. It is true, the old town residence of Stephen de Lancey, which stood at the head of Broadway, just above Trinity, 4 had been converted into a tavern, and we did not know but the Patroon might choose to alight there, as it was then the principal inn of the town; still, most people preferred Queen Street; and the new City Tavern was so much out of the way, that strangers in particular were not fond of frequenting it. Caesar came up, much out of breath, just as we got into the country.

Quitting Broadway, we went along the country road that then diverged to the east, but which is now getting to contain a sort of suburb, and passing the road that leads into Queen Street, we felt more certain of meeting the traveller, whose carriage we soon learned had not gone by. As there were and are several taverns for country people in this quarter, most of us went quite into the country, proceeding as far as the villas of the Bayards, de Lanceys, and other persons of mark; of which there are several along the Bowery Road. Our party stopped under some cherry-trees, that were not more than a mile from town, nearly opposite to Lt. Gov. de Lancey's country-house; 5 but many boys &c. went a long long way into the country, finishing the day by nutting and gathering apples in the grounds of Petersfield and Rosehill, the country residences of the Stuyvesant and Watt, or, as the last is now called the Watts, families. I was desirous of going thus far myself, for I had heard much of both of those grand places; but Pompey told me it would be necessary to be back for dinner by half-past one, his mistress having consented to postpone the hour a little, in order to indulge my natural desire to see all I could while in town.

We were not altogether children and blacks who were out on the Bowery Road that day,—many tradesmen were among us, the leathern aprons making a goodly parade on the occasion. I saw one or two persons wearing swords, hovering round, in the lanes and in the woods,—proof that even gentlemen had some desire to see so great a person as the Patroon of Albany pass. I shall not stop to say much of the transit of the Patroon. He came by about noon, as was expected, and in his coach-and-four, with two out-riders, coach-man, &c. in liveries, as is usual in the families of the gentry, and with a team of heavy, black, Dutch-looking horses, that I remember Caesar pronounced to be of the true Flemish breed. The Patroon himself was a sightly, well-dressed gentleman, wearing a scarlet coat, flowing wig, and cocked hat; and I observed that the handle of his sword was of solid silver. But my father wore a sword with a solid silver handle, too, a present from my grandfather when the former first entered the army. 6 He bowed to the salutations he received in passing, and I thought all the spectators were pleased with the noble sight of seeing such an equipage pass into the town. Such a sight does not occur every day in the colonies, and I felt exceedingly happy that it had been my privilege to witness it.

A little incident occurred to myself that rendered this day long memorable to me. Among the spectators assembled along the road on this occasion, were several groups of girls, who belonged to the better class, and who had been induced to come out into the country, either led by curiosity or by the management of the different sable nurses who had them in charge. In one of these groups was a girl of about ten, or possibly of eleven years of age, whose dress, air, and mien, early attracted my attention. I thought her large, bright, full, blue eye, particularly winning; and boys of fourteen are not altogether insensible to beauty in the other sex, though they are possibly induced oftener to regard it in those who are older than in those who are younger than themselves. Pompey happened to be acquainted with Silvy, the negress who had the care of my little beauty, to whom he bowed, and addressed as Miss Anneke (Anna Cornelia abbreviated). Anneke I thought a very pretty name too, and some little advances were made towards an acquaintance by means of an offering of some fruit that I had gathered by the way-side. Things were making a considerable progress, and I had asked several questions, such as whether 'Miss Anneke had ever seen a patroon,' which 'was the greatest personage, a patroon or a governor, whether 'a nobleman who had lately been in the colony, as a military officer, or the patroon, would be likely to have the finest coach,' when a butcher's boy, who was passing, rudely knocked an apple out of Anneke's hand, and caused her to shed a tear.

I took fire at this unprovoked outrage, and lent the fellow a dig in the ribs that gave him to understand the young lady had a protector. My chap was about my own age and weight, and he surveyed me a minute with a species of contempt, and then beckoned me to follow him into an orchard that was hard by, but a little out of sight. In spite of Anneke's entreaties I went, and Pompey and Caesar followed. We had both stripped before the negroes got up, for they were in a hot discussion whether I was to be permitted to fight or not. Pompey maintained it would keep dinner waiting; but Caesar, who had the most bottom, as became his name, insisted, as I had given a blow, I was bound to render satisfaction. Luckily, Mr. Worden was very skilful at boxing, and he had given both Dirck and myself many lessons, so that I soon found myself the best fellow. I gave the butcher's boy a bloody nose and a black eye, when he gave in, and I came off victor; not, however, without a facer or two, that sent me to college with a reputation I hardly merited, or that of a regular pugilist.

When I returned to the road, after this breathing, Anneke 7 had disappeared, and I was so shy and silly as not to ask her family name from Caesar the Great, or Pompey the Little.

3 (return)

[ The intelligent reader will, of course, properly appreciate the provincial admiration of Mr. Littlepage, who naturally fancied his own best was other people's best. The Trinity of that day was burned in the great fire of 1776. The edifice that succeeded it, at the peace of 1783, has already given place to a successor, that has more claim to be placed on a level with modern, English, town church-architecture, than any other building in the Union. When another shall succeed this, which shall be as much larger and more elaborated than this is compared to its predecessor, and still another shall succeed, which shall bear the same relation to that, then the country will possess an edifice that is on a level with the first-rate Gothic cathedral-architecture of Europe. It would be idle to pretend that the new Trinity is without faults; some of which are probably the result of circumstances and necessity; but, if the respectable architect who has built it, had no other merit, he would deserve the gratitude of every man of taste in the country, by placing church-towers of a proper comparative breadth, dignity and proportions, before the eyes of its population. The diminutive meanness of American church-towers, has been an eye-sore to every intelligent, travelled American, since the country was settled.—EDITOR.]

4 (return)

[ The site of the present City Hotel.—ED.]

5 (return)

[ Now, de Lancey Street.—ED.]

6 (return)

[ This patroon must have been Jeremiah Van Rensselaer, who lived to be a bachelor of forty before he married. If there be no anachrenism, this gentleman married Miss Van Cortlandt, one of the seven daughters of Stephanus Van Cortlandt, who was proprietor of the great manor of Cortlandt, West Chester county, and who, in his day, was the principal personage of the colony. The seven daughters of this Colonel Van Cortlandt, by marrying into the families of de Lancey, Bayard, Van Rensellaer, Beekman, M'Gregor—Skinner, &c. &c. brought together a connection that was long felt in the political affairs of New York. The Schuylers were related through a previous marriage, and many of the Long Island and other families of weight by other alliances. This connection formed the court party, which was resisted by an opposition led by the Livingstons, Morris, and other names of their connection. This old bachelor, Jeremiah Van Rensellaer, believing he would never marry, alienated, in behalf of his next brother and anticipated heir, the Greenbush and Claverack estates,—portions of those vast possessions which, in our day, and principally through the culpable apathy, or miserable demagogueism of those who have been entrusted with the care of the public weal, have been the pretext for violating some of the plainest laws of morality that God has communicated to man.—EDITOR.]

7 (return)

[ Pronounced On-na-kay, I believe.—EDITOR]

CHAPTER III.

  "Believe me, thou talkest of an admirable conceited fellow. Has

  he any unbraided wares?"

  "Pr'ythee, bring him in; and let him approach singing."

  Winter's Tale.

I have no intention of taking the reader with me through college, where I remained the usual term of four years. These four years were not idled away, as sometimes happens, but were fairly improved. I read all of the New Testament, in Greek; several of Cicero's Orations; every line of Horace, Satires and Odes; four books of the Iliad; Tully de Oratore, throughout; besides paying proper attention to geography, mathematics, and other of the usual branches. Moral philosophy, in particular, was closely attended to, senior year, as well as Astronomy. We had a telescope that showed us all four of Jupiter's moons. In other respects, Nassau might be called the seat of learning. One of our class purchased a second-hand copy of Euripides, in town, and we had it in college all of six months; though it was never my good fortune to see it, as the young man who owned it, was not much disposed to let profane eyes view his treasure. Nevertheless, I am certain the copy of the work was in college; and we took good care to let the Yale men hear of it more than once. I do not believe they ever saw even the outside of an Euripides. As for the telescope, I can testify of my own knowledge; having seen the moons of Jupiter as often as ten times, with my own eyes, aided by its magnifiers. We had a tutor who was expert among the stars, and who, it was generally believed, would have been able to see the ring of Saturn, could he have found the planet; which, as it turned out, he was unable to do.

My four college years were very happy years. The vacations came often, and I went home invariably; passing a day or two with my aunt Legge, in going or coming. The acquisition of knowledge was always agreeable to me; and I may say it without vanity, I trust, at this time of life, I got the third honour of my class. We should have graduated four, but one of our class was compelled to quit us at the end of junior year, on account of his health. He was an unusually hard student, and it was generally admitted that he would have taken the first honour had he remained. We were thought to acquit ourselves with credit at the commencement; although I afterwards heard my grandfather tell Mr. Worden, that he was of opinion the addresses would have been more masculine and commendable, had less been said of the surprising growth, prosperity, and power of the colonies. He had no objection to the encouragement of a sound, healthful, patriotic feeling; but to him it appeared that something more novel might have better pleased the audience. This may have been true, as all three of us had something to say on the subject; and it is a proof how much we thought alike, that our language was almost as closely assimilated as our ideas.

As for the Powles Hook Ferry, it was an unpleasant place I will allow; though by the time I was junior I thought nothing of it. My mother, however, was glad when it was passed for the last time. I remember the very first words that escaped her, after she had kissed me on my final return from college, were, "Well, Heaven be praised, Corny! you will never again have any occasion to cross that frightful ferry, now college is completely done with!" My poor mother little knew how much greater dangers I was subsequently called on to encounter, in another direction. Nor was she minutely accurate in her anticipations, since I have crossed the ferry in question, several times in later life; the distances not appearing to be as great, of late years, as they certainly seemed to be in my youth.

It was a feather in a young man's cap to have gone through college in 1755, which was the year I graduated. It is true, the University men, who had been home for their learning, were more or less numerous; but they were of a class that held itself aloof from the smaller gentry, and most of them were soon placed in office, adding the dignity of public trusts to their acquisitions—the former in a manner overshadowing the latter. But, I was nearer to the body of the community, and my position admitted more of comparative excellence, as it might be. No one thinks of certain habits, opinions, manners, and tastes, in the circle where they are expected to be found; but, it is a different thing where all, or any of these peculiarities form the exception. I am afraid more was anticipated from my college education than has ever been realized; but I will say this for my Alma Mater, that I am not conscious my acquisitions at college have ever been of any disadvantage to me; and I rather think they have, in some degree at least, contributed to the little success that has attended my humble career.

I kept up my intimacy with Dirck Follock, during the whole time I remained at college. He continued the classics with Mr. Worden, for two years after I left the school; but I could not discover that his progress amounted to anything worth mentioning. The master used to tell the Colonel, that "Dirck's progress was slow and sure;" and this did not fail to satisfy a man who had a constitutional aversion to much of the head-over-heels rate of doing things among the English population. Col. Follock, as we always called him, except when my father or grandfather asked him to drink a glass of wine, or drank his health in the first glass after the cloth was removed, when he was invariably styled Col. Van Valkenburgh, at full length; but Col. Follock was quite content that his son and heir should know no more than he knew himself, after making proper allowances for the difference in years and experience. By the time I returned home, however, a material change had been made in the school. Mr. Worden fell heir to a moderate competency at home, and he gave up teaching, a business he had never liked, accordingly. It was even thought he was a shade less zealous in his parochial duties, after the acquisition of this fifty pounds sterling a-year, than he had previously been; though I am far from insisting on the fact's being so. At any rate, it was not in the power of £50 per annum to render Mr. Worden apathetic on the subject of the church; for he continued a most zealous churchman down to the hour of his death; and this was something, even admitting that he was not quite so zealous as a Christian. The church being the repository of the faith, if not the faith itself, it follows that its friends are akin to religion, though not absolutely religious. I have always liked a man the better for being what I call a sound, warm-hearted churchman, though his habits may have been a little free.

It was necessary to supply the place left vacant by the emigration of Mr. Worden, or to abandon a school that had got to be the nucleus of knowledge in Westchester. There was a natural desire, at first, to obtain another scholar from home; but no such person offering, a Yale College graduate was accepted, though not without sundry rebellions, and plenty of distrust. The moment he appeared, Col. Follock, and Major Nicholas Oothout, another respectable Dutch neighbour, withdrew their sons; and from that hour Dirck never went to school again. It is true, Westchester was not properly a Dutch county, like Rockland, and Albany, and Orange, and several others along the river; but it had many respectable families in it, of that extraction, without alluding to such heavy people as the Van Cortlandts, Felipses, Beekmans, and two or three others of that stamp. Most of our important county families had a different origin, as in the case of the Morrises, of Morrisania, and of the Manor of Fordham, the Pells, of Pelham, the Heathcotes, of Mamanneck, the branch of the de Lanceys, at West Farms, the Jays, of Rye, &c., &c. All these came of the English, or the Huguenot stock. Among these last, more or less Dutch blood was to be found, however; though Dutch prejudices were a good deal weakened. Although few of these persons sent their boys to this school, they were consulted in the selection of a master; and I have always supposed that their indifference was the cause that the county finally obtained the services of a Yankee, from Yale.

The name of the new pedagogue was Jason Newcome, or, as he pronounced the latter appellation himself, Noo-come. As he affected a pedantic way of pronouncing the last syllable long, or as it was spelt, he rather called himself Noo-comb, instead of Newcome, as is the English mode, whence he soon got the nick-name of Jason Old Comb among the boys; the lank, orderly arrangement of his jet-black, and somewhat greasy-looking locks, contributing their share towards procuring for him the sobriquet, as I believe the French call it. As this Mr. Newcome will have a material part to play in the succeeding portions of this narrative, it may be well to be a little more minute in his description.

I found Jason fully established in the school, on my return from college. I remember we met very much like two strange birds, that see each other for the first time on the same dunghill; or two quadrupeds, in their original interview in a common herd. It was New Haven against Newark; though the institution, after making as many migrations as the House of Loretto, finally settled down at Princeton, a short time before I took my degree. I was consequently entitled to call myself a graduate of Newark,—a sort of scholar that is quite as great a curiosity in the country as a Queen Anne's farthing, or a book printed in the fifteenth century. I remember the first evening we two spent in company, as well as if the meeting occurred only last night. It was at Satanstoe, and Mr. Worden was present. Jason had a liberal supply of puritanical notions, which were bred in-and-in in his moral, and I had almost said, in his physical system; nevertheless, he could unbend; and I did not fail to observe that very evening, a gleam of covert enjoyment on his sombre countenance, as the hot-stuff, the cards, and the pipes were produced, an hour or two before supper,—a meal we always had hot and comfortable. This covert satisfaction, however, was not exhibited without certain misgiving looks, as if the neophyte in these innocent enjoyments distrusted his right to possess his share. I remember in particular, when my mother laid two or three new, clean packs of cards on the table, that Jason cast a stealthy glance over his shoulder, as if to make certain that the act was not noted by the minister, or the "neighbours." The neighbours!—what a contemptible being a man becomes, who lives in constant dread of the comments and judgments of these social supervisors! and what a wretch, the habit of deferring to no principle better than their decision has made many a being, who has had originally the materials of something better in him, than has been developed by the surveillance of ignorance, envy, vulgarity, gossiping and lying! In those cases in which education, social position, opportunities and experience have made any material difference between the parties, the man who yields to such a government, exhibits the picture of a giant held in bondage by a pigmy. I have always remarked, too, that they who are best qualified to sit in this neighbourhood-tribunal, generally keep most aloof from it, as repugnant to their tastes and habits, thus leaving its decisions to the portion of the community least qualified to make such as are either just or enlightened.

I felt a disposition to laugh outright, at the manner in which Jason betrayed a sneaking consciousness of crime, as he saw my meek, innocent, simple-minded, just and warm-hearted mother lay the cards on the table that evening. His sense of guilt was purely conventional, while my mother's sense of innocence existed in the absence of false instruction, and in the purity of her intentions. One had been taught no exaggerated and false notion of sin,—nay, a notion that is impious, as it is clearly impious in man to torture acts that are perfectly innocent, per se, into formal transgressions of the law of God,—while the other had been educated under the narrow and exaggerated notions of a provincial sect, and had obtained a species of conscience that was purely dependent on his miserable schooling. I heard my grandfather say that Jason actually showed the white of his eyes the first time he saw Mr. Worden begin to deal, and he still looked, the whole time we were at whist, as if he expected some one might enter, and tell of his delinquency, I soon discovered that Jason had a much greater dread of being told of, than of doing such things as taking a hand at whist, or drinking a glass of punch, from which I inferred his true conscience drew perceptible distinctions between the acts and the penalties he had been accustomed to see inflicted on them. He was much disposed to a certain sort of frailty; but it was a sneaking disposition to the last.

But, the amusing part of the exhibition, that first evening of our acquaintance, was Mr. Worden's showing off his successor's familiarity with the classics. Jason had not the smallest notion of quantity; and he pronounced the Latin very much as one would read Mohawk, from a vocabulary made out by a hunter, or a savant of the French Academy. As I had received the benefit of Mr. Worden's own instruction, I could do better, and, generally, my knowledge of the classics went beyond that of Jason's. The latter's English, too, was long a source of amusement with us all, though my grandfather often expressed strong disgust at it. Even Col. Follock did not scruple to laugh at Newcome's English, which, as he frequently took occasion to say, "hat a ferry remarkaple sount to it." As this peculiarity of Jason's extended a good way into the Anglo-Saxon race, in the part of the country in which he was born, it may be well to explain what I mean a little more at large.

Jason was the son of an ordinary Connecticut farmer, of the usual associations, and with no other pretension to education than such as was obtained in a common school, or any reading which did not include the Scriptures, some half-dozen volumes of sermons and polemical works, all the latter of which were vigorously as well as narrowly one-sided, and a few books that had been expressly written to praise New England, and to undervalue all the rest of the earth. As the family knew nothing of the world beyond the limits of its own township, and an occasional visit to Hartford, on what is called "election-day," Jason's early life was necessarily of the most contracted experience. His English, as a matter of course, was just that of his neighbourhood and class of life; which was far from being either very elegant or very Doric. But on this rustic, provincial, or rather, hamlet foundation, Jason had reared a superstructure of New Haven finish and proportions. As he kept school before he went to college, while he was in college, and after he left college, the whole energies of his nature became strangely directed to just such reforms of language as would be apt to strike the imagination of a pedagogue of his calibre. In the first place, he had brought from home with him a great number of sounds that were decidedly vulgar and vicious, and with these in full existence in himself, he had commenced his system of reform on other people. As is common with all tyros, he fancied a very little knowledge sufficient authority for very great theories. His first step was to improve the language, by adapting sound to spelling and he insisted on calling angel, an-gel, because a-n spelt an; chamber, cham-ber, for the same reason; and so on through a long catalogue of similarly constructed words.

"English," he did not pronounce as "__lish" but as "_Eng_lish," for instance; and "nothing" (anglicè nuthing), as noth-ing; or, perhaps, it were better to say "nawthin'." While Jason showed himself so much of a purist with these and many other words, he was guilty of some of the grossest possible mistakes, that were directly in opposition to his own theory. Thus, while he affectedly pronounced "none," (nun,) as "known," he did not scruple to call "stone," "stun," and "home," "hum." The idea of pronouncing "clerk," as it should be, or "clark," greatly shocked him, as it did to call "hearth," "h'arth;" though he did not hesitate to call this good earth of ours, the "'arth." "Been," he pronounced "ben," of course, and "roof," he called "ruff," in spite of all his purism.

From the foregoing specimens, half a dozen among a thousand, the reader will get an accurate notion of this weakness in Jason's character. It was heightened by the fact that the young man commenced his education, such as it was, late in life, and it is rare indeed that either knowledge or tastes thus acquired are entirely free from exaggeration. Though Jason was several years my senior, like myself he was a recent graduate, and it will be easy enough to imagine the numberless discussions that took place between us, on the subject of our respective acquisitions. I say 'respective,' instead of mutual acquisitions, because there was nothing mutual about it, or them. Neither our classics, our philosophy, nor our mathematics would seem to have been the same, but each man apparently had a science, or a language of his own, and which had been derived from the institution where he had been taught. In the classics I was much the strongest, particularly in the quantities, but Jason had the best of it in mathematics. In spite of his conceit, his vulgarity, his English, his provincialism, and the awkwardness with which he wore his tardily acquired information, this man had strong points about him, and a native shrewdness that would have told much more in his favour had it not been accompanied by a certain evasive manner, that caused one constantly to suspect his sincerity, and which often induced those who were accustomed to him, to imagine he had a sneaking propensity that rendered him habitually hypocritical. Jason held New York in great contempt; a feeling he was not always disposed to conceal, and of necessity his comparisons were usually made with the state of things in Connecticut, and much to the advantage of the latter. To one thing, however, he was much disposed to defer, and that was money. Connecticut had not then, nor has it now, a single individual who would be termed rich in New York; and Jason, spite of his provincial conceit, spite of his overweening notions of moral and intellectual superiority, could no more prevent this profound deference for wealth, than he could substitute for a childhood of vulgarity and neglect, the grace, refinement and knowledge which the boys of the more fortunate classes in life obtain as it might be without knowing it. Yes, Jason bowed down to the golden calf, in spite of his puritanism, his love of liberty, his pretension to equality and the general strut of his disposition and manner.

Such is an outline of the character and qualifications of the man whom I found, on my return from college, at the head of Mr. Worden's school. We soon became acquainted, and I do not know which got the most ideas from the other, in course of the first fortnight. Our conversation and arguments were free, almost to rudeness, and little mercy was shown to our respective prejudices. Jason was ultra leveling in his notions of social intercourse, while I had the opinions of my own colony, in which the distinctions of classes are far more strongly marked than is usual in New England, out of Boston, and its immediate association. Still Jason deferred to names, as well as money, though it was in a way very different from my own. New England was, and is, loyal to the crown; but having the right to name many of its own governors, and possessing many other political privileges through the charters that were granted to her people, in order to induce them to settle that portion of the continent, they do not always manifest the feeling in a way to be agreeable to those who have a proper reverence for the crown. Among other points, growing out of this difference in training, Jason and I had sundry arguments on the subject of professions, trades and callings. It was evident he fancied the occupation of a schoolmaster next in honour to that of a clergyman. The clergy formed a species of aristocracy, according to his notions; but no man could commence life under more favourable auspices, than by taking a school. The following dialogue occurred between us, on this subject; and I was so much struck with the novelty of my companion's notions, as to make a note of it, as soon as we parted.

"I wonder your folks don't think of giving you suthin' to do, Corny," commenced Jason, one day, after our acquaintance had ripened into a sort of belligerent intimacy. "You're near nineteen, now, and ought to begin to think of bringing suthin' in, to pay for all the outgoings."

By "your folks," Jason meant the family of Littlepage; and the blood of that family quickened a little within me, fit the idea of being profitably employed, in the manner intimated, because I had reached the mature and profitable age of nineteen.

"I do not understand you exactly, Mr. Newcome, by your bringing something in," answered I, with dignity enough to put a man of ordinary delicacy on his guard.

"Bringing suthin' in is good English, I hope, Mr. Littlepage. I mean that your edication has cost your folks enough to warrant them in calling on you for a little interest. How much do you suppose, now, has been spent on your edication, beginning at the time you first went to Mr. Worden, and leaving off the day you quitted Newark?"

"Really, I have not the smallest notion; the subject has never crossed my mind."

"Did the old folks never say anything to you about it?—never foot up the total?"

"I am sure it is not easy to see how this could be done, for I could not help them in the least."

"But your father's books would tell that, as doubtless it all stands charged against you."

"Stands charged against me!—How, sir! do you imagine my father makes a charge in a book against me, whenever he pays a few pounds for my education?"

"Certainly; how else could he tell how much you have had?—though, on reflection, as you are an only child, it does not make so much difference. You probably will get all, in the end."

"And had I a brother, or a sister, do you imagine, Mr. Newcome, each shilling we spent would be set down in a book, as charges against us?"

"How else, in natur', could it be known which had had the most, or any sort of justice be done between you?"

"Justice would be done, by our common father's giving to each just as much of his own money as he might see fit. What is it to me, if he chose to give my brother a few hundred pounds more than he chose to give to me? The money is his, and he may do with it as he choose."

"An hundred pounds is an awful sight of money!" exclaimed Jason, betraying by his countenance how deeply he felt the truth of this. "If you have had money in such large sums, so much the more reason why you should set about doing suthin' to repay the old gentleman. Why not set up a school?"

"Sir!"

"Why not set up a school, I say? You might have had this of mine, had you been a little older; but once in, fast in, with me. Still, schools are wanted, and you might get a tolerable good recommend. I dare say your tutor would furnish a certificate."

This word "recommend" was used by Jason for "recommendation" the habit of putting verbs in the places of substantives, and vice versa, being much in vogue with him.

"And do you really think that one who is destined to inherit Satanstoe, would act advisedly to set up a school? Recollect, Mr. Newcome, that my father and grandfather have both borne the king's commission; and that the last bears it, at this very moment, through his representative, the Governor."

"What of all that? What better business is there than keeping a good school? If you are high in your notions, get to be made a tutor in that New Jersey college. Recollect that a tutor in a college is somebody. I did hope for such a place, but having a Governor's son against me, as a candidate, there was no chance."

"A Governor's son a candidate for a tutorship in a college! You are pleased to trifle with me, Mr. Newcome."

"It's true as the gospel. You thought some smaller fish put me down, but he was the son of the Governor. But, why do you give that vulgar name to your father's farm—Satanstoe is not decent; yet, Corny, I've heard you use it before your own mother!"

"That you may hear every day, and my mother use it, too, before her own son. What fault do you find with the name of Satanstoe?"

"Fault!—In the first place it is irreligious and profane; then it is ungenteel and vulgar, and only fit to be used in low company. Moreover, it is opposed to history and revelation, the Evil One having a huff, if you will, but no toes. Such a name couldn't stand a fortnight before public opinion in New England."

"Yes, that may be very true; but we do not care enough for His Satanic Majesty in the colony of New York, to treat him with so much deference. As for the 'huffs,' as you call them——"

"Why, what do you call 'em, Mr. Littlepage?"

"Hoofs, Mr. Newcome; that is the New York pronunciation of the word."

"I care nothing for York pronunciation, which everybody knows is Dutch and full of corruptions. You'll never do anything worth speaking of in this colony, Corny, until you pay more attention to your schools."

"I do not know what you call attention, Mr. Jason, unless we have paid it already. Here, I have the caption, or rather preamble of a law, on that very subject, that I copied out of the statute-book on purpose to show you, and which I will now read in order to prove to you how things really stand in the colony."

"Read away," rejoined Jason, with an air of sufficient disdain.

Read I did, and in the following sententious and comprehensive language, viz:—"Whereas the youth of this colony are found, by manifold experience, to be not inferior in their natural geniuses to the youth of any other country in the world, therefore be it enacted, &c." 8

"There, sir," I said in exultation, "you have chapter and verse for the true character of the rising generation in the colony of New York."

"And what does that preamble lead to?" demanded Jason, a little staggered at finding the equality of our New York intellects established so clearly by legislative enactment.

"It is the preamble to an act establishing the free schools of New York, in which the learned languages have now been taught these twenty years; and you will please to remember that another law has not long been passed establishing a college in town."

"Well, curious laws sometimes do get into the statute-books, and a body must take them as he finds them. I dare say Connecticut might have a word to say on the same subject, if you would give her a chance. Have you heard the wonderful news from Philadelphia, Corny, that has just come among us?"

"I have heard nothing of late; for you know I have been over in Rockland, with Dirck Follock, for the last two weeks, and news never reaches that family, or indeed that county."

"No, that is true enough," answered Jason, drily; "News and a Dutchman have no affinity, or attraction, as we would say in philosophy; though there is gravitation enough on one side, ha! boy?"

Here Jason laughed outright, for he was always delighted whenever he could get a side-hit at the children of Holland, whom he appeared to regard as a race occupying a position between the human family and the highest class of the unintellectual animals. But it is unnecessary to dwell longer on this dialogue, my object being merely to show the general character of Jason's train of thought, in order to be better understood when I come to connect his opinions with his acts.

Dirck and myself were much together after my return from college. I passed weeks at a time with him, and he returned my visits with the utmost freedom and good-will. Each of us had now got his growth, and it would have done the heart of Frederick of Prussia good, to have seen my young friend after he had ended his nineteenth year. In stature he measured exactly six feet three, and he gave every promise of filling up in proportion. Dirck was none of your roundly-turned, Apollo-built fellows, but he had shoulders that his little, short, solid, but dumpy-looking mother, who was of the true stock, could scarcely span, when she pulled his head down to give him a kiss; which she did regularly, as Dirck told me himself, twice each year; that is to say, Christmas and New-Year. His complexion was fair, his limbs large and well proportioned, his hair light, his eyes blue, and his face would have been thought handsome by most persons. I will not deny, however, that there was a certain ponderosity, both of mind and body, about my friend, that did not very well accord with the general notion of grace and animation. Nevertheless, Dirck was a sterling fellow, as true as steel, as brave as a game-cock, and as honest as noon-day light.

Jason was a very different sort of person, in many essentials. In figure, he was also tall, but he was angular, loose-jointed and swinging—slouching would be the better word, perhaps. Still, he was not without strength, having worked on a farm until he was near twenty; and he was as active as a cat; a result that took the stranger a little by surprise, when he regarded only his loose, quavering sort of build. In the way of thought, Jason would think two feet to Dirck's one; but I am far from certain that it was always in so correct a direction. Give the Dutchman time, he was very apt to come out right; whereas Jason, I soon discovered, was quite liable to come to wrong conclusions, and particularly so in all matters that were a little adverse, and which affected his own apparent interests. Dirck, moreover, was one of the best-natured fellows that breathed; it being almost impossible to excite him to anger; when it did come, however, the earthquake was scarcely more terrific. I have seen him enraged, and would as soon encounter a wild-boar in an open field, as run against his course, while in the fit.

Modesty will hardly permit me to say much of myself. I was well-grown, active, strong, for my years; and, I am inclined to think, reasonably well-looking; though I would prefer that this much should be said by any one but myself. Dirck and I often tried our manhood together, when youngsters, and I was the better chap until my friend reached his eighteenth year, when the heavy metal of the young Dutch giant told in our struggles. After that period was past, I found Dirck too much for me, in a close gripe, though my extraordinary activity rendered the inequality less apparent than it might otherwise have proved. I ought not to apply the term of "extraordinary" to anything about myself, but the word escaped me unconsciously, and I shall let it stand. One thing I will say, notwithstanding, let the reader think of it as he may: I was good-natured and well-disposed to my fellow-creatures, and had no greater love of money than was necessary to render me reasonably discreet.

Such is an outline of the characters and persons of three of the principal actors in the scenes I am about to relate; scenes that will possess some interest for those who love to read accounts of adventures in a new country, however much they may fail in interesting others, when I speak of the condition and events of the more civilized condition of society, that was enjoyed, even in my youth, in such old counties as Westchester, and such towns as York.

8 (return)

[ This quotation would seem to be accurate, and it is somewhat curious to trace the reason why a preamble so singular should have been prefixed to the law. Was it not owing to the oft-repeated and bold assertions of Europeans, that man deteriorated in this hemisphere? Any American who has been a near observer of European opinion, even in our day, must have been frequently amused at the expression of surprise and doubt that so often escapes the residents of the Old World, when they discover anything that particularly denotes talent coming from the New. I make little question that this extraordinary preamble is a sort of indirect answer to an imputation that was known to be as general, in that age, as it was felt to be unjust. My own experience would lead me to think native capacity more abundant in America than in the midland countries of Europe, and quite as frequently met with as in Italy itself; and I have often heard teachers, both English and French, admit that their American and West-India scholars were generally the readiest and cleverest in their schools. The great evil under which this country labours, in this respect, is the sway of numbers, which is constantly elevating mediocrity and spurious talent to high places. In America we have a higher average of intelligence, while we have far less of the higher class; and I attribute the latter fact to the control of those who have never enjoyed the means of appreciating excellence.—EDITOR.]

CHAPTER IV.

  "Let us, then, be up and doing,

  With a heart for any fate;

  Still achieving, still pursuing,

  Learn to labour and to wait."

  LONGFELLOW.

The spring of the year I was twenty, Dirck and myself paid our first visit to town, in the characters of young men. Although Satanstoe was not more than five-and-twenty miles from New York, by the way of King's-Bridge, the road we always travelled in order to avoid the ferry, it was by no means as common to visit the capital as it has since got to be. I know gentlemen who pass in and out from our neighbourhood, now, as often as once a fortnight, or even once a week; but thirty years since this was a thing very seldom done. My dear mother always went to town twice a year; in the spring to pass Easter week, and in the autumn to make her winter purchases. My father usually went down four times, in the course of the twelve months, but he had the reputation of a gadabout, and was thought by many people to leave home quite as much as he ought to do. As for my grandfather, old age coming on, he seldom left home now, unless it were to pay stated visits to certain old brother campaigners who lived within moderate distances, and with whom he invariably passed weeks each summer.

The visit I have mentioned occurred some time after Easter, a season of the year that many of our country families were in the habit of passing in town, to have the benefit of the daily services of Old Trinity, as the Hebrews resorted to Jerusalem to keep the feast of the passover. My mother did not go to town this year, on account of my father's gout, and I was sent to supply her place with my aunt Legge, who had been so long accustomed to have one of the family with her at that season, that I was substituted. Dirck had relatives of his own, with whom he staid, and thus every thing was rendered smooth. In order to make a fair start, my friend crossed the Hudson the week before, and, after taking breath at Satanstoe for three days, we left the Neck for the capital, mounted on a pair of as good roadsters as were to be found in the county: and that is saying a good deal; for the Morrises, and de Lanceys, and Van Cortlandts all kept racers, and sometimes gave us good sport, in the autumn, over the county course. West Chester, to say no more than she deserved, was a county with a spirited gentry, and one of which no colony need be ashamed.

My mother was a tender-hearted parent, and full of anxiety in behalf of an only child. She knew that travelling always has more or less of hazard, and was desirous we should be off betimes, in order to make certain of our reaching town before the night set in. Highway robbers, Heaven be praised! were then, and are still, unknown to the colonies; but there were other dangers that gave my excellent parent much concern. All the bridges were not considered safe; the roads were, and are yet, very circuitous, and it was possible to lose one's way; while it was said persons had been known to pass the night on Harlem common, an uninhabited waste that lies some seven or eight miles on our side of the city. My mother's first care, therefore, was to get Dirck and myself off early in the morning; in order to do which she rose with the light, gave us our breakfasts immediately afterwards, and thus enabled us to quit Satanstoe just as the sun had burnished the eastern sky with its tints of flame-colour.

Dirck was in high good-humour that morning, and, to own the truth, Corny did not feel the depression of spirits which, according to the laws of propriety, possibly ought to have attended the first really free departure of so youthful an adventurer from beneath the shadows of the paternal roof. We went our way laughing and chatting like two girls just broke loose from boarding-school. I had never known Dirck more communicative, and I got certain new insights into his feelings, expectations and prospects, as we rode along the colony's highway that morning, that afterwards proved to be matters of much interest with us both. We had not got a mile from the chimney-tops of Satanstoe, ere my friend broke forth as follows:—

"I suppose you have heard, Corny, what the two old gentlemen have been at, lately?"

"Your father and mine?—I have not heard a syllable of any thing new."

"They have been suing out, before the Governor and Council, a joint claim to that tract of land they bought of the Mohawks, the last time they were out together on service in the colony militia."

I ought to mention, here, that though my predecessors had made but few campaigns in the regular army, each had made several in the more humble capacity of a militia officer.

"This is news to me, Dirck," I answered. "Why should the old gentlemen have been so sly about such a thing?"

"I cannot tell you, lest they thought silence the best way to keep off the yankees. You know, my father has a great dread of a yankee's getting a finger into any of his bargains. He says the yankees are the locusts of the west."

"But, how came you to know any thing about it, Dirck?"

"I am no yankee, Corny."

"And your father told you on the strength of this recommendation?"

"He told me, as he tells me most things that he thinks it best I should know. We smoke together, and then we talk together."

"I would learn to smoke too, if I thought I should get any useful information by so doing."

"Dere is much to be l'arnt from ter pipe!" said Dirck, dropping into a slightly Dutch accent, as frequently happened with him, when his mind took a secret direction towards Holland, though in general he spoke English quite as well as I did myself, and vastly better than that miracle of taste, and learning, and virtue, and piety, Mr. Jason Newcome, A.B., of Yale, and prospective president of that, or some other institution.

"So it would seem, if your father is telling you secrets all the time you are smoking together. But where is this land, Dirck?"

"It is in the Mohawk country—or, rather, it is in the country near the Hampshire Grants, and at no great distance from the Mohawk country."

"And how much may there be of it?"

"Forty thousand acres; and some of it of good, rich flats, they say; such as a Dutchman loves."

"And your father and mine have purchased all this land in company, you say—share and share alike, as the lawyers call it."

"Just so."

"Pray how much did they pay for so large a tract of land?"

Dirck took time to answer this question. He first drew from his breast a pocket-book, which he opened as well as he could under the motion of his roadster, for neither of us abated his speed, it being indispensable to reach town before dark. My friend succeeded at length in putting his hand on the paper he wanted, which he gave to me.

"There," he said; "that is a list of the articles paid to the Indians, which I have copied, and then there have been several hundred pounds of fees paid to the Governor and his officers."

I read from the list, as follows; the words coming out by jerks, as the trotting of my horse permitted. "Fifty blankets, each with yellow strings and yellow trimmings; ten iron pots, four gallons each; forty pounds of gunpowder; seven muskets; twelve pounds of small beads; ten strings of wampum; fifty gallons of rum, pure Jamaica, and of high proof; a score of jews-harps, and three dozen first quality English-made tomahawks."

"Well, Dirck," I cried, as soon as through reading, "this is no great matter to give for forty thousand acres of land, in the colony of New York. I dare say a hundred pounds currency ($250) would buy every thing here, even to the rum and the first quality of English-made tomahawks."

"Ninety-six pounds, thirteen shillings, seven pence 't'ree fart'in's' was the footing of the whole bill," answered Dirck deliberately, preparing to light his pipe; for he could smoke very conveniently while trotting no faster than at the rate of six miles the hour.

"I do not find that dear for forty thousand acres; I suppose the muskets, and rum, and other things were manufactured expressly for the Indian trade."

"Not they, Corny: you know how it is with the old gentlemen;—they are as honest as the day."

"So much the better for them, and so much the better for us! But what is to be done with this land, now they own it?"

Dirck did not answer, until we had trotted twenty rods; for by this time the pipe was at work, and the moment that smoke was seen he kept his eye on it, until he saw a bright light in front of his nose.

"The first thing will be to find it, Corny. When a patent is signed and delivered, then you must send forth some proper person to find the land it covers. I have heard of a gentleman who got a grant of ten thousand acres, five years since; and though he has had a hunt for it every summer since, he has not been able to find it yet. To be sure, ten thousand acres is a small object to look for, in the woods."

"And our fathers intend to find this land as soon as the season opens?"

"Not so fast, Corny; not so fast! That was the scheme of your father's Welsh blood, but mine takes matters more deliberately. Let us wait until next year, he said, and then we can send the boys. By that time, too, the war will take some sort of a shape, and we shall know better how to care for the children. The subject has been fairly talked over between the two patentees, and we are to go early next spring, not this."

The idea of land-hunting was not in the least disagreeable to me; nor was it unpleasant to think that I stood in reversion, or as heir, to twenty thousand acres of land, in addition to those of Satanstoe. Dirck and I talked the matter over, as we trotted on, until both of us began to regret that the expedition was so far in perspective.

The war to which Dirck alluded, had broken out a few months before our visit to town: a Mr. Washington, of Virginia—the same who has since become so celebrated as the Col Washington of Braddock's defeat, and other events at the south—having been captured, with a party of his men, in a small work thrown up in the neighbourhood of the French, somewhere on the tributaries of the Ohio; a river that is known to run into the Mississippi, a vast distance to the west. I knew very little then, nor do I know much now of these remote regions, beyond the fact that there are such places, and that they are sometimes visited by detachments, war-parties, hunters, and other adventurers from the colonies. To me, it seems scarce worth fighting about such distant and wild territory; for ages and ages must elapse before it can be of any service for the purposes of civilization. Both Dirck and myself regretted that the summer would be likely to go by without our seeing the enemy; for we came of families that were commonly employed on such, occasions. We thought both our fathers might be out; though even that was a point that still remained under discussion.

We dined and baited at Kingsbridge, intending to sup in town. While the dinner was cooking, Dirck and I walked out on the heights that overlook the Hudson; for I knew less of this noble river than I wished to know of it. We conversed as we walked; and my companion, who knew the river much better than myself, having many occasions to pass up and down it, between the village of Haverstraw and town, in his frequent visits to his relatives below, gave me some useful information.

"Look here, Corny," said Dirck, after betraying a good deal of desire to obtain a view of some object in the distance, along the river-side; "Look here, Corny, do you see yonder house, in the little bay below us, with the lawn that extends down to the water; and that noble orchard behind it?"

I saw the object to which Dirck alluded. It was a house that stood near the river, but sheltered and secluded, with the lawn and orchard as described; though at the distance of some two or three miles all the beauties of the spot could not be discovered, and many of them had to be received on the faith of my companion's admiration. Still I saw very plainly, all the principal objects named; and, among others, the house, the orchard, and the lawn. The building was of stone—as is common with most of the better sort of houses in the country—was long, irregular, and had that air of solid comfort about it, which it is usual to see in buildings of that description. The walls were not whitewashed, according to the lively tastes of our Dutch fellow-colonists, who appear to expend all their vivacity in the pipe and the brush, but were left in their native grey; a circumstance that rendered the form and dimensions of the structure a little less distinct, at a first glance, than they might otherwise have proved. As I gazed at the spot, however, I began to fancy it a charm, to find the picture thus sobered down; and found a pleasure in drawing the different angles, and walls, and chimneys, and roofs, from this back-ground, by means of the organ of sight. On the whole, I thought the little sequestered bay, the wooded and rocky shores, the small but well distributed lawn, the orchard, with all the other similar accessories, formed together one of the prettiest places of the sort I had ever seen. Thinking so, I was not slow in saying as much to my companion. I was thought to have some taste in these matters, and had been consulted on the subject of laying out grounds by one or two neighbours in the county.

"Whose house is it, Dirck?" I enquired; "and how came you to know anything about it?"

"That is Lilacsbush," answered my friend; "and it belongs to my mother's cousin, Herman Mordaunt."

I had heard of Herman, or, as it is pronounced, Harmar Mordaunt. He was a man of considerable note in the colony, having been the son of a Major Mordaunt, of the British army, who had married the heiress of a wealthy Dutch merchant, whence the name of Herman; which had descended to the son along with the money. The Dutch were so fond of their own blood, that they never failed to give this Mr. Mordaunt his Christian name; and he was usually known in the colony as Herman Mordaunt. Further than this, I knew little of the gentleman, unless it might be that he was reputed rich, and was admitted to be in the best society, though not actually belonging to the territorial or political aristocracy of the colony.

"As Herman Mordaunt is your mother's cousin, I suppose, Dirck," I resumed, "that you have been at Lilacsbush, and ascertained whether the inside of the house is as pleasant and respectable as the outside."

"Often, Corny; while Madam Mordaunt lived, my mother and I used to go there every summer. The poor lady is now dead, but I go there still."

"Why did you not ride on as far as Lilacsbush, and levy a dinner on your relations? I should think Herman Mordaunt would feel hurt, were he to learn that an acquaintance, or a relation, had put up at an inn, within a couple of miles of his own house. I dare say he knows both Major and Capt. Littlepage, and I protest I shall feel it necessary to send him a note of apology for not calling. These things ought not to be done, Dirck, among persons of a certain stamp, and who are supposed to know what is proper."

"This would be all right enough, Corny, had Herman Mordaunt, or his daughter, been at Lilacsbush; but they live in Crown Street, in town, in winter, and never come out here until after the Pinkster holidays, let them come when they may."

"Oh! he is as great a man as that, is he?—a town and country house; after all, I do not know whether it would do to be quite so free with one of his standing, as to go to dine with him without sending notice."

"Nonsense, Corny. Who hesitates about stopping at a gentleman's door, when he is travelling? Herman Mordaunt would have given us a hearty welcome, and I should have gone on to Lilacsbush, did I not know that the family is certain to be in town at this season. Easter came early this year, and to-morrow will be the first day of the Pinkster holidays. As soon as they are over, Herman Mordaunt and Anneke will be out here to enjoy their lilacs and roses."

"Oh, ho! there is an Anneke, as well as the old gentleman. Pray, how old may Miss Anneke be, Master Dirck?"

As this question was asked, I turned to look my friend in the face, and I found that his handsome, smooth, fair Dutch lineaments were covered with a glow of red, that it was not usual to see extended so far from his ruddy cheeks. Dirck was too much of a man, however, to turn away, or to try to hide blushes so ingenuous; but he answered stoutly—

"My cousin, Anneke Mordaunt, is just turned of seventeen; and, I'll tell you what, Corny—"

"Well—I am listening, with both ears, to hear your what—Out with it, man; both ears are open."

"Why, Anneke (On-na-kay), is one of the very prettiest girls in the colony!—What is more, she is as sweet and goot"—Dirck grew Dutch, as he grew animated—"as she is pretty."

I was quite astounded at the energy and feeling with which this was said. Dirck was such a matter-of-fact fellow, that I had never dreamed he could be sensible to the passion of love; nor had I ever paused to analyze the nature of our own friendship. We liked each other, in the first place, most probably, from habit; then, we were of characters so essentially different, that our attachment was influenced by that species of excitement which is the child of opposition. As we grew older, Dirck's good qualities began to command my respect, and reason entered more into my affection for him. I was well convinced that my companion could, and would, prove to be a warm friend; but the possibility of his ever becoming a lover, had not before crossed my mind. Even then, the impression made was not very deep or lasting, though I well remember the sort of admiration and wonder with which I gazed at his flushed cheek, animated eye, and improved mien. For the moment, Dirck really had a commanding and animated air.

"Why, Anneke is one of the prettiest girls in the colony!" my friend had exclaimed.

"And your cousin?"

"My second cousin.—Her mother's father and my mother's mother were brother and sister."

"In that case, I shall hope to have the honour of being introduced, one of these days, to Miss Anneke Mordaunt, who is just turned of seventeen, and is one of the prettiest girls in the colony, and is as good as she is pretty."

"I wish you to see her, Corny, and that before we go home," Dirck replied, all his philosophy, or phlegm, whichever the philosophy of other people may term it, returning; "come; let us go back to the inn; our dinner will be getting cold."

I mused on my friend's unusual manner, as we walked back towards the inn; but it was soon forgotten, in the satisfaction produced by eating a good, substantial meal of broiled ham, with hot potatoes, boiled eggs, a beefsteak, done to a turn, with the accessions of pickles, cold-slaw, apple-pie, and cider. This is a common New York tavern dinner, for the wayfarer; and, I must say, I have got to like it. Often have I enjoyed such a repast, after a sharp forenoon's ride; ay, and enjoyed it more than I have relished entertainments at which have figured turkies, oysters, hams, hashes, and other dishes, that have higher reputations. Even turtle-soup, for which we are somewhat famous in New York, has failed to give me the same delight.

Dirck, to do him justice, ate heartily; for it is not an easy matter to take away his appetite. As usual, I did most of the talking; and that was with our landlady, who, hearing I was a son of her much-esteemed and constant customer, Major Littlepage, presented herself with the dessert and cheese, and did me the honour to commence a discourse. Her name was Light; and light was she certain to cast on everything she discussed; that is to say, innkeeper's light; which partakes somewhat of the darkness that is so apt to overshadow no small portion of the minds of her many customers.

"Pray, Mrs. Light," I asked, when there was an opening, which was not until the good woman had exhausted her breath in honour of the Littlepages, "do you happen to know anything of a family, hereabouts, of the name of Mordaunt?"

"Do I happen to know, sir!—Why, Mr. Littlepage, you might almost as well have asked me, if I had ever heard of a Van Cortlandt, or a Philipse, or a Morris, or any other of the gentry hereabouts. Mr. Mordaunt has a country-place, and a very pretty one it is, within two miles and a half of us; and he and Madame Mordaunt never passed our door, when they went into the country to see Madame Van Cortlandt, without stopping to say a word, and leave a shilling. The poor lady is dead; but there is a young image of her virtues, that is coming a'ter her, that will be likely to do some damage in the colony. She is modesty itself, sir; so I thought it could do her no harm, the last time she was here, just to tell her, she ought to be locked up, for the thefts she was likely to commit, if not for them she had committed already. She blushed, sir, and looked for all the world like the shell of the most delicate boiled lobster you ever laid eyes on. She is truly a charming young lady!"

"Thefts of hearts, you mean of course, my good Mrs. Light?"

"Of nothing else, sir; young ladies are apt to steal hearts, you know. My word for it, Miss Anneke will turn out a great robber, after her own fashion, you know, sir."

"And whose hearts is she likely to run away with, pray? I should be pleased to hear the names of some of the sufferers."

"Lord, sir!—she is too young to have done much yet, but wait a twelvemonth, and I'll answer the question."

I could see all this time that Dirck was uneasy, and had some amusement in watching the workings of his countenance. My malicious intentions, however, were suddenly interrupted. As if to prevent further discourse, and, at the same time, further espionage, my young friend rose from table, ordering the horses and the bill.

During the ride to town, no more was said of Lilacsbush, Herman Mordaunt, or his daughter Anneke. Dirck was silent, but this was his habit after dinner, and I was kept a good deal on the alert in order to find the road which crossed the common, it being our desire to go in that direction. It is true, we might have gone into town by the way of Bloomingdale, Greenwich, the meadows and the Collect, and so down past the common upon the head of Broadway; but my mother had particularly desired we would fall into the Bowery Lane, passing the seats that are to be found in that quarter, and getting into Queen Street as soon as possible. By taking this course she thought we should be less likely to miss our way within the town itself, which is certainly full of narrow and intricate passages. My uncle Legge had removed into Duke Street, in the vicinity of Hanover Square; and Queen Street, I well knew, would lead us directly to his door. Queen Street, indeed, is the great artery of New York, through which most of its blood circulates.

It was drawing towards night when we trotted up to the stable, where we left our horses, and obtaining a black to shoulder our portmanteaus, we began to thread the mazes of the capital on foot. New York was certainly, even in 1757, a wonderful place for commerce! Vessels began to be seen some distance east of Fly Market, and there could not have been fewer than twenty ships, brigs, and schooners, lying in the East river, as we walked down Queen Street. Of course I include all descriptions of vessels that go to sea, in this estimate. At the present moment, it is probable twice that number would be seen. There Dirck and I stopped more than once, involuntarily, to gaze at the exhibitions of wealth and trade that offered themselves as we went deeper into the town. My mother had particularly cautioned me against falling into this evidence of country habits, and I felt much ashamed at each occurrence of the weakness; but I found it irresistible. At length my friend and I parted; he to go to the residence of his aunt, while I proceeded to that of mine. Before separating, however we agreed to meet next morning in the fields at the head of Broadway, on the common, which, as it was understood, was to be the scene of the Pinkster sports.

My reception in Duke Street was cordial, both on the part of my uncle and on the part of my aunt; the first being a good-hearted person, though a little too apt to run into extravagance on the subject of the rights of the rabble. I was pleased with the welcome I received, enjoyed an excellent hot supper, to which we sat down at half-past eight, my aunt being fond of town hours, both dining and supping a little later than my mother, as being more fashionable and genteel. 9 As I was compelled to confess fatigue, after so long a ride, as soon as we quitted the table I retired to my own room.

The next day was the first of the three that are devoted to Pinkster, the great Saturnalia of the New York blacks. Although this festival is always kept with more vivacity at Albany than in York, it is far from being neglected, even now, in the latter place. I had told my aunt, before I left her, I should not wait for breakfast, but should be up with the sun, and off in quest of Dirck, in order that we might enjoy a stroll along the wharves before it was time to repair to the common, where the fun was to be seen. Accordingly I got out of the house betimes, though it was an hour later than I had intended; for I heard the rattling of cups in the little parlour, the sign that the table was undergoing the usual process of arrangement for breakfast. It then occurred to me that most, if not all of the servants, seven in number, would be permitted to enjoy the holiday; and that it might be well if I took all my meals, that day, in the fields. Running back to the room, I communicated this intention to Juno, the girl I found doing Pompey's work, and left the house on a jump. There was no great occasion for starving, I thought, in a town as large and as full of eatables as New York; and the result fully justified this reasonable opinion.

Just as I got into Hanover Square, I saw a grey-headed negro, who was for turning a penny before he engaged in the amusements of the day, carrying two pails that were scoured to the neatness of Dutch fastidiousness, and which were suspended from the yoke he had across his neck and shoulders. He cried "White wine—white wine!" in a clear sonorous voice; and I was at his side in a moment. White wine was, and is still, my delight of a morning; and I bought a delicious draught of the purest and best of a Communipaw vintage, eating a cake at the same time. Thus refreshed, I proceeded into the square, the beauty of which had struck my fancy as I walked through it the previous evening. To my surprise, whom should I find in the very centre of Queen Street, gaping about him with a most indomitable Connecticut air, but Jason Newcome! A brief explanation let me into the secret of his presence. His boys had all gone home to enjoy the Pinkster holiday, with the black servants of their respective families; and Jason had seized the opportunity to pay his first visit to the great capital of the colony. He was on his travels, like myself.

"And what has brought you down here?" I demanded, the pedagogue having already informed me that he had put up at a tavern in the suburbs, where horse-keeping and lodgings were "reasonable." "The Pinkster fields are up near the head of Broadway, on the common."

"So I hear," answered Jason; "but I want to see a ship and all the sights this way, in the first place. It will be time enough for Pinkster, two or three hours hence, if a Christian ought even to look at such vanities. Can you tell me where I am to find Hanover Square, Corny?"

"You are in it now, Mr. Newcome; and to my fancy, a very noble area it is!"

"This Hanover Square!" repeated Jason. "Why, its shape is not that of a square at all; it is nearer a triangle."

"What of that, sir? By a square in a town, one does not necessarily understand an area with four equal sides and as many right angles, but an open space that is left for air and beauty. There are air and beauty enough to satisfy any reasonable man. A square may be a parallelogram, or a triangle, or any other shape one pleases."

"This, then, is Hanover Square!—a New York square, or a Nassau Hall square, Corny; but not a Yale College square, take my word for it. It is so small, moreover!"

"Small!—the width of the street at the widest end must be near a hundred feet; I grant you it is not half that at the other end, but that is owing to the proximity of the houses."

"Ay, it is all owing to the proximity of the houses, as you call it. Now, according to my notion, Hanover Square, of which a body hears so much talk in the country, ought to have had fifty or sixty acres in it, and statues of the whole House of Brunswick, besides. Why is that nest of houses left in the middle of your square?"

"It is not, sir. The square ceases when it reaches them. They are too valuable to be torn down, although there has been some talk of it. My uncle Legge told me, last evening, that those houses have been valued as high as twelve thousand dollars; and some persons put them as high as six thousand pounds."

This reconciled Jason to the houses; for he never failed to defer to money, come in what shape it would. It was the only source of human distinction that he could clearly comprehend, though he had some faint impressions touching the dignity of the crown, and the respect due to its representatives.

"Corny," said Jason, in an under tone, and taking me by the arm to lead me aside, though no one was near, like a man who has a great secret to ask, or to communicate, "what was that I saw you taking for your bitters, a little while ago?"

"Bitters! I do not understand you, Jason. Nothing bitter have I tasted to-day; nor can I say I have any great wish to put anything bitter into my mouth."

"Why, the draught you got from the nigger who is now coming back across the square, as you call it, and which you seemed to enj'y particularly. I am dry, myself, and should wonderfully like a drink."

"Oh! that fellow sells 'white wine,' and you will find it delicious. If you want your 'bitters,' as you call them, you cannot do better than stop him, and give him a penny."

"Will he let it go so desperate cheap as that?" demanded Jason, his eyes twinkling with a sort of "bitters" expectation.

"That is the stated price. Stop him boldly; there is no occasion for all this Connecticut modesty. Here, uncle, this gentleman wishes a cup of your white wine."

Jason turned away in alarm, to see who was looking on; and, when the cup was put into his hand, he shut his eyes, determined to gulp its contents at a swallow, in the most approved "bitters" style. About half the liquor went down his throat, the rest being squirted back in a small white stream.

"Buttermilk, by Jingo!" exclaimed the disappointed pedagogue, who expected some delicious combination of spices with rum. St. Jingo was the only saint, and a "darnation" or "darn you," were the only oaths his puritan education ever permitted him to use.

9 (return)

[ The dinner of the last half century is, in one sense, but a substitute for the petits soupers of the century or two that preceded. It is so entirely rational and natural, that the cultivated and refined should meet for the purposes of social enjoyment after the business of the day has terminated, that the supper has only given place to the same meal under another name, and at hours little varying from those of the past. The Parisian dines at half-past six, remaining at table until eight. The Englishman, later in all his hours, and more ponderous in all his habits, sits down to table about the time the Frenchman gets up; quitting it between nine and ten. The Italian pays a tribute to his climate, and has his early dinner and light supper, both usually alone, the habits of the country carrying him to the opera and the conversazione for social communion. But what is the American? A jumble of the same senseless contradictions in his social habits, as he is fast getting to be in his political creeds and political practices; a being that is in transitu, pressed by circumstances on the one side, and by the habit of imitation on the other; unwilling, almost unable, to think and act for himself. The only American who is temporarily independent in such things, is the unfledged provincial, fresh from his village conceit and village practices, who, until corrected by communion with the world, fancies the south-east corner of the north-west parish, in the town of Hebron, in the county of Jericho, and the State of Connecticut, to be the only portion of this globe that is perfection. If he should happen to keep a school, or conduct a newspaper, the community becomes, in a small degree, the participant of his rare advantages and vast experience!—EDITOR.]

CHAPTER V.

  "Here's your fine clams!

  As white as snow!

  On Rockaway these clams do grow."

  New York Cries.

It was some time before Jason's offended dignity and disappointment would permit him to smile at the mistake; and we had walked some distance towards Old Slip, where I was to meet Dirck, before the pedagogue even opened his lips. Then, the only allusion he made to the white wine, was to call it "a plaguy Dutch cheat;" for Jason had implicitly relied on having that peculiar beverage of his caste, known as "bitters." What he meant by a Dutch cheat, I do not know; unless he thought the buttermilk was particularly Dutch, and this buttermilk an imposition.

Dirck was waiting for me at the Old Slip; and, on inquiry, I found he had enjoyed his draught of white wine as well as myself, and was ready for immediate service. We proceeded along the wharves in a body, admiring the different vessels that lined them. About nine o'clock, all three of us passed up Wall Street, on the stoops of which, no small portion of its tenants were already seated, enjoying the sight of the negroes, as, with happy "shining" faces they left the different dwellings, to hasten to the Pinkster field. Our passage through the street attracted a good deal of attention; for, being all three strangers, it was not to be supposed we could be thus seen in a body, without exciting a remark. Such a thing could hardly have been expected in London itself.

After showing Jason the City Hall, Trinity Church, and the City Tavern, we went out of town, taking the direction of a large common that the King's officers had long used for a parade-ground, and which has since been called the Park, though it would be difficult to say why, since it is barely a paddock in size, and certainly has never been used to keep any animals wilder than the boys of the town. A park, I suppose, it will one day become, though it has little at present that comports with my ideas of such a thing. On this common, then, was the Pinkster ground, which was now quite full of people, as well as of animation.

There was nothing new in a Pinkster frolic, either to Dirck, or to myself; though Jason gazed at the whole procedure with wonder. He was born within seventy miles of that very spot, but had not the smallest notion before, of such a holiday as Pinkster. There are few blacks in Connecticut, I believe; and those that are there, are so ground down in the Puritan mill, that they are neither fish, flesh, nor red-herring, as we say of a nondescript. No man ever heard of a festival in New England, that had not some immediate connection with the saints, or with politics.

Jason was at first confounded with the noises, dances, music, and games that were going on. By this time, nine-tenths of the blacks of the city, and of the whole country within thirty or forty miles, indeed, were collected in thousands in those fields, beating banjoes, singing African songs, drinking, and worst of all, laughing in a way that seemed to set their very hearts rattling within their ribs. Everything wore the aspect of good-humour, though it was good-humour in its broadest and coarsest forms. Every sort of common game was in requisition, while drinking was far from being neglected. Still, not a man was drunk. A drunken negro, indeed, is by no means a common thing. The features that distinguish a Pinkster frolic from the usual scenes at fairs, and other merry-makings, however, were of African origin. It is true, there are not now, nor were there then, many blacks among us of African birth; but the traditions and usages of their original country were so far preserved as to produce a marked difference between this festival, and one of European origin. Among other things, some were making music, by beating on skins drawn over the ends of hollow logs, while others were dancing to it, in a manner to show that they felt infinite delight. This, in particular, was said to be a usage of their African progenitors.

Hundreds of whites were walking through the fields, amused spectators. Among these last were a great many children of the better class, who had come to look at the enjoyment of those who attended them, in their own ordinary amusements. Many a sable nurse did I see that day, chaperoning her young master, a young mistress, or both together, through the various groups; demanding of all, and receiving from all, the respect that one of these classes was accustomed to pay to the other.

A great many young ladies between the ages of fifteen and twenty were also in the field, either escorted by male companions, or, what was equally as certain of producing deference, under the dare of old female nurses, who belonged to the race that kept the festival. We had been in the field ourselves two hours, and even Jason was beginning to condescend to be amused, when, unconsciously, I got separated from my companions, and was wandering through the groups by myself, as I came on a party of young girls, who were under the care of two or three wrinkled and grey-headed negresses, so respectably attired, as to show at once they were confidential servants in some of the better families. As for the young ladies themselves, most were still of the age of school girls; though there were some of that equivocal age, when the bud is just breaking into the opening flower, and one or two that were even a little older; young women in forms and deportment, though scarcely so in years. One of a party of two of the last, appeared to me to possess all the grace of young womanhood, rendered radiant by the ingenuous laugh, the light-hearted playfulness, and the virgin innocence of sweet seventeen. She was simply, but very prettily dressed, and everything about her attire, air, carriage and manner, denoted a young lady of the better class, who was just old enough to feel all the proprieties of her situation, while she was still sufficiently youthful to enjoy all the fun. As she came near me, it seemed as if I knew her; but it was not until I heard her sweet, mirthful voice, that I recollected the pretty little thing in whose behalf I had taken a round with the butcher's boy, on the Bowery road, near six years before. As her party came quite near the spot where I stood, what was only conjecture at first, was reduced to a certainty.

In the surprise of the moment, happening to catch the eye of the young creature, I was emboldened to make her a low bow. At first she smiled, like one who fancies she recognises an acquaintance; then her face became scarlet, and she returned my bow with a very lady-like, but, at the same time, a very distant curtsey; upon which, bending her blue eyes to the ground, she turned away, seemingly to speak to her companion. After this, I could not advance to speak, though I was strongly in hopes the old black nurse who was with her would recognise me, for she had manifested much concern about me on the occasion of the quarrel with the young butcher. This did not occur; and old Katrinke, as I heard the negress called, jabbered away, explaining the meaning of the different ceremonies of her race, to a cluster of very interested listeners, without paying any attention to me. The tongues of the pretty little things went, as girls' tongues will go, though my unknown fair one maintained all the reserve and quiet of manner that comported with her young womanhood, and apparent condition in life.

"Dere, Miss Anneke!" exclaimed Katrinke, suddenly; "dere come a genttleum dat will bring a pleasure, I know."

"Anneke," I repeated, mentally, and "gentleman that will cause pleasure by his appearance." "Can it be Dirck?" I thought. Sure enough, Dirck it proved to be, who advanced rapidly to the group, making a general salute, and finishing by shaking my beautiful young stranger's hands, and addressing her by the name of "cousin Anneke." This, then, was Annie Mordaunt, as the young lady was commonly called in the English circles, the only child and heiress of Herman Mordaunt, of Crown Street and of Lilacsbush. Well, Dirck has more taste than I had ever given him credit for! Just as this thought glanced through my mind, my figure caught my friend's eye, and, with a look of pride and exultation, he signed to me to draw nearer, though I had managed to get pretty near as it was, already.

"Cousin Anneke," said Dirck, who never used circumlocution, when direct means were at all available, "this is Corny Littlepage, of whom you have heard me speak so often, and for whom I ask one of your best curtsies and sweetest smiles."

Miss Mordaunt was kind enough to comply literally, both curtsying and smiling precisely as she had been desired to do, though I could see she was also slightly disposed to laugh. I was still making my bow, and mumbling some unintelligible compliment, when Katrinke gave a little exclamation, and using the freedom of an old and confidential servant, she eagerly pulled the sleeve of her young mistress, and hurriedly whispered something in her ear. Anneke coloured, turned quickly towards me, bent her eyes more boldly and steadily on my face—and then it was that I fancied the sweetest smile which mortal had ever received, or that with which I had just before been received, was much surpassed.

"Mr. Littlepage, I believe, is not a total stranger, cousin Dirck," she said. "Katrinke remembers him, as a young gentleman who once did me an important service, and now I think I can trace the resemblance myself! I allude to the boy who insulted me on the Bowery Road, Mr. Littlepage, and your handsome interference in my behalf."

"Had there been twenty boys, Miss Mordaunt, an insult to you would have been resented by any man of ordinary spirit."

I do not know that any youth, who was suddenly put to his wits to be polite, or sentimental, or feeling, could have done a great deal better than that! So Anneke thought too, I fancy, for her colour increased, rendering her ravishingly lovely, and she looked surprisingly pleased.

"Yes," put in Dirck with energy,—"let twenty, or a hundred try it if they please, Anneke, men or boys, and they'll find those that will protect you."

"You for one, of course, cousin Dirck," rejoined the charming girl, holding out her hand towards my friend, with a frankness I could have dispensed with in her; "but, you will remember, Mr. Littlepage, or Master Littlepage as he then was, was a stranger, and I had no such claim on him, as I certainly have on you."

"Well, Corny, it is odd you never said a word of this to me! when I was showing him Lilacsbush, and talking of you and of your father, not a word did he say on the subject."

"I did not then know it was Miss Mordaunt I had been so fortunate as to serve; but here is Mr. Newcome at your elbow, Follock, and dying to be introduced, as he sees I have been."

Anneke turned to smile and curtsey again to Jason, who made his bow in a very school-master sort of a fashion, while I could see that the circumstance I had not boasted of my exploit gave it new importance in the sweet creature's eyes. As for Jason, he had no sooner got along with the introduction,—the first, I fancy, he had ever gone regularly through,—than, profiting by some questions Miss Mordaunt was asking Dirck about his mother and the rest of the family, he came round to me, drew me aside by a jerk of the sleeve, and gave me to understand he had something for my private ear.

"I did not know before that you had ever kept school, Corny," he half whispered earnestly.

"How do you know it now, Mr. Newcome? since the thing never happened?"

"How comes it, then, that this young woman called you Master Littlepage?"

"Bah! Jason, wait a year or two, and you will begin to get truer notions of us New Yorkers."

"But I heard her with my own ears—Master Littlepage; as plain as words were ever called."

"Well, then, Miss Mordaunt must be right, and I have forgotten the affair. I must once have kept a woman's school, somewhere in my younger days, but forgotten it."

"Now this is nothing (nawthin', as expressed) but you? desperate York pride, Corny; but I think all the better of you for it. Why, as it could not have taken place after you went to college, you must have got the start of even me! But, the Rev. Mr. Worden is enough to start a youth with a large capital, if he be so minded. I admit he does understand the dead languages. It is a pity he is so very dead in religious matters."

"Well—well—I will tell you all about it another time, you perceive, now, that Miss Mordaunt wishes to move on, and does not like to quit us too abruptly. Let us follow."

Jason complied, and for an hour or two we had the pleasure of accompanying the young ladies, as they strolled among the booths and different groups of that singular assembly. As has been said, most of the blacks had been born in the colony, but there were some native Africans among them. New York never had slaves on the system of the southern planters, or in gangs of hundreds, to labour in the fields under overseers, and who lived apart in cabins of their own; but, our system of slavery was strictly domestic, the negro almost invariably living under the same roof with the master, or, if his habitation was detached, as certainly sometimes happened, it was still near at hand, leaving both races as parts of a common family. In the country, the negroes never toiled in the field, but it was as ordinary husbandmen; and, in the cases of those who laboured on their own property, or as tenants of some extensive land-ford, the black did his work at his master's side. Then all, or nearly all our household servants were, and still are, blacks, leaving that department of domestic economy almost exclusively in their hands, with the exception of those cases in which the white females busied themselves also in such occupations, united to the usual supervision of the mistresses. Among the Dutch, in particular, the treatment of the negro was of the kindest character, a trusty field slave often having quite as much to say on the subject of the tillage and the crops, as the man who owned both the land he worked, and himself.

A party of native Africans kept us for half an hour. The scene seemed to have revived their early associations, and they were carried away with their own representation of semi-savage sports. The American-born blacks gazed at this group with intense interest also, regarding them as so many ambassadors from the land of their ancestors, to enlighten them in usages and superstitious lore, that were more peculiarly suited to their race. The last even endeavoured to imitate the acts of the first, and, though the attempt was often ludicrous, it never failed on the score of intention and gravity. Nothing was done in the way of caricature, but much in the way of respect and affection.

Lest the habits of this generation should pass away and be forgotten, of which I see some evidence, I will mention a usage that was quite common among the Dutch, and which has passed in some measure, into the English families that have formed connections with the children of Holland. Two of these intermarriages had so far brought the Littlepages within the pale, that the usage to which I allude was practised in my own case. The custom was this: when a child of the family reached the age of six, or eight, a young slave of the same age and sex, was given to him, or her, with some little formality, and from that moment the fortunes of the two were considered to be, within the limits of their respective pursuits and positions, as those of man and wife. It is true, divorces do occur, but it is only in cases of gross misconduct, and quite as often the misconduct is on the side of the master, as on that of the slave. A drunkard may get in debt, and be compelled to part with his blacks this one among the rest; but this particular negro remains with him as long as anything remains. Slaves that seriously misbehave, are usually sent to the islands, where the toil on the sugar plantations proves a very sufficient punishment.

The day I was six, a boy was given to me, in the manner I have mentioned; and he remained not only my property, but my factotum, to this moment. It was Yaap, or Jacob, the negro to whom I have already had occasion to allude. Anneke Mordaunt, whose grandmother was of a Dutch family, it will be remembered, had with her there, in the Pinkster field, a negress of just her own age, who was called Mari; not Mary, or Maria; but the last, as it would be pronounced without the final a. This Mari was a buxom, glistening, smooth-faced, laughing, red-lipped, pearl-toothed, black-eyed hussy, that seemed born for fun; and who was often kept in order by her more sedate and well-mannered young mistress with a good deal of difficulty. My fellow was on the ground, somewhere, too; for I had given him permission to come to town to keep Pinkster; and he was to leave Satanstoe, in a sloop, within an hour after I left it myself. The wind had been fair, and I made no question of his having arrived; though, as yet, I had not seen him.

I could have accompanied Anneke, and her party, all day, through that scene of unsophisticated mirth, and felt no want of interest. Her presence immediately produced an impression; even the native Africans moderating their manner, and lowering their yells, as it might be, the better to suit her more refined tastes. No one, in our set, was too dignified to laugh, but Jason. The pedagogue, it is true, often expressed his disgust at the amusements and antics of the negroes, declaring they were unbecoming human beings and otherwise manifesting that disposition to hypercriticism, which is apt to distinguish one who is only a tyro in his own case.

Such was the state of things, when Mari came rushing up to her young mistress, with distended eyes and uplifted hands, exclaiming, on a key that necessarily made us all sharers in the communication—

"Oh! Miss Anneke!—What you t'ink, Miss Anneke! Could you ever s'pose sich a t'ing, Miss Anneke!"

"Tell me at once, Mari, what it is you have seen, or heard; and leave off these silly exclamations;" said the gentle mistress, with a colour that proved she was unused to her own girl's manner.

"Who could t'ink it, Miss Anneke! Dese, here, werry niggers have sent all'e way to deir own country, and have had a lion cotched for Pinkster!"

This was news, indeed, if true. Not one of us all had ever seen a lion; wild animals, then, being exceedingly scarce in the colonies, with the exception of those that were taken in our own woods. I had seen several of the small brown bears, and many a wolf, and one stuffed panther, in my time; but never supposed it within the range of possibilities, that I could be brought so near a living lion. Inquiry showed, nevertheless, that Mari was right, with the exception of the animal's having been expressly caught for the occasion. It was the beast of a showman, who was also the proprietor of a very active and amusing monkey. The price of admission was a quarter of a dollar, for adult whites; children and negroes going in for half-price. These preliminaries understood, it was at once settled that all who could muster enough of money and courage, should go in a body, and gaze on the king of beasts. I say, of courage; for it required a good deal for a female novice to go near a living lion.

The lion was kept in a cage, of course, which was placed in a temporary building of boards, that had been erected for the Pinkster field. As we drew near the door, I saw that the cheeks of several of the pretty young creatures who belonged to the party of Anneke, began to turn pale; a sign of weakness that, singular as it may appear, very sensibly extended itself to most of their attendant negresses. Mari did not flinch, however; and, when it came to the trial, of that sex, she and her mistress were the only two who held out in the original resolution of entering. Some time was thrown away in endeavouring to persuade two or three of her older companions to go in with her; but, finding it useless, with a faint smile, Miss Mordaunt calmly said—

"Well, gentlemen, Mari and myself must compose the female portion of the party. I have never seen a lion, and would not, by any means, miss this opportunity. We shall find my friends waiting for such portions of us as shall not be eaten, on our return."

We were now near the door, where stood the man who received the money, and gave the tickets. It happened that Dirck had been stopped by a gentleman of his acquaintance, who had just left the building, and who was laughingly relating some incident that had occurred within. I stood on one side of Anneke, Jason on the other, while Mari was close in the rear.

"A quarter for each gentleman and the lady," said the door-keeper, "and a shilling for the wench."

On this hint, Jason, to my great surprise, (for usually he was very backward on such occasions,) drew out a purse, and emptying some silver into his hand, he said with a flourish—

"Permit me, Miss—it is an honour I covet; a quarter for yourself, and a shilling for Mari."

I saw Anneke colour, and her eye turn hastily towards Dirck. Before I had time to say anything, or to do anything in fact, she answered steadily—

"Give yourself no trouble, Mr. Newcome; Mr. Littlepage will do me the favour to obtain tickets for me."

Jason had the money in his fingers, and I passed him and bought the tickets, while he was protesting—

"It gave him pleasure—he was proud of the occasion—another time her brother could do the same for his sisters and he had six," and other matters of the sort.

I simply placed the tickets in Anneke's hand, who received them with an expression of thanks, and we all passed; Dirck inquiring of his cousin, as he came up, if he should get her tickets. I mention this little incident as showing the tact of woman, and will relate all that pertains to it, before I proceed to other things. Anneke said nothing on the subject of her tickets until we had left the booth, when she approached me, and with that grace and simplicity which a well-bred woman knows how to use on such an occasion, and quietly observed—

"I am under obligations to you, Mr. Littlepage, for having paid for my tickets;—they cost three shillings, I believe."

I bowed, and had the pleasure of almost touching Miss Mordaunt's beautiful little hand, as she gave me the money. At this instant, a jerk at my elbow came near causing me to drop the silver. It was Jason, who had taken this liberty, and who now led me aside with a earnestness of manner it was not usual for him to exhibit. I saw by the portentous look of the pedagogue's countenance, and his swelling manner, that something extraordinary was on his mind, and waited with some little curiosity to learn what it might be.

"Why, what in human natur', Corny, do you mean?" he cried, almost angrily. "Did ever mortal man hear of a gentleman's making a lady pay for a treat! Do you know you have made Miss Anneke pay for a treat!"

"A treat, Mr. Newcome!"

"Yes, a treat, Mr. Corny Littlepage! How often do you think young ladies will accompany you to shows, and balls, and other sights, if you make them pay!"

Then a laugh of derision added emphasis to Jason's words.

"Pay!—could I presume to think Miss Mordaunt would suffer me to pay money for her, or for her servant?"

"You almost make me think you a nat'ral! Young men always pay for young women, and no questions asked. Did you not remark how smartly I offered to pay for this Miss, and how well she took it, until you stepped forward and cut me out;—I bore it, for it saved me three nine-pences."

"I observed how Miss Mordaunt shrunk from the familiarity of being called Miss, and how unwilling she was to let you buy the tickets; and that I suspect was solely because she saw you had some notion of what you call a treat."

I cannot enter into the philosophy of the thing, but certainly nothing is more vulgar in English, to address a young lady as Miss, without affixing a name, whereas I know it is the height of breeding to say Mademoiselle in French, and am told the Spaniards, Italians and Germans, use its synonyme in the same manner. I had been indignant at Jason's familiarity when he called Anneke—the pretty Anneke!—Miss; and felt glad of an occasion to let him understand how I felt on the subject.

"What a child you be, a'ter all, Corny!" exclaimed the pedagogue, who was much too good-natured to take offence at a trifle. "You a bachelor of arts! But this matter must be set right, if it be only for the honour of my school. Folks"—Jason never blundered on the words 'one' or 'people' in this sense—"Folks may think that you have been in the school since it has been under my care, and I wouldn't for the world have it get abroad that a youth from my school had neglected to treat a lady under such circumstances."

Conceiving it useless to remonstrate with me any further, Jason proceeded forthwith to Anneke, with whom he begged permission to say a word in private. So eager was my companion to wipe out the stain, and so surprised was the young lady, who gently declined moving more than a step, that the conference took place immediately under my observation, neither of the parties being aware that I necessarily heard or saw all that passed.

"You must excuse Corny, Miss," Jason commenced, producing his purse again, and beginning to hunt anew for a quarter and a shilling; "he is quite young, and knows nawthin' worth speaking of, of the ways of mankind. Ah! here is just the money—three ninepennies, or three York shillings. Here, Miss, excuse Corny, and overlook it all; when he is older, he will not make such blunders."

"I am not certain that I understand you, sir!" exclaimed Anneke, who had shrunk back a little at the 'Miss,' and who now saw Jason hold out the silver, with a surprise she took no pains to conceal.

"This is the price of the tickets—yes, that's all. Naw-thin' else, on honour. Corny, you remember, was so awful dumb as to let you pay, just as if you had been a gentleman."

Anneke now smiled, and glancing at me at the same instant, a bright blush suffused her face, though the meaning of my eye, as I could easily see, strongly tempted her to laugh.

"It is very well as it is, Mr. Newcome, though I feel much indebted to your liberal intentions," she said, turning to rejoin her friends; "it is customary in New York for ladies to pay, themselves, for everything of this nature. When I go to Connecticut, I shall feel infinitely indebted to you for another such offer."

Jason did not know what to make of it! He long after insisted that the young lady was 'huffed,' as he called it, and that she had refused to take the money merely because she was thus offended.

"There is a manner, you know, Corny," he said, "of doing even a genteel thing, and that is to do it genteelly. I much doubt if a genteel thing can be done ungenteelly. One thing I'm thankful for, and that is, that she don't know that you ever were at the 'Seminarian Institute' in your life;" such being the appellation Jason had given to that which Mr. Worden had simply called a 'Boys' School.' To return to the booth.

The lion had many visitors, and we had some difficulty in finding places. As a matter of course, Anneke was put in front, most of the men who were in the booth giving way to her with respectful attention. Unfortunately, the young lady wore an exceedingly pretty shawl, in which scarlet was a predominant colour; and that which occurred has been attributed to this circumstance, though I am far from affirming such to have been literally the case. Anneke, from the first, manifested no fear; but the circle pressing on her from without, she got so near the cage that the beast thrust a paw through, and actually caught hold of the shawl, drawing the alarmed girl quite up to the bars. I was at Anneke's side, and with a presence of mind that now surprises me, I succeeded in throwing the shawl from the precious creature's shoulders, and of fairly lifting her from the ground and setting her down again at a safe distance from the beast. All this passed so soon that half the persons present were unconscious of what had occurred until it was all over; and what astonishes me most is, that I do not retain the least recollection of the pleasure I ought to have felt while my arm encircled Anneke Mordaunt's slender waist, and while she was altogether supported by me. The keeper interfered immediately, and the lion relinquished the shawl, looking like a disappointed beast when he found it did not contain its beautiful owner.

Anneke was rescued before she had time fully to comprehend the danger she had been in. Even Dirck could not advance to her aid, though he saw and comprehended the imminent risk ran by the being he loved best in the world; but Dirck was always so slow! I must do Jason the credit to say that he behaved well, though so situated as to be of no real use. He rushed forward to assist Anneke, and remained to draw away the shawl, as soon as the keeper had succeeded in making the lion relinquish his hold. But, all this passed so rapidly, as to give little opportunity for noting incidents.

Anneke was certainly well frightened by this adventure with the lion, as was apparent by her changing colour, and a few tears that succeeded. Still, a glass of water, and a minute or two, seated in a chair, were sufficient to restore her self-composure, and she remained with us, for half an hour, examining and admiring her terrible assailant.

And, here, let me add, for the benefit of those who have never had an opportunity of seeing the king of beasts, that he is a sight well worthy to behold! I have never viewed an elephant, which travelled gentlemen tell me is a still more extraordinary animal, though I find it difficult to imagine anything finer, in its way, than the lion which came so near injuring "sweet Anne Mordaunt." I question if any of us were aware of the full extent of the danger she ran, until we began to reflect on it coolly, after time and leisure were afforded. As soon as the commotion naturally produced at first, had subsided, the incident seemed forgotten, and we left the booth, after a long visit, expatiating on the animal, and its character, apparently in forgetfulness of that which, by one blow of his powerful paw, the lion might have rendered fatal to one of the very sweetest and happiest innocents of the whole province, but for the timely and merciful interposition of a kind providence.

After the little affair of the tickets, I walked on with Anneke, who declared her intention of quitting the field, her escape beginning to affect her spirits, and she was afraid that some particularly kind friend might carry an exaggerated account of what had happened to her father. Dirck offered to accompany her home, for Mr. Mordaunt kept no carriage; or, at least, nothing that was habitually used as a town equipage. We had all gone as far as the verge of the Common with Anneke, when the sweet girl stopped, looked at me earnestly, and, while her colour changed and tears rose to her eyes, she said,—

"Mr. Littlepage, I am just getting to be fully conscious of what I owe to you. The thing passed so suddenly, and I was so much alarmed, that I did not know how to express myself at the time, nor am I certain that I do now. Believe me, notwithstanding, that I never can forget this morning, and I beg of you, if you have a sister, to carry to her the proffered friendship of Anneke Mordaunt, and tell her that her own prayers in behalf of her brother will not be more sincere than mine."

Before I could recollect myself, so as to make a suitable answer, Anneke had curtsied and walked away, with her handkerchief to her eyes.

CHAPTER VI.

  "Nay, be brief:

  I see into thy end, and am almost

  A man already."

  Cymbeline.

As Dirck accompanied Miss Mordaunt to her father's house in Crown Street, 10 I took an occasion to give Jason the slip, being in no humour to listen to his lectures on the proprieties of life, and left the Pinkster field as fast as I could. Notwithstanding the size and importance of New York, a holiday like this could not fail to draw great crowds of persons to witness the sports. In 1757, James de Lancey was at the head of the government of the province, as indeed he had been, in effect, for much of his life; and I remember to have met his chariot, carrying the younger children of the family to the field, on my way into the town. As the day advanced, carriages of one sort and another made their appearance in Broadway, principally conveying the children of their different owners. All these belonged to people of the first mark; and I saw the Ship that denotes the arms of Livingston, the Lance, of the de Lanceys, the Burning Castle, of the Morrises, and other armorial bearings that were well known in the province. Carriages, certainly, were not as common in 1757 as they have since become; but most of our distinguished people rode in their coaches, chariots, or phaetons, or conveyances of some sort or other, when there was occasion to go so far out of town as the Common, which is the site of the present "Park." The roads on the island of Manhattan were very pretty and picturesque, winding among rocks and through valleys, being lined with groves and copses in a way to render all the drives rural and retired. Here and there, one came to a country-house, the residence of some person of importance, which, by its comfort and snugness, gave all the indications of wealth and of a prudent taste. Mr. Speaker Nicoll had 11 occupied a dwelling of this sort for a long series of years, that was about a league from town, and which is still standing, as I pass it constantly in travelling between Satanstoe and York. I never saw the Patentee myself, as he died long before my birth; but his house near town still stands, as I have said, a memorial of past ages!

The whole town seemed alive, and everybody had a desire to get a glance at the sports of the Pinkster Field; though the more dignified and cultivated had self-denial enough to keep aloof, since it would hardly have comported with their years and stations to be seen in such a place. The war had brought many regiments into the province, however, and I met at least twenty young officers, strolling out to the scene of amusement, as I walked into town. I will confess I gazed at these youths with admiration, and not entirely without envy, as they passed me in pairs, laughing and diverting themselves with the grotesque groups of blacks that were occasionally met, coming in from their sports. These young men I knew had enjoyed the advantages of being educated at home, some of them, quite likely, in the Universities, and all of them amid the high civilization and taste of England. I say all of them, too hastily; as there were young men of the colonies among them, who probably had not enjoyed these advantages. The easy air, self-possession, and quiet, what shall I call it?—insolence would be too strong a word, and a term that I, the son and grandson of old king's officers, would not like to apply, and yet it comes nearest to what I mean as applicable to the covert manner of these young men—but, whatever it was, that peculiar air of metropolitan superiority over provincial ignorance and provincial dependence, which certainly distinguished all the younger men of this class, had an effect on me, I find it difficult to describe. I was a loyal subject, loved the King,—most particularly since he was so identified with the Protestant succession,—loved all of the blood-royal, and wished for nothing more than the honour and lustre of the English crown. One thus disposed could not but feel amicably towards the King's officers; yet, I will confess, there were moments when this air of ill-concealed superiority, this manner that so much resembled that of the master towards the servant, the superior to the dependent, the patron to the client, gave me deep offence, and feelings so bitter, that I was obliged to struggle hard to suppress them. But this is Anticipating, and is interrupting the course of my narrative. I am inclined to think there must always be a good deal of this feeling, where the relation of principal and dependant exists, as between distinct territories.

I was a good deal excited, and a little fatigued with the walk and the incidents of the morning, and determined to proceed at once to Duke Street, and share the cold dinner of my aunt; for few private families in York, that depended on regular cooks for their food, had anything served warm on their tables, for that and the two succeeding days. Here and there a white substitute was found, it is true, and we had the benefit of such an assistant at half-past one. It was the English servant of a Col. Mosely, an officer of the army, who was intimate at my uncle's, and who had had the civility to offer a man for this occasion. I afterwards ascertained, that many officers manifested the same kind spirit towards various other families in which they visited on terms of friendship.

Marriages between young English officers and our pretty, delicate York belles, were of frequent occurrence, and I had felt a twinge or two, on the subject of Anneke, that morning, as I passed the youths of the 55th, 60th, or Loyal Americans, 17th, and other regiments that were then in the province.

My aunt was descending from the drawing-room, in dinner dress—for that no lady ever neglects, even though she dines on a cold dumpling. As I opened the street-door, Mrs. Legge was not coming down alone to take her seat at table, but, having some extra duty to perform in consequence of the absence of most of her household, she was engaged in that service. Seeing me, however, she stopped on the landing of the stains, and beckoned me to approach.

"Corny," she said, "what have you been doing, my child, to have drawn this honour upon you?"

"Honour!—I am ignorant of having even received any. What can you mean, my dear aunt?"

"Here is Herman Mordaunt waiting to see you, in the drawing-room. He asked particularly for you;—wishes to see you—expresses his regrets that you are not in, and talks only of you!"

"In which case, I ought to hasten up stairs in order to receive him, as soon as possible. I will tell you all about it at dinner, aunt;—excuse me now."

Away I went, with a beating heart, to receive a visit from Anneke's father. I can scarcely give a reason why this gentleman was usually called, when he was spoken of, and sometimes when he was spoken to, Herman Mordaunt; unless, indeed, it were, that being in part of Dutch extraction, the name which denoted the circumstance (Hermanus—pronounced by the Hollanders, Hermaanus,) was used by a portion of the population in token of the fact, and adopted by others in pure compliance. But Herman Mordaunt was he usually styled; and this, too, in the way of respect, and not as coarse-minded persons affect to speak of their superiors, or in a way to boast of their own familiarity. I should have thought it an honour, at my time of life, to receive a visit from Herman Mordaunt; but my heart fairly beat, as I have said, as I went hastily up stairs, to meet Anneke's father.

My uncle was not in, and I found my visitor waiting for me, alone, in the drawing-room. Aware of the state of the family, and of all families, indeed, during Pinkster, he had insisted on my aunt's quitting him, while he looked over some new books that had recently been received from home; among which was a new and very handsome edition of the Spectator, a work that enjoys a just celebrity throughout the colonies.

Mr. Mordaunt advanced to receive me with studied politeness, yet a warmth that could not well be counterfeited, the instant I approached. Nevertheless, his manner was easy and natural; and to me he appeared to be the highest-bred man I had ever seen.

"I am thankful that the debt of gratitude I owe you, my young friend," he said, at once, and without preface of any sort, unless that of manner be so received, "is due to the son of a gentleman I so much esteem as Evans Littlepage. A loyal subject, an honest man, and a well-connected and well-descended gentleman, like him, may well be the parent of a brave youth, who does not hesitate to face even lions, in defence of the weaker sex."

"I cannot affect to misunderstand you, sir," I answered; "and I sincerely congratulate you that matters are no worse; though you greatly overrate the danger. I doubt if even a lion would have the heart to hurt Miss Mordaunt, were she in his power."

I think this was a very pretty speech, for a youth of twenty; and I confess I look back upon it, even now, with complacency. If I occasionally betray weakness of this character, I beg the reader to recollect that I am acting in the part of an honest historian, and that it is my aim to conceal nothing that ought to be known.

Herman Mordaunt did not resume his seat, on account of the lateness of the hour, (half-past one); but he made me professions of friendship, and named Friday, the first moment when he could command the services of his domestics, when I should dine with him. The army had introduced later hours than was usual; and this invitation was given for three o'clock; it being said, at the time, as I well remember, that persons of fashion in London sat down to table even later than this. After remaining with me five minutes, Herman Mordaunt took his leave. Of course, I accompanied him to the door, where we parted with many bows.

At dinner, I told my uncle and aunt all that had occurred, and was glad to hear them both speak so favourably of my new acquaintances.

"Herman Mordaunt might be a much more considerable man than he is," observed my uncle, "were he disposed to enter into public life. He has talents, a good education, a very handsome estate, and is well-connected in the colony, certainly; some say at home, also."

"And Anneke is a sweet young thing," added my aunt; "and, since Corny was to assist any young lady, I am heartily glad it was Anneke. She is an excellent creature, and her mother was one of my most intimate friends, as she was of my sister Littlepage, too. You must go and inquire after her health, this evening, Corny. Such an attention is due, after what has passed all round."

Did I wish to comply with this advice? Out of all question; and yet I was too young, and too little at my ease, to undertake this ceremony, without many misgivings. Luckily, Dirck came in, in the evening; and my aunt repeating her opinion before my friend, he at once declared it was altogether proper, and that he thought Anneke would have a right to expect it. As he offered to be my companion, we were soon on our way to Crown Street, in which Mr. Mordaunt owned and inhabited a very excellent house. We were admitted by Mr. Mordaunt himself, not one of his blacks, having yet returned from the Pinkster field.

Dirck appeared to be on the best terms, not only with Herman Mordaunt, but with his charming daughter. I had observed that the latter always called him "cousin Dirck," and I hardly knew whether to interpret this as a sign of particular or of family regard. That Dirck was fonder of Anneke Mordaunt than of any other human being, I could easily see; and I confess that the discovery already began to cause uneasiness. I loved Dirck, and wished he loved any one else but the very being I feared he did.

Herman Mordaunt showed me the way, up the noble, wide, mahogany-garnished staircase of his dwelling, and ushered us into a very handsome, though not very large, but well-lighted drawing-room. There sat Anneke, his daughter, in the loveliness of her maiden charms, a little more dressed than usual, perhaps, for she had three or four young and lovely girls with her, and five or six young men; among whom were no less than three scarlet coats.

I shall not attempt to conceal my weakness. Only twenty, inexperienced and unaccustomed to town society, I felt awkward and unpleasantly the instant I entered the room; nor did the feeling subside during the first half-hour. Anneke came forward, one or two steps, to meet me; and I could see, she was almost as much confused, as I was myself. She blushed, as she thanked me for the service I had rendered, and expressed her satisfaction that her father had been fortunate enough to find me at home, and had had an opportunity of saying a little of what he felt, on the occasion. She then invited me to be seated, naming me to the company, and telling me who two or three of the young ladies were. From these last I received sundry approving smiles; which I took as so many thanks for serving their friend; while I could not help seeing that I was an object of examination to most of the men present. The three officers, in particular, looked at me the most intently, and the longest.

"I trust, your little accident, which could have been of no great moment, in itself, since you escaped so well, did not have the effect to prevent you from enjoying the rare fun of this Pinkster affair?" said one of the scarlet coats, as soon as the movement caused by my reception had subsided.

"You call it a 'little accident,' Mr. Bulstrode," returned Anneke, with a reproachful shake of her pretty head, "but, I can assure you, it is not a trifle, to a young lady, to find herself in the paws of a lion."

"Serious accident, then; since, I see, you are resolved to consider yourself a victim;" rejoined the other; "but, not serious enough, I trust, to deprive you of the fun?"

"Pinkster fields, and Pinkster frolics, are no novelties to us, sir, as they occur every season; and I am just old enough not to have missed one of them all, for the last twelve years."

"We heard you had been 'out," put in another red-coat, whom I had heard called Billings, "accompanied by a little army, of what Bulstrode called, the Light Infantry."

Here three or four of the other young ladies joined in the discourse, at once, protesting against Mr. Bulstrode's placing their younger sisters in the army, in so cavalier a manner; an accusation that Mr. Bulstrode endeavoured to parry, by declaring his hopes of having them all, not only in the army, but in his own regiment, one day or other. At this, there was a certain amount of mirth, and various protestations of an unwillingness to enlist; in which, I was glad to see, that neither Anneke, nor her most intimate friend, Mary Wallace, saw fit to join, I liked their reserve of manner, far better than the girlish trifling of their companions; and, I could see, that all the men respected them the more for it. There was a good deal of general and disjointed conversation that succeeded; which I shall not pretend to follow or relate, but confine myself to such observations as had a bearing on matters that were connected with myself.

As none of the young soldiers were addressed by their military titles, such things never occurring in the better circles, as I now discovered, and, least of all, in those connected with the army, I was not able, at the time, to ascertain the rank of the three red-coats; though I afterwards ascertained, that the youngest was an ensign, of the name of Harris; a mere boy, and the younger son of a member of Parliament. The next oldest, Billings, was a captain, and was said to be a natural son of a nobleman; while Bulstrode was actually the oldest son of a baronet, of three or four thousand a year, and had already bought his way up as high as a Majority, though only four-and-twenty. This last was a handsome fellow, too; nor had I been an hour in his company, before I saw, plainly enough, that he was a strong admirer of Anneke Mordaunt. The other two evidently admired themselves too much, to have any very lively feelings on the subject of other persons. As for Dirck, younger than myself, and diffident, as well as slow by nature, he kept himself altogether in the back-ground, conversing, most of the time, with Herman Mordaunt, on the subject of farming.

We had been together an hour, and I had acquired sufficient ease to change my seat, and to look at a picture or two, which adorned the walls, and which were said to be originals, from the Old World; for, to own the truth, the art of painting has not made much progress in the colonies. We have painters, it is true, and one or two are said to be men of rare merit, the ladies being very fond of sitting to them for their portraits; but these are exceptions. At a future day, when critics shall have immortalized the names of a Smybert, and a Watson, and a Blackburn, the people of these provinces will become aware of the talents they once possessed among them; and the grandchildren of those who neglected these men of genius, in their day—ay, their descendants to the latest generations—will revenge the wrongs of merit and talent, to the end of civilized time. It is a failing of colonies to be diffident of their own opinions; but I have heard gentlemen, who were educated at home, and who possessed cultivated and refined tastes, affirm that the painters of Europe, when visiting this hemisphere, have retained all their excellence; and have painted as freely and as well, under an American, as under a European sun. As for a sister art, the Thespian muse had actually made her appearance among us, five years before the time of my visit to town in 1757, or in 1752; a theatre having actually been built and opened in Nassau Street in 1753, with a company under the care of the celebrated Hallam, and his family. This theatre I had been dying to visit, while it stood, for as yet I had never witnessed a theatrical performance; but my mother's injunctions prevented me from entering it while at college. "When you are old enough, Corny," she used to say, "you shall have my permission to go as often as is proper; but you are now of an age, when Shakspeare and Rowe might unsettle your Latin and Greek." My task of obedience had not been very difficult, inasmuch as the building in Nassau Street, the second regular theatre ever erected in British America, was taken down, and a church erected in its place. 12 The comedians went to the islands, and had not reappeared on the continent down to the period of which I am now writing; nor did their return occur until the following year. That they were expected, however, and that a new house had been built for them, in another part of the town, I was aware, though month after month passed away, and the much-expected company did not appear. I had understood, however, that the large military force collecting in the colony, would be likely to bring them back soon; and the conversation soon took a turn, that proved how much interest the young, the gay, and the fair, felt in the result. I was still looking at a picture, when Mr. Bulstrode approached me, and entered into conversation. It will be remembered, that this gentleman was four years my senior; that he had been at one of the universities; was the heir to a baronetcy; knew the world; had risen to a Majority in the army, and was by nature, as well as training, agreeable, when he had a mind to be, and genteel. These circumstances, I could not but feel, gave him a vast advantage over me; and I heartily wished that we stood anywhere but in the presence of Anneke Mordaunt, as he thus saw fit to single me out for invidious comparison, by a sort of tête-à-tête, or aside. Still, I could not complain of his manner, which was both polite and respectful; though I could scarce divest myself of the idea, that he was covertly amusing himself, the whole time.

"You are a fortunate man, Mr. Littlepage," he commenced, "in having had it in your power to do so important a service to Miss Mordaunt. We all envy you your luck, while we admire your spirit, and I feel certain the men of our regiment will take some proper notice of it. Miss Anneke is in possession of half our hearts, and we should be still more heartless to overlook such a service."

I muttered some half-intelligible answer to this compliment, and my new acquaintance proceeded.

"I am almost surprised, Mr. Littlepage," he added, "that a man of your spirit does not come among us in times as stirring as these. They tell me both your father and grandfather served, and that you are quite at your ease. You will find a great many men of merit and fashion among us, and I make no doubt they would contribute to make your time pass agreeably enough. Large reinforcements are expected, and if you are inclined for a pair of colours, I think I know a battalion in which there are a vacancy or two, and which will certainly serve in the colonies. It would afford me great pleasure to help to further your views, should you be disposed to turn them towards the army."

Now all this was said with an air of great apparent frankness and sincerity, which I fancied was only the more visible from the circumstance that Anneke was so seated as unavoidably to hear every word of what was said. I observed that she even turned her eyes on me as I made my answer, though I did not dare so far to observe her in turn as to note their expression.

"I am very sensible, Mr. Bulstrode, of the liberality and kindness of your intentions," I answered steadily enough, for pride came to my assistance, "though I fear it will not be in my power to profit by it at once, if ever. My grandfather is still living, and he has much influence over me and my fortune, and I know it is his wish that I should remain at Satanstoe."

"Where?" demanded Bulstrode, with more quickness and curiosity than strictly comported with good-breeding perhaps.

"Satanstoe; I do not wonder you smile, for it has an odd sound, but it is the name my grandfather has given the family place in Westchester. Given, I have said, though translated would be better, as I understand the present appellation is pretty literally rendered into English from the Dutch."

"I like the name exceedingly, Mr. Littlepage, and I feel certain I should like your good, old, honest, Anglo-Saxon grandfather. But, pardon me, it is his wish you should remain at Satansfoot?"

"Satanstoe, sir; we do not aspire to the whole foot. It is my grandfather's wish that I remain at home until of age, which will not be now for some months."

"By way of keeping you out of Satan's footsteps, I suppose. Well, these old gentlemen are often right. Should you alter your views, however, my dear Littlepage, do not forget me, but remember you can count on one who has some little influence, and who will ever be ready to exert it in the behalf of one who has proved so serviceable to Miss Mordaunt. Sir Harry is a martyr to the gout, and talks of letting me stand in his place at the dissolution. In that case my wishes will naturally carry more weight. I like that name of Satanstoe amazingly!"

"I am infinitely obliged to you, Mr. Bulstrode, though I will confess I have never looked forward to rising in the world by taxing my friends. One may own that he has had some hopes founded on merit and honesty—"

"Poh! poh!—my dear Littlepage, honesty is a very pretty thing to talk about, but I suppose you remember what Juvenal says on that interesting subject—"probitas laudatur et alget." I dare say you are fresh enough from college to remember that comprehensive sentiment."

"I have never read Juvenal, Mr. Bulstrode, and never wish to, if such be the tendency of what he teaches—"

"Juvenal was a satirist, you know," interrupted Bulstrode a little hastily, for by this time he too had ascertained that Anneke was listening, and he betrayed some eagerness to get rid of so flagitious a sentiment; "and satirists speak of things as they are, rather than as they ought to be. I dare say Rome deserved all she got, for the moralists give a very sad account of her condition. Of all the large capitals of which we have any account, London is the only town of even tolerable manners."

What young Bulstrode would have ventured to say next, it is out of my power to guess; for a certain Miss Warren, who was of the company, and who particularly affected the youth, luckily called out at this critical instant—

"Your attention one moment, if you please, Mr. Bulstrode; is it true that the gentlemen of the army have been getting the new theatre in preparation, and that they intend to favour us with some representations? A secret something like this has just leaked out, from Mr. Harris, who even goes so far as to add that you can tell us all about it."

"Mr. Harris must be put under an arrest for this, though I hear the colonel let the cat out of the bag, at the Lt. Governor's table, as early as last week."

"I can assure you, Mr. Bulstrode," Anneke observed calmly, "that I have heard rumours to this effect for quite a fortnight. You must not blame Mr. Harris solely, for your whole regiment has been hinting to the same purpose far and near."

"Then the delinquent will escape, this time. I confess the charge; we have hired the new theatre, and do intend to solicit the honour of the ladies coming to hear me murder Cato, and Scrub; a pretty climax of characters, you will admit, Miss Mordaunt?"

"I know nothing of Scrub, though I have read Mr. Addison's play, and think you have no need of being ashamed of the character of Cato. When is the theatre to open?"

"We follow the sable gentry. As soon as St. Pinkster has received his proper share of attention, we shall introduce Dom-Cato and Mr. Scrub to your acquaintance."

All the young ladies, but Anneke and her friend Mary Wallace, laughed, two or three repeating the words 'St. Pinkster,' as if they contained something much cleverer than it was usual to hear. A general burst of exclamations, expressions of pleasure, and of questions and answers followed, in which two or three voices were heard at the same moment, during which time Anneke turned to me, who was standing near her, at the spot occupied by Bulstrode a minute before, and seemed anxious to say something.

"Do you seriously think of the army, Mr. Littlepage?" she asked, changing colour at the freedom of her own question.

"In a war like this, no one can say when he may be called on to go out," I answered. "But, only as a defender of the soil, if at all."

I thought Anneke Mordaunt seemed pleased with this answer. After a short pause, she resumed the dialogue.

"Of course you understand Latin, Mr. Littlepage, although you have not been at the universities?"

"As it is taught in our own colleges, Miss Mordaunt."

"And that is sufficient to tell me what Mr. Bulstrode's quotation means—if it be proper for me to hear."

"He would hardly presume to use even a Latin saying in your presence, that is unfit for your ear. The maxim which Mr. Bulstrode attributes to Juvenal, simply means 'that honesty is praised and starves.'"

I thought that something like displeasure settled on the fair, polished, brow of Miss Mordaunt, who, I could soon see, possessed much character and high principles for one of her tender years. She said nothing, however, though she exchanged a very meaning glance with her friend Mary Wallace. Her lips were moved, and I fancied I could trace the formation of the sounds "honesty is praised and starves!"

"And you are to be Cato I hear, Mr. Bulstrode," cried one of the young ladies, who thought more of a scarlet coat, I fancy, than was for her own good. "How very charming! Will you play the character in regimentals or in mohair—in a modern or in an ancient dress?"

"In my robe de chambre, a little altered for the occasion, Unless St. Pinkster and his sports should suggest some more appropriate costume," answered the young man lightly.

"Are you quite aware what feast Pinkster is?" asked Anneke, a little gravely.

Bulstrode actually changed colour, for it had never crossed his mind to inquire into the character of the holiday; and, to own the truth, the manner in which it is kept by the negroes of New York, never would enlighten him much on the subject.

"That is information for which I perceive I am now about to be indebted to Miss Mordaunt."

"Then you shall not be disappointed, Mr. Bulstrode; Pinkster is neither more nor less than the Festival of Whit-sunday, or the Feast of Pentecost. I suppose we shall now hear no more of your saint."

Bulstrode took this little punishment, which was very sweetly but quite steadily uttered, with perfect good-humour, and with a manner so rebuked as to prove that Anneke possessed great control over him. He bowed in submission, and she smiled so kindly, that I wished the occasion for the little pantomime had not occurred.

"Our ancestors, Miss Mordaunt, never heard of any Pinkster, you will remember, and that must explain my ignorance," he said meekly.

"But some of mine have long understood it, and observed the festival," answered Anneke.

"Ay, on the side of Holland—but when I presume to speak of our ancestors, I mean those which I can claim the honour of boasting as belonging to me in common with yourself."

"Are you and Mr. Bulstrode, then, related?" I asked, as it might be involuntarily and almost too abruptly.

Anneke replied, however, in a way to show that she thought the question natural for the circumstances, and not in the least out of place.

"My grandfather's mother, and Mr. Bulstrode's grandfather, were brother and sister," was the quiet answer.

"This makes us a sort of cousins, according to those Dutch notions which he so much despises, though I fancy it would not count for much at home."

Bulstrode protested to the contrary, stating that he knew his father valued his relationship to Mr. Mordaunt, by the earnest manner in which he had commanded him to cultivate the acquaintance of the family the instant he reached New York. I saw by this, the footing on which the formidable Major was placed in the family, everybody seeming to be related to Anneke Mordaunt but myself. I took an occasion that very evening, to question the dear girl on the subject of her Dutch connections, giving her a clue to mine but with all our industry, and some assistance from Herman Mordaunt, who took an interest in such a subject, as it might be ex officio, we could make out no affinity worth mentioning.

10 (return)

[ Now, Liberty Street.]

11 (return)

[ The person meant here, was William Nicoll, Esquire, Patentee of Islip, a large estate on Long Island, that is still in the family, under a Patent granted in 1683. This gentleman was a son of Mr. Secretary Nicoll, who is supposed to have been a relative of Col. Nicoll, the first English Governor. Mr. Speaker Nicoll, as the son was called, in consequence of having filled that office for nearly a generation, was the direct ancestor of the Nicolls of Islip and Shelter Island, as well as of a branch long settled at Stratford, Connecticut. The house alluded to by Mr. Littlepage, as a relic of antiquity in his day,—American antiquity, be it remembered,—was standing a few years since, if it be not still standing, at the point of junction between the Old Boston Road and the New Road, and nearly opposite to tha termination of the long avenue that led to Rosehill, originally a seat of the Watts'. The house stood a short distance above the present Union Square, and not far from that of the present Gramercy. It was, or is, a brick-house of one story, with a small court-yard in front; the House of Refuge being at a little distance on its right. If still standing, it must now be one of the oldest buildings of any sort, in a town of 400,000 souls! As Mr. Speaker Nicoll resigned the chair in 1718, this house must be at least a hundred and thirty or forty years old; and it may be questioned if a dozen as old, public of private, can be found on the whole island.

As the regular family residences of the Nicolls were in Suffolk, or on their estates, it is probable that the abode mentioned was, in a measure, owing to an intermarriage with the Watts', as much as to the necessity of the Speaker's passing so much time at the seat of government.—EDITOR.]

12 (return)

[ The church is now (1845) being converted into a Post-Office.]

CHAPTER VII.

  "Sir Valentino, I care not for her, I."

  "I hold him but a fool, that will endanger

  His body for a girl that loves him not."

  "I claim her not, and therefore she is thine."

  Two Gentlemen of Verona.

I saw Anne Mordaunt several times, either in the street or in her own house, between that evening and the day I was to dine with her father. The morning of the last named day Mr. Bulstrode favoured me with a call, and announced that he was to be of the party in Crown Street, and that the whole company was to repair to the theatre, to see his own Cato and Scrub, in the evening.

"By giving yourself the trouble to call at the Crown and Bible, kept hard-by here, in Hanover Square or Queen Street, by honest Hugh Gaine, you will find a package of tickets for yourself, Mr. and Mrs. Legge, and your relative Mr. Dirck Follock, as I believe the gentleman is called. These Dutch have extraordinary patronymics, you must admit, Littlepage."

"It may appear so to an Englishman, though our names are quite as odd to strangers. But Dirck Van Valkenburgh is not a kinsman of mine, though he is related to the Mordaunts, your relatives."

"Well, it's all the same! I knew he was related to somebody that I know, and I fancied it was to yourself. I am sure I never see him but I wish he was in our grenadier company."

"Dirck would do honour to any corps, but you know how it is with the Dutch families, Mr. Bulstrode. They still retain much of their attachment to Holland, and do not as often take service in the army, or navy, as we of English descent."

"I should have thought a century might have cooled them off, a little, from their veneration of the meadows of Holland. It is the opinion at home, that New York is a particularly well affected colony."

"So it is, as I hear from all sides. As respects the Dutch, among ourselves, I have heard my grandfather say, that the reign of King William had a powerful influence in reconciling them to the new government, but, since his day, that they are less loyal than formerly. The Van Valkenburghs, notwithstanding, pass for as good subjects as any that the house of Hanover possesses. On no account would I injure them in your opinion."

"Good or bad, we shall hope to see your friend, who is a connection in some way, as you believe, of the Mordaunts. You will get but a faint idea of what one of the royal theatres is, Littlepage, by this representation of ours, though it may serve to kill time. But, I must go to rehearsal; we shall meet at three."

Here my gay and gallant major made his bow, and took his leave. I proceeded on to the sign of the Crown and the Bible, where I found a large collection of people, coming in quest of tickets. As the élite of the town would not of themselves form an audience sufficiently large to meet the towering ambition of the players, more than half the tickets were sold, the money being appropriated to the sick families of soldiers—those who were not entitled to receive aid from government. It was deemed a high compliment to receive tickets gratis, though all who did, made it a point to leave a donation to the fund, with Mr. Gaine. Receiving my package, I quitted the shop, and it being the hour for the morning promenade, I went up Wall Street, to the Mall, as Trinity Church Walk was even then called. Here, I expected to meet Dirck, and hoped to see Anneke, for the place was much frequented by the young and gay, both in the mornings and in the evenings. The bands of different regiments were stationed in the churchyard, and the company was often treated to much fine martial music. Some few of the more scrupulous objected to this desecration of the churchyard, but the army had everything pretty much in its own way. As they were supposed to do nothing but what was approved of at home, the dissenters were little heeded, nor do I think the army would have greatly cared, had they been more numerous.

I dare say there were fifty young ladies promenading the church-walk when I reached it, and nearly as many young men in attendance on them; no small portion of the last being scarlet-coats, though the mohairs had their representatives there too. A few blue-jackets were among us also, there being two or three king's cruisers in port. As no one presumed to promenade the Mall, who was not of a certain stamp of respectability, the company was all gaily dressed; and I will confess that I was much struck with the air of the place, the first time I showed myself among the gay idlers. The impression made on me that morning was so vivid, that I will endeavour to describe the scene, as it now presents itself to my mind.

In the first place, there was the noble street, quite eighty feet in width in its narrowest part, and gradually expanding as you looked towards the bay, until it opened into an area of more than twice that width, at the place called the Bowling-Green. 13 Then came the Fort, crowning a sharp eminence, and overlooking everything in that quarter of the town. In the rear of the Fort, or in its front, taking a water view, lay the batteries that had been built on the rocks which form the south-western termination of the island. Over these rocks, which were black and picturesque, and over the batteries they supported, was obtained a view of the noble bay, dotted here and there with some speck of a sail, or possibly with some vessel anchored on its placid bosom. Of the two rows of elegant houses, most of them of brick, and with very few exceptions principally of two stories in height, it is scarcely necessary to speak, as there are few who have not heard of, and formed some notion of Broadway; a street that all agree is one day to be the pride of the western world.

In the other direction, I will admit that the view was not so remarkable, the houses being principally of wood, and of a somewhat ignoble appearance. Nevertheless the army was said to frequent those habitations quite as much as they did any other in the place. After reaching the Common, or present Park, where the great Boston road led off into the country, the view was just the reverse of that which was seen in the opposite quarter. Here, all was inland, and rural. It is true, the new Bridewell had been erected in that quarter, and there was also a new gaol, both facing the common; and the king's troops had barracks in their rear; but high, abrupt, conical hills, with low marshy land, orchards and meadows, gave to all that portion of the island a peculiarly novel and somewhat picturesque character. Many of the hills in that quarter, and indeed all over the widest part of the island, are now surmounted by country-houses, as some were then, including Petersfield, the ancient abode of the Stuyvesants, or that farm which, by being called after the old Dutch governor's retreat, has given the name of Bowery, or Bouerie, to the road that led to it; as well as the Bowery-house, as it was called, the country abode of the then Lieutenant Governor, James de Lancey, Mount Bayard, a place belonging to that respectable family; Mount Pitt, another that was the property of Mrs. Jones, the wife of Mr. Justice Jones, a daughter of James de Lancey, and various other mounts, houses, hills, and places, that are familiar to the gentry and people of New York.

But, the reader can imagine for himself the effect produced by such a street as Broadway, reaching very nearly half a mile in length, terminating at one end, in an elevated, commanding Fort, with its back-ground of batteries, rocks and bay, and, at the other, with the common, on which troops were now constantly parading, the Bridewell an I gaol, and the novel scene I have just mentioned. Nor is Trinity itself to be forgotten. This edifice, one of the noblest, if not the most noble of its kind, in all the colonies, with its gothic architecture, statues in carved stone, and flanking walls, was a close accessory of the view, giving to the whole grandeur, and a moral. 14

As has been said, I found the Mall crowded with young persons of fashion and respectability. This Mall was near a hundred yards in length; and it follows that there must have been a goodly show of youth and beauty. The fine weather had commenced; spring had fairly opened; Pinkster Blossoms (the wild honeysuckle) had been seen in abundance throughout the week; and everything and person appeared gay and happy.

I could discover that my person in this crowd attracted attention as a stranger. I say as a stranger; for I am unwilling to betray so much vanity as to ascribe the manner in which many eyes followed me, to any vain notion that I was known or admired. Still, I will not so far disparage the gifts of a bountiful Providence, as to leave the impression that my face, person, or air was particularly disagreeable. This would not be the fact; and I have now reached a time of life when something like the truth may be told, without the imputation of conceit. My mother often boasted to her intimates, "that Corny was one of the best-made, handsomest, most active, and genteelest youths in the colony." This I know, for such things will leak out; but mothers are known to have a remarkable weakness on the subject of their children. As I was the sole surviving offspring of my dear mother, who was one of the best-hearted women that ever breathed, it is highly probable that the notions she entertained of her son partook largely of the love she bore me. It is true, my aunt Legge, on more than one occasion, has been heard to express a very similar opinion; though nothing can be more natural than that sisters should think alike, on a family matter of this particular nature, more especially as my aunt Legge never had a child of her own to love and praise.

Let all this be as it may, well stared at was I, as I mingled among the idlers on Trinity Church Walk, on the occasion named. As for myself, my own eyes were bent anxiously on the face of every pretty, delicate young creature that passed, in the hope of seeing Anneke. I both wished and dreaded to meet her; for, to own the truth, my mind was dwelling on her beauty, her conversation, her sentiments, her grace, her gentleness, and withal her spirit, a good deal more than half the time. I had some qualms on the subject of Dirck, I will confess; but Dirck was so young, that his feelings could not be much interested, after all; and then Anneke was a second cousin, and that was clearly too near to marry. My grandfather had always put his foot down firmly against any connection between relations that were nearer than third cousins; and I now saw how proper were his reasons. If they were even farther removed, so much the better, he said; and so much the better it was.

If the reader should ask me why I dreaded to meet Anne Mordaunt, under such circumstances, I might be at a loss to give him a very intelligible answer. I feared even to see the sweet face I sought; and oh! how soft, serene, and angel-like it was, at that budding age of seventeen!—but, though I almost feared to see it, when at last I saw her I had so anxiously sought approaching me, arm and arm with Mary Walface, having Bulstrode next herself, and Harris next her friend, my eyes were instantly averted, as if they had unexpectedly lighted on something disagreeable. I should have passed without even the compliment of a bow, had not my friends been more at their ease, and more accustomed to the free ways of town life than I happened to be myself.

"How's this, Cornelius, Coeur de Lion!" exclaimed Bulstrode, stopping, thus causing the whole party to stop with him, or to appear to wish to avoid me; "will you not recognise us, though it is not an hour since you and I parted? I hope you found the tickets; and when you have answered 'yes,' I hope you will turn and do me the honour to bow to these ladies."

I apologized, I am afraid I blushed; for I detected Anneke looking at me, as I thought, with some little concern, as if she pitied my awkward country embarrassment. As for Bulstrode, I did not understand him at that time; it exceeding my observation to be certain whether he considered me of sufficient importance or not, to feel any concern on my account, in his very obvious suit with Anneke. Nevertheless, as he treated me with cordiality and respect, while he dealt with me so frankly, there was not room to take offence. Of course, I turned and walked back with the party, after had properly saluted the ladies and Mr. Harris.

"Coeur de Lion is a better name for a soldier than for a civilian;" said Anneke, as we moved forward; "and, however much Mr. Littlepage may deserve the title, I am not certain, Mr. Bulstrode, he would not prefer leaving it among you gentlemen who serve the king."

"I am glad of this occasion, Mr. Littlepage, to enlist you on my side, in a warfare I am compelled to wage with Miss Anne Mordaunt," said the Major gaily. "It is on the subject of the great merit of us poor fellows who have crossed the wide Atlantic in order to protect the colonies, New York among the number, and their people, Miss Mordaunt and Miss Wallace inclusively, from the grasp of their wicked enemies, the French. The former young lady has a way of reasoning on the matter to which I cannot assent, and I am willing to choose you as arbitrator between us."

"Before Mr. Littlepage accept the office, it is proper he should know its duties and responsibilities," said Anneke, smiling. "In the first place, he will find Mr. Bulstrode with loud professions of attachment to the colonies, much disposed to think them provinces that owe their very existence to England; while I maintain it is English men, and that it is not England, that have done so much in America. As for New York, Mr. Littlepage, and especially as for you and me, we can also say a word in favour of Holland. I am very proud of my Dutch connections and Dutch descent."

I was much gratified with the "as for you and me;" though I believe I cared less for Holland than she did herself. I made an answer much in the vein of the moment; but the conversation soon changed to the subject of the military theatre that was about to open.

"I shall dread you as a critic, cousin Annie," so Bulstrode often termed Anneke, as I soon discovered; "I find you are not too well disposed to us of the cockade, and I think you have a particular spite to our regiment. I know that Billings and Harris, too, hold you in the greatest possible dread."

"They then feel apprehensive of a very ignorant critic; for I never was present at a theatrical entertainment in my life," Anneke answered with perfect simplicity. "So far as I can learn, there never has been but one season of any regular company, in this colony; and that was when I was a very little and a very young girl—as I am now neither very large, nor very old as a young woman."

"You see, Littlepage, with how much address my cousin avoids adding, and 'very uninteresting, and very ugly, and very disagreeable, and very much unsought,' and fifty other things she might add with such perfect truth and modesty! But is it true, that the theatre was open only one season, here?"

"So my father tells me, though I know very little of the facts themselves. To-night will be my first appearance in front of any stage, Mr. Bulstrode, as I understand it will be your first appearance on it."

"In one sense the last will be true, though not altogether in another. As a school-boy, I have often played, school-boy fashion; but this is quite a new thing with us, to be amateur players."

"It may seem ungrateful, when you are making so many efforts, principally to amuse us young ladies, I feel convinced, to inquire if it be quite as wise as it is novel. I must ask this, as a cousin, you know, Henry Bulstrode, to escape entirely from the imputation of impertinence."

"Really, Anneke Mordaunt, I am not absolutely certain that it is. Our manners are beginning to change in this respect, however, and I can assure you that various noblemen have permitted sports of this sort at their seats. The custom is French, as you probably know, and whatever is French has much vogue with us during times of peace. Sir Harry does not altogether approve of it, and as for my lady mother, she has actually dropped more than one discouraging hint on the subject in her letters."

"The certain proof that you are a most dutiful son. Perhaps when Sir Harry and Lady Bulstrode learn your great success, however, they will overlook the field on which your laurels have been won. But our hour has come, Mary; we have barely time to thank these gentlemen for their politeness, and to return in season to dress. I am to enact a part myself, at dinner, as I hope you will all remember."

Saying this, Anneke made her curtsies in a way to preclude any offer of seeing her home, and went her way with her silent but sensible-looking and pretty friend. Bulstrode took my arm with an air of easy superiority, and led the way towards his own lodgings, which happened to be in Duke Street. Harris joined another party, making it a point to be always late at dinner.

"That is not only one of the handsomest, but she is one of the most charming girls in the colonies, Littlepage!" my companion exclaimed, as soon as we had departed, speaking at the same time with an earnestness and feeling I was far from expecting. "Were she in England, she would make one of the first women in it, by the aid of a little fashion and training; and very little would do too, for there is a charm in her naiveté that is worth the art of fifty women of fashion."

"Fashion is a thing that any one may want who does not happen to be in vogue," I answered, notwithstanding the great degree of surprise I felt. "As for training, I can see nothing but perfection in Miss Mordaunt as she is, and should deprecate the lessons that produced any change."

I believe it was now Bulstrode's turn to feel surprise, for I was conscious of his casting a keen look into my face, though I did not like to return it. My companion was silent for a minute; then, without again adverting to Anneke, he began to converse very sensibly on the subject of theatres and plays. I was both amused and instructed, for Mr. Bulstrode was an educated and a clever man; and a strange feeling came over the spirit of my dream, even then, as I listened to his conversation. This man, I thought, admires Anne Mordaunt, and he will probably carry her with him to England, and obtain for her that fashion and training of which he has just spoken. With his advantages of birth, air, fortune, education, and military rank, he can scarcely fail in his suit, should he seriously attempt one; and it will be no more than prudent to command my own feelings, lest I become the hopeless victim of a serious passion. Young as I was, all this I saw, and thus I reasoned; and when I parted from my companion I fancied myself a much wise man than when we had met. We separated in Duke Street, with a promise on my part to call at the Major's lodgings half an hour later, after dressing, and walk with him to Herman Mordaunt's door.

"It is fortunate that it is the fashion of New York to walk to a dinner party," said Bulstrode, as he again took my arm on our way to Crown Street; "for these narrow streets must be excessively inconvenient for chariots, though I occasionally see one of them. As for sedan chairs, I detest them as things unfit for a man to ride in."

"Many of our leading families keep carnages, and they seem to get along well enough," I answered. "Nevertheless, it is quite in fashion even for ladies to walk. I understand that many, perhaps most of your auditors, will walk to the play-house door this evening."

"They tell me as much," said Bulstrode, curling his lip, a little, in a way I did not exactly like. "Notwithstanding, there will be many charming creatures among them, and they shall be welcome. Well, Littlepage, I do not despair of having you among us; for, to be candid, without wishing to boast, I think you will find the ——th as liberal a set of young men as there is in the service. There is a wish to have the mohairs among us instead of shutting ourselves up altogether in scarlet. Then your father and grandfather have both served, and that will be a famous introduction."

I protested my unfitness for such an amusement, never having seen such an exhibition in my life; but to this my companion would not listen; and we picked our way, as well as we could, through William Street, up Wall, and then by Nassau into Crown; Herman Mordaunt owning a new house, that stood not far from Broadway, in the latter street. This was rather in a remote part of the town; but the situation had the advantage of good air; and, as a place extends, it is necessary some persons should live on its skirts.

"I wish my good cousin did not live quite so much in the suburbs," said Bulstrode, as he knocked in a very patrician manner; "it is not altogether convenient to go quite so much out of one's ordinary haunts, in order to pay visits. I wonder Mr. Mordaunt came so far out of the world, to build."

"Yet the distances of London must be much greater though there you have coaches."

"True; but not a word more on this subject: I would not have Anneke fancy I ever find it far to visit her."

We were the last but one; the tardy Mr. Harris making it a point always to be the last. We found Anneke Mordaunt supported by two or three ladies of her connection, and a party of quite a dozen assembled. As most of those present saw each other every day, and frequently two or three times a day, the salutations and compliments were soon over, and Herman Mordaunt began to look about him, to see who was wanting.

"I believe everybody is here but Mr. Harris," the father observed to his daughter, interrupting some of Mr. Bulstrode's conversation, to let this fact be known. "Shall we wait for him, my dear; he is usually so uncertain and late?"

"Yet a very important man," put in Bulstrode, "as being entitled to lead the lady of the house to the table, in virtue of his birthright. So much for being the fourth son of an Irish baron! Do you know Harris's father has just been ennobled?"

This was news to the company; and it evidently much increased the doubts of the propriety of sitting down without the young man in question.

"Failing of this son of a new Irish baron, I suppose you fancy I shall be obliged to give my hand to the eldest son of an English baronet," said Anneke, smiling, so as to take off the edge of a little irony that I fancy just glimmered in her manner.

"I wish to Heaven you would, Anne Mordaunt," whispered Bulstrode, loud enough for me to hear him, "so that the heart were its companion!"

I thought this both bold and decided; and I looked anxiously at Anneke, to note the effect; but she evidently received it as trifling, certainly betraying no emotion at a speech I thought so pointed. I wished she had manifested a little resentment. Then she was so very young to be thus importuned!

"Dinner had better be served, sir," she calmly observed to her father. "Mr. Harris is apt to think himself ill-treated if he do not find everybody at table. It would be a sign his watch was wrong, and that he had come half an hour too soon."

Herman Mordaunt nodded assent, and left his daughter's side to give the necessary order.

"I fancy Harris will regret this," said Bulstrode. "I wish I dared repeat what he had the temerity to say to me on this very subject, no later than yesterday."

"Of the propriety of so doing, Mr. Bulstrode must judge for himself; though repetitions of this nature are usually best avoided."

"No, the fellow deserves it; so I will just tell you and Mr. Littlepage in confidence. You must know, as his senior in years, and his senior officer in the bargain, I was hinting to Harris the inexpediency of always being so late at dinner; and here is my gentleman's answer:—'You know,' said he, 'that excepting my lord Loudon, the Commander-in-chief, the Governor, and a few public officers, I shall now take precedence of almost every man here; and I find, if I go early to dinner, I shall have to hand in all the elderly ladies, and to take my place at their sides; whereas, if I go a little late, I can steal in alongside of their daughters.' Now, on the present occasion, he will be altogether a loser, the lady of the house not yet being quite fifty."

"I had not given Mr. Harris credit for so much ingenuity," said Anneke, quietly. "But here he is to claim his rights."

"Ay, the fellow has remembered your age, and quite likely your attractions!"

Dinner was announced at that instant, and all eyes were turned on Harris, in expectation that he would advance to lead Anneke down stairs. The young man, even more youthful than myself, had a good deal of mauvaise honte; for, though the son of an Irish peer, of two months' creation, the family was not strictly Irish, and he had very little ambition to figure in this manner. From what I saw of him subsequently, I do believe that nothing but a sense of duty to his order made him respect these privileges of rank at all, and that he would really just as soon go to a dinner-table last, as first. In the present case, however, he was soon relieved by Herman Mordaunt; who had been educated at home, and understood the usages of the world very well.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I must ask you to waive the privileges of rank in favour of Mr. Cornelius Littlepage, to-day. This good company has met to do honour especially to his courage and devotion to his fellow-creatures, and he will do me the favour to hand Miss Mordaunt down stairs."

Herman Mordaunt then pointed out to the Hon. Mr. Harris, the next lady of importance, and to Mr. Bulstrode a third; after which all the rest took care of themselves. As for myself, I felt my face in a glow, at this unexpected order, and scarcely dared to look at Anneke as we led the way to the dining-room door. So much abashed was I, that I scarce touched the tips of her slender little fingers, and a tremour was in the limb that performed this office, the whole time it was thus employed. Of course, my seat was next to that of the young and lovely mistress of the house, at this banquet.

What shall I say of the dinner? It was the very first entertainment of the sort at which I had ever been present; though I had acquired some of the notions of town habits, on such occasions, at my aunt Legge's table. To my surprise, there was soup; a dish that I never saw at Satanstoe, except in the most familiar way; while here it was taken by every one, seemingly as a matter of course. Everything was elegant, and admirably cooked. Abundance, however, was the great feature of the feast; as I have heard it said, is apt to be the case with most New York entertainments. Nevertheless, I have always understood that, in the way of eating and drinking, the American colonies have little reason to be ashamed.

"Could I have foreseen this dinner, Miss Mordaunt," I said, when everybody was employed, and I thought there was an opening to say something to my beautiful neighbour; "it would have made my father very happy to have sent a sheepshead to town, for the occasion."

Anneke thanked me, and then we began to converse about the game. Westchester was, and is still, famous for partridges, snipe, quails, ducks, and meadow-larks; and I understood expatiating on such a subject, as well as the best of them. All the Littlepages were shots; and I have known my father bag ten brace of woodcock, among the wet thickets of Satanstoe, of a morning; and this with merely a second class dog, and only one. Both Bulstrode and Harris listened to what I said on this subject with great attention, and it would soon have been the engrossing discourse, had not Anneke pleasantly said—

"All very well, gentlemen; but you will remember that neither Miss Wallace, nor I, shoot."

"Except with the arrows of Cupid," answered Bulstrode, gaily; "with these you do so much execution between you," emphasizing the words, so as to make me look foolish, for I sat between them, "that you ought to be condemned to hear nothing but fowling conversation for the next year."

This produced a laugh, a little at my expense, I believe; though I could see that Anneke blushed, while Mary Wallace smiled indifferently; but as the healths now began, there was a truce to trifling. And a serious thing it is, to drink to everybody by name, at a large table; serious I mean to a new beginner. Yet, Herman Mordaunt went through it with a grace and dignity, that I think would have been remarked at a royal banquet. The ladies acquitted themselves admirably, omitting no one; and even Harris felt the necessity of being particular with this indispensable part of good-breeding. So well done was this part of the ceremony, that I declare, I believe everybody had drunk to everybody, within five minutes after Herman Mordaunt commenced; and it was very apparent that there was more ease and true gaiety after all had got through, than there had previously been.

But the happy period of every dinner-party, is after the cloth is removed. With the dark polished mahogany for a back-ground, the sparkling decanters making their rounds, the fruit and cake baskets, the very scene seems to inspire one with a wish for gaiety. Herman Mordaunt called for toasts, as soon as the cloth disappeared, with a view I believe of putting everybody at ease, and to render the conversation more general. He was desired to set the example, and immediately gave "Miss Markham," who, as I was told, was a single lady of forty, with whom he had carried on a little flirtation. Anneke's turn came next, and she chose to give a sentiment, notwithstanding all Bulstrode's remonstrances, who insisted on a gentleman. He did not succeed, however; Anneke very steadily gave "The Thespian corps of the——h; may it prove as successful in the arts of peace, as in its military character it has often proved itself to be in the art of war." Much applause followed this toast, and Harris was persuaded by Bulstrode to stand up, and say a few words, for the credit of the regiment. Such a speech!—It reminded me of the horse that was advertised as a show, in London, about this time, and which was said 'to have its tail where its head ought to be.' But, Bulstrode clapped his hands, and cried 'hear,' at every other word, protesting that the regiment was honoured as much in the thanks, as in the sentiment. Harris did not seem displeased with his own effort, and, presuming on his rank, he drank, without being called on, "to the fair of New York; eminent alike for beauty and wit, may they only become as merciful as they are victorious."

"Bravo!" again cried Bulstrode,—"Harris is fairly inspired, and is growing better and better. Had he said imminent, instead of eminent, it would be more accurate, as their frowns are as threatening, as their smiles are bewitching."

"Is that to pass for your sentiment, Mr. Bulstrode, and are we to drink it?" demanded Herman Mordaunt.

"By no means, sir; I have the honour to give Lady Dolly Merton."

Who Lady Dolly was, nobody knew, I believe, though we of the colonies always drank a titled person, who was known to be at home, with a great deal of respectful attention, not to say veneration. Other toasts followed, and then the ladies were asked to sing. Anneke complied, with very little urging, as became her position, and never did I hear sweeter strains than those she poured forth! The air was simple, but melody itself, and the sentiment had just enough of the engrossing feeling of woman in it, to render it interesting, without in the slightest degree impairing its fitness for the virgin lips from which it issued. Bulstrode, I could see, was almost entranced; and I heard him murmur "an angel, by Heavens!" He sang, himself, a love song, full of delicacy and feeling, and in a way to show that he had paid much attention to the art of music. Harris sang, too, as did Mary Wallace; the former, much as he spoke; the last plaintively, and decidedly well. Even Herman Mordaunt gave us a strain, and my turn followed. Singing was somewhat of a forte with me, and I have reason to think I made out quite as well as the best of them. I know that Anneke seemed pleased, and I saw tears in her eyes, as I concluded a song that was intended to produce just such an effect.

At length the youthful mistress of the house arose, reminding her father that he had at table the principal performer of the evening, by way of a caution, when three or four of us handed the ladies to the drawing-room door. Instead of returning to the table, I entered the room, and Bulstrode did the same, under the plea of its being necessary for him to drink no more, on account of the work before him.

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[ Mr. Cornelius Littlepage betrays not a little of provincial admiration, as the reader will see. I have not thought it necessary to prune these passages, their causes being too familiar to leave any danger of their insertion's being misunderstood. Admiration of Broadway, certainly not more than a third-class street, as streets go in the old world, is so very common among us as to need no apology.—EDITOR.]

14 (return)

[ The provincial admiration of Mr. Cornelius Littlepage was not quite as much in fault, as respects the church, as the superciliousness of our more modern tastes and opinions may lead us to suspect. The church that was burned in 1776, was a larger edifice than that just pulled down, and, in many respects, was its superior.—EDITOR.]

CHAPTER VIII.

  "Odd's bodikins, man, much better: use

  Every man after his desert, and who shall 'scape

  Whipping? use them after your own honour

  And dignity: the less they deserve, the more

  Merit is in your bounty."

  Hamlet.

"Harris will be hors de combat" Bulstrode soon observed, "unless I can manage to get him from the table.—You know he is to play Marcia this evening; and, though a little wine will give him fire and spirit for the part, too much will impair its feminine beauties. Addison never intended that 'the virtuous Marcia,' in towering above her sex, was to be picked out of a kennel, or from under a table. Harris is a true Irish peer, when claret is concerned."

All the ladies held up their hands, and protested against Mr. Harris' being permitted to act a travestie on their sex. As yet, no one had known how the characters were to be cast, beyond the fact that Bulstrode himself was to play Cato, for great care had been taken to keep the bills of the night from being seen, in order that the audience might have the satisfaction of finding out, who was who, for themselves. At the close of each piece a bill was to be sent round, among the favoured few, telling the truth. As Anneke declared that her father never locked in his guests, and had faithfully promised to bring up everybody for coffee, in the course of half an hour, it was determined to let things take their own way.

Sure enough, at the end of the time mentioned, Herman Mordaunt appeared, with all the men, from the table. Harris was not tipsy, as I found was very apt to be the case with him after dinner, but neither was he sober. According to Bulstrode's notion, he may have had just fire enough to play the 'virtuous Marcia.' In a few minutes he hurried the ensign off, declaring that, like Hamlet's ghost, their hour had come. At seven, the whole party left the house in a body to walk to the theatre. Herman Mordaunt did not keep a proper town equipage, and, if he had, it would not have contained a fourth of our company. In this, however, we were not singular, as nine in ten of the audience that night, I mean nine in ten of the gentle sex, went to the theatre on foot.

Instead of going directly down Crown Street, into Maiden Lane, which would have been the nearest way to the theatre, we went out into Broadway, and round by Wall Street, the walking being better, and the gutters farther from the ladies; the centre of the street being at no great distance from the houses, in the narrower passages of the town. We found a great many well-dressed people moving in the same direction with ourselves. Herman Mordaunt remarked that he had never before seen so many hoops, cardinals, cocked hats and swords in the streets, at once, as he saw that evening. All the carriages in town rolled past us as we went down Wall Street, and by the time we reached William Street, the pavements resembled a procession, more than anything else. As every one was in full dress, the effect was pleasing, and the evening being fine, most of the gentlemen carried their hats in their hands, in order not to disturb their curls, thus giving to the whole the air of a sort of vast drawing-room. I never saw a more lovely creature than Anneke Mordaunt appeared, as she led our party, on this occasion. The powder had got a little out of her fine auburn hair, and on the part of the head that was not concealed by a cap, that shaded half her beautiful face, it seemed as if the rich covering bestowed by nature was about to break out of all restraint, and shade her bust with its exuberance. Her negligée was a rich satin, flounced in front, while the lace that dropped from her elbows seemed as if woven by fairies, expressly for a fairy to wear. She had paste buckles in her shoes, and I thought I had never beheld such a foot, as was occasionally seen peeping from beneath her dress, while she walked daintily, yet with the grace of a queen, at my side. I do not thus describe Anneke with a view of inducing the reader to fancy her stately and repulsive; on the contrary, winning ease and natural grace were just as striking in her manner, as were beauty, and sentiment, and feeling in her countenance. More than once, as we walked side by side, did I become painfully conscious how unworthy I was to fill the place I occupied. I believe this humility is one of the surest signs of sincere love.

At length we reached the theatre, and were permitted to enter. All the front seats were occupied by blacks, principally in New York liveries; that is to say, with cuffs, collars and pocket-flaps of a cloth different from the coat, though a few were in lace. These last belonged to the topping families, several of which gave colours and ornaments almost as rich as those that I understand are constantly given at home. I well remember that two entire boxes were retained by servants, in shoulder-knots, and much richer dresses than common, one of whom belonged to the Lt. Governor, and the other to my Lord Loudon, who was then Commander-In-Chief. As the company entered, these domestics disappeared, as is usual, and we all took our seats on the benches thus retained for us. Bulstrode's care was apparent in the manner in which he had provided for Anneke, and her party, which, I will take it on myself to say, was one of the most striking, for youth and good looks, that entered the house that evening.

Great was the curiosity, and deep the feeling, that prevailed, among the younger portion of the audience in particular, as party after party was seated, that important evening. The house was ornamented as a theatre, and I thought it vast in extent; though Herman Mordaunt assured me it was no great things, in that point of view, as compared with most of the playhouses at home. But the ornaments, and the lights, and the curtain, the pit, the boxes the gallery, were all so many objects of intense interest. Few of us said anything; but our eyes wandered over all with a species of delight, that I am certain can be felt in a theatre only once. Anneke's sweet face was a picture of youthful expectation; an expectation, however, in which intelligence and discretion had their full share. The orchestra was said to have an undue portion of wind instruments in it; though I perceived ladies all over the house, including those in our own box, returning the bows of many of the musicians, who, I was told, were amateurs from the army and the drawing-rooms of the town.

At length the Commander-In-Chief and the Lt. Governor entered together, occupying the same box, though two had been provided, their attendants having recourse to the second. The commotion produced by these arrivals had hardly subsided, when the curtain arose, and a new world was presented to our view! Of the playing, I shall not venture to say much; though to me it seemed perfection. Bulstrode gained great applause that night; and I understand that divers gentlemen, who had either been educated at home, or who had passed much time there, declared that his Cato would have done credit to either of the royal theatres. His dress appeared to me to be everything it should be; though I cannot describe it. I remember that Syphax wore the uniform of a colonel of dragoons, and Juba, that of a general officer; and that there was a good deal of criticism expended, and some offence taken, because the gentlemen who played these parts came out in wool, and with their faces blacked. It was said, in answer to these feelings, that the characters were Africans; and that any one might see, by casting his eyes at the gallery, that Africans are usually black, and that they have woolly hair; a sort of proof that, I imagine, only aggravated the offence. 15 Apart from this little mistake, everything went off well, even Marcia. It is true, that some evil-inclined person whispered that the "virtuous Marcia" was a little how-came-you-so; but Bulstrode afterwards assured me that his condition helped him along amazingly, and that it added a liquid lustre to his eyes, that might otherwise have been wanting. The high-heeled shoes appeared to trouble him; but some persons fancied it gave him a pretty tottering in his walk, that added very much to the deception. On the whole, the piece went off surprisingly, as I could see by Lord Loudon and the Lt. Governor, both of whom seemed infinitely diverted. Herman Mordaunt smiled once or twice, when he ought to have looked grave; but this I ascribed to a want of practice, of late years, in scenic representations. He certainly was a man of judgment, and must have known the proper moments to exhibit particular emotions.

During the interval between the play and the farce, the actors came among us, to receive the homage they merited, and loud were the plaudits that were bestowed on them. Anneke's bright eyes sparkled with pleasure as she admitted, without reserve, to Bulstrode the pleasure she had received, and confessed she had formed no idea, hitherto, of the beauty and power of a theatrical representation, aided as was this, by the auxiliaries of lights, dress and scenery. It is true, the women had been a little absurd, and the "virtuous Marcia" particularly so; but the fine sentiments of Addison, which, though as Herman Mordaunt observed, they had all the accuracy and all the stiffness of a pedantic age, were sufficiently beautiful and just, to cover the delinquencies of the Hon. Mr. Harris. She hoped the afterpiece would be of the same general character, that they might all enjoy it as much as they had the play itself.

The other young ladies were equally decided in their praise, though it struck me that Anneke felt the most, on the occasion. That the Major had obtained a great advantage by his efforts, I could not but see; and the folly of my having any pretensions with one who was courted by such a rival, began to impress itself on my imagination with a force I found painful. But the bell soon summoned away the gallant actors, in order to dress for the farce.

The long interval that occurred between the two pieces, gave ample opportunity for visiting one's acquaintances, and to compare opinions. I went to my aunt's box, and found her well satisfied, though less animated than the younger ladies, in the expression of her pleasure. My uncle was altogether himself; good-natured, but not disposed to award any indiscreet amount of praise.

"Pretty well for boys, Corny," he said, "though the youngster who acted Marcia had better been at school. I do not know his name, but he completely took all the virtue out of Marcia. He must have studied her character from some of the ladies who follow the camp."

"My dear uncle, how differently you think from all in our box! That gentleman is the Hon. Mr. Harris, who is only eighteen, and has a pair of colours in the ——th, and is a son of Lord Ballybannon, or Bally-something else, and is said to have the softest voice in the army!"

"Ay, and the softest head, too, I'll answer for it. I tell you, Corny, the Hon. Mr. Ballybilly, who is only eighteen, and has a pair of colours in the ——th, and the softest voice in the army, had better been at school, instead of undermining the virtue of the 'virtuous Marcia,' as he has so obviously done. Bulstrode did well enough; capitally well, for an amateur, and must be a first-rate fellow. By the way, Jane"—that was my aunt's name—"they tell me, he is likely to marry that exceedingly pretty daughter of Herman Mordaunt, and make her Lady Bulstrode, one of these days."

"Why not, Mr. Legge?—Anne Mordaunt is as sweet a girl as there is in the colony, and is very respectably connected. They even say the Mordaunts are of a high family at home. Mary Wallace told me that Herman Mordaunt and Sir Henry Bulstrode are themselves related; and you know, my dear, how intimate the Mordaunts and the Wallaces are?"

"Not I;—I know nothing of their intimacies, though I dare say it may be all true. Mordaunt's father was an English gentleman of some family, I have always heard, though he was as poor as a church-mouse, when he married one of our Dutch heiresses; and as for Herman Mordaunt himself, he proved he had not lost the instinct by marrying another, though she did not happen to be Dutch. Here comes Anneke to inherit it all, and I'll answer for it that care is had that she shall marry an heir."

"Well, Mr. Bulstrode is an heir, and the eldest son of a baronet. I am always pleased when one of our girls makes a good connection at home, for it does the colony credit. It is an excellent thing, Corny, to have our interest well sustained at home—especially before the Privy Council, they tell me."

"Well, I am not," answered my uncle. "I think it more to the credit of the colony for its young women to take up with its young men, and its young men with its young women. I wish Anne Mordaunt had been substituted for the Hon. Ballyshannon to-night. She would have made a thousand times better 'virtuous Marcia."

"You surely would not have had a young lady of respectability appear in public, in this way, Mr. Legge."

My uncle said something to this, for he seldom let "Jane" get the better of it for want of an answer; but as I left the box, I did not hear his reply. It seemed then to be settled, in the minds of most persons, that Bulstrode was to marry Anneke! I cannot describe the new shock this opinion gave me; but it seemed to make me more fully sensible of the depth of the impression that had been made on myself, in the intercourse of a single week. The effect was such that I did not return to the party I had left, but sought a seat in a distant part of the theatre, though one in which I could distinctly see those I had abandoned.

The Beaux Stratagem soon commenced, and Bulstrode was again seen in the character of Scrub. Those who were most familiar with the stage, pronounced his playing to be excellent—far better in the footman than in the Roman Senator. The play itself struck me as being as broad and coarse as could be tolerated; but as it had a reputation at home, where it had a great name, our matrons did not dare to object to it. I was glad to see the smiles soon disappear from Anneke's face, however, and to discover that she found no pleasure in scenes so unsuited to her sex and years. The short, quick glances that were exchanged between Anneke and Mary Wallace, did not escape me, and the manner in which they both rose, as soon as the curtain dropped, told quite plainly the haste they were in to quit the theatre. I reached their box-door in time to assist them through the crowd.

Not a word was said by any of us, until we reached the street, where two or three of Miss Mordaunt's female friends became loud in the expression of their satisfaction. Neither Anneke nor Mary Wallace said anything, and so well did I understand the nature of their feelings, that I made no allusion whatever to the farce. As for the others, they did but chime in with what appeared to be the common opinion, and were to be pitied rather than condemned. It was perhaps the more excusable in them to imagine such a play right, inasmuch as they must have known it was much extolled at home, a fact that gave any custom a certain privilege in the colonies. A mother country has much of the same responsibility as a natural mother, herself, since its opinions and example are apt to be quoted in the one case by the dependant, in justification of its own opinions and conduct, as it is by the natural offspring in the other.

I fancy, notwithstanding, this sort of responsibility gives the ministers or people of England very little trouble, since I never could discover any sensitiveness to their duties on this score. We all went in at Herman Mordaunt's, after walking to the house as we had walked from it, and were made to take a light supper, including some delicious chocolate. Just as we sat down to table, Bulstrode joined us, to receive the praises he had earned, and to enjoy his triumph. He got a seat directly opposite to mine, on Anneke's left hand, and soon began to converse.

"In the first place," he cried, "you must all admit that Tom Harris did wonders to-night as Miss Marcia Cato. I had my own trouble with the rogue, for there is no precedent for a tipsy Marcia; but we managed to keep him straight, and that was the nicest part of my management, let me assure you."

"Yes," observed Herman Mordaunt, drily; "I should think keeping Tom Harris straight, after dinner, an exploit of no little difficulty, but a task that would demand a very judicious management, indeed."

"You were pleased to express your satisfaction with the performance of Cato, Miss Mordaunt," said Bulstrode, in a very deferential and solicitous manner; "but I question if the entertainment gave you as much pleasure?"

"It certainly did not. Had the representation ended with the first piece, I am afraid I should too much regret that we are without a regular stage; but the farce will take off much of the keenness of such regrets."

"I fear I understand you, cousin Anne, and greatly regret that we did not make another choice," returned Bulstrode, with a humility that was not usual in his manner, even when addressing Anneke Mordaunt; "but I can assure you the play has great vogue at home; and the character of Scrub, in particular, has usually been a prodigious favourite. I see by your look, however, that enough has been said; but after having done so much to amuse this good company, to-night, I shall feel authorised to call on every lady present, at least for a song, as soon as the proper moment arrives. Perhaps I have a right to add, a sentiment, and a toast."

And songs, and toasts, and sentiments, we had, as usual, the moment we had done eating. It was, and indeed is, rather more usual to indulge in this innocent gaiety after supper, than after dinner, with us; and that night everybody entered into the feeling of the moment with spirit. Herman Mordaunt gave "Miss Markham," as he had done at dinner, and this with an air so determined, as to prove no one else would ever be got out of him.

"There is a compact between Miss Markham and myself, to toast each other for the remainder of our lives," cried the master of the house, laughing; "and we are each too honest ever to violate it."

"But Miss Mordaunt is under no such engagement," put in a certain Mr. Benson, who had manifested much interest in the beautiful young mistress of the house throughout the day; "and I trust we shall not be put off by any such excuse from her."

"It is not in rule to ask two of the same race for toasts in succession," answered Herman Mordaunt. "There is Mr. Bulstrode dying to give us another English belle."

"With all my heart," said Bulstrode, gaily. "This time it shall be Lady Betty Boddington."

"Married or single, Bulstrode?" inquired Billings, as I thought with some little point.

"No matter which, so long as she be a beauty and a toast. I believe it is now my privilege to call on a lady, and I beg a gentleman from Miss Wallace."

There had been an expression of pained surprise, at the trifling between Billings and Bulstrode, in Anneke's sweet countenance; for, in the simplicity of our provincial habits, we of the colonies did not think it exactly in rule for the single to toast the married, or vice versa; but the instant her friend was thus called on, it changed for a look of gentle concern. Mary Wallace manifested no concern, however, but gave "Mr. Francis Fordham."

"Ay, Frank Fordham, with all my heart," cried Herman Mordaunt. "I hope he will return to his native country as straight-forward, honest, and good as he left it."

"Mr. Fordham is then abroad?" inquired Bulstrode. "I thought the name new to me."

"If being at home can be called being abroad. He is reading law at the Temple."

This was the answer of Mary Wallace, who looked as if she felt a friendly interest in the young Templar, but no more. She now called on Dirck for his lady. Throughout the whole of that day, Dirck's voice had hardly been heard; a reserve that comported well enough with his youth and established diffidence. This appeal, however, seemed suddenly to arouse all that there was of manhood in him; and that was not a little, I can tell the reader, when there was occasion to use it. Dirck's nature was honesty itself; and he felt that the appeal was too direct, and the occasion too serious, to admit of duplicity. He loved but one, esteemed but one, felt for one only; and it was not in his nature to cover his preference by any attempt at deception. After colouring to the ears, appearing distressed, he made an effort, and pronounced the name of—"Anneke Mordaunt."

A common laugh rewarded this blunder; common with all but the fair creature who had extorted this involuntary tribute, and myself, who knew Dirck's character too well not to understand how very much he must be in earnest thus to lay bare the most cherished secret of his heart. The mirth continued some time, Herman Mordaunt appearing to be particularly pleased, and applauding his kinsman's directness with several 'bravos' very distinctly uttered. As for Anneke, I saw she looked touched, while she looked concerned, and as if she would be glad to have the thing undone.

"After all, Dirck, much as I admire your spirit and plain dealing, boy," cried Herman Mordaunt, "Miss Wallace can never let such a toast pass. She will insist on having another."

"I!—I protest I am well pleased with it, and ask for no other," exclaimed the lady in question. "No toast can be more agreeable to me than Anneke Mordaunt, and I particularly like the quarter from which this comes."

"If friends can be trusted in a matter of this nature," put in Bulstrode, with a little pique, "Mr. Follock has every reason to be contented. Had I known, however, that the customs of New York allowed a lady who is present to be toasted, that gentleman would not have had the merit of being the first to make this discovery."

"Nor is it," said Herman Mordaunt; "and Dirck must hunt up another to supply my daughter's place."

But no other was forthcoming from the stores of Dirck Follock's mind. Had he a dozen names in reserve, not one of them would he have produced under circumstances that might seem like denying his allegiance to the girl already given; but he could not name any other female. So, after some trifling, the company attributing Dirck's hesitation to his youth and ignorance of the world, abandoned the attempt, desiring him to call on Anneke herself for a toast in turn.

"Cousin Dirck Van Valkenburgh," said Anneke, with the greater self-possession and ease of her sex, though actually my friend's junior by more than two years; laying some emphasis, at the same time, on the word cousin.

"There!" exclaimed Dirck, looking exultingly at Bulstrode; "you see, gentlemen and ladies, that it is permitted to toast a person present, if you happen to respect and esteem that person!"

"By which, sir, we are to understand how much Miss Mordaunt respects and esteems Mr. Dirck Van Valkenburgh," answered Bulstrode gravely. "I am afraid there is only too much justice in an opinion that might, at the first blush, seem to savour of self-love."

"An imputation I am far from denying," returned Anneke, with a steadiness that showed wonderful self-command, did she really return any of Dirck's attachment. "My kinsman gives me as his toast, and I give him as mine. Is there anything unnatural in that?"

Here there was an outbreak of raillery at Anneke's expense, which the young lady bore with a calmness and composure that at first astonished me. But when I came to reflect that she had been virtually at the head of her father's house for several years, and that she had always associated with persons older than herself, it appeared more natural; for it is certain we can either advance or retard the character by throwing a person into intimate association with those who, by their own conversation, manners, or acquirements, are most adapted for doing either. In a few minutes the interruption was forgotten by those who had no interest in the subject, and the singing commenced. I had obtained so much credit by my attempt at dinner, that I had the extreme gratification of being asked to sing another song by Anneke herself. Of course I complied, and I thought the company seemed pleased. As for my young hostess, I knew she looked more gratified with my song than with the afterpiece, and that I felt to be something. Dirck had an occasion to renew a little of the ground lost by the toast, for he sang a capital comic song in Low Dutch. It is true, not half the party understood him, but the other half laughed until the tears rolled down their cheeks, and there was something so droll in my friend's manner, that everybody was delighted. The clocks struck twelve before we broke up.

I staid in town but a day or two longer, meeting my new acquaintances every day, and sometimes twice a-day, however, on Trinity Church Walk. I paid visits of leave-taking with a heavy heart, and most of all to Anneke and her father.

"I understood from Follock," said Herman Mordaunt, when I explained the object of my call, "that you are to leave town to-morrow. Miss Mordaunt and her friend, Miss Wallace, go to Lilacsbush this afternoon; for it is high time to look after the garden and the flowers, many of which are now in full bloom. I shall join them in the evening and I propose that you young men, take a late breakfast with us, on your way to Westchester. A cup of coffee before you start, and getting into your saddle at six, will bring all right. I promise you that you shall be on the road again by one, which will give you plenty of time to reach Satanstoe before dark."

I looked at Anneke, and fancied that the expression of her countenance was favourable. Dirck left everything to me, and I accepted the invitation. This arrangement shortened my visit in Crown Street, and I left the house with a lighter heart than that with which I had entered it. It is always so agreeable to get an unpleasant duty deferred!

Next day Dirck and I were in the saddle at six precisely, and we rode through the streets just as the blacks were washing down their stoops and side-walks; though there were but very few of the last, in my youth. This is a commodious improvement, and one that it is not easy to see how the ladies could dispense with, and which is now getting to be pretty common; all the new streets, I see, being provided with the convenience.

It was a fine May morning, and the air was full of the sweet fragrance of the lilac, in particular, as we rode into the country. Just as we got into the Bowery Lane, a horseman was seen walking out of one of the by-streets, and coming our way. He no sooner caught sight of two travellers going in his own direction, than he spurred forward to join us; being alone, and probably wishing company. As it would have been churlish to refuse to travel in company with one thus situated, we pulled up, walking our horses until the stranger joined us; when, to our surprise, it turned out to be Jason Newcome. The pedagogue was as much astonished when he recognised us, as we were in recognising him; and I believe he was a little disappointed; for Jason was so fond of making acquaintances, that it was always a pleasure to him to be thus employed. It appeared that he had been down on the island to visit a relative, who had married and settled in that quarter; and this was the reason we had not met since the morning of the affair of the lion. Of course we trotted on together, neither glad nor sorry at having this particular companion.

I never could explain the process by means of which Jason wound his way into everybody's secrets. It is true he had no scruples about asking questions; putting those which most persons would think forbidden by the usages of society, with as little hesitation as those which are universally permitted. The people of New England have a reputation this way; and I remember to have heard Mr. Worden account for the practice in the following way: Everything and everybody was brought under rigid church government among the Puritans; and, when a whole community gets the notion that it is to sit in judgment on every act of one of its members, it is quite natural that it should extend that right to an inquiry into all his affairs. One thing is certain; our neighbours of Connecticut do assume a control over the acts and opinions of individuals that is not dreamed of in New York; and I think it very likely that the practice of pushing inquiry into private things, has grown up under this custom.

As one might suppose, Jason, whenever baffled in an attempt to obtain knowledge by means of inquiries, more or less direct, sought to advance his ends through conjectures; taking those that were the most plausible, if any such could be found, but putting up with those that had not even this questionable recommendation, if nothing better offered. He was, consequently, for ever falling into the grossest errors, for, necessarily making his conclusions on premises drawn from his own ignorance and inexperience, he was liable to fall into serious mistakes at the very outset. Nor was this the worst; the tendency of human nature not being very directly to charity, the harshest constructions were sometimes blended with the most absurd blunders, in his mind, and I have known him to be often guilty of assertions, that had no better foundation than these conjectures, which might have subjected him to severe legal penalties.

On the present occasion, Jason was not long in ascertaining where we were bound. This was done in a manner so characteristic and ingenious, that I will attempt to relate it.

"Why, you're out early, this morning, gentlemen," exclaimed Jason, affecting surprise. "What in natur' has started you off before breakfast?"

"So as to be certain not to lose our suppers at Satanstoe, this evening," I answered.

"Suppers? why, you will almost reach home (Jason would call this word hum) by dinner-time; that is, your York dinner-time. Perhaps you mean to call by the way?"

"Perhaps we do, Mr. Newcorne; there are many pleasant families between this and Satanstoe."

"I know there be. There's the great Mr. Van Cortlandt's at Yonker's; perhaps you mean to stop there?"

"No, sir; we have no such intention."

"Then there's the rich Count Philips's, on the river; that would be no great matter out of the way?"

"It's farther than we intend to turn."

"Oh! so you do intend to turn a bit aside! Well, there's that Mr. Mordaunt, whose daughter you pulled out of the lion's paws;—he has a house near King's-Bridge, called Lilacsbush."

"And how did you ascertain that, Jason?"

"By asking. Do you think I would let such a thing happen, and not inquire a little about the young lady? Nothing is ever lost by putting a few questions, and inquiring round; and I did not forget the rule in her case."

"And you ascertained that the young lady's father has a place called Lilacsbush, in this neighbourhood?"

"I did; and a queer York fashion it is to give a house a name, just as you would a Christian being; that must be a Roman Catholic custom, and some way connected with idolatry."

"Out of all doubt. It is far better to say, for instance, that we are going to breakfast at Mr. Mordaunt's-es-es, than to say we intend to stop at Lilacsbush."

"Oh! you be, be you? Well, I thought it would turn out that some such place must have started you off so early. It will be a desperate late breakfast, Corny!"

"It will be at ten o'oclock, Jason, and that is rather later than common; but our appetites will be so much the better."

To this Jason assented, and then commenced a series of manoeuvres to be included in the party. This we did not dare to do, however, and all Jason's hints were disregarded, until, growing desperate by our evasions, he plumply proposed to go along, and we as plumply told him we would take no such liberty with a man of Herman Mordaunt's years, position and character. I do not know that we should have hesitated so much had we considered Jason a gentleman, but this was impossible. The custom of the colony admitted of great freedom in this respect, being very different from what it is at home, by all accounts, in these particulars; but there was always an understanding that the persons one brought with him should be of a certain stamp and class in life; recommendations to which Jason Newcome certainly had no claim.

The case was getting to be a little embarrassing, when the appearance of Herman Mordaunt himself, fortunately removed the difficulty. Jason was not a man to be thrown off very easily; but here was one who had the power, and who showed the disposition to set things right. Herman Mordaunt had ridden down the road a mile or two to meet us, intending to lead us by a private and shorter way to his residence, than that which was already known to us. He no sooner saw that Jason was of our company, than he asked that as a favour, which our companion would very gladly have accepted as a boon.

15 (return)

[ In England, Othello is usually played as a black, while in America he is played as a nondescript; or of no colour that is ordinarily seen. It is not clear that England is nearer right than America, however; the Moor not being a negro, any more than he is of the colour of a dried herring.—EDITOR.]