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+Project Gutenberg's The Story of a New York House, by Henry Cuyler Bunner
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Story of a New York House
+
+Author: Henry Cuyler Bunner
+
+Illustrator: A. B. Frost
+
+Release Date: December 13, 2009 [EBook #30662]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Geetu Melwani, Rob Reid, David Garcia and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+(This book was produced from scanned images of public
+domain material from the Google Print project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Then out of the door came Jacob Dolph.]
+
+
+
+
+          THE STORY
+
+              OF
+
+       A NEW YORK HOUSE
+
+              BY
+
+         H. C. BUNNER
+
+
+  _ILLUSTRATED BY A. B. FROST_
+
+
+           NEW YORK
+    CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+             1887
+
+
+
+
+      COPYRIGHT, 1887, BY
+    CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.
+
+
+   Press of J. J. Little & Co.
+     Astor Place, New York.
+
+
+
+
+              TO
+
+           A. L. B.
+
+
+
+
+  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+  _Then out of the door came Jacob Dolph_                FRONTISPIECE
+
+                                                                 PAGE
+
+  _"I thumped him"_                                                14
+
+  _"It's a monstrous great place for a country-house, Mr. Dolph"_  18
+
+  _There was only one idea, and that was flight_                   28
+
+  _The light flickered on the top of the church spire_             32
+              (_By F. Hopkinson Smith._)
+
+  _They hesitated a second, looking at the great arm chair_        37
+
+  _"Stay there, sir--you, sir, you, Jacob Dolph!"_                 41
+
+  _After awhile he began to take timorous strolls_                 46
+
+  _Jacob Dolph the elder ... stood on his hearth rug_              51
+
+  _And then he marched off to bed by himself, suffering no one to
+  go with him_                                                     55
+
+  _In quiet morning hours ... when his daughter sat at his feet_   77
+
+  _"Mons'us gran dinneh, seh!"_                                    79
+
+  _"All of a sudden, chock forward he went, right on his face"_    83
+
+  _He heard the weak, spasmodic wail of another Dolph_             88
+
+  _"Central American," said the clerk_                            107
+
+  _"Looks like his father," was Mr. Daw's comment_                109
+
+  _O'Reagan of Castle Reagan_                                     118
+
+  _"If it hadn't been for the Dolphs, devil the rattle you'd
+  have had"_                                                      120
+
+  _"I know'd you'd take me in, Mist' Dolph," he panted_           132
+
+  _"Have you got a nigger here?"_                                 133
+
+  _Abram Van Riper makes a business communication._               141
+
+  _And so she set his necktie right, and he went_                 144
+
+  _Looking on his face, she saw death quietly coming upon him_    149
+
+  _Finial_                                                        151
+
+
+
+
+           THE STORY
+
+       OF A NEW YORK HOUSE.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+
+"I hear," said Mrs. Abram Van Riper, seated at her breakfast-table, and
+watching the morning sunlight dance on the front of the great Burrell
+house on the opposite side of Pine Street, "that the Dolphs are going to
+build a prodigious fine house out of town--somewhere up near the
+Rynders's place."
+
+"And I hear," said Abram Van Riper, laying down last night's _Evening
+Post_, "that Jacob Dolph is going to give up business. And if he does,
+it's a disgrace to the town."
+
+It was in the summer of 1807, and Abram Van Riper was getting well over
+what he considered the meridian line of sixty years. He was hale and
+hearty; his business was flourishing; his boy was turning out all that
+should have been expected of one of the Van Riper stock; the refracted
+sunlight from the walls of the stately house occupied by the Cashier of
+the Bank of the United States lit with a subdued secondary glimmer the
+Van Riper silver on the breakfast-table--the squat teapot and slop-bowl,
+the milk-pitcher, that held a quart, and the apostle-spoon in the broken
+loaf-sugar on the Delft plate. Abram Van Riper was decorously happy, as
+a New York merchant should be. In all other respects, he was pleased to
+think, he was what a New York merchant should be, and the word of the
+law and the prophets was fulfilled with him and in his house.
+
+"I'm sure," Mrs. Van Riper began again, somewhat querulously, "I can't
+see why Jacob Dolph shouldn't give up business, if he's so minded. He's
+a monstrous fortune, from all I hear--a good hundred thousand dollars."
+
+"A hundred thousand dollars!" repeated her husband, scornfully. "Ay, and
+twice twenty thousand pounds on the top of that. He's done well, has
+Dolph. All the more reason he should stick to his trade; and not go to
+lolling in the sun, like a runner at the Custom-House door. He's not
+within ten years of me, and here he must build his country house, and
+set up for the fine gentleman. Jacob Dolph! Did I go on his note, when
+he came back from France, brave as my master, in '94, or did I not? And
+where 'ud he have raised twenty thousand in this town, if I hadn't?
+What's got into folks nowadays? Damn me if I can see!"
+
+His wife protested, in wifely fashion. "I'm sure, Van Riper," she began,
+"you've no need to fly in such a huff if I so much as speak of folks who
+have some conceit of being genteel. It's only proper pride of Mr. Dolph
+to have a country house, and--" (her voice faltering a little,
+timorously) "ride in and--and out----"
+
+"_Ride!_" snorted Mr. Van Riper. "In a carriage, maybe?"
+
+"In a carriage, Van Riper. You may think to ride in a carriage is like
+being the Pope of Rome; but there's some that knows better. And if you'd
+set up your carriage," went on the undaunted Mrs. Van Riper, "and gone
+over to Greenwich Street two years ago, as I'd have had you, and made
+yourself friendly with those people there, I'd have been on the Orphan
+Asylum Board at this very minute; and _you_ would----"
+
+Mr. Van Riper knew all that speech by heart, in all its variations. He
+knew perfectly well what it would end in, this time, although he was not
+a man of quick perception: "He would have been a member of the new
+Historical Society."
+
+"Yes," he thought to himself, as he found his hat and shuffled out into
+Pine Street; "and John Pintard would have had my good check in his
+pocket for his tuppenny society. Pine Street is fine enough for me."
+
+Mr. Van Riper had more cause for his petulancy than he would have
+acknowledged even to himself. He was a man who had kept his shop open
+all through Clinton's occupancy, and who had had no trouble with the
+British. And when they were gone he had had to do enough to clear his
+skirts of any smirch of Toryism, and to implant in his own breast a
+settled feeling of militant Americanism. He did not like it that the
+order of things should change--and the order of things was changing.
+The town was growing out of all knowledge of itself. Here they had their
+Orphan Asylum, and their Botanical Garden, and their Historical Society;
+and the Jews were having it all their own way; and now people were
+talking of free schools, and of laying out a map for the upper end of
+the town to grow on, in the "system" of straight streets and avenues. To
+the devil with systems and avenues! said he. That was all the doing of
+those cursed Frenchmen. He knew how it would be when they brought their
+plaguy frigate here in the first fever year--'93--and the fools marched
+up from Peck's Slip after a red nightcap, and howled their cut-throat
+song all night long.
+
+It began to hum itself in his head as he walked toward Water Street--_�a
+ira--�a ira--les aristocrats � la lanterne_. A whiff of the wind that
+blew through Paris streets in the terrible times had come across the
+Atlantic and tickled his dull old Dutch nostrils.
+
+But something worse than this vexed the conservative spirit of Abram Van
+Riper. He could forgive John Pintard--whose inspiration, I think,
+foreran the twentieth century--his fancy for free schools and historical
+societies, as he had forgiven him his sidewalk-building fifteen years
+before; he could proudly overlook the fact that the women were busying
+themselves with all manner of wild charities; he could be contented
+though he knew that the Hebrew Hart was president of that merchants'
+club at Baker's, of which he himself would fain have been a member. But
+there was some thing in the air that he could neither forgive nor
+overlook, nor be contented with.
+
+There was a change coming over the town--a change which he could not
+clearly define, even in his own mind. There was a great keeping of
+carriages, he knew. A dozen men had bought carriages, or were likely to
+buy them at any time. The women were forming societies for the
+improvement of this and that. And he, who had moved up-town from Dock
+Street, was now in an old-fashioned quarter. All this he knew, but the
+something which made him uneasy was more subtile.
+
+Within the last few years he had observed an introduction of certain
+strange distinctions in the social code of the town. It had been vaguely
+intimated to him--perhaps by his wife, he could not remember--that there
+was a difference between his trade and Jacob Dolph's trade. He was a
+ship-chandler. Jacob Dolph sold timber. Their shops were side by side;
+Jacob Dolph's rafts lay in the river in front of Abram Van Riper's shop,
+and Abram Van Riper had gone on Jacob Dolph's note, only a few years
+ago. Yet, it seemed that it was _genteel_ of Jacob Dolph to sell timber,
+and it was not genteel of Abram Van Riper to be a ship-chandler. There
+was, then, a difference between Jacob Dolph and Abram Van Riper--a
+difference which, in forty years, Abram Van Riper had never conceived
+of. There were folks who held thus. For himself, he did not understand
+it. What difference there was between selling the wood to make a ship,
+and selling the stores to go inside of her, he could not understand.
+
+The town was changing for the worse; he saw that. He did not wish--God
+forbid!--that his son John should go running about to pleasure-gardens.
+But it would be no more than neighborly if these young bucks who went
+out every night should ask him to go with them. Were William Irving's
+boys and Harry Brevoort and those young Kembles too fine to be friends
+with his boy? Not that he'd go with them a-rollicking--no, not that--but
+'twould be neighborly. It was all wrong, he thought; they were going
+whither they knew not, and wherefore they knew not; and with that he
+cursed their airs and their graces, and pounded down to the Tontine, to
+put his name at the head of the list of those who subscribed for a
+testimonial service of plate, to be presented to our esteemed
+fellow-citizen and valued associate, Jacob Dolph, on his retirement from
+active business.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Jacob Dolph at this moment was setting forth from his house in State
+Street, whose pillared balcony, rising from the second floor to the
+roof, caught a side glance of the morning sun, that loved the Battery
+far better than Pine Street. He had his little boy by the hand--young
+Jacob, his miniature, his heir, and the last and only living one of his
+eight children. Mr. Dolph walked with his stock thrust out and the lower
+end of his waistcoat drawn in--he was Colonel Dolph, if he had cared to
+keep the title; and had come back from Monmouth with a hole in his hip
+that gave him a bit of a limp, even now in eighteen-hundred-and-seven.
+He and the boy marched forth like an army with a small but enthusiastic
+left wing, into the poplar-studded Battery. The wind blew fresh off the
+bay; the waves beat up against the seawall, and swirled with a chuckle
+under Castle Garden bridge. A large brig was coming up before the wind,
+all her sails set, as though she were afraid--and she was--of British
+frigates outside the Hook. Two or three fat little boats, cat-rigged,
+after the good old New York fashion, were beating down toward Staten
+Island, to hunt for the earliest blue-fish.
+
+The two Dolphs crossed the Battery, where the elder bowed to his friends
+among the merchants who lounged about the city's pleasure-ground, lazily
+chatting over their business affairs. Then they turned up past Bowling
+Green into Broadway, where Mr. Dolph kept on bowing, for half the town
+was out, taking the fresh morning for marketing and all manner of
+shopping. Everybody knew Jacob Dolph afar off by his blue coat with the
+silver buttons, his nankeen waistcoat, and his red-checked Indian silk
+neckcloth. He made it a sort of uniform. Captain Beare had brought him a
+bolt of nankeen and a silk kerchief every year since 1793, when Mr.
+Dolph gave him credit for the timber of which the _Ursa Minor_ was
+built.
+
+And everybody seemed willing to make acquaintance with young Jacob's
+London-made kerseymere breeches, of a bright canary color, and with his
+lavender silk coat, and with his little _chapeau de Paris_. Indeed,
+young Jacob was quite the most prominent moving spectacle on Broadway,
+until they came to John Street, and saw something rolling down the
+street that quite cut the yellow kerseymeres out of all popular
+attention.
+
+This was a carriage, the body of which was shaped like a huge section of
+a cheese, set up on its small end upon broad, swinging straps between
+two pairs of wheels. It was not unlike a piece of cheese in color, for
+it was of a dull and faded grayish-green, like mould, relieved by
+pale-yellow panels and gilt ornaments. It was truly an interesting
+structure, and it attracted nearly as much notice on Broadway in 1807 as
+it might to-day. But it was received with far more reverence, for it was
+a court coach, and it belonged to the Des Anges family, the rich
+Huguenots of New Rochelle. It had been built in France, thirty years
+before, and had been sent over as a present to his brother from the
+Count des Anges, who had himself neglected to make use of his
+opportunities to embrace the Protestant religion.
+
+When the white-haired old lady who sat in this coach, with a very little
+girl by her side, saw Mr. Dolph and his son, she leaned out of the
+window and signalled to the old periwigged driver to stop, and he drew
+up close to the sidewalk. And then Mr. Dolph and his son came up to the
+window and took off their hats, and made a great low bow and a small low
+bow to the old lady and the little girl.
+
+"Madam Des Anges," said Mr. Dolph, with an idiom which he had learned
+when he was presented at the court of Louis the Sixteenth, "has surely
+not driven down from New Rochelle this morning? That would tax even her
+powers."
+
+Madam Des Anges did not smile--she had no taste for smiling--but she
+bridled amiably.
+
+"No, Mr. Dolph," she replied; "I have been staying with my
+daughter-in-law, at her house at King's Bridge, and I have come to town
+to put my little granddaughter to school. She is to have the privilege
+of being a pupil of Mme. Dumesnil."
+
+Madam Des Anges indicated the little girl with a slight movement, as
+though she did not wish to allow the child more consideration than a
+child deserved. The little girl turned a great pair of awed eyes, first
+on her grandmother, and then on the gentlemen, and spoke no word. Young
+Jacob Dolph stared hard at her, and then contemplated his kerseymeres
+with lazy satisfaction. He had no time for girls. And a boy who had his
+breeches made in London was a boy of consequence, and need not concern
+himself about every one he saw.
+
+"And this is your son, I make no doubt," went on Madam Des Anges; "you
+must bring him to see us at King's Bridge, while we are so near you.
+These young people should know each other."
+
+Mr. Dolph said he would, and showed a becoming sense of the honor of the
+invitation; and he made young Jacob say a little speech of thanks, which
+he did with a doubtful grace; and then Mr. Dolph sent his compliments to
+Madam Des Anges' daughter-in-law, and Madam Des Anges sent her
+compliments to Mrs. Dolph, and there was more stately bowing, and the
+carriage lumbered on, with the little girl looking timorously out of the
+window, her great eyes fixed on the yellow kerseymeres, as they twinkled
+up the street.
+
+"Papa," said young Jacob, as they turned the corner of Ann Street, "when
+may I go to a boys' school? I'm monstrous big to be at Mrs. Kilmaster's.
+And I don't like to be a girl-boy."
+
+"Are you a girl-boy?" inquired his father, smiling.
+
+"Aleck Cameron called me one yesterday. He said I was a girl-boy because
+I went to dame-school. He called me Missy, too!" the boy went on, with
+his breast swelling.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"We'll see about it," said Mr. Dolph, smiling again; and they walked on
+in silence to Mrs. Kilmaster's door, where he struck the knocker, and a
+neat mulatto girl opened the narrow door. Then he patted his boy on the
+head and bade him good-by for the morning, and told him to be a good boy
+at school. He took a step or two and looked back. Young Jacob lingered
+on the step, as if he had a further communication to make. He paused.
+
+"I thumped him," said young Jacob, and the narrow door swallowed him up.
+
+Mr. Dolph continued on his walk up Broadway. As he passed the upper end
+of the Common he looked with interest at the piles of red sandstone
+among the piles of white marble, where they were building the new City
+Hall. The Council had ordered that the rear or northward end of the
+edifice should be constructed of red stone; because red stone was cheap,
+and none but a few suburbans would ever look down on it from above
+Chambers Street. Mr. Dolph shook his head. He thought he knew better. He
+had watched the growth of trade; he knew the room for further growth; he
+had noticed the long converging lines of river-front, with their
+unbounded accommodation for wharves and slips. He believed that the day
+would come--and his own boy might see it--when the business of the city
+would crowd the dwelling-houses from the river side, east and west, as
+far, maybe, as Chambers Street. He had no doubt that the boy might find
+himself, forty years from then, in a populous and genteel neighborhood.
+Perhaps he foresaw too much; but he had a jealous yearning for a house
+that should be a home for him, and for his child, and for his
+grandchildren. He wanted a place where his wife might have a garden; a
+place which the boy would grow up to love and cherish, where the boy
+might bring a wife some day. And even if it were a little out of
+town--why, his wife did not want a rout every night; and it was likely
+his old friends would come out and see him once in a while, and smoke a
+pipe in his garden and eat a dish of strawberries, perhaps.
+
+As he thought it all over for the hundredth time, weighing for and
+against in his gentle and deliberative mind, he strolled far out of
+town. There was a house here and there on the road--a house with a trim,
+stiff little garden, full of pink and white and blue flowers in orderly,
+clam-shell-bordered beds. But it was certainly, he had to admit, as he
+looked about him, very _countrified_ indeed. It seemed that the city
+must lose itself if it wandered up here among these rolling meadows and
+wooded hills. Yet even up here, half way to Greenwich Village, there
+were little outposts of the town--clumps of neighborly houses, mostly of
+the poorer class, huddling together to form small nuclei for sporadic
+growth. There was one on his right, near the head of Collect Street.
+Perhaps that quizzical little old German was right, who had told him
+that King's Bridge property was a rational investment.
+
+He went across the hill where Grand Street crosses Broadway, and up past
+what was then North and is to-day Houston Street, and then turned down a
+straggling road that ran east and west. He walked toward the Hudson, and
+passed a farmhouse or two, and came to a bare place where there were no
+trees, and only a few tangled bushes and ground-vines.
+
+Here a man was sitting on a stone, awaiting him. As he came near, the
+man arose.
+
+"Ah, it's you, Weeks? And have you the plan?"
+
+"Yes, Colonel--Mr. Dolph. I've put the window where you want it--that
+is, my brother Levi did--though I don't see as you're going to have much
+trouble in looking over anything that's likely to come between you and
+the river."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Mr. Dolph took the crisp roll of parchment and studied it with loving
+interest. It had gone back to Ezra Weeks, the builder, and his brother
+Levi, the architect, for the twentieth time, perhaps. Was there ever an
+architect's plan put in the hands of a happy nest-builder where the
+windows did not go up and down from day to day, and the doors did not
+crawl all around the house, and the veranda did not contract and expand
+like a sensitive plant; or where the rooms and closets and corridors did
+not march backward and forward and in and out at the bidding of every
+fond, untutored whim?
+
+"It's a monstrous great big place for a country-house, Mr. Dolph," said
+Ezra Weeks, as he looked over Jacob Dolph's shoulder at the drawings of
+the house, and shook his head with a sort of pitying admiration for the
+projector's audacity.
+
+They talked for a while, and looked at the site as if they might see
+more in it than they saw yesterday, and then Weeks set off for the city,
+pledged to hire laborers and to begin the work on the morrow.
+
+"I think I can get you some of that stone that's going into the back of
+the City Hall, if you say so, Mr. Dolph. That stone was bought cheap,
+you know--bought for the city."
+
+"See what you can do, Weeks," said Mr. Dolph; and Mr. Weeks went
+whistling down the road.
+
+Jacob Dolph walked around his prospective domain. He kicked a wild
+blackberry bush aside, to look at the head of a stake, and tried to
+realize that that would be the corner of his house. He went to where the
+parlor fireplace would be, and stared at the grass and stones, wondering
+what it would be like to watch the fire flickering on the new hearth.
+Then he looked over toward the Hudson, and saw the green woods on Union
+Hill and the top of a white sail over the high river-bank. He hoped that
+no one would build a large house between him and the river.
+
+He lingered so long that the smoke of midday dinners was arising from
+Greenwich Village when he turned back toward town. When he reached the
+Commons on his homeward way he came across a knot of idlers who were
+wasting the hour of the noontide meal in gaping at the unfinished
+municipal building.
+
+They were admiringly critical. One man was vociferously enthusiastic.
+
+"It's a marvellous fine building, say I, sir! Worthy of the classic
+shades of antiquity. If Europe can show a finer than that will be when
+she's done, then, in _my_ opinion, sir, Europe is doing well."
+
+"You admire the architecture, Mr. Huggins?" asked Mr. Dolph, coming up
+behind him. Mr. Huggins turned around, slightly disconcerted, and
+assumed an amiability of manner such as can only be a professional
+acquirement among us poor creatures of human nature.
+
+"Ah, Mr. Dolph--Colonel, I should say! I have purposed to do myself the
+honor of presenting myself at your house this afternoon, Colonel Dolph,
+to inquire if you did not desire to have your peruke _fris�e_. For I had
+taken the liberty of observing you in conversation with Madam Des Anges
+this morning, in her equipage, and it had occurred to me that possibly
+the madam might be a-staying with you."
+
+"Madam Des Anges does not honor my house this time, Huggins," returned
+Mr. Dolph, with an indulgent little laugh; "and my poor old peruke will
+do very well for to-day."
+
+There was a perceptible diminution in Mr. Huggins's ardor; but he was
+still suave.
+
+"I hope the madam is in good health," he remarked.
+
+"She is, I believe," said Mr. Dolph.
+
+"And your good lady, sir? I have not had the pleasure of treating Mrs.
+Dolph professionally for some time, sir, I----"
+
+Mr. Dolph was wary. "I don't think Mrs. Dolph is fond of the latest
+modes, Huggins. But here comes Mr. Van Riper. Perhaps he will have his
+peruke _fris�e_."
+
+Mr. Huggins got out of a dancing-master's pose with intelligent
+alacrity, bade Mr. Dolph a hasty "Good-afternoon!" and hurried off
+toward his shop, one door above Wall Street. Mr. Van Riper did not like
+"John Richard Desbrosses Huggins, Knight of the Comb."
+
+There was something else that Mr. Van Riper did not like.
+
+"Hullo, Dolph!" he hailed his friend. "What's this I heard about you
+building a preposterous tom-fool of a town-house out by Greenwich? Why
+don't you hire that house that Burr had, up near Lispenard's
+cow-pasture, and be done with it?"
+
+Mr. Dolph seized his chance.
+
+"It's not so preposterous as all that. By the way, talking of Burr, I
+hear from Richmond that he'll positively be tried next week. Did you
+know that young Irving--William's son, the youngest, the lad that writes
+squibs--has gone to Richmond for the defence?"
+
+"William Irving's son might be in better business," grunted Mr. Van
+Riper, for a moment diverted. "If we'd got at that devil when he
+murdered poor Hamilton--'fore gad, we'd have saved the trouble of trying
+him. Do you remember when we was for going to Philadelphia after him,
+and there the sly scamp was at home all the time up in his fine house,
+a-sitting in a tub of water, reading French stuff, as cool as a
+cowcumber, with the whole town hunting for him?" Then he came back. "But
+that house of yours. You haven't got this crazy notion that New York's
+going to turn into London while you smoke your pipe, have you? You're
+keeping some of your seven business senses, ain't you?"
+
+"I don't know," Mr. Dolph mildly defended his hobby; "there is a great
+potentiality of growth in this city. Here's an estimate that John
+Pintard made the other day----"
+
+"John Pintard! He's another like _you_!" said Mr. Van Riper.
+
+"Well, look at it for yourself," pleaded the believer in New York's
+future.
+
+Mr. Van Riper took the neatly written paper, and simply snorted and
+gasped as he read this:
+
+                         _Statistical_.
+
+    By the numeration of the inhabitants of this city, recently
+    published, the progress of population for the last 5 years appears
+    to be at the rate of 25 per cent. Should our city continue to
+    increase in the same proportion during the present century, the
+    aggregate number at its close will far exceed that of any other city
+    in the Old World, Pekin not excepted, as will appear from the
+    following table. Progress of population in the city of New York,
+    computed at the rate of 25 per cent, every 5 years:
+
+      1805   75,770        1855    705,650
+      1810   95,715        1860    882,062
+      1815  110,390        1865  1,102,577
+      1820  147,987        1870  1,378,221
+      1825  184,923        1875  1,722,776
+      1830  231,228        1880  2,153,470
+      1835  289,035        1885  2,691,837
+      1840  361,293        1890  3,364,796
+      1845  451,616        1895  4,205,995
+      1850  564,520        1900  5,257,493
+
+When he had read it through he was a-quivering, crimson with that rage
+of Conservative indignation which is even more fervent than the flames
+of Radical enthusiasm.
+
+"Yes," he said; "there's seventy-five thousand people in this town, and
+there'll be seventy-five thousand bankrupts if this lunacy goes on. And
+there's seventy-five thousand maggots in your brain, and seventy-five
+thousand in John Pintard's; and if you two live to see nineteen hundred,
+you'll have twice five million two hundred and fifty-seven thousand four
+hundred and ninety-three--whatever that may be!" And he thrust the paper
+back at Jacob Dolph, and made for the Tontine and the society of
+sensible men.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The house was built, in spite of Abram Van Riper's remonstrance. It had
+a stone front, almost flush with the road, and brick gable-ends, in each
+one of which, high up near the roof, stood an arched window, to lift an
+eyebrow to the sun, morning and evening. But it was only a
+country-house, after all; and the Dolphs set up their carriage and
+drove out and in, from June to September.
+
+There was a garden at the side, where Mrs. Dolph could have the flowers
+her heart had yearned after ever since Jacob Dolph brought her from her
+home at Rondout, when she was seventeen.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Strengthened by the country air--so they said--young Jacob grew clean
+out of his dame-school days and into and out of Columbia College, and
+was sent abroad, a sturdy youth, to have a year's holiday. It was to the
+new house that he came back the next summer, with a wonderful stock of
+fine clothes and of finer manners, and with a pair of mustaches that
+scandalized everybody but Madam Des Anges, who had seen the like in
+France when she visited her brother. And a very fine young buck was
+young Jacob, altogether, with his knowledge of French and his ignorance
+of Dutch, and a way he had with the women, and another way he had with
+the men, and his heirship to old Jacob Dolph's money and his two
+houses.
+
+For they stayed in the old house until 1822.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a close, hot night in the early summer; there was a thick, warm
+mist that turned now and then into a soft rain; yet every window in the
+Dolphs' house on State Street was closed.
+
+It had been a hideous day for New York. From early morning until long
+after dark had set in, the streets had been filled with frightened,
+disordered crowds. The city was again stricken with the old, inevitable,
+ever-recurring scourge of yellow fever, and the people had lost their
+heads. In every house, in every office and shop, there was hasty
+packing, mad confusion, and wild flight. It was only a question of
+getting out of town as best one might. Wagons and carts creaked and
+rumbled and rattled through every street, piled high with household
+chattels, up-heaped in blind haste. Women rode on the swaying loads, or
+walked beside with the smaller children in their arms. Men bore heavy
+burdens, and children helped according to their strength. There was
+only one idea, and that was flight--from a pestilence whose coming
+might have been prevented, and whose course could have been stayed. To
+most of these poor creatures the only haven seemed to be Greenwich
+Village; but some sought the scattered settlements above; some crossed
+to Hoboken; some to Bushwick; while others made a long journey to Staten
+Island, across the bay. And when they reached their goals, it was to beg
+or buy lodgings anywhere and anyhow; to sleep in cellars and garrets, in
+barns and stables.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The panic was not only among the poor and ignorant. Merchants were
+moving their offices, and even the Post Office and the Custom House
+were to be transferred to Greenwich. There were some who remained
+faithful throughout all, and who labored for the stricken, and whose
+names are not even written in the memory of their fellow-men. But the
+city had been so often ravaged before, that at the first sight there was
+one mere animal impulse of flight that seized upon all alike.
+
+At one o'clock, when some of the better streets had once more taken on
+their natural quiet, an ox-cart stood before the door of the Dolphs' old
+house. A little behind it stood the family carriage, its lamps unlit.
+The horses stirred uneasily, but the oxen waited in dull, indifferent
+patience. Presently the door opened, and two men came out and awkwardly
+bore a plain coffin to the cart. Then they mounted to the front of the
+cart, hiding between them a muffled lantern. They wore cloths over the
+lower part of their faces, and felt hats drawn low over their eyes.
+Something in their gait showed them to be seafaring men, or the like.
+
+Then out of the open door came Jacob Dolph, moving with a feeble shuffle
+between his son and his old negro coachman--this man and his wife the
+only faithful of all the servants. The young man put his father in the
+carriage, and the negro went back and locked the doors and brought the
+keys to his young master. He mounted to the box, and through the
+darkness could be seen a white towel tied around his arm--the old badge
+of servitude's mourning.
+
+The oxen were started up, and the two vehicles moved up into Broadway.
+They travelled with painful slowness; the horses had to be held in to
+keep them behind the cart, for the oxen could be only guided by the
+whip, and not by word of mouth. The old man moaned a little at the pace,
+and quivered when he heard the distant sound of hammers.
+
+"What is it?" he asked, nervously.
+
+"They are boarding up some of the streets," said his son; "do not fear,
+father. Everything is prepared; and if we make no noise, we shall not be
+troubled."
+
+"If we can only keep her out of the Potter's Field--the Potter's Field!"
+cried the father; "I'll thank God--I'll ask no more--I'll ask no more!"
+
+And then he broke down and cried a little, feebly, and got his son's
+hand in the darkness and put on his own shoulder.
+
+It was nearly two when they came to St. Paul's and turned the corner to
+the gate. It was dark below, but some frenzied fools were burning
+tar-barrels far down Ann Street, and the light flickered on the top of
+the church spire. They crossed the churchyard to where a shallow grave
+had been dug, half way down the hill. The men lowered the body into it;
+the old negro gave them a little _rouleau_ of coin, and they went
+hurriedly away into the night.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The clergyman came out by and by, with the sexton behind him. He stood
+high up above the grave, and drew his long cloak about him and lifted an
+old pomander-box to his face. He was not more foolish than his fellows;
+in that evil hour men took to charms and to saying of spells. Below the
+grave and apart, for the curse rested upon them, too, stood Jacob Dolph
+and his son, the old man leaning on the arm of the younger. Then the
+clergyman began to read the service for the burial of the dead, over
+the departed sister--and wife and mother. He spoke low; but his voice
+seemed to echo in the stillness. He came forward with a certain
+shrinking, and cast the handful of dust and ashes into the grave. When
+it was done, the sexton stepped forward and rapidly threw in the earth
+until he had filled the little hollow even with the ground. Then, with
+fearful precaution, he laid down the carefully cut sods, and smoothed
+them until there was no sign of what had been done. The clergyman turned
+to the two mourners, without moving nearer to them, and lifted up his
+hands. The old man tried to kneel; but his son held him up, for he was
+too feeble, and they bent their heads for a moment of silence. The
+clergyman went away as he had come; and Jacob Dolph and his son went
+back to the carriage. When his father was seated, young Jacob Dolph said
+to the coachman: "To the new house."
+
+The heavy coach swung into Broadway, and climbed up the hill out into
+the open country. There were lights still burning in the farmhouses,
+bright gleams to east and west, but the silence of the damp summer night
+hung over the sparse suburbs, and the darkness seemed to grow more
+intense as they drove away from the city. The trees by the roadside were
+almost black in the gray mist; the raw, moist smell of the night, the
+damp air, chilly upon the high land, came in through the carriage
+windows. Young Jacob looked out and noted their progress by familiar
+landmarks on the road; but the old man sat with his head bent on his new
+black stock.
+
+It was almost three, and the east was beginning to look dark, as though
+a storm were settling there in the grayness, when they turned down the
+straggling street and drew up before the great dark mass that was the
+new house. The carriage-wheels gritted against the loose stones at the
+edge of the roadway, and the great door of the house swung open. The
+light of one wavering candle-flame, held high above her head, fell on
+the black face of old Chloe, the coachman's wife. There were no candles
+burning on the high-pitched stairway; all was dark behind her in the
+empty house.
+
+Young Jacob Dolph helped his father to the ground, and between the young
+man and the negro old Jacob Dolph wearily climbed the steps. Chloe
+lifted her apron to her face, and turned to lead them up the stair. Her
+husband went out to his horses, shutting the door softly after him,
+between Jacob Dolph's old life and the new life that was to begin in the
+new house.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+When young Jacob Dolph came down to breakfast the next morning he found
+his father waiting for him in the breakfast-room. The meal was upon the
+table. Old Chloe stood with her black hands folded upon her white apron,
+and her pathetic negro eyes following the old gentleman as he moved
+wistfully about the room.
+
+Father and son shook hands in silence, and turned to the table. There
+were three chairs in their accustomed places. They hesitated a
+half-second, looking at the third great arm-chair, as though they waited
+for the mistress of the house to take her place. Then they sat down. It
+was six years before any one took that third chair, but every morning
+Jacob Dolph the elder made that little pause before he put himself at
+the foot of the table.
+
+On this first morning there was very little said and very little eaten.
+But when they had made an end of sitting at the table old Jacob Dolph
+said, with something almost like testiness in his husky voice:
+
+"Jacob, I want to sell the house."
+
+"Father!"
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"The old house, I mean; I shall never go back there."
+
+His son looked at him with a further inquiry. He felt a sudden new
+apprehension. The father sat back in his easy-chair, drumming on the
+arms with nervous fingers.
+
+"I shall never go back there," he said again.
+
+"Of course you know best, sir," said young Jacob, gently; "but would it
+be well to be precipitate? It is possible that you may feel differently
+some time----"
+
+"There is no 'some time' for me!" broke in the old man, gripping the
+chair-arms, fiercely; "my time's done--done, sir!"
+
+Then his voice broke and became plaintively kind.
+
+"There, there! Forgive me, Jacob, boy. But it's true, my boy, true. The
+world's done, for me; but there's a world ahead for you, my son, thank
+God! I'll be patient--I'll be patient. God has been good to me, and I
+haven't many years to wait, in the course of nature."
+
+He looked vacantly out of the window, trying to see the unforeseen with
+his mental sight.
+
+"While I'm here, Jacob, let the old man have his way. It's a whimsey; I
+doubt 'tis hardly rational. But I have no heart to go home. Let me learn
+to live my life here. 'Twill be easier."
+
+"But do you think it necessary to sell, sir? Could you not hold the
+house? Are you certain that you would like to have a stranger living
+there?"
+
+"I care not a pin who lives within those four walls now, sir!" cried the
+elder, with a momentary return of his vehemence. "It's no house to me
+now. Sell it, sir, sell it!--if there's any one will give money for it
+at a time like this. Bring every stick of furniture and every stitch of
+carpet up here; and let me have my way, Jacob--it won't be for long."
+
+He got up and went blindly out of the room, and his son heard him
+muttering, "Not for long--not for long, now," as he wandered about the
+house and went aimlessly into room after room.
+
+Old Jacob Dolph had always been an indulgent parent, and none kinder
+ever lived. But we should hardly call him indulgent to-day. Good as he
+was to his boy, it had always been with the goodness of a superior. It
+was the way of his time. A half-century ago the child's position was
+equivocal. He lived by the grace of God and his parents, and their duty
+to him was rather a duty to society, born of an abstract morality. Love
+was given him, not as a right, but as an indulgence. And young Jacob
+Dolph, in all his grief and anxiety, was guiltily conscious of a secret
+thrill of pleasure--natural enough, poor boy!--in his sudden elevation
+to the full dignity of manhood, and his father's abdication of the
+headship of the house.
+
+A little later in the day, urged again by the old gentleman, he put on
+his hat and went to see Abram Van Riper. Mr. Van Riper was now, despite
+his objections to the pernicious institution of country-houses, a near
+neighbor of the Dolphs. He had yielded, not to fashion, but to yellow
+fever, and at the very first of the outbreak had bought a house on the
+outskirts of Greenwich Village, and had moved there in unseemly haste.
+He had also registered an unnecessarily profane oath that he would never
+again live within the city limits.
+
+When young Jacob Dolph came in front of the low, hip-roofed house, whose
+lower story of undressed stone shone with fresh whitewash, Mr. Van Riper
+stood on his stoop and checked his guest at the front gate, a dozen
+yards away. From this distance he jabbed his big gold-headed cane toward
+the young man, as though to keep him off.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"Stay there, sir--you, sir, you Jacob Dolph!" he roared, brandishing the
+big stick. "Stand back, I tell you! Don't come in, sir! Good-day,
+sir--good-day, good-day, good-day!" (This hurried excursus was in
+deference to a sense of social duty.) "Keep away, confound you, keep
+away--consume your body, sir, stay where you are!"
+
+"I'm not coming any nearer, Mr. Van Riper," said Jacob Dolph, with a
+smile which he could not help.
+
+"I can't have you in here, sir," went on Mr. Van Riper, with no
+abatement of his agitation. "I don't want to be inhospitable; but I've
+got a wife and a son, sir, and you're infectious--damn it, sir, you're
+infectious!"
+
+"I'll stay where I am, Mr. Van Riper," said young Jacob, smiling again.
+"I only came with a message from my father."
+
+"With a what?" screamed Mr. Van Riper. "I can't have--oh, ay, a message!
+Well, say it then and be off, like a sensible youngster. Consume it,
+man, can't you talk farther out in the street?"
+
+When Mr. Van Riper learned his visitor's message, he flung his stick on
+the white pebbles of the clam-shell-bordered path, and swore that he,
+Van Riper, was the only sane man in a city of lunatics, and that if
+Jacob Dolph tried to carry out his plan he should be shipped
+straightway to Bloomingdale.
+
+But young Jacob had something of his father's patience, and, despite the
+publicity of the interview, he contrived to make Mr. Van Riper
+understand how matters stood. To tell the truth, Van Riper grew quite
+sober and manageable when he realized that his extravagant imputation of
+insanity was not so wide of the mark as it might have seemed, and that
+there was a possibility that his old friend's mind might be growing
+weak. He even ventured a little way down the path and permitted Jacob to
+come to the gate while they discussed the situation.
+
+"Poor old Dolph--poor old Jacob!" he groaned. "We must keep him out of
+the hands of the sharks, that we must!" He did not see young Jacob's
+irrepressible smile at this singular extension of metaphor. "He mustn't
+be allowed to sell that house in open market--never, sir! Confound it,
+I'll buy it myself before I'll see him fleeced!"
+
+In the end he agreed, on certain strict conditions of precaution, to see
+young Jacob the next day and discuss ways and means to save the
+property.
+
+"Come here, sir, at ten, and I'll see you in the sitting-room, and we'll
+find out what we can do for your father--curse it, it makes me feel bad;
+by gad, it does! Ten to-morrow, then--and come fumigated, young man,
+don't you forget that--come fumigated, sir!"
+
+It was Van Riper who bought the property at last. He paid eighteen
+thousand dollars for it. This was much less than its value; but it was
+more than any one else would have given just at that time, and it was
+all that Van Riper could afford. The transaction weighed on the
+purchaser's mind, however. He had bought the house solely out of
+kindness, at some momentary inconvenience to himself; and yet it looked
+as though he were taking advantage of his friend's weakness. Abram Van
+Riper was a man who cultivated a clear conscience, of a plain,
+old-fashioned sort, and the necessity for self-examination was novel and
+disagreeable to him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Life lived itself out at Jacob Dolph's new house whether he liked it or
+not. The furniture came up-town, and was somewhat awkwardly disposed
+about its new quarters; and in this unhomelike combination of two homes
+old Mr. Dolph sat himself down to finish his stint of life. He awoke
+each morning and found that twenty-four hours of sleep and waking lay
+before him, to be got through in their regular order, just as they were
+lived through by men who had an interest in living. He went to bed every
+night, and crossed off one from a tale of days of which he could not
+know the length.
+
+Of course his son, in some measure, saved his existence from emptiness.
+He was proud of young Jacob--fond and proud. He looked upon him as a
+prince of men, which he was, indeed. He trusted absolutely in the young
+man, and his trust was well placed. And he knew that his boy loved him.
+But he had an old man's sad consciousness that he was not necessary to
+Jacob--that he was an adjunct, at the best, not an integral part of this
+younger existence. He saw Jacob the younger gradually recovering from
+his grief for the mother who had left them; and he knew that even so
+would Jacob some day recover from grief when his father should have
+gone.
+
+He saw this; but it is doubtful if he felt it acutely. Nature was
+gradually dulling his sensibilities with that wonderful an�sthetic of
+hers, which is so much kinder to the patient than it is to his watching
+friends. After the first wild freak of selling the house, he showed, for
+a long time, no marked signs of mental impairment, beyond his lack of
+interest in the things which he had once cared about--even in the growth
+of the city he loved. And in a lonely and unoccupied man, sixty-five
+years of age, this was not unnatural. It was not unnatural, even, if now
+and then he was whimsical, and took odd fancies and prejudices. But
+nevertheless the work was going on within his brain, little by little,
+day by day.
+
+He settled his life into an almost mechanical routine, of which the most
+active part was his daily walk down into the city. At first he would not
+go beyond St. Paul's churchyard; but after awhile he began to take
+timorous strolls among the old business streets where his life had been
+passed. He would drop into the offices of his old friends, and would
+read the market reports with a pretence of great interest, and then he
+would fold up his spectacles and put them in their worn leather case,
+and walk slowly out. He was always pleased when one of the younger
+clerks bowed to him and said, "Good-day, Mr. Dolph!"
+
+[Illustration]
+
+It was in the fourth year of his widowhood that he bethought himself of
+young Jacob's need of a more liberal social life than he had been
+leading. The boy went about enough; he was a good deal of a beau, so
+his father heard; and there was no desirable house in the town that did
+not welcome handsome, amiable young Dolph. But he showed no signs of
+taking a wife unto himself, and in those days the bachelor had only a
+provisional status in society. He was expected to wed, and the whole
+circle of his friends chorused yearly a deeper regret for the lost
+sheep, as time made that detestable thing, an "old bachelor," of him.
+
+Young Jacob was receiving many courtesies and was making no adequate
+return. He felt it himself, but he was too tender of his father's
+changeless grief to urge him to open the great empty house to their
+friends. The father, however, felt that it was his duty to sacrifice his
+own desire for solitude, and, when the winter of 1825 brought home the
+city's wandering children--there were not so many of the wandering sort
+in 1825--he insisted that young Jacob should give a dinner to his
+friends among the gay young bachelors. That would be a beginning; and if
+all went well they would have an old maiden aunt from Philadelphia to
+spend the winter with them, and help them to give the dinner parties
+which do not encourage bachelorhood, but rather convert and reform the
+coy celibate.
+
+The news went rapidly through the town. The Dolph hospitality had been
+famous, and this was taken for a signal that the Dolph doors were to
+open again. There was great excitement in Hudson Street and St. John's
+Park. Maidens, bending over their tambour-frames, working secret hopes
+and aspirations in with their blossoming silks and worsted, blushed,
+with faint speculative smiles, as they thought of the vast social
+possibilities of the mistress of the grand Dolph house. Young bachelors,
+and old bachelors, too, rolled memories of the Dolph Madeira over
+longing tongues.
+
+The Dolph cellar, too, had been famous, and just at that period New
+Yorkers had a fine and fanciful taste in wine, if they had any
+self-respect whatever.
+
+I think it must have been about then that Mr. Dominick Lynch began his
+missionary labors among the smokers and drinkers of this city; he who
+bought a vineyard in France and the Vuelta Abajo plantations in Cuba,
+solely to teach the people of his beloved New York what was the
+positively proper thing in wines and cigars. If it was not then, it
+could not have been much later that Mr. Dolph had got accustomed to
+receiving, every now and then, an unordered and unexpected consignment
+of wines or Havana cigars, sent up from Little Dock Street--or what we
+call Water Street now, the lower end of it. And I am sure that he paid
+Mr. Lynch's bill with glowing pride; for Mr. Lynch extended the
+evangelizing hand of culture to none but those of pre-eminent social
+position.
+
+It was to be quite a large dinner; but it was noticeable that none of
+the young men who were invited had engagements of regrettable priority.
+
+Jacob Dolph the elder looked more interested in life than he had looked
+in four years when he stood on the hearthrug in the drawing-room and
+received his son's guests. He was a bold figure among all the young men,
+not only because he was tall and white-haired, and for the moment
+erect, and of a noble and gracious cast of countenance, but because he
+clung to his old style of dress--his knee-breeches and silk stockings,
+and his long coat, black, for this great occasion, but of the
+"shadbelly" pattern. He wore his high black stock, too, and his
+snow-white hair was gathered behind into a loose peruke.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The young men wore trousers, or pantaloons, as they mostly called them,
+strapped under their varnished boots. Their coats were cut like our
+dress-coats, if you can fancy them with a wild amplitude of collar and
+lapel. They wore large cravats and gaudy waistcoats, and two or three of
+them who had been too much in England came with shawls or rugs around
+their shoulders.
+
+They were a fashionable lot of people, and this was a late dinner, so
+they sat down at six o'clock in the great dining-room--not the little
+breakfast-room--with old Jacob Dolph at one end of the table and young
+Jacob Dolph at the other.
+
+It was a pleasant dinner, and the wine was good, and the company duly
+appreciative, although individually critical.
+
+Old Jacob Dolph had on his right an agreeable French count, just arrived
+in New York, who was creating a _furor_; and on his left was Mr. Philip
+Waters, the oldest of the young men, who, being thirty-five, had a
+certain consideration for old age. But old Jacob Dolph was not quite at
+his ease. He did not understand the remarkable decorum of the young men.
+He himself belonged to the age of "bumpers and no heel taps," and nobody
+at his board to-night seemed to care about drinking bumpers, even out
+of the poor, little, newfangled claret-glasses, that held only a
+thimbleful apiece. He had never known a lot of gentlemen, all by
+themselves, to be so discreet. Before the evening was over he became
+aware of the fact that he was the only man who was proposing toasts, and
+then he proposed them no more.
+
+Things had changed since he was a young buck, and gave bachelor parties.
+Why, he could remember seeing his own good father--an irreproachable
+gentleman, surely--lock the door of his dining-room on the inside--ay,
+at just such a dinner as this--and swear that no guest of his should go
+out of that room sober. And his word had been kept. Times were changing.
+He thought, somehow, that these young men needed more good port in their
+veins.
+
+Toward the end of the festivities he grew silent. He gave no more
+toasts, and drank no more bumpers, although he might safely have put
+another bottle or two under his broad waistcoat. But he leaned back in
+his chair, and rested one hand on the table, playing with his wineglass
+in an absent-minded way. There was a vague smile on his face; but every
+now and then he knit his heavy gray brows as if he were trying to work
+out some problem of memory. Mr. Philip Waters and the French count were
+talking across him; he had been in the conversation, but he had dropped
+out some time before. At last he rose, with his brows knit, and pulled
+out his huge watch, and looked at its face. Everybody turned toward him,
+and, at the other end of the table, his son half rose to his feet. He
+put the watch back in his pocket, and said, in his clear, deep voice:
+"Gentlemen, I think we will rejoin the ladies."
+
+There was a little impulsive stir around the table, and then he seemed
+to understand that he had wandered, and a frightened look came over his
+face. He tottered backward, and swayed from side to side. Mr. Philip
+Waters and the Frenchman had their arms behind him before he could fall,
+and in a second or two he had straightened himself up. He made a
+stately, tremulous apology for what he called his "infelicitous
+absence of mind," and then he marched off to bed by himself, suffering
+no one to go with him.
+
+[Illustration: And then he marched off to bed by himself, suffering no
+one to go with him.]
+
+A little while later in the evening, Mr. Philip Waters, walking down
+Broadway (which thoroughfare was getting to have a fairly suburban
+look), informed the French count that in his, Mr. Waters's, opinion,
+young Jacob Dolph would own that house before long.
+
+Young Jacob Dolph's father insisted on repetitions of the bachelor
+dinner, but he never again appeared in the great dining-room. When there
+was a stag party he took his own simple dinner at five o'clock and went
+to bed early, and lay awake until his son had dismissed the last mild
+reveller, and he could hear the light, firm, young footstep mounting the
+stairs to the bedroom door opposite his own.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That was practically the end of it for old Jacob Dolph. The maiden aunt,
+who had been invited, was notified that she could not come, for Mr.
+Dolph was not well enough to open his house that winter. But it was
+delicately intimated to her that if he grew worse she might still be
+sent for, and that alleviated her natural disappointment. She liked to
+give parties; but there is also a chastened joy for some people in being
+at the head of a house of mourning.
+
+Old Mr. Dolph grew no worse physically, except that he was inclined to
+make his daily walks shorter, and that he grew fonder of sitting at home
+in the little breakfast-room, where the sun shone almost all day long,
+and where Mrs. Dolph had once been fond of coming to sew. Her little
+square work-table of mahogany stood there still. There the old gentleman
+liked to dine, and often he dined alone. Young Jacob was in great demand
+all over town, and his father knew that he ought to go out and amuse
+himself. And the young man, although he was kind and loving, and never
+negligent in any office of respect or affection, had that strong youth
+in him which makes it impossible to sit every day of the week opposite
+an old man whose world had slipped by him, who knew nothing of youth
+except to love it and wonder at it.
+
+In the morning, before he went out for his daily tramp into town, old
+Jacob would say to young Jacob:
+
+"I suppose I shall see you at dinner, my boy?"
+
+And young Jacob would say, "Yes, sir," or "No, sir, I think not. Mrs.
+Des Anges was in town yesterday, and she asked me to ride up there
+to-day and dine. And Diana" (Diana was his big black mare) "needs a
+little work; she's getting badly out of condition. So, if it doesn't
+matter to you, sir, I'll just run up there and get back before the moon
+sets."
+
+And the father would answer that it didn't matter, and would send his
+best respects, through Mrs. Des Anges at King's Bridge, to Madam Des
+Anges at New Rochelle; and at night he would sit down alone to his
+dinner in the breakfast-room, served by old Chloe, who did her humble
+best to tempt his appetite, which was likely to be feeble when Master
+Jacob was away.
+
+Master Jacob had taken to riding to King's Bridge of late. Sometimes he
+would start out early in the morning, just about the time when young
+Van Riper was plodding by on his way to the shop. Young Van Riper liked
+to be at the shop an hour earlier than his father. Old Mr. Dolph was
+always up, on these occasions, to see his son start off. He loved to
+look at the boy, in his English riding-boots and breeches, astride of
+black Diana, who pranced and curvetted up the unpaved road. Young Jacob
+had her well in hand, but he gave her her head and let her play until
+they reached Broadway, where he made her strike a rattling regular pace
+until they got well up the road; and then she might walk up Bloomingdale
+way or across to Hickory Lane.
+
+If he went up by the east he was likely to dismount at a place which you
+can see now, a little west and south of McComb's Dam Bridge, where there
+is a bit of a rocky hollow, and a sort of horizontal cleft in the rocks
+that has been called a cave, and a water-washed stone above, whose oddly
+shaped depression is called an Indian's footprint. He would stop there,
+because right in that hollow, as I can tell you myself, grew, in his
+time as in mine, the first of the spring flowers. It was full of violets
+once, carpeted fairly with the pale, delicate petals.
+
+And up toward the west, on a bridle-path between the hills and the
+river, as you came toward Fort Washington, going to Tubby Hook--we are
+refined nowadays, and Tubby Hook is "Inwood"--Heaven help it!--there
+were wonderful flowers in the woods. The wind-flowers came there early,
+nestling under the gray rocks that sparkled with garnets; and there
+bloomed great bunches of Dutchman's-breeches--not the thin sprays that
+come in the late New England spring, but huge clumps that two men could
+not enclose with linked hands; great masses of scarlet and purple,
+and--mostly--of a waxy white, with something deathlike in their
+translucent beauty. There, also, he would wade into the swamps around a
+certain little creek, lured by a hope of the jack-in-the-pulpit, to find
+only the odorous and disappointing skunk-cabbage. And there the woods
+were full of the aroma of sassafras, and of birch tapped by the earliest
+woodpecker, whose drumming throbbed through the young man's deep and
+tender musing.
+
+And--strange enough for a young man who rides only to exercise his black
+mare--he never came out of those woods without an armful of columbine or
+the like. And--strange enough for any young man in this world of strange
+things--when he sat down at the table of Mrs. Des Anges, in her pleasant
+house near Harlem Creek, Miss Aline Des Anges wore a bunch of those
+columbines at her throat. Miss Aline Des Anges was a slim girl, not very
+tall, with great dark eyes that followed some people with a patient
+wistfulness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One afternoon, in May of 1827, young Jacob found his father in the
+breakfast-room, and said to him:
+
+"Father, I am going to marry Aline Des Anges."
+
+His father, who had been dozing in the sun by the south window, raised
+his eyes to his son's face with a kindly, blank look, and said,
+thoughtfully:
+
+"Des Anges. That's a good family, Jacob, and a wonderful woman, Madam
+Des Anges. Is she alive yet?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Madam Des Anges, eighty years old, and strong and well, heard of
+this, she said:
+
+"It is the etiquette of France that one family should make the
+proposition to the other family. Under the circumstances _I_ will be the
+family that proposes. I will make a precedent. The Des Anges make
+precedents."
+
+And she rode down to the Dolph house in the family carriage--the last
+time it ever went out--and made her "proposition" to Jacob Dolph the
+elder, and he brightened up most wonderfully, until you would have
+thought him quite his old self, and he told her what an honor he
+esteemed the alliance, and paid her compliments a hundred words long.
+
+And in May of the next year, King's Bridge being out of the question,
+and etiquette being waived at the universal demand of society, the young
+couple stood up in the drawing-room of the Dolph house to be wed.
+
+The ceremony was fashionably late--seven o'clock in the evening. And
+after it was over, and the young couple had digested what St. Paul had
+to say about the ordinance of wedlock, and had inaudibly promised to do
+and be whatever the domine required of them, they were led by the
+half-dozen groomsmen to the long glass between the front windows, and
+made to stand up there, with their faces toward the company, and to
+receive the congratulations of a mighty procession of friends, who all
+used the same formulas, except the very old ones, who were delicately
+indelicate.
+
+The bridegroom wore a blue coat and trousers, and a white satin
+waistcoat embroidered with silver-thread roses and lilies-of-the-valley.
+The coat was lined with cream-colored satin, quilted in a most elaborate
+pattern; and his necktie was of satin, too, with embroidered ends. His
+shirt was a miracle of fine linen. As to the bride, she was in white
+satin and lace, and at her throat she wore a little bunch of late white
+columbines, for which Mr. Jacob Dolph the younger had scoured the woods
+near Fort Washington.
+
+There was to be a grand supper, later; and the time of waiting was
+filled up with fashionable conversation.
+
+That dear old doctor, who was then a dear young doctor, and whose fine
+snow-crowned face stood in later years as an outward and visible sign of
+all that was brave, kindly, self-sacrificing, and benevolent in the art
+of healing, was seated by Madam Des Anges, and was telling her, in
+stately phrase, suited to his auditor, of a certain case of heroism with
+which he had met in the course of his practice. Mr. Blank, it appeared,
+had been bitten by a dog that was supposed to be possessed by the
+rabies. For months he had suffered the agonies of mental suspense and of
+repeated cauterizing of the flesh, and during those months had concealed
+his case from his wife, that he might spare her pain--suffering in
+silence enough to unnerve most men.
+
+"It was heroic," said Dr. F.
+
+Madam Des Anges bowed her gray head approvingly.
+
+"I think," she said, "his conduct shows him to be a man of taste. Had he
+informed his wife of his condition, she might have experienced the most
+annoying solicitude; and I am informed that she is a person of feeble
+character."
+
+The doctor looked at her, and then down at the floor; and then he asked
+her if she did not hope that Almaviva Lynch would bring Garcia back
+again, with that marvellous Italian opera, which, as he justly observed,
+captivated the eye, charmed the ear, and awakened the profoundest
+emotions of the heart.
+
+And at that Madam Des Anges showed some animation, and responded that
+she had listened to some pleasing operas in Paris; but she did not know
+that they were of Italian origin.
+
+But if Madam Des Anges was surprised to learn that any good thing could
+come out of any other country than France, there was another surprise in
+store for her, and it did not long impend.
+
+It was only a little while after this that her grandson-in-law, finding
+her on his right and Abram Van Riper on his left--he had served out his
+time as a statue in front of the mirror--thought it proper to introduce
+to Madam Des Anges his father's old friend, Mr. Van Riper. Mr. Van
+Riper bowed as low as his waistcoat would allow, and courteously
+observed that the honor then accorded him he had enjoyed earlier in the
+evening through the kind offices of Mr. Jacob Dolph, senior.
+
+Madam Des Anges dandled her quizzing-glass as though she meant to put it
+up to her eye, and said, in a weary way:
+
+"Mr.--ah--Van Riper must pardon me. I have not the power of remembering
+faces that some people appear to have; and my eyes--my eyes are not
+strong."
+
+Old Van Riper stared at her, and he turned a turkey-cock purple all over
+his face, down to the double chin that hung over his white neckerchief.
+
+"If your ladyship has to buy spectacles," he sputtered, "it needn't be
+on my account."
+
+And he stamped off to the sideboard and tried to cool his red-hot rage
+with potations of Jamaica rum. There his wife found him. She had drawn
+near when she saw him talking with the great Madam Des Anges, and she
+had heard, as she stood hard by and smiled unobtrusively, the end of
+that brief conversation. Her face, too, was flushed--a more fiery red
+than her flame-colored satin dress.
+
+She attacked him in a vehement whisper.
+
+"Van Riper, what are you doing? I'd almost believe you'd had too much
+liquor, if I didn't know you hadn't had a drop. Will you ever learn what
+gentility is? D'ye want us to live and die like toads in a hole? Here
+you are with your ill manners, offending Madam Des Anges, that everybody
+knows is the best of the best, and there's an end of all likelihood of
+ever seeing her and her folks, and two nieces unmarried and as good
+girls as ever was, and such a connection for your son, who hasn't been
+out of the house it's now twelve months--except to this very wedding
+here, and you've no thought of your family when once you lose that
+mighty fine temper of yours, that you're so prodigious proud of; and
+where you'll end us, Van Riper, is more than I know, I vow."
+
+But all she could get out of Van Riper was:
+
+"The old harridan! She'll remember my name this year or two to come,
+I'll warrant ye!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was all over at last, and old black Julius, who had been acting as a
+combination of link-boy and major-domo at the foot of the front steps,
+extinguished his lantern, and went to bed, some time before a little
+white figure stole up the stairs and slipped into a door that
+Chloe--black Chloe--held open.
+
+And the next day Jacob Dolph the elder handed the young bride into the
+new travelling-carriage with his stateliest grace, and Mr. and Mrs.
+Jacob Dolph, junior, rolled proudly up the road, through Bloomingdale,
+and across King's Bridge--stopping for luncheon at the Des Anges
+house--over to New Rochelle, where the feminine head of the house of Des
+Anges received them at her broad front door, and where they had the
+largest room in her large, old-fashioned house, for one night. Madam Des
+Anges wished to keep them longer, and was authoritative about it. But
+young Jacob settled the question of supremacy then and there, with the
+utmost courtesy, and Madam Des Anges, being great enough to know that
+she was beaten, sent off the victor on the morrow, with his trembling
+accomplice by his side, and wished them _bon voyage_ as heartily as she
+possibly could.
+
+So they started afresh on their bridal tour, and very soon the
+travelling carriage struck the old Queen Anne's Road, and reached
+Yonkers. And there, and from there up to Fishkill, they passed from one
+country-house to another, bright particular stars at this dinner and at
+that supper, staying a day here and a night there, and having just the
+sort of sociable, public, restless, rattling good time that neither of
+them wanted.
+
+At every country-house where they stayed a day they were pressed to stay
+a week, and always the whole neighborhood was routed out to pay them
+social tribute. The neighbors came in by all manner of conveyances. One
+family of aristocrats started at six o'clock in the morning, and
+travelled fourteen miles down the river in an ox-cart, the ladies
+sitting bolt upright, with their hair elaborately dressed for the
+evening's entertainment. And once a regular assembly ball was given in
+their honor, at a town-hall, the use of which was granted for the
+purpose specified by unanimous vote of the town council. Of course,
+they had a very good time; but then there are various sorts of good
+times. Perhaps they might have selected another sort for themselves.
+
+There is a story that, on their way back, they put up for several days
+at a poor little hostelry under the hills below Peekskill, and spent
+their time in wandering through the woods and picking wild-flowers; but
+it lacks confirmation, and I should be sorry to believe that two
+well-brought-up young people would prefer their own society to the
+unlimited hospitality of their friends in the country.
+
+Old Jacob Dolph, at home, had the great house all to himself; and,
+although black Chloe took excellent care of his material comforts, he
+was restless and troubled. He took most pleasure in a London almanac, on
+whose smudgy pages he checked off the days. Letters came as often as the
+steamboat arrived from Albany, and he read them, after his fashion. It
+took him half the week to get through one missive, and by that time
+another had arrived. But I fear he did not make much out of them.
+Still, they gave him one pleasure. He endorsed them carefully with the
+name of the writer, and the date of receipt, and then he laid them away
+in his desk, as neatly as he had filed his business letters in his old
+days of active life.
+
+Every night he had a candle alight in the hallway; and if there were a
+far-off rumble of carriage-wheels late at night, he would rise from his
+bed--he was a light sleeper, in his age--and steal out into the
+corridor, hugging his dressing-robe about him, to peer anxiously down
+over the balusters till the last sound and the last faint hope of his
+son's return had died away.
+
+And, indeed, it was late in July when the travelling-carriage once more
+drew up in front of the Dolph house, and old Julius opened the door, and
+old Mr. Dolph welcomed them, and told them that he had been very lonely
+in their absence, and that their mother--and then he remembered that
+their mother was dead, and went into the house with his head bowed low.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+
+St. John's Park and Hudson Street and all well-bred New York, for that
+matter, had its fill of the Dolph hospitality the next winter. It was
+dinner and ball and rout and merry-making of one sort or another, the
+season through. The great family sleighs and the little bachelor sleighs
+whirred and jingled up to the Dolph door surely two, and sometimes four,
+evenings in every week, and whirred and jingled away again at intensely
+fashionable hours, such as plain folk used for sleeping.
+
+They woke up Abram Van Riper, did the revellers northward bound to
+country houses on the river-side, and, lying deep in his feather-bed, he
+directed his rumbling imprecations at the panes of glass, that sparkled
+with frost in the mild moonlight.
+
+  "Oh, come, maidens, come, o'er the blue, rolling wave,
+   The lovely should still be the care of the brave--
+   Trancadillo, trancadillo, trancadillo, dillo, dillo, dillo!"
+
+sang the misguided slaves of fashion, as they sped out of hearing.
+
+"Trancadillo!" rumbled Mr. Van Riper. "I'd like to trancadillo them,
+consume 'em!" and then he cursed his old friend's social circle for a
+parcel of trumpery fools; and Mrs. Van Riper, lying by his side, sighed
+softly with chastened regret and hopeless aspiration.
+
+But everybody else--everybody who was anybody--blessed the Dolphs and
+the Dolphs' cellar, and their man-servant and their maid-servant, and
+their roasted ox and their saddle of venison, and the distinguished
+stranger who was within their gates; and young Mrs. Dolph was made as
+welcome as she made others.
+
+For the little girl with the great dark eyes took to all this giddiness
+as naturally as possible--after her quiet fashion. The dark eyes
+sparkled with subdued pleasure that had no mean pride in it when she sat
+at the head of her great mahogany table, and smiled at the double row of
+bright faces that hemmed in the gorgeous display of the Dolph silver and
+china and fine linen. And it was wonderful how charming were the famous
+Des Anges manners, when they were softened and sweetened by so much
+grace and beauty.
+
+"Who would have thought she had it in her?" said the young ladies down
+in St. John's Park. "You remember her, don't you, what a shy little slip
+of a thing she was when we were at old Dumesnil's together? Who was it
+used to say that she had had the life grandmothered out of her?"
+
+"Fine little creature, that wife of Dolph's," said the young men as they
+strolled about in Niblo's Garden. "Dolph wouldn't have had the road all
+to himself if that old dragon of a grandmother had given the girl half a
+chance. 'Gad, she's an old grenadier! They say that Dolph had to put her
+through her facings the day after he was married, and that he did it in
+uncommon fine style, too."
+
+"He's a lucky devil, that Dolph," the younger ones would sigh. "Nothing
+to do, all the money he wants, pretty wife, and the best wine in New
+York! I wish _my_ old man would cut the shop and try to get an education
+in wine."
+
+Their devotion to the frivolities of fashion notwithstanding, the young
+Dolphs were a loving, and, in a way, a domestic couple. Of course,
+everybody they knew had to give them a dinner or a ball, or pay them
+some such social tribute, and there were a myriad calls to be received
+and returned; but they found time for retired communings, even for long
+drives in the sleigh which, many a time in young Jacob Dolph's bachelor
+days, had borne the young man and a female companion--not always the
+same companion, either--up the Bloomingdale Road. And in the confidences
+of those early days young Jacob learned what his gentle little wife told
+him--without herself realizing the pathos of it--the story of her
+crushed, unchildlike youth, loveless till he came, her prince, her
+deliverer. Dolph understood it; he had known, of course, that she could
+not have been happy under the _r�gime_ of Madam Des Anges; but when he
+heard the simple tale in all its monotonous detail, and saw spread out
+before him this poor young life, with its thousand little
+disappointments, submissions, abnegations, and undeserved punishments
+and needless restrictions, a generous rage glowed in his heart, and
+perhaps sprang once in a while to his indiscreet lips; and out of this
+grew a deeper and maturer tenderness than his honeymoon love for the
+sweet little soul that he had at first sought only for the dark eyes
+through which it looked out upon its joyless world.
+
+It is unwise to speak in profane language, it is injudicious to speak
+disrespectfully of old age, yet the Recording Angel, if he did not see
+fit to let a tear fall upon the page, perchance found it convenient to
+be mending his pen when young Jacob Dolph once uttered certain words
+that made his wife cry out:
+
+"Oh, Jacob, don't, _please_ don't. She didn't mean it!"
+
+This is only a supposition. Perhaps Madam Des Anges really had meant
+well. But oh, how much happier this world would be if all the people who
+"mean well" and do ill would only take to meaning ill and doing well!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Jacob Dolph the elder took but a doubtful part in all the festivities.
+The cloud that had hung dimly over him had begun to show little rifts;
+but the dark masses between the rifts were thicker and heavier than
+ever. It was the last brief convulsive struggle of the patient against
+the power of the an�sthetic, when the nervous hand goes up to put the
+cloth away from the mouth, just before the work is done and
+consciousness slips utterly away, and life is no more for the sufferer,
+though his heart beat and the breath be warm between his lips.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+When he was bright he was almost like his old self, and these delusive
+periods came oftenest when he met some old friend, or in quiet morning
+hours when his daughter--so he always called her--sat at his feet in the
+sunny breakfast-room, and sewed and listened, or perhaps read to him
+from Scott's latest novel.
+
+He may have had some faint sub-consciousness of his condition, for
+although he took the deepest interest in the balls and the dinners, he
+would never appear before his son's guests except when he was at his
+best and brightest. But he loved to sit, withdrawn in a corner, watching
+the young life that fluttered through the great rooms, smiling to
+himself, and gently pleased if some old crony sought him out and talked
+of old times--the older the times were, the better he remembered them.
+Indeed, he now recalled some things that he had not thought of since his
+far-off boyhood.
+
+In truth, the younger Dolphs often had small heart in their festal
+doings. But the medical science of the day, positive, self-satisfied,
+and blinded by all manner of tradition, gave them, through its
+ministers, cruelly false hopes of the old man's ultimate recovery.
+Besides, they could not well order things otherwise. The extravagant
+hospitality of the day demanded such ceremonial, and to have abated any
+part of it would only have served to grieve and to alarm the object of
+their care.
+
+The whole business was a constant pride and joy to old Mr. Jacob Dolph.
+When there was a dinner to be given, he would follow Aline as she went
+about the house superintending the preparations of her servants, in her
+flowered apron of black silk, with her bunch of keys--honest keys,
+those, a good four inches long, with tongues as big as a
+domino--jingling at her side. He would himself overlook the making ready
+of the wines, and give oft-repeated instructions as to the proper
+temperature for the port, and see that the champagne was put on ice in
+the huge octagonal cellaret in the dining-room corner. And when all was
+ready, as like as not he would kiss Aline on the forehead, and say:
+
+"I have a headache to-night, my dear, and I think I shall take my dinner
+in my room."
+
+[Illustration: "Mons'us gran' dinneh, Seh!"]
+
+And he would go feebly up stairs, and when old Julius, who always waited
+upon him, brought up his tray, he would ask:
+
+"Is it a fine dinner, Julius? Did everybody come?"
+
+And Julius would invariably reply, with profound African dignity:
+
+"Mons'us gran' dinneh, seh! 'E fines' dinneh I eveh witness', seh! I
+have stood behin' you' chai', seh, this thutty y'ah, an' I neveh see no
+such a gran' dinneh, Misteh Do'ph, seh!"
+
+"Except the dinner we gave Mr. Hamilton; in State Street, Julius," the
+old man would put in.
+
+"_Ex_cep' that, seh," Julius would gravely reply: "_that_ was a
+pol-litical dinneh, seh; an', _of_ co'se, a pol'litical dinneh--" an
+expressive pause--"but this he' is sho'ly a mons'us fine dinneh, seh."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+His bodily vigor was unimpaired, however, and except that his times of
+entire mental clearness grew fewer and briefer as the months went on,
+there was little change in the old gentleman when the spring of 1829
+came. He was not insane, he was not idiotic, even at the worst. It
+seemed to be simply a premature old age that clouded his faculties. He
+forgot many things, he was weakly absent-minded, often he did not
+recognize a familiar face, and he seemed ever more and more disinclined
+to think and to talk. He liked best to sit in silence, seemingly
+unconscious of the world about him; and if he was aroused from his
+dreamy trance, his wandering speech would show that his last
+thought--and it might have entered his mind hours before, at the
+suggestion of some special event--was so far back in the past that it
+dealt with matters beyond his son's knowledge.
+
+He was allowed to do as he pleased, for in the common affairs of daily
+life he seemed to be able to care for himself, and he plaintively
+resented anything that looked like guardianship. So he kept up his
+custom of walking down into the city, at least as far as St. Paul's. It
+was thought to be safe enough, for he was a familiar figure in the town,
+and had friends at every turn.
+
+But one afternoon he did not return in time for dinner. Young Jacob was
+out for his afternoon ride, which that day had taken him in the
+direction of the good doctor's house. And when he had reached the house,
+he found the doctor likewise mounted for a ride. The doctor was going up
+to Bond Street--the Dolphs' quarter was growing fashionable already--to
+look at a house near Broadway that he had some thoughts of buying, for
+he was to be married the coming winter. So they had ridden back
+together, and after a long examination of the house, young Jacob had
+ridden off for a gallop through the country lanes; and it was five
+o'clock, and dinner was on the table, when he came to his father's house
+and learned from tearful Aline that his father was missing.
+
+The horse was at the stable door when young Jacob mounted him once more
+and galloped off to Bond Street, where he found the doctor just ready to
+turn down the Bowery; and they joined forces and hurried back, and down
+Broadway, inquiring of the people who sat on their front stoops--it was
+a late spring evening, warm and fair--if they had seen old Mr. Dolph
+that day.
+
+Many had seen him as he went down; but no one could remember that the
+old gentleman had come back over his accustomed path. At St. Paul's, the
+sexton thought that Mr. Dolph had prolonged his walk down the street.
+Further on, some boys had seen him, still going southward. The searchers
+stopped at one or two of the houses where he might have called; but
+there was no trace of him. It was long since old Jacob Dolph had made a
+formal call.
+
+But at Bowling Green they were hailed by Mr. Philip Waters, who came
+toward them with more excitement in his mien than a young man of good
+society often exhibited.
+
+"I was going for a carriage, Dolph," he said: "your father is down there
+in the Battery Park, and I'm afraid--I'm afraid he's had a stroke of
+paralysis."
+
+They hurried down, and found him lying on the grass, his head on the lap
+of a dark-skinned, ear-ringed Spanish sailor. He had been seen to fall
+from the bench near by, another maritime man in the crowd about him
+explained.
+
+"It was only a minit or two ago," said the honest seafarer, swelled with
+the importance that belongs to the narrator of a tale of accident and
+disaster. "He was a-settin' there, had been for two hours 'most, just
+a-starin' at them houses over there, and all of a sudden chuck forward
+he went, right on his face. And then a man come along that knowed him,
+and said he'd go for a kerridge, or I'd 'a' took him on my sloop--she's
+a-layin' here now, with onions from Weathersfield--and treated him
+well; I see he wa'n't no disrespectable character. Here, Pedro, them's
+the old man's folks--let 'em take him. A-settin' there nigh on two
+hours, he was, just a-studyin' them houses. B'long near here?"
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Young Jacob had no words for the Connecticut captain. Waters had
+arrived, with somebody's carriage, confiscated on the highway, and they
+gently lifted up the old gentleman and set off homeward. They were just
+in time, for Waters had been the earliest of the evening promenaders to
+reach the Battery. It was dinner hour--or supper hour for many--and the
+park was given up to the lounging sailors from the river-side streets.
+
+The doctor's face was dark.
+
+"No, it is not paralysis," he said. "Let us proceed at once to your own
+home, Mr. Dolph. In view of what I am now inclined to consider his
+condition, I think it would be the most advisable course."
+
+He was as precise and exact in his speech, even then, as he was later
+on, when years had given an innocent, genial pomposity to his delivery
+of his rounded sentences.
+
+They put old Jacob Dolph to bed in the room which he had always
+occupied, in his married as in his widowed days. He never spoke again;
+that day, indeed, he hardly moved. But on the next he stirred uneasily,
+as though he were striving to change his position. The doctor bled him,
+and they shifted him as best they could, but he seemed no more
+comfortable. So the doctor bled him again; and even that did no good.
+
+About sunset, Aline, who had watched over him with hardly a moment's
+rest, left the room for a quarter of an hour, to listen to what the
+doctors had to say--there were four of them in the drawing-room below.
+When she and her husband entered the sick-room again, the old man had
+moved in his bed. He was lying on his side, his face to the windows that
+looked southward, and he had raised himself a little on his arm. There
+was a troubled gaze in his eyes, as of one who strains to see something
+that is unaccountably missing from his sight. He turned his head a
+little, as though to listen. Thus gazing, with an inward and spiritual
+vision only, at the bay that his eyes might never again see, and
+listening to the waves whose cadence he should hear no more, the
+troubled look faded into one of inscrutable peace, and he sank back into
+the hollow of his son's arm and passed away.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next time that the doctor was in the house it was of a snowy night a
+few days after New Year's Day. It was half-past two o'clock in the
+morning, and Jacob Dolph--no longer Jacob Dolph the younger--had been
+pacing furiously up and down the long dining-room--that being the
+longest room in the house--when the doctor came down stairs, and
+addressed him with his usual unruffled precision:
+
+"I will request of you, Dolph, a large glass of port. I need not suggest
+to you that it is unnecessary to stint the measure, for the hospitality
+of this house is----"
+
+"How is she, doctor? For God's sake, tell me--is she--is she----"
+
+"The hospitality of this house is prover--" the precise doctor
+recommenced.
+
+"Damn the hospitality!" cried Jacob Dolph: "I mean--oh, doctor--tell
+me--is anything wrong?"
+
+"Should I request of you the cup of amity and geniality, Mr. Dolph, were
+there cause for anything save rejoicing in this house?" demanded the
+physician, with amiable severity. "I had thought that my words would
+have conveyed----"
+
+"It's all over?"
+
+"And bravely over!" And the doctor nodded his head with a dignified
+cheerfulness.
+
+"And may I go to her?"
+
+"You may, sir, after you have given me my glass of port. But remember,
+sir----"
+
+Dolph turned to the sideboard, grasped a bottle and a glass, and thrust
+them into the doctor's hand, and started for the door.
+
+"But remember, sir," went on the unperturbed physician, "you must not
+agitate or excite her. A gentle step, a tranquil tone, and a cheerful
+and encouraging address, brief and affectionate, will be all that is
+permitted."
+
+Dolph listened in mad impatience, and was over the threshold before the
+doctor's peremptory call brought him back.
+
+"What is it now?" he demanded, impatiently.
+
+The doctor looked at him with a gaze of wonder and reproach.
+
+"It is a male child, sir," he said.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Jacob Dolph crept up the stairs on tiptoe. As he paused for a moment in
+front of a door at the head, he heard the weak, spasmodic wail of
+another Dolph.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"There's no help for it--I've got to do it," said Jacob Dolph.
+
+It was another wintry morning, just after breakfast. The snow was on the
+ground, and the sleigh-bells up in Broadway sent down a faint jingling.
+Ten winters had come and gone, and Mr. Dolph was as comfortably stout as
+a man should be who is well fed and forty. He stood with his back to the
+fire, pulling at his whiskers--which formed what was earlier known as a
+Newgate collar--with his right thumb and forefinger. His left thumb was
+stuck in the armhole of his flowered satin waistcoat, black and shiny.
+
+Opposite him sat a man of his own age, clean-shaven and sharp-featured.
+He had calm, somewhat cold, gray eyes, a deliberate, self-contained
+manner of speaking, and a pallid, dry complexion that suited with his
+thin features. His dress was plain, although it was thoroughly neat. He
+had no flowered satin waistcoat; but something in his bearing told you
+that he was a man who had no anxiety about the narrow things of the
+counting-room; who had no need to ask himself how much money was coming
+in to-morrow. And at the same time you felt that every cent of whatever
+might be to-morrow's dues would find its way to his hands as surely as
+the representative figures stood on his ledger's page. It was young Mr.
+Van Riper--but he, too, had lost his right to that title, not only
+because of his years, but because, in the garret of the house in
+Greenwich Village, a cobweb stretched from one of the low beams to the
+head of old Abram Van Riper's great walking-stick, which stood in the
+corner where it had been placed, with other rubbish, the day after Abram
+Van Riper's funeral.
+
+"I should not advise it, Dolph, if it can be helped," Mr. Van Riper
+observed, thoughtfully.
+
+"It can't be helped."
+
+"I can give you your price, of course," Van Riper went on, with
+deliberation; "but equally of course, it won't be anything like what the
+property will bring in the course of a few years."
+
+Dolph kicked at the hearthrug, as he answered, somewhat testily:
+
+"I'm not making a speculation of it."
+
+Mr. Van Riper was unmoved.
+
+"And I'm not making a speculation of you, either," he said, calmly: "I
+am speaking only for your own benefit, Dolph."
+
+Mr. Dolph put his hands in his pockets, strode to the window and back
+again, and then said, with an uneasy little laugh:
+
+"I beg your pardon, Van Riper; you're quite right, of course. The fact
+is, I've got to do it. I must have the money, and I must have it now."
+
+Mr. Van Riper stroked his sharp chin.
+
+"Is it necessary to raise the money in that particular way? You are
+temporarily embarrassed--I don't wish to be intrusive--but why not
+borrow what you need, and give me a mortgage on the house?"
+
+Ten years had given Jacob Dolph a certain floridity; but at this he
+blushed a hot red.
+
+"Mortgage on the house? No, sir," he said, with emphasis.
+
+"Well, any other security, then," was Van Riper's indifferent amendment.
+
+Again Jacob Dolph strode to the window and back again, staring hard at
+the carpet, and knitting his brows.
+
+Mr. Van Riper waited in undisturbed calm until his friend spoke once
+more.
+
+"I might as well tell you the truth, Van Riper," he said, at last;
+"I've made a fool of myself. I've lost money, and I've got to pocket the
+loss. As to borrowing, I've borrowed all I ought to borrow. I _won't_
+mortgage the house. This sale simply represents the hole in my capital."
+
+Something like a look of surprise came into Mr. Van Riper's wintry eyes.
+
+"It's none of my business, of course," he observed; "but if you haven't
+any objection to telling me----"
+
+"What did it? What does for everybody nowadays? Western lands and Wall
+Street--that's about the whole story. Oh, yes, I know--I ought to have
+kept out of it. But I didn't. I was nothing better than a fool at such
+business. I'm properly punished."
+
+He sighed as he stood on the hearthrug, his hands under his coat-tails,
+and his head hanging down. He looked as though many other thoughts were
+going through his mind than those which he expressed.
+
+"I wish," he began again, "that my poor old father had brought me up to
+business ways. I might have kept out of it all. College is a good thing
+for a man, of course; but college doesn't teach you how to buy lots in
+western cities--especially when the western cities aren't built."
+
+"College teaches you a good many other things, though," said Van Riper,
+frowning slightly, as he put the tips of his long fingers together; "I
+wish I'd had your chance, Dolph. _My_ boy shall go to Columbia, that's
+certain."
+
+"_Your_ boy?" queried Dolph, raising his eyebrows.
+
+Van Riper smiled.
+
+"Yes," he said, "my boy. You didn't know I had a boy, did you? He's
+nearly a year old."
+
+This made Mr. Jacob Dolph kick at the rug once more, and scowl a little.
+
+"I'm afraid I haven't been very neighborly, Van Riper--" he began; but
+the other interrupted him, smiling good-naturedly.
+
+"You and I go different ways, Dolph," he said. "We're plain folks over
+in Greenwich Village, and you--you're a man of fashion."
+
+Jacob Dolph smiled--not very mirthfully. Van Riper's gaze travelled
+around the room, quietly curious.
+
+"It costs money to be a man of fashion, doesn't it?"
+
+"Yes," said Dolph, "it does."
+
+There was silence for a minute, which Van Riper broke.
+
+"If you've got to sell, Dolph, why, it's a pity; but I'll take it. I'll
+see Ogden to-day, and we can finish the business whenever you wish. But
+in my opinion, you'd do better to borrow."
+
+Dolph shook his head.
+
+"I've been quite enough of a fool," he replied.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Van Riper, rising, "I must get to the office. You'll
+hear from Ogden to-morrow. I'm sorry you've got in such a snarl; but--"
+his lips stretched into something like a smile--"I suppose you'll know
+better next time. Good-day."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After Mr. Dolph had bowed his guest to the door, Mrs. Dolph slipped down
+the stairs and into the drawing-room.
+
+"Did he take it?" she asked.
+
+"Of course he took it," Dolph answered, bitterly, "at that price."
+
+"Did he say anything," she inquired again, "about its being hard for us
+to--to sell it?"
+
+"He said we had better not sell it now--that it would bring more a few
+years hence."
+
+"He doesn't understand," said Mrs. Dolph.
+
+"He _couldn't_ understand," said Mr. Dolph.
+
+Then she went over to him and kissed him.
+
+"It's only selling the garden, after all," she said; "it isn't like
+selling our home."
+
+He put his arm about her waist, and they walked into the breakfast-room,
+and looked out on the garden which to-morrow would be theirs no longer,
+and in a few months would not be a garden at all.
+
+High walls hemmed it in--the walls of the houses which had grown up
+around them. A few stalks stood up out of the snow, the stalks of
+old-fashioned flowers--hollyhock and larkspur and Job's-tears and the
+like--and the lines of the beds were defined by the tiny hedges of box,
+with the white snow-powder sifted into their dark, shiny green. The
+bare rose-bushes were there, with their spikes of thorns, and little
+mounds of snow showed where the glories of the poppy-bed had bloomed.
+
+Jacob Dolph, looking out, saw the clear summer sunlight lying where the
+snow lay now. He saw his mother moving about the paths, cutting a flower
+here and a bud there. He saw himself, a little boy in brave breeches,
+following her about, and looking for the harmless toads, and working
+each one into one of the wonderful legends which he had heard from the
+old German gardener across the way. He saw his father, too, pacing those
+paths of summer evenings, when the hollyhocks nodded their pink heads,
+and glancing up, from time to time, at his mother as she sat knitting at
+that very window. And, last of all in the line, yet first in his mind,
+he saw his wife tripping out in the fresh morning, to smile on the
+flowers she loved, to linger lovingly over the beds of verbena, and to
+pick the little nosegay that stood by the side of the tall coffee-urn at
+every summer-morning breakfast.
+
+And the wife, looking out by his side, saw that splendid boy of theirs
+running over path and bed, glad of the flowers and the air and the
+freedom, full of young life and boyish sprightliness, his long hair
+floating behind him, the light of hope and youth in his bright face.
+
+And to-morrow it would be Van Riper's; and very soon there would be
+houses there, to close up the friendly window which had seen so much,
+which had let so much innocent joy and gladness into the old
+breakfast-room; and there would be an end of flower-bordered paths and
+nodding hollyhocks. She put her face upon her husband's shoulder, and
+cried a little, though he pretended not to know it. When she lifted it,
+somehow she had got her eyes dry, though they were painfully bright and
+large.
+
+"It isn't like selling our house," she said.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+
+Jacob Dolph got out of the Broadway stage at Bowling Green, followed by
+Eustace Dolph. Eustace Dolph at twenty-two was no more like his father
+than his patrician name was like simple and scriptural Jacob. The elder
+Dolph was a personable man, certainly; a handsome man, even, who looked
+to be nearer forty than fifty-two; and he was well dressed--perhaps a
+trifle out of the mode--and carried himself with a certain genial
+dignity, and with the lightness of a man who has not forgotten that he
+has been a buck in his time. But Eustace was distinctly and unmistakably
+a dandy. There are superficial differences, of course, between the dandy
+of 1852 and the dandy of 1887; but the structural foundation of all
+types of dandy is the same through all ages. Back of the clothes--back
+of the ruffles, or the bright neckcloth, or the high pickardil--which
+may vary with the time or the individual, you will ever find clearly
+displayed to your eyes the obvious and unmistakable spiritual reason
+for and cause of the dandy--and it is always self-assertion pushed
+beyond the bounds of self-respect.
+
+Now, as a matter of fact, young Eustace's garments were not really worse
+than many a man has worn from simple, honest bad taste. To be sure, the
+checked pattern of his trousers was for size like the design of a prison
+grating; he had a coat so blue that it shimmered in the sunlight; his
+necktie was of purple satin, and fearfully and wonderfully made and
+fringed, and decked with gems fastened by little gold chains to other
+inferior guardian gems; and his waistcoat was confected of satin and
+velvet and damask all at once; yet you might have put all these things
+on his father, and, although the effect would not have been pleasant,
+you would never have called the elder gentleman a dandy. In other words,
+it was why young Eustace wore his raiment that made it dandified, and
+not the inherent gorgeousness of the raiment itself.
+
+The exchange of attire might readily have been made, so far as the size
+of the two men was concerned. But only in size were they alike. There
+was nothing of the Dolph in Eustace's face. He bore, indeed, a strong
+resemblance to his maternal great-grandmother, now many years put away
+where she could no longer trouble the wicked, and where she had to let
+the weary be at rest. (And how poor little Aline had wept and wailed
+over that death, and lamented that she had not been more dutiful as a
+child!) But his face was not strong, as the face of Madam Des Anges had
+been. Some strain of a weaker ancestry reappeared in it, and, so to
+speak, changed the key of the expression. What had been pride in the old
+lady bordered on superciliousness in the young man. What had been
+sternness became a mere haughtiness. Yet it was a handsome face, and
+pleasant, too, when the young smile came across it, and you saw the
+white small teeth and the bright, intelligent light in the dark eyes.
+
+The two men strolled through the Battery, and then up South Street, and
+so around through Old Slip. They were on business; but this was also a
+pleasure trip to the elder. He walked doubly in spirit through those
+old streets--a boy by his father's side, a father with his son at his
+elbow. He had not been often in the region of late years. You remember,
+he was a man of pleasure. He was one of the first-fruits of metropolitan
+growth and social culture. His father had made an idler and _dilettante_
+of him. It was only half a life at best, he thought, happy as he had
+been; blessed as he was in wife and child. He was going to make a
+business man of his own boy. After all, it was through the workers that
+great cities grew. Perhaps we were not ripe yet for that European
+institution, the idler. He himself had certain accomplishments that
+other Americans had not. He could _fl�ner_, for instance. But to have to
+_fl�ner_ through fifty or sixty or seventy years palled on the spirit,
+he found. And one thing was certain, if any Dolph was ever to be an
+accomplished _fl�neur_, and to devote his whole life to that occupation,
+the Dolph fortune must be vastly increased. Old Jacob Dolph had
+miscalculated. The sum he had left in 1829 might have done very well for
+the time, but it was no fortune to idle on among the fashionables of
+1852.
+
+Something of this Mr. Dolph told his son; but the young man, although he
+listened with respectful attention, appeared not to take a deep interest
+in his father's reminiscences. Jacob Dolph fancied even that Eustace did
+not care to be reminded of the city's day of small things. Perhaps he
+had something of the feeling of the successful struggler who tries to
+forget the shabbiness of the past. If this were the case, his pride must
+have been chafed, for his father was eloquent in displaying the powers
+of an uncommonly fine memory; and he had to hear all about the slips,
+and the Fly Market, and the gradual extension of the water-front, and
+the piles on which the old Tontine was built, and the cucumber-wood
+pipes of the old water-company, still lying under their feet. Once, at
+least, he showed a genuine enjoyment of his father's discourse, and that
+was when it ran on the great retinue of servants in which Jacob Dolph
+the elder had indulged himself. I think he was actually pleased when he
+heard that his grandfather had at one time kept slaves.
+
+Wandering in this way, to the running accompaniment of Mr. Dolph's
+lecture, they came to Water Street, and here, as though he were reminded
+of the object of their trip, the father summed up his reminiscences in
+shape for a neat moral.
+
+"The city grows, you see, my boy, and we've got to grow with it. I've
+stood still; but you sha'n't."
+
+"Well, governor," said the younger man, "I'll be frank with you. I don't
+like the prospect."
+
+"You will--you will, my boy. You'll live to thank me."
+
+"Very likely you're right, sir; I don't deny it; but, as I say, I don't
+like the prospect. I don't see--with all due respect, sir--how any
+gentleman can _like_ trade. It may be necessary, and of course I don't
+think it's lowering, or any of that nonsense, you know; but it can't be
+_pleasant_. Of course, if _your_ governor had to do it, it was all
+right; but I don't believe he liked it any better than I should, or he
+wouldn't have been so anxious to keep you out of it."
+
+"My poor father made a great mistake, Eustace. He would admit it now,
+I'm sure, if he were alive."
+
+"Well, sir, I'm going to try it, of course. I'll give it a fair trial.
+But when the two years are up, sir, as we agreed, I hope you won't say
+anything against my going into the law, or--well, yes--" he colored a
+little--"trying what I can do on the Street. I know what you think about
+it, sir," he went on, hastily; "but there are two sides to the question,
+and it's my opinion that, for an intelligent man, there's more money to
+be made up there in Wall Street in one year than can be got out of
+haggling over merchandise for a lifetime."
+
+Jacob Dolph grew red in the face and shook his head vigorously.
+
+"Don't speak of it, sir, don't speak of it!" he said, vehemently. "It's
+the curse of the country. If you have any such infernal opinions, don't
+vent them in my presence, sir. I know what I am talking about. Keep
+clear of Wall Street, sir. It is the straight road to perdition."
+
+They entered one of a row of broad-fronted buildings of notable severity
+and simplicity of architecture. Four square stone columns upheld its
+brick front, and on one of these faded gilt letters, on a ground of
+dingy black, said simply:
+
+    ABRAM VAN RIPER'S SON.
+
+There was no further announcement of Abram Van Riper's Son's character,
+or of the nature of his business. It was assumed that all people knew
+who Abram Van Riper's Son was, and that his (Abram Van Riper's)
+ship-chandlery trade had long before grown into a great "commission
+merchant's" business.
+
+It was full summer, and there were no doors between the pillars to bar
+entrance to the gloomy cavern behind them, which stretched in
+semi-darkness the whole length and width of the building, save for a
+narrow strip at the rear, where, behind a windowed partition, clerks
+were writing at high desks, and where there was an inner and more
+secluded pen for Abram Van Riper's son.
+
+In the front of the cave, to one side, was a hoistway, where bales and
+boxes were drawn up from the cellar or swung twisting and twirling to
+the lofts above. Amidships the place was strewn with small tubs,
+matting-covered bales and boxes, coils of bright new rope, and
+odd-looking packages of a hundred sorts, all of them with gaping wounds
+in their envelopes, or otherwise having their pristine integrity
+wounded. From this it was not difficult to guess that these were samples
+of merchandise. Most of them gave forth odors upon the air, odors
+ranging from the purely aromatic, suggestive of Oriental fancies or
+tropic dreams of spice, to the positively offensive--the latter
+varieties predominating.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+But certain objects upon a long table were so peculiar in appearance
+that the visitors could not pass them by with a mere glance of wonder.
+They looked like small leather pies, badly warped in the baking. A clerk
+in his shirt sleeves, with his straw hat on one side of his head,
+whistled as he cut into these, revealing a livid interior, the color of
+half-cooked veal, which he inspected with care. Eustace was moved to
+positive curiosity.
+
+"What are they?" he inquired of the clerk, pride mingling with disgust
+in his tone, as he caught a smell like unto the smell which might arise
+from raw smoked salmon that had lain three days in the sun.
+
+"Central American," responded the clerk, with brevity, and resumed his
+whistling of
+
+  "My name is Jake Keyser, I was born in Spring Garden;
+     To make me a preacher my father did try."
+
+"Central American _what_?" pursued the inquirer.
+
+"_Rubber!_" said the clerk, with a scorn so deep and far beyond
+expression that the combined pride of the Dolphs and the Des Anges
+wilted into silence for the moment. As they went on toward the rear
+office, while the clerk gayly whistled the notes of
+
+  "It's no use a-blowing, for I am a hard 'un--
+     I'm bound to be a butcher, by heavens, or die!"
+
+Eustace recovered sufficiently to demand of his father:
+
+"I say, sir, shall I have to handle that damned stuff?"
+
+"Hush!" said his senior; "here's Mr. Van Riper."
+
+Mr. Van Riper came to the office door to welcome them, with his thin
+face set in the form of a smile.
+
+"Ah!" he said, "here's the young man, is he? Fine big fellow, Dolph.
+Well, sir, so you are going to embrace a mercantile career, are you?
+That's what they call it in these fine days, Dolph."
+
+"I am going to try to, sir," replied the young man.
+
+"He will, Van Riper," put in his father, hastily; "he'll like it as soon
+as he gets used to it--I know he will."
+
+"Well," returned Mr. Van Riper, with an attempt at facetious geniality,
+"we'll try to get his nose down to the grindstone, we will. Come into my
+office with me, Dolph, and I'll hand this young gentleman over to old
+Mr. Daw. Mr. Daw will feel his teeth--eh, Mr. Daw?--see what he
+_doesn't_ know--how's that, Mr. Daw? You remember Mr. Daw, Dolph--used
+to be with your father before he went out of business--been with us ever
+since. Let's see, how long is that, Daw? Most fifty years, ain't it?"
+
+[Illustration: "Looks like his father," was Mr. Daw's comment.]
+
+Mr. Daw, who looked as though he might have been one hundred years at
+the business, wheeled around and descended with stiff deliberation from
+his high stool, holding his pen in his mouth as he solemnly shook hands
+with Jacob Dolph, and peered into his face. Then he took the pen out of
+his mouth.
+
+"Looks like his father," was Mr. Daw's comment. "Forty-five years the
+twenty-ninth of this month, sir. You was a little shaver then. I
+remember you comin' into the store and whittlin' timber with your little
+jack-knife. I was only eleven years with your father, sir--eleven years
+and six months--went to him when I was fourteen years old. That's
+fifty-six years and six months in the service of two of the best houses
+that ever was in New York--an' I can do my work with any two young
+shavers in the town--ain't missed a day in nineteen years now. Your
+father hadn't never ought to have gone out of business, Mr. Dolph. He
+did a great business for those days, and he had the makin' of a big
+house. Goin' to bring your boy up like a good New York merchant, hey?
+Come along here with me, young man, and I'll see if you're half the man
+your grandfather was. He hadn't never ought to have given up business,
+Mr. Dolph. But he was all for pleasuring an' the play-houses, an' havin'
+fine times. Come along, young man. What's your name?"
+
+"Eustace Dolph."
+
+"Hm! Jacob's better."
+
+And he led the neophyte away.
+
+"Curious old case," said Mr. Van Riper, dryly. "Best accountant in New
+York. See that high stool of his?--can't get him off it. Five years ago
+I gave him a low desk and an arm-chair. In one week he was back again,
+roosting up there. Said he didn't feel comfortable with his feet on the
+ground. He thought that sort of thing might do for aged people, but _he_
+wasn't made of cotton-batting."
+
+Thus began Eustace Dolph's apprenticeship to business, and mightily ill
+he liked it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There came a day, a winter day in 1854, when there was great agitation
+among what were then called the real old families of New York. I cannot
+use the term "fashionable society," because that is more comprehensive,
+and would include many wealthy and ambitious families from New England,
+who were decidedly not of the Dolphs' set. And then, the Dolphs could
+hardly be reckoned among the leaders of fashion. To live on or near the
+boundaries of fashion's domain is to lower your social status below the
+absolute pitch of perfection, and fashion in 1854 drew the line pretty
+sharply at Bleecker Street. Above Bleecker Street the cream of the cream
+rose to the surface; below, you were ranked as skim milk. The social
+world was spreading up into the wastes sacred to the circus and the
+market-garden, although, if Admiral Farragut had stood on his sea-legs
+where he stands now, he might have had a fairly clear view of Chelsea
+Village, and seen Alonzo Cushman II., or Alonzo Cushman III., perhaps,
+going around and collecting his rents.
+
+But the old families still fought the tide of trade, many of them
+neck-deep and very uncomfortable. They would not go from St. John's
+Park, nor from North Moore and Grand Streets. They had not the
+_bourgeois_ conservatism of the Greenwich Villagers, which has held them
+in a solid phalanx almost to this very day; but still, in a way, they
+resented the up-town movement, and resisted it. So that when they did
+have to buy lots in the high-numbered streets they had to pay a fine
+price for them.
+
+It was this social party that was stirred by a bit of scandal about the
+Dolphs. I do not know why I should call it scandal; yet I am sure
+society so held it. For did not society whisper it, and nod and wink
+over it, and tell it in dark corners, and chuckle, and lift its
+multitudinous hands and its myriad eyebrows, and say in innumerable
+keys: "Well, _upon_ my word!" and "Well, I _should_ think----!" and "Who
+would _ever_ have thought of such a thing?" and the like? Did not
+society make very funny jokes about it, and did not society's
+professional gossips get many an invitation to dinner because they
+professed to have authentic details of the way Mr. and Mrs. Dolph looked
+when they spoke about it, and just what they had to say for themselves?
+
+And yet it was nothing more than this, that Mr. Dolph being fifty-four,
+and his wife but a few years younger, were about to give to the world
+another Dolph. It was odd, I admit; it was unusual; if I must go so far,
+it was, I suppose, unconventional. But I don't see that it was necessary
+for Mr. Philip Waters to make an epigram about it. It was a very clever
+epigram; but if you had seen dear old Mrs. Dolph, with her rosy cheeks
+and the gray in her hair, knitting baby-clothes with hands which were
+still white and plump and comely, while great dark eyes looked
+timorously into the doubtful, fear-clouded future, I think you would
+have been ashamed that you had even listened to that epigram.
+
+The expected event was of special and personal interest to only three
+people--for, after all, when you think of it, it was not exactly
+society's business--and it affected them in widely different ways.
+
+Jacob Dolph was all tenderness to his wife, and all sympathy with her
+fears, with her nervous apprehensions, even with her morbid forebodings
+of impossible ills. He did not repine at the seclusion which the
+situation forced upon them, although his life for years had been given
+up to society's demands, until pleasure-seeking and pleasure-giving had
+grown into a routine, which occupied his whole mind. His wife saw him
+more than she had for many years. Clubs and card-parties had few
+temptations for him now; he sat at home and read to her and talked to
+her, and did his best to follow the injunctions of the doctor, and
+"create and preserve in her a spirit of cheerful and hopeful
+tranquillity, free of unnecessary apprehension."
+
+But when he _did_ go to the club, when he was in male society, his
+breast expanded, and if he had to answer a polite inquiry as to Mrs.
+Dolph's general health, I am afraid that he responded: "Mrs. Dolph is
+extremely well, sir, extremely well!" with a pride which the moralists
+will tell you is baseless, unworthy, and unreasonable.
+
+As for Aline herself, no one may know what timorous hopes stirred in her
+bosom and charmed the years away, and brought back to her a lovely youth
+that was almost girlish in its innocent, half-frightened gladness.
+Outside, this great, wise, eminently proper world that she lived in
+girded at the old woman who was to bear a child, and laughed behind
+tasselled fans, and made wondrous merry over Nature's work; but within
+the old house she sat, and sewed upon the baby-clothes, or, wandering
+from cupboard to cupboard, found the yellowing garments, laid away more
+than a score of years before--the poor little lace-decked trifles that
+her first boy had worn; and she thanked heaven, in her humble way, that
+twenty-four years had not taken the love and joy of a wife and a mother
+out of her heart.
+
+She could not find all her boy's dresses and toys, for she was
+open-handed, and had given many of them away to people who needed them.
+This brought about an odd encounter. The third person who had a special
+interest in the prospect of the birth of a Dolph was young Eustace, and
+he found nothing in it wherewith to be pleased. For Eustace Dolph was of
+the ultra-fashionables. He cared less for old family than for new ideas,
+and he did not let himself fall behind in the march of social progress,
+even though he was, as he admitted with humility born of pride, only a
+poor devil of a down-town clerk. If his days were occupied, he had his
+nights to himself, and he lengthened them to suit himself. At first this
+caused his mother to fret a little; but poor Aline had come into her
+present world from the conventional seclusion of King's Bridge, and her
+only authority on questions of masculine license was her husband. He,
+being appealed to, had to admit that his own hours in youth had been
+late, and that he supposed the hours of a newer generation should
+properly be later still. Mr. Dolph forgot, perhaps, that while his early
+potations had been vinous, those of the later age were distinctly
+spirituous; and that the early morning cocktail and the midnight
+brandy-and-soda were abominations unknown to his own well-bred youth.
+With port and sherry and good Bordeaux he had been familiar all his
+life; a dash of _liqueur_ after dinner did not trouble his digestion; he
+found a bottle of champagne a pleasant appetizer and a gentle stimulant;
+but whiskey and gin were to him the drinks of the vulgar; and rum and
+brandy stood on his sideboard only to please fiercer tastes than his
+own. Perhaps, also, he was ignorant of the temptations that assail a
+young man in a great city, he who had grown up in such a little one that
+he had at one time known every one who was worth knowing in it.
+
+However this may have been, Eustace Dolph ruled for himself his going
+out and his coming in. He went further, and chose his own associates,
+not always from among the scions of the "old families." He found those
+excellent young men "slow," and he selected for his own private circle a
+set which was mixed as to origin and unanimously frivolous as to
+tendency. The foreign element was strongly represented. Bright young
+Irishmen of excellent families, and mysterious French and Italian counts
+and marquises, borrowed many of the good gold dollars of the Dolphs,
+and forgot to return an equivalent in the local currency of the
+O'Reagans of Castle Reagan, or the D'Arcy de Montmorenci, or the
+Montescudi di Bajocchi. Among this set there was much merry-making when
+the news from the Dolph household sifted down to them from the
+gossip-sieve of the best society. They could not very well chaff young
+Dolph openly, for he was muscular and high-tempered, and, under the most
+agreeable conditions, needed a fight of some sort every six months or
+so, and liked a bit of trouble in between fights. But a good deal of low
+and malicious humor came his way, from one source or another, and he,
+with the hot and concentrated egotism of youth, thought that he was in a
+ridiculous and trying position, and chafed over it.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+There had been innuendos and hints and glancing allusions, but no one
+had dared to make any direct assault of wit, until one evening young
+Haskins came into the club "a little flushed with wine." (The "wine" was
+brandy.) It seems that young Haskins had found at home an ivory rattle
+which had belonged to Eustace twenty years before, and which Mrs. Dolph
+had given to Mrs. Haskins when Eustace enlarged his horizon in the
+matter of toys.
+
+Haskins, being, as I have said, somewhat flushed with brandy, came up to
+young Dolph, who was smoking in the window, and meditating with frowning
+brows, and said to him:
+
+"Here, Dolph, I've done with this. You'd better take it back--it may be
+wanted down your way."
+
+There was a scene. Fortunately, two men were standing just behind Dolph,
+who were able to throw their arms about him, and hold him back for a few
+seconds. There would have been further consequences, however, if it had
+not been that Eustace was in the act of throwing the rattle back at
+Haskins when the two men caught him. Thus the toy went wide of its mark,
+and fell in the lap of Philip Waters, who, old as he was, generally
+chose to be in the company of the young men at the club; and then
+Philip Waters did something that almost atones, I think, for the
+epigram.
+
+He looked at the date on the rattle, and then he rose up and went
+between the two young men, and spoke to Haskins.
+
+"Young man," he said, "when Mrs. Jacob Dolph gave your mother this
+thing, your father had just failed for the second time in three years.
+He had come to New York about five years before from Hartford, or
+Providence, or--Succotash, or whatever his confounded town was. Mr.
+Jacob Dolph got Mr. Van Riper to give your father an extension on his
+note, or he would have gone to the debtors' prison down by the City
+Hall. As it was, he had to sell his house, and the coat off his back,
+for all I know. If it hadn't been for the Dolphs, devil the rattle you'd
+have had, and you wouldn't have been living in Bond Street to-day."
+
+[Illustration: "If it hadn't been for the Dolphs, devil the rattle you'd
+have had."]
+
+After which Mr. Philip Waters sat down and read the evening paper; and
+when young Haskins was able to speak he asked young Dolph's pardon, and
+got it--at least, a formal assurance that he had it.
+
+The baby was born in the spring, and everybody said she was the image of
+her mother.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There will come a day, it may be, when advancing civilization will
+civilize sleighing out of existence, as far as New York is concerned.
+Year after year the days grow fewer that will let a cutter slip up
+beyond the farthest of the "road-houses" and cross the line into
+Westchester. People say that the climate is changing; but close
+observers recognize a sympathy between the decrease of snow-storms and
+the increase of refinement--that is, a sympathy in inverse ratio; a
+balanced progress in opposite directions. As we grow further and further
+beyond even old-world standards of polite convention, as we formalize
+and super-formalize our codes, and steadily eliminate every element of
+amusement from our amusements, Nature in strict conformity represses her
+joyous exuberance. The snow-storm of the past is gone, because the great
+public sleigh that held twenty-odd merry-makers in a shell like a circus
+band-wagon has gone out of fashion among all classes. Now we have,
+during severe winters, just enough snow from time to time to bear the
+light sleigh of the young man who, being in good society, is also horsy.
+When _he_ finds the road vulgar, the poor plebeian souls who go
+sleighing for the sport of it may sell their red and blue vehicles, for
+Nature, the sycophant of fashion, will snow no more.
+
+But they had "good old-fashioned" snow-storms eighty years after the
+Declaration of Independence, and one had fallen upon New York that
+tempted Mrs. Jacob Dolph to leave her baby, ten months old, in the
+nurse's charge, and go out with her husband in the great family sleigh
+for what might be the last ride of the season.
+
+They had been far up the road--to Arcularius's, maybe, there swinging
+around and whirling back. They had flown down the long country road, and
+back into the city, to meet--it was early in the day--the great
+procession of sleighing folk streaming northward up Broadway. It was one
+of New York's great, irregular, chance-set carnivals, and every sleigh
+was out, from the "exquisite's" gilded chariot, a shell hardly larger
+than a fair-sized easy-chair, to the square, low-hung red sledge of the
+butcher-boy, who braved it with the fashionables, his _Schneider_-made
+clothes on his burly form, and his girl by his side, in her best Bowery
+bonnet. Everybody was a-sleighing. The jingle of countless bells fell on
+the crisp air in a sort of broken rhythm--a rude _tempo rubato_. It was
+fashionable then. But we--we amuse ourselves less boisterously.
+
+They drew up at the door of the Dolph house, and Jacob Dolph lifted his
+wife out of the sleigh, and carried her up the steps into the
+breakfast-room, and set her down in her easy-chair. He was bending over
+her to ask her if her ride had done her good, when a servant entered and
+handed him a letter marked "Immediate."
+
+He read it, and all the color of the winter's day faded out of his face.
+
+"I've got to go down to Van Riper's," he said, "at once; he wants me."
+
+"Has anything happened to--to Eustace?" his wife cried out.
+
+"He doesn't say so--I suppose--I suppose it's only business of some
+sort," her husband said. His face was white. "Don't detain me, dear.
+I'll come back as soon as--as soon as I get through."
+
+He kissed her, and was gone. Half an hour later he sat in the office of
+Abram Van Riper's Son.
+
+There was no doubting it, no denying it, no palliating it even. The
+curse had come upon the house of Jacob Dolph, and his son was a thief
+and a fugitive.
+
+It was an old story and a simple story. It was the story of the
+Haskins's million and the Dolphs' hundred thousand; it was the story of
+the boy with a hundred thousand in prospect trying to spend money
+against the boy with a million in sight. It was the story of cards,
+speculation--another name for that sort of gambling which is worse than
+any on the green cloth--and what is euphemistically known as wine.
+
+There was enough oral and documentary evidence to make the whole story
+hideously clear to Jacob Dolph, as he sat in that dark little pen of Van
+Riper's and had the history of his son's fall spelled out to him, word
+by word. The boy had proved himself apt and clever in his office work.
+His education had given him an advantage over all the other clerks, and
+he had learned his duties with wonderful ease. And when, six months
+before, old Mr. Daw had let himself down from his stool for the last
+time, and had muffled up his thin old throat in his great green worsted
+scarf, and had gone home to die, young Dolph had been put temporarily in
+his place. In those six months he had done his bad work. Even Van Riper
+admitted that it must have been a sudden temptation. But--he had
+yielded. In those six months fifty thousand dollars of Abram Van Riper's
+money had gone into the gulf that yawned in Wall Street; fifty thousand
+dollars, not acquired by falsifying the books, but filched outright from
+the private safe to which he had access; fifty thousand dollars, in
+securities which he had turned into money, acting as the confidential
+man of the house.
+
+When Jacob Dolph, looking like a man of eighty, left the private office
+of Mr. Van Riper he had two things to do. One was to tell his wife, the
+other was to assign enough property to Van Riper to cover the amount of
+the defalcation. Both had been done before night.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+
+It is to be said for society that there was very little chuckling and
+smiling when this fresh piece of news about the Dolphs came out. Nor did
+the news pass from house to house like wildfire. It rather leaked out
+here and there, percolating through barriers of friendly silence,
+slipping from discreet lips and repeated in anxious confidence, with all
+manner of qualifications and hopeful suppositions and suggestions. As a
+matter of fact, people never really knew just what Eustace Dolph had
+done, or how far his wrong-doing had carried him. All that was ever
+positively known was that the boy had got into trouble down-town, and
+had gone to Europe. The exact nature of the trouble could only be
+conjectured. The very brokers who had been the instruments of young
+Dolph's ruin were not able to separate his authorized speculations from
+those which were illegitimate. They could do no more than guess, from
+what they knew of Van Riper's conservative method of investment, that
+the young man's unfortunate purchases were made for himself, and they
+figured these at fifty-five thousand odd hundred dollars.
+
+Somebody, who looked up the deed which Jacob Dolph executed that winter
+day, found that he had transferred to Van Riper real estate of more than
+that value.
+
+No word ever came from the cold lips of Abram Van Riper's son; and his
+office was a piece of all but perfect machinery, which dared not creak
+when he commanded silence. And no one save Van Riper and Dolph, and
+their two lawyers, knew the whole truth. Dolph never even spoke about it
+to his wife, after that first night. It was these five people only who
+knew that Mr. Jacob Dolph had parted with the last bit of real estate
+that he owned, outside of his own home, and they knew that his other
+property was of a doubtful sort, that could yield at the best only a
+very limited income--hardly enough for a man who lived in so great a
+house, and whose doors were open to all his friends nine months in the
+year.
+
+Yet he stayed there, and grew old with an age which the years have not
+among their gifts. When his little girl was large enough to sit upon his
+knee, her small hands clutched at a snowy-white mustache, and she
+complained that his great, dark, hollow eyes never would look "right
+into hers, away down deep." Yet he loved her, and talked more to her
+perhaps than to any one else, not even excepting Aline.
+
+But he never spoke to her of the elder brother whom she could not
+remember. It was her mother who whispered something of the story to her,
+and told her not to let papa know that she knew of it, for it would
+grieve him. Aline herself knew nothing about the boy save that he lived,
+and lived a criminal. Jacob himself could only have told her that their
+son was a wandering adventurer, known as a blackleg and sharper in every
+town in Europe.
+
+The doors of the great house were closed to all the world, or opened
+only for some old friend, who went away very soon out of the presence of
+a sadness beyond all solace of words, or kindly look, or hand-clasp. And
+so, in something that only the grace of their gentle lives relieved
+from absolute poverty, those three dwelt in the old house, and let the
+world slip by them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was no sleep for any one of the little household in the great
+house on the night of the 14th of July, 1863. Doors and blinds were
+closed; only a light shone through the half-open slats at a second-story
+window, and in that room Aline lay sick, almost unto death, her white
+hair loosed from its usual dainty neatness, her dark eyes turning with
+an unmeaning gaze from the face of the little girl at her side to the
+face of her husband at the foot of her bed. Her hands, wrinkled and
+small, groped over the coverlet, with nervous twitchings, as every now
+and then the howls or the pistol-shots of the mob in the streets below
+them fell on her ear. And at every such movement the lips of the girl by
+her pillow twitched in piteous sympathy. About half-past twelve there
+was sharp firing in volleys to the southward of them, that threw the
+half-conscious sufferer into an agony of supersensitive disturbance.
+Then there came a silence that seemed unnaturally deep, yet it was only
+the silence of a summer night in the deserted city streets.
+
+Through it they heard, sharp and sudden, with something inexplicably
+fearful about it, the patter of running feet. They had heard that sound
+often enough that night and the night before; but these feet stopped at
+their own door, and came up the steps, and the runner beat and pounded
+on the heavy panels.
+
+Father and child looked in each other's eyes, and then Jacob Dolph left
+his post at the foot of the bed, and, passing out of the room, went down
+the stairs with deliberate tread, and opened the door.
+
+A negro's face, almost gray in its mad fear, stared into his with a
+desperate appeal which the lips could not utter. Dolph drew the man in,
+and shut the door behind him. The negro leaned, trembling and exhausted,
+against the wall.
+
+"I knowed you'd take me in, Mist' Dolph," he panted; "I'm feared they
+seen me, though--they was mighty clost behind."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+They were close behind him, indeed. In half a minute the roar of the
+mob filled the street with one terrible howl and shriek of animal rage,
+heard high above the tramp of half a thousand feet; and the beasts of
+disorder, gathered from all the city's holes and dens of crime, wild for
+rapine and outrage, burst upon them, sweeping up the steps, hammering at
+the great doors, crying for the blood of the helpless and the
+innocent.
+
+[Illustration: "Have you got a nigger here?"]
+
+Foreign faces, almost all! Irish, mostly; but there were heavy, ignorant
+German types of feature uplifted under the gas-light; sallow,
+black-mustached Magyar faces; thin, acute, French faces--all with the
+stamp of old-world ignorance and vice upon them.
+
+The door opened, and the white-haired old gentleman, erect, haughty,
+with brightening eyes, faced the leader of the mob--a great fellow,
+black-bearded, who had a space to himself on the stoop, and swung his
+broad shoulders from side to side.
+
+"Have you got a nigger here?" he began, and then stopped short, for
+Jacob Dolph was looking upon the face of his son.
+
+Vagabond and outcast, he had the vagabond's quick wit, this leader of
+infuriate crime, and some one good impulse stirred in him of his
+forfeited gentlehood. He turned savagely upon his followers.
+
+"He ain't here!" he roared. "I told you so--I saw him turn the corner."
+
+"Shtap an' burrn the bondholder's house!" yelled a man behind. Eustace
+Dolph turned round with a furious, threatening gesture.
+
+"You damned fool!" he thundered; "he's no bondholder--he's one of _us_.
+Go on, I tell you! Will you let that nigger get away?"
+
+He half drove them down the steps. The old man stepped out, his face
+aflame under his white hair, his whole frame quivering.
+
+"You lie, sir!" he cried; but his voice was drowned in the howl of the
+mob as it swept around the corner, forgetting all things else in the
+madness of its hideous chase.
+
+When Jacob Dolph returned to his wife's chamber, her feeble gaze was
+lifted to the ceiling. At the sound of his footsteps she let it fall
+dimly upon his face. He was thankful that, in that last moment of
+doubtful quickening, she could not read his eyes; and she passed away,
+smiling sweetly, one of her white old hands in his, and one in her
+child's.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Age takes small account of the immediate flight of time. To the young, a
+year is a mighty span. Be it a happy or an unhappy year that youth
+looks forward to, it is a vista that stretches far into the future. And
+when it is done, this interminable year, and youth, just twelve months
+older, looks back to the first of it, what a long way off it is! What
+tremendous progress we have made! How much more we know! How
+insufficient are the standards by which we measured the world a poor
+three hundred and sixty-five days back!
+
+But age has grown habituated to the flight of time. Years? we have seen
+so many of them that they make no great impression upon us. What! is it
+ten years since young Midas first came to the counting-room, asking
+humbly for an entry-clerk's place--he who is now the head of the firm?
+Bless us! it seems like yesterday. Is it ten years since we first put on
+that coat? Why, it must be clean out of the fashion by this time.
+
+But age does not carry out the thought, and ask if itself be out of the
+fashion. Age knows better. A few wrinkles, a stoop in the back, a
+certain slowness of pace, do not make a man old at sixty--nor at
+seventy, neither; for now you come to think of it, the ten years we were
+speaking of is gone, and it is seventy now, and not sixty. Seventy! Why,
+'tis not to be thought of as old age--save when it may be necessary to
+rebuke the easy arrogance of youth.
+
+The time had come to Jacob Dolph when he could not feel that he was
+growing old. He was old, of course, in one sense. He was sixty-one when
+the war broke out; and they had not allowed him to form a regiment and
+go to the front at its head. But what was old for a soldier in active
+service was not old for a well-preserved civilian. True, he could never
+be the same man again, now that poor Aline was gone. True, he was
+growing more and more disinclined for active exercise, and he regretted
+he had led so sedentary a life. But though '64 piled itself up on '63,
+and '65 on top of that, these arbitrary divisions of time seemed to him
+but trivial.
+
+Edith was growing old, perhaps; getting to be a great girl, taller than
+her mother and fairer of complexion, yet not unlike her, he sometimes
+thought, as she began to manage the affairs of the house, and to go
+about the great shabby mansion with her mother's keys jingling at her
+girdle. For the years went on crawling one over the other, and soon it
+was 1873, and Edith was eighteen years old.
+
+One rainy day in this year found Jacob Dolph in Wall Street. Although he
+himself did not think so, he was an old man to others, and kindly hands,
+such as were to be found even in that infuriate crowd, had helped him up
+the marble steps of the Sub-Treasury and had given him lodgment on one
+of the great blocks of marble that dominate the street. From where he
+stood he could see Wall Street, east and west, and the broad plaza of
+Broad Street to the south, filled with a compact mass of men, half
+hidden by a myriad of umbrellas, rain-soaked, black, glinting in the dim
+light. So might a Roman legion have looked, when each man raised his
+targum above his head and came shoulder to shoulder with his neighbor
+for the assault.
+
+There was a confused, ant-like movement in the vast crowd, and a dull
+murmur came from it, rising, in places, into excited shouts. Here and
+there the fringe of the mass swelled up and swept against the steps of
+some building, forcing, or trying to force, an entry. Sometimes a narrow
+stream of men trickled into the half-open doorway; sometimes the great
+portals closed, and then there was a mad outcry and a low groan, and the
+foremost on the steps suddenly turned back, and in some strange way
+slipped through the throng and sped in all directions to bear to hushed
+or clamorous offices the news that this house or that bank had
+"suspended payment." "Busted," the panting messengers said to
+white-faced merchants; and in the slang of the street was conveyed the
+message of doom. The great panic of 1873 was upon the town--the outcome
+of long years of unwarranted self-confidence, of selfish extravagance,
+of conscienceless speculation--and, as hour after hour passed by,
+fortunes were lost in the twinkling of an eye, and the bread was taken
+out of the mouths of the helpless.
+
+After Jacob Dolph had stood for some time, looking down upon the
+tossing sea of black umbrellas, he saw a narrow lane made through the
+crowd in the wake of a little party of clerks and porters, bearing aid
+perhaps to some stricken bank. Slipping down, he followed close behind
+them. Perhaps the jostling hundreds on the sidewalk were gentle with
+him, seeing that he was an old man; perhaps the strength of excitement
+nerved him, for he made his way down the street to the flight of steps
+leading to the door of a tall white building, and he crowded himself up
+among the pack that was striving to enter. He had even got so far that
+he could see the line pouring in above his head, when there was a sudden
+cessation of motion in the press, and one leaf of the outer iron doors
+swung forward, meeting the other, already closed to bar the crush, and
+two green-painted panels stood, impassable, between him and the last of
+the Dolph fortune.
+
+One howl and roar, and the crowd turned back on itself, and swept him
+with it. In five minutes a thousand offices knew of the greatest failure
+of the day; and Jacob Dolph was leaning--weak, gasping, dazed--against
+the side wall of a hallway in William Street, with two stray office-boys
+staring at him out of their small, round, unsympathetic eyes.
+
+Let us not ask what wild temptation led the old man back again to risk
+all he owned in that hellish game that is played in the narrow street.
+We may remember this: that he saw his daughter growing to womanhood in
+that silent and almost deserted house, shouldered now by low tenements
+and wretched shops and vile drinking-places; that he may have pictured
+for her a brighter life in that world that had long ago left him behind
+it in his bereaved and disgraced loneliness; that he had had some vision
+of her young beauty fulfilling its destiny amid sweeter and fairer
+surroundings. And let us not forget that he knew no other means than
+these to win the money for which he cared little; which he found
+absolutely needful.
+
+After Jacob Dolph had yielded for the last time to the temptation that
+had conquered him once before, and had ruined his son's soul; after that
+final disastrous battle with the gamblers of Wall Street, wherein he
+lost the last poor remnant of the great Dolph fortune, giving up with it
+his father's home forever, certain old bread of his father's casting
+came back to him upon strange waters.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Abram Van Riper came to the daughter of the house of Dolph, a little
+before it became certain that the house must be sold, and told her, in
+his dry way, that he had to make a business communication to her, for he
+feared that her father was hardly capable of understanding such matters
+any longer. She winced a little; but he took a load off her heart when
+he made his slow, precise explanation. The fact was, he said, that the
+business transactions between her father and himself, consequent upon
+the defalcation of her brother Eustace, had never been closed, in all
+these seventeen years. (Edith Dolph trembled.) It was known at the time
+that the property transferred by her father rather more than covered the
+amount of her brother's--peculation. But her father's extreme
+sensitiveness had led him to avoid a precise adjustment, and as the
+property transferred was subject to certain long leases, he, Mr. Van
+Riper, had thought it best to wait until the property was sold and the
+account closed, to settle the matter with Mr. Dolph. This had lately
+been done, and Mr. Van Riper found that, deducting charges, and interest
+on his money at seven per cent., he had made by the transaction six
+thousand three hundred and seventy dollars. This sum, he thought,
+properly belonged to Mr. Dolph. And if Miss Dolph would take the counsel
+of an old friend of her father's, she would leave the sum in charge of
+the house of Abram Van Riper's Son. The house would invest it at ten per
+cent.--he stopped and looked at Edith, but she only answered him with
+innocent eyes of attention--and would pay her six hundred and
+thirty-seven dollars annually in quarterly payments. It might be of
+assistance to Mr. Dolph in his present situation.
+
+It was of assistance. They lived on it, father and daughter, with such
+aid as Decorative Art--just introduced to this country--gave in
+semi-remunerative employment for her deft fingers.
+
+Abram Van Riper, when he left the weeping, grateful girl, marched out
+into the street, turned his face toward what was once Greenwich Village,
+and said to his soul:
+
+"I think that will balance any obligation my father may have put himself
+under in buying that State Street house too cheap. Now then, old
+gentleman, you can lie easy in your grave. The Van Ripers ain't beholden
+to the Dolphs, that's sure."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A few years ago--shall we say as many as ten?--there were two small
+rooms up in a quiet street in Harlem, tenanted by an old gentleman and a
+young gentlewoman; and in the front room, which was the young woman's
+room by night, but a sort of parlor or sitting-room in the daytime, the
+old gentleman stood up, four times a year, to have his collar pulled up,
+and his necktie set right, and his coat dusted off by a pair of small
+white hands, so that he might be presentable when he went down town to
+collect certain moneys due him.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+They were small rooms, but they were bright and cheerful, being
+decorated with sketches and studies of an artistic sort, which may have
+been somewhat crude and uncertain as to treatment, but were certainly
+pleasant and feminine. Yet few saw them save the young woman and the old
+man. The most frequent visitor was a young artist from the West, who
+often escorted Miss Dolph to and from the Art League rooms. His name was
+Rand; he had studied in Munich; he had a future before him, and was
+making money on his prospects. He might just as well have lived in
+luxurious bachelor quarters in the lower part of the city; but, for
+reasons of his own, he preferred to live in Harlem.
+
+Old Mr. Dolph insisted on going regularly every quarter-day to the
+office of the Van Riper Estate, "to collect," as he said, "the interest
+due him." Four times a year he went down town on the Eighth Avenue cars,
+where the conductors soon learned to know him by his shiny black
+broadcloth coat and his snow-white hair. His daughter was always uneasy
+about these trips; but her father could not be dissuaded from them. To
+him they were his one hold on active life--the all-important events of
+the year. It would have broken his tender old heart to tell him that he
+could not go to collect his "interest." And so she set his necktie
+right, and he went.
+
+When he got out of the car at Abingdon Square he tottered, in his slow,
+old way, to a neat structure which combined modern jauntiness with
+old-time solidity, and which was labelled simply: "Office of the Van
+Riper Estate," and there he told the smilingly indulgent clerk that he
+thought he would "take it in cash, this time," and, taking it in cash,
+went forth.
+
+And then he walked down through Greenwich Village into New York city,
+and into the street where stood the house that his father had built.
+Thus he had gone to view it four times a year, during every year save
+the first, since he had given it up.
+
+He had seen it go through one stage of decadence after another. First it
+was rented, by its new owner, to the Jewish pawnbroker, with his
+numerous family. Good, honest folk they were, who tried to make the
+house look fine, and the five daughters made the front stoop resplendent
+of summer evenings. But they had long ago moved up-town. Then it was a
+cheap boarding-house, and vulgar and flashy men and women swarmed out in
+the morning and in at eventide. Then it was a lodging-house, and shabby
+people let themselves out and in at all hours of the day and night. And
+last of all it had become a tenement-house, and had fallen into line
+with its neighbors to left and right, and the window-panes were broken,
+and the curse of misery and poverty and utter degradation had fallen
+upon it.
+
+But still it lifted its grand stone front, still it stood, broad and
+great, among all the houses in the street. And it was the old man's
+custom, after he had stood on the opposite sidewalk and gazed at it for
+a while, to go to a little French _caf�_ a block to the eastward, and
+there to take a glass of _vermouth gomm�_--it was a mild drink, and
+pleasing to an old man. Sometimes he chanced to find some one in this
+place who would listen to his talk about the old house--he was very
+grand; but they were decent people who went to that _caf�_, and perhaps
+would go back with him a block and look at it. We would not have talked
+to chance people in an east-side French _caf�_. But then we have never
+owned such a house, and lost it--and everything else.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Late one hot summer afternoon young Rand sat in his studio, working
+enthusiastically on a "composition." A new school of art had invaded New
+York, and compositions were everything, for the moment, whether they
+composed anything or nothing. He heard a nervous rattling at his
+door-knob, and he opened the door. A young woman lifted a sweet,
+flushed, frightened face to his.
+
+"Oh, John," she cried, "father hasn't come home yet, and it's five
+o'clock, and he left home at nine."
+
+John Rand threw off his flannel jacket, and got into his coat.
+
+"We'll find him; don't worry, dear," he said.
+
+They found him within an hour. The great city, having no further use for
+the old Dolph house, was crowding it out of existence. With the crashing
+of falling bricks, and the creaking of the tackle that swung the great
+beams downward, the old house was crumbling into a gap between two high
+walls. Already you could see through to where the bright new bricks
+were piled at the back to build the huge eight-story factory that was to
+take its place. But it was not to see this demolition that the crowd was
+gathered, filling the narrow street. It stood, dense, ugly, vulgar,
+stolidly intent, gazing at the windows of the house opposite--a poor
+tenement house.
+
+As they went up the steps they met the young hospital surgeon, going
+back to his ambulance.
+
+"You his folks?" he inquired. "Sorry to tell you so, but I can't do any
+good. Sunstroke, I suppose--may have been something else--but it's
+collapse now, and no mistake. You take charge, sir?" he finished,
+addressing Rand.
+
+Jacob Dolph was lying on his back in the bare front room on the first
+floor. His daughter fell on her knees by his side, and made as though
+she would throw her arms around him; but, looking in his face, she saw
+death quietly coming upon him, and she only bent down and kissed him,
+while her tears wet his brow.
+
+Meanwhile a tall Southerner, with hair halfway down his neck, and
+kindly eyes that moved in unison with his broad gestures, was talking to
+Rand.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"I met the ol' gentleman in the French _caf�_, neah heah," he said, "and
+he was jus' honing to have me come up and see his house, seh--house he
+used to have. Well, I came right along, an' when we got here, sure
+'nough, they's taihin' down that house. Neveh felt so bad in all my
+life, seh. He wasn't expectin' of it, and I 'lowed 'twuz his old home
+like, and he was right hahd hit, fo' a fact. He said to me, 'Good-day,
+seh,' sezee; 'good-day, seh,' he says to me, an' then he starts across
+the street, an' first thing I know, he falls down flat on his face, seh.
+Saw that theah brick an' mortar comin' down, an' fell flat on his face.
+This hyeh pill-man 'lowed 'twuz sunstroke; but a Southern man like I am
+don't need to be told what a gentleman's feelings are when he sees his
+house a-torn down--no, seh. If you ever down oweh way, seh, I'd be right
+glad----"
+
+But Rand had lifted Edith from the floor, for her father would know her
+no more, and had passed out of this world, unconscious of all the
+squalor and ruin about him; and the poor girl was sobbing on his
+shoulder.
+
+He was very tender with her, very sorry for her--but he had never known
+the walls that fell across the way; he was a young man, an artist, with
+a great future before him, and the world was young to him, and she was
+to be his wife.
+
+Still, looking down, he saw that sweetly calm, listening look, that
+makes beautiful the faces of the dead, come over the face of Jacob
+Dolph, as though he, lying there, heard the hammers of the workmen
+breaking down his father's house, brick by brick--and yet the sound
+could no longer jar upon his ear or grieve his gentle spirit.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+  +----------------------------------------------------------+
+  |Transcriber's Note:                                       |
+  |The following printing errors were corrected in this text.|
+  |  Page 82, period added after 'path'.                     |
+  |           (back over his accustomed path. At)            |
+  |  Page 97, period added after 'said'.                     |
+  |           (selling our house," she said.)                |
+  |  Page 99, 'w' in 'why' changed to lower case.            |
+  |           (it was why young Eustace)                     |
+  |  Page 115, repeated 'the' removed.                       |
+  |           (girded at the old woman)                      |
+  +----------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Story of a New York House, by 
+Henry Cuyler Bunner
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+<pre>
+
+Project Gutenberg's The Story of a New York House, by Henry Cuyler Bunner
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Story of a New York House
+
+Author: Henry Cuyler Bunner
+
+Illustrator: A. B. Frost
+
+Release Date: December 13, 2009 [EBook #30662]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Geetu Melwani, Rob Reid, David Garcia and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+(This book was produced from scanned images of public
+domain material from the Google Print project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class = "tnote">
+<p class="center">Transcriber's Note:</p>
+<p>A <a href="#CONTENTS">table of chapters</a>, not in the original text, has been inserted
+immediately preceding Chapter I. </p>
+<p>A small number of printing errors have been corrected. They are
+shown within the text with <ins class = "correction" title ="Transcriber's Note: example">mouse-hover popups</ins>
+and are also listed in full at the <a href="#Endnote">end</a> of the text.</p>
+</div>
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/cover.jpg" >
+<img class="plain" src="images/cover-thumb.jpg" width="275" height="400" alt="Front Cover" title="" />
+</a>
+</div>
+<hr class="major" />
+
+<div class="center">
+<a id="Frontis" href="images/frontis.jpg" >
+<img class="plain" src="images/frontis-thumb.jpg" width="278" height="400" alt="Then out of the door came Jacob Dolph." title="" />
+</a><p class="caption">Then out of the door came Jacob Dolph.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<h1>THE STORY<br />
+
+OF<br />
+
+A NEW YORK HOUSE<br /></h1>
+
+<p class="titles">BY</p>
+<p class="titles_large">H. C. BUNNER</p>
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p class="titles"><i>ILLUSTRATED BY A. B. FROST</i></p>
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p class="titles_small">NEW YORK<br />
+CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS<br />
+1887</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<p class="titles_x-small"><span class="smcap">Copyright, 1887, by</span><br />
+CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.</p>
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p class="titles_x-small">Press of J. J. Little &amp; Co.<br />
+Astor Place, New York.<br /></p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<p class="titles_small">TO</p>
+
+<p class="titles_large">A. L. B.</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<p class="titles">LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table class="TOI" summary="List of Illustrations">
+<tr><td class="TOI"><i>Then out of the door came Jacob Dolph</i></td><td class="TOI" align="right"><span class="smcap"><a href="#Frontis">Frontispiece</a></span></td></tr>
+</table><table class="TOI" summary="List of Illustrations"><!-- Split table to width of Frontispiece does not affect wrapping of rest of table  -->
+<tr><td class="TOI"></td><td class="TOI_page" align="right">PAGE</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="TOI"><i>"I thumped him"</i></td><td class="TOI" align="right"><a href="#Page_14">14</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="TOI"><i>"It's a monstrous great place for a country-house, Mr. Dolph"</i></td><td class="TOI" align="right"><a href="#Page_18">18</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="TOI"><i>There was only one idea, and that was flight</i></td><td class="TOI" align="right"><a href="#Page_28">28</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="TOI"><i>The light flickered on the top of the church spire</i></td><td class="TOI" align="right"><a href="#Page_31">31</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="TOI_credit">(<i>By F. Hopkinson Smith.</i>)</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="TOI"><i>They hesitated a second, looking at the great arm chair</i></td><td class="TOI" align="right"><a href="#Page_37">37</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="TOI"><i>"Stay there, sir&mdash;you, sir, you, Jacob Dolph!"</i></td><td class="TOI" align="right"><a href="#Page_41">41</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="TOI"><i>After awhile he began to take timorous strolls</i></td><td class="TOI" align="right"><a href="#Page_47">47</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="TOI"><i>Jacob Dolph the elder ... stood on his hearth rug</i></td><td class="TOI" align="right"><a href="#Page_51">51</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="TOI"><i>And then he marched off to bed by himself, suffering no one to go with him</i></td><td class="TOI" align="right"><a href="#Page_55">55</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="TOI"><i>In quiet morning hours ... when his daughter sat at his feet</i></td><td class="TOI" align="right"><a href="#Page_77">77</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="TOI"><i>"Mons'us gran dinneh, seh!"</i></td><td class="TOI" align="right"><a href="#Page_79">79</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="TOI"><i>"All of a sudden, chock forward he went, right on his face"</i></td><td class="TOI" align="right"><a href="#Page_84">84</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="TOI"><i>He heard the weak, spasmodic wail of another Dolph</i></td><td class="TOI" align="right"><a href="#Page_88">88</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="TOI"><i>"Central American," said the clerk</i></td><td class="TOI" align="right"><a href="#Page_106">106</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="TOI"><i>"Looks like his father," was Mr. Daw's comment</i></td><td class="TOI" align="right"><a href="#Page_109">109</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="TOI"><i>O'Reagan of Castle Reagan</i></td><td class="TOI" align="right"><a href="#Page_118">118</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="TOI"><i>"If it hadn't been for the Dolphs, devil the rattle you'd have had"</i></td><td class="TOI" align="right"><a href="#Page_120">120</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="TOI"><i>"I know'd you'd take me in, Mist' Dolph," he panted</i></td><td class="TOI" align="right"><a href="#Page_131">131</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="TOI"><i>"Have you got a nigger here?"</i></td><td class="TOI" align="right"><a href="#Page_133">133</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="TOI"><i>Abram Van Riper makes a business communication.</i></td><td class="TOI" align="right"><a href="#Page_141">141</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="TOI"><i>And so she set his necktie right, and he went</i></td><td class="TOI" align="right"><a href="#Page_144">144</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="TOI"><i>Looking on his face, she saw death quietly coming upon him</i></td><td class="TOI" align="right"><a href="#Page_149">149</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="TOI"><i>Finial</i></td><td class="TOI" align="right"><a href="#Page_152">152</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<p class="titles_small"><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CHAPTERS</p>
+
+<ul class="TOC">
+<li class="TOC"><a href="#Chapter_I">I.</a></li>
+<li class="TOC"><a href="#Chapter_II">II.</a></li>
+<li class="TOC"><a href="#Chapter_III">III.</a></li>
+<li class="TOC"><a href="#Chapter_IV">IV.</a></li>
+<li class="TOC"><a href="#Chapter_V">V.</a></li>
+</ul>
+<hr class="major" />
+
+<p><span class="toc_link"><a href="#CONTENTS">[TOC]</a></span>
+<a name="Chapter_I" id="Chapter_I"></a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1" href="#Page_1">[1]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="titles_large">THE STORY<br />
+OF A NEW YORK HOUSE.
+</p>
+
+
+<h2>I.</h2>
+
+
+<p>"I hear," said Mrs. Abram Van Riper,
+seated at her breakfast-table, and watching
+the morning sunlight dance on the front
+of the great Burrell house on the opposite side
+of Pine Street, "that the Dolphs are going to
+build a prodigious fine house out of town&mdash;somewhere
+up near the Rynders's place."</p>
+
+<p>"And I hear," said Abram Van Riper, laying
+down last night's <i>Evening Post</i>, "that
+Jacob Dolph is going to give up business.
+And if he does, it's a disgrace to the town."</p>
+
+<p>It was in the summer of 1807, and Abram
+Van Riper was getting well over what he considered
+the meridian line of sixty years. He
+was hale and hearty; his business was flourishing;
+his boy was turning out all that should<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2" href="#Page_2">[2]</a></span>
+have been expected of one of the Van Riper
+stock; the refracted sunlight from the walls of
+the stately house occupied by the Cashier of
+the Bank of the United States lit with a subdued
+secondary glimmer the Van Riper silver
+on the breakfast-table&mdash;the squat teapot and
+slop-bowl, the milk-pitcher, that held a quart,
+and the apostle-spoon in the broken loaf-sugar
+on the Delft plate. Abram Van Riper was
+decorously happy, as a New York merchant
+should be. In all other respects, he was
+pleased to think, he was what a New York
+merchant should be, and the word of the law
+and the prophets was fulfilled with him and in
+his house.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure," Mrs. Van Riper began again,
+somewhat querulously, "I can't see why Jacob
+Dolph shouldn't give up business, if he's so
+minded. He's a monstrous fortune, from all I
+hear&mdash;a good hundred thousand dollars."</p>
+
+<p>"A hundred thousand dollars!" repeated
+her husband, scornfully. "Ay, and twice twenty
+thousand pounds on the top of that. He's
+done well, has Dolph. All the more reason he
+should stick to his trade; and not go to lolling<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3" href="#Page_3">[3]</a></span>
+in the sun, like a runner at the Custom-House
+door. He's not within ten years of me, and
+here he must build his country house, and set
+up for the fine gentleman. Jacob Dolph! Did
+I go on his note, when he came back from
+France, brave as my master, in '94, or did I
+not? And where 'ud he have raised twenty
+thousand in this town, if I hadn't? What's
+got into folks nowadays? Damn me if I can
+see!"</p>
+
+<p>His wife protested, in wifely fashion. "I'm
+sure, Van Riper," she began, "you've no need
+to fly in such a huff if I so much as speak of
+folks who have some conceit of being genteel.
+It's only proper pride of Mr. Dolph to have a
+country house, and&mdash;"(her voice faltering a
+little, timorously) "ride in and&mdash;and out&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Ride!</i>" snorted Mr. Van Riper. "In a
+carriage, maybe?"</p>
+
+<p>"In a carriage, Van Riper. You may think
+to ride in a carriage is like being the Pope of
+Rome; but there's some that knows better.
+And if you'd set up your carriage," went on
+the undaunted Mrs. Van Riper, "and gone
+over to Greenwich Street two years ago, as I'd<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4" href="#Page_4">[4]</a></span>
+have had you, and made yourself friendly with
+those people there, I'd have been on the
+Orphan Asylum Board at this very minute;
+and <i>you</i> would&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Van Riper knew all that speech by
+heart, in all its variations. He knew perfectly
+well what it would end in, this time, although
+he was not a man of quick perception: "He
+would have been a member of the new Historical
+Society."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he thought to himself, as he found
+his hat and shuffled out into Pine Street; "and
+John Pintard would have had my good check
+in his pocket for his tuppenny society. Pine
+Street is fine enough for me."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Van Riper had more cause for his petulancy
+than he would have acknowledged even
+to himself. He was a man who had kept his
+shop open all through Clinton's occupancy,
+and who had had no trouble with the British.
+And when they were gone he had had to do
+enough to clear his skirts of any smirch of
+Toryism, and to implant in his own breast a
+settled feeling of militant Americanism. He
+did not like it that the order of things<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5" href="#Page_5">[5]</a></span>
+should change&mdash;and the order of things was
+changing. The town was growing out of all
+knowledge of itself. Here they had their
+Orphan Asylum, and their Botanical Garden,
+and their Historical Society; and the Jews
+were having it all their own way; and now
+people were talking of free schools, and of laying
+out a map for the upper end of the town
+to grow on, in the "system" of straight streets
+and avenues. To the devil with systems and
+avenues! said he. That was all the doing of
+those cursed Frenchmen. He knew how it
+would be when they brought their plaguy
+frigate here in the first fever year&mdash;'93&mdash;and
+the fools marched up from Peck's Slip after a
+red nightcap, and howled their cut-throat song
+all night long.</p>
+
+<p>It began to hum itself in his head as he
+walked toward Water Street&mdash;<i>�a ira&mdash;�a ira&mdash;les
+aristocrats � la lanterne</i>. A whiff of the
+wind that blew through Paris streets in the
+terrible times had come across the Atlantic
+and tickled his dull old Dutch nostrils.</p>
+
+<p>But something worse than this vexed the
+conservative spirit of Abram Van Riper. He<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6" href="#Page_6">[6]</a></span>
+could forgive John Pintard&mdash;whose inspiration,
+I think, foreran the twentieth century&mdash;his
+fancy for free schools and historical societies,
+as he had forgiven him his sidewalk-building
+fifteen years before; he could proudly overlook
+the fact that the women were busying themselves
+with all manner of wild charities; he
+could be contented though he knew that the
+Hebrew Hart was president of that merchants'
+club at Baker's, of which he himself would fain
+have been a member. But there was some
+thing in the air that he could neither forgive
+nor overlook, nor be contented with.</p>
+
+<p>There was a change coming over the town&mdash;a
+change which he could not clearly define,
+even in his own mind. There was a great
+keeping of carriages, he knew. A dozen men
+had bought carriages, or were likely to buy
+them at any time. The women were forming
+societies for the improvement of this and that.
+And he, who had moved up-town from Dock
+Street, was now in an old-fashioned quarter.
+All this he knew, but the something which
+made him uneasy was more subtile.</p>
+
+<p>Within the last few years he had observed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7" href="#Page_7">[7]</a></span>
+an introduction of certain strange distinctions
+in the social code of the town. It had been
+vaguely intimated to him&mdash;perhaps by his
+wife, he could not remember&mdash;that there was
+a difference between his trade and Jacob
+Dolph's trade. He was a ship-chandler. Jacob
+Dolph sold timber. Their shops were
+side by side; Jacob Dolph's rafts lay in the
+river in front of Abram Van Riper's shop,
+and Abram Van Riper had gone on Jacob
+Dolph's note, only a few years ago. Yet, it
+seemed that it was <i>genteel</i> of Jacob Dolph to
+sell timber, and it was not genteel of Abram
+Van Riper to be a ship-chandler. There was,
+then, a difference between Jacob Dolph and
+Abram Van Riper&mdash;a difference which, in forty
+years, Abram Van Riper had never conceived
+of. There were folks who held thus. For
+himself, he did not understand it. What difference
+there was between selling the wood to
+make a ship, and selling the stores to go inside
+of her, he could not understand.</p>
+
+<p>The town was changing for the worse; he
+saw that. He did not wish&mdash;God forbid!&mdash;that
+his son John should go running about to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8" href="#Page_8">[8]</a></span>
+pleasure-gardens. But it would be no more
+than neighborly if these young bucks who
+went out every night should ask him to go
+with them. Were William Irving's boys and
+Harry Brevoort and those young Kembles too
+fine to be friends with his boy? Not that he'd
+go with them a-rollicking&mdash;no, not that&mdash;but
+'twould be neighborly. It was all wrong, he
+thought; they were going whither they knew
+not, and wherefore they knew not; and with
+that he cursed their airs and their graces, and
+pounded down to the Tontine, to put his name
+at the head of the list of those who subscribed
+for a testimonial service of plate, to be presented
+to our esteemed fellow-citizen and
+valued associate, Jacob Dolph, on his retirement
+from active business.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Jacob Dolph at this moment was setting
+forth from his house in State Street, whose pillared
+balcony, rising from the second floor to
+the roof, caught a side glance of the morning
+sun, that loved the Battery far better than Pine
+Street. He had his little boy by the hand<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9" href="#Page_9">[9]</a></span>&mdash;young
+Jacob, his miniature, his heir, and the
+last and only living one of his eight children.
+Mr. Dolph walked with his stock thrust out
+and the lower end of his waistcoat drawn in&mdash;he
+was Colonel Dolph, if he had cared to keep
+the title; and had come back from Monmouth
+with a hole in his hip that gave him a bit of a
+limp, even now in eighteen-hundred-and-seven.
+He and the boy marched forth like an army
+with a small but enthusiastic left wing, into the
+poplar-studded Battery. The wind blew fresh
+off the bay; the waves beat up against the seawall,
+and swirled with a chuckle under Castle
+Garden bridge. A large brig was coming up
+before the wind, all her sails set, as though she
+were afraid&mdash;and she was&mdash;of British frigates
+outside the Hook. Two or three fat little
+boats, cat-rigged, after the good old New York
+fashion, were beating down toward Staten
+Island, to hunt for the earliest blue-fish.</p>
+
+<p>The two Dolphs crossed the Battery, where
+the elder bowed to his friends among the merchants
+who lounged about the city's pleasure-ground,
+lazily chatting over their business affairs.
+Then they turned up past Bowling<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10" href="#Page_10">[10]</a></span>
+Green into Broadway, where Mr. Dolph kept
+on bowing, for half the town was out, taking
+the fresh morning for marketing and all manner
+of shopping. Everybody knew Jacob
+Dolph afar off by his blue coat with the silver
+buttons, his nankeen waistcoat, and his red-checked
+Indian silk neckcloth. He made it a
+sort of uniform. Captain Beare had brought
+him a bolt of nankeen and a silk kerchief every
+year since 1793, when Mr. Dolph gave him
+credit for the timber of which the <i>Ursa Minor</i>
+was built.</p>
+
+<p>And everybody seemed willing to make acquaintance
+with young Jacob's London-made
+kerseymere breeches, of a bright canary color,
+and with his lavender silk coat, and with his
+little <i>chapeau de Paris</i>. Indeed, young Jacob
+was quite the most prominent moving spectacle
+on Broadway, until they came to John
+Street, and saw something rolling down the
+street that quite cut the yellow kerseymeres
+out of all popular attention.</p>
+
+<p>This was a carriage, the body of which was
+shaped like a huge section of a cheese, set up
+on its small end upon broad, swinging straps<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11" href="#Page_11">[11]</a></span>
+between two pairs of wheels. It was not unlike
+a piece of cheese in color, for it was of a
+dull and faded grayish-green, like mould, relieved
+by pale-yellow panels and gilt ornaments.
+It was truly an interesting structure,
+and it attracted nearly as much notice on
+Broadway in 1807 as it might to-day. But it
+was received with far more reverence, for it
+was a court coach, and it belonged to the Des
+Anges family, the rich Huguenots of New
+Rochelle. It had been built in France, thirty
+years before, and had been sent over as a present
+to his brother from the Count des Anges,
+who had himself neglected to make use of his
+opportunities to embrace the Protestant religion.</p>
+
+<p>When the white-haired old lady who sat in
+this coach, with a very little girl by her side,
+saw Mr. Dolph and his son, she leaned out of
+the window and signalled to the old periwigged
+driver to stop, and he drew up close to
+the sidewalk. And then Mr. Dolph and his
+son came up to the window and took off their
+hats, and made a great low bow and a small
+low bow to the old lady and the little girl.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12" href="#Page_12">[12]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Madam Des Anges," said Mr. Dolph, with
+an idiom which he had learned when he was
+presented at the court of Louis the Sixteenth,
+"has surely not driven down from New Rochelle
+this morning? That would tax even her
+powers."</p>
+
+<p>Madam Des Anges did not smile&mdash;she had
+no taste for smiling&mdash;but she bridled amiably.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Mr. Dolph," she replied; "I have been
+staying with my daughter-in-law, at her house
+at King's Bridge, and I have come to town to
+put my little granddaughter to school. She is
+to have the privilege of being a pupil of Mme.
+Dumesnil."</p>
+
+<p>Madam Des Anges indicated the little girl
+with a slight movement, as though she did not
+wish to allow the child more consideration than
+a child deserved. The little girl turned a great
+pair of awed eyes, first on her grandmother,
+and then on the gentlemen, and spoke no
+word. Young Jacob Dolph stared hard at
+her, and then contemplated his kerseymeres
+with lazy satisfaction. He had no time for
+girls. And a boy who had his breeches made
+in London was a boy of consequence, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13" href="#Page_13">[13]</a></span>
+need not concern himself about every one he
+saw.</p>
+
+<p>"And this is your son, I make no doubt,"
+went on Madam Des Anges; "you must bring
+him to see us at King's Bridge, while we are
+so near you. These young people should
+know each other."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Dolph said he would, and showed a becoming
+sense of the honor of the invitation;
+and he made young Jacob say a little speech
+of thanks, which he did with a doubtful grace;
+and then Mr. Dolph sent his compliments to
+Madam Des Anges' daughter-in-law, and Madam
+Des Anges sent her compliments to Mrs.
+Dolph, and there was more stately bowing, and
+the carriage lumbered on, with the little girl
+looking timorously out of the window, her
+great eyes fixed on the yellow kerseymeres, as
+they twinkled up the street.</p>
+
+<p>"Papa," said young Jacob, as they turned
+the corner of Ann Street, "when may I go to a
+boys' school? I'm monstrous big to be at Mrs.
+Kilmaster's. And I don't like to be a girl-boy."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you a girl-boy?" inquired his father,
+smiling.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14" href="#Page_14">[14]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Aleck Cameron called me one yesterday.
+He said I was a girl-boy because I went to
+dame-school. He called me Missy, too!" the
+boy went on, with his breast swelling.</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/ill-p014.jpg" >
+<img class="plain" src="images/ill-p014-thumb.jpg" width="400" height="393" alt="" title="" />
+</a>
+</div>
+
+<p>"We'll see about it," said Mr. Dolph, smiling
+again; and they walked on in silence to
+Mrs. Kilmaster's door, where he struck the
+knocker, and a neat mulatto girl opened the
+narrow door. Then he patted his boy on the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15" href="#Page_15">[15]</a></span>
+head and bade him good-by for the morning,
+and told him to be a good boy at school. He
+took a step or two and looked back. Young
+Jacob lingered on the step, as if he had a further
+communication to make. He paused.</p>
+
+<p>"I thumped him," said young Jacob, and
+the narrow door swallowed him up.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Dolph continued on his walk up Broadway.
+As he passed the upper end of the Common
+he looked with interest at the piles of red
+sandstone among the piles of white marble,
+where they were building the new City Hall.
+The Council had ordered that the rear or
+northward end of the edifice should be constructed
+of red stone; because red stone was
+cheap, and none but a few suburbans would
+ever look down on it from above Chambers
+Street. Mr. Dolph shook his head. He
+thought he knew better. He had watched the
+growth of trade; he knew the room for further
+growth; he had noticed the long converging
+lines of river-front, with their unbounded
+accommodation for wharves and
+slips. He believed that the day would come&mdash;and
+his own boy might see it&mdash;when the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16" href="#Page_16">[16]</a></span>
+business of the city would crowd the dwelling-houses
+from the river side, east and west, as
+far, maybe, as Chambers Street. He had no
+doubt that the boy might find himself, forty
+years from then, in a populous and genteel
+neighborhood. Perhaps he foresaw too much;
+but he had a jealous yearning for a house that
+should be a home for him, and for his child,
+and for his grandchildren. He wanted a place
+where his wife might have a garden; a place
+which the boy would grow up to love and
+cherish, where the boy might bring a wife
+some day. And even if it were a little out of
+town&mdash;why, his wife did not want a rout every
+night; and it was likely his old friends would
+come out and see him once in a while, and
+smoke a pipe in his garden and eat a dish of
+strawberries, perhaps.</p>
+
+<p>As he thought it all over for the hundredth
+time, weighing for and against in his gentle
+and deliberative mind, he strolled far out of
+town. There was a house here and there on
+the road&mdash;a house with a trim, stiff little garden,
+full of pink and white and blue flowers in
+orderly, clam-shell-bordered beds. But it was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17" href="#Page_17">[17]</a></span>
+certainly, he had to admit, as he looked about
+him, very <i>countrified</i> indeed. It seemed that
+the city must lose itself if it wandered up here
+among these rolling meadows and wooded
+hills. Yet even up here, half way to Greenwich
+Village, there were little outposts of the
+town&mdash;clumps of neighborly houses, mostly
+of the poorer class, huddling together to form
+small nuclei for sporadic growth. There was
+one on his right, near the head of Collect
+Street. Perhaps that quizzical little old German
+was right, who had told him that King's
+Bridge property was a rational investment.</p>
+
+<p>He went across the hill where Grand Street
+crosses Broadway, and up past what was then
+North and is to-day Houston Street, and then
+turned down a straggling road that ran east
+and west. He walked toward the Hudson, and
+passed a farmhouse or two, and came to a bare
+place where there were no trees, and only a
+few tangled bushes and ground-vines.</p>
+
+<p>Here a man was sitting on a stone, awaiting
+him. As he came near, the man arose.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, it's you, Weeks? And have you the
+plan?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18" href="#Page_18">[18]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Colonel&mdash;Mr. Dolph. I've put the
+window where you want it&mdash;that is, my brother
+Levi did&mdash;though I don't see as you're going to
+have much trouble in looking over anything
+that's likely to come between you and the
+river."</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/ill-p018.jpg" >
+<img class="plain" src="images/ill-p018-thumb.jpg" width="343" height="400" alt="" title="" />
+</a>
+</div>
+
+<p>Mr. Dolph took the crisp roll of parchment<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19" href="#Page_19">[19]</a></span>
+and studied it with loving interest. It had
+gone back to Ezra Weeks, the builder, and his
+brother Levi, the architect, for the twentieth
+time, perhaps. Was there ever an architect's
+plan put in the hands of a happy nest-builder
+where the windows did not go up and down
+from day to day, and the doors did not crawl
+all around the house, and the veranda did not
+contract and expand like a sensitive plant; or
+where the rooms and closets and corridors did
+not march backward and forward and in and
+out at the bidding of every fond, untutored
+whim?</p>
+
+<p>"It's a monstrous great big place for a country-house,
+Mr. Dolph," said Ezra Weeks, as he
+looked over Jacob Dolph's shoulder at the
+drawings of the house, and shook his head with
+a sort of pitying admiration for the projector's
+audacity.</p>
+
+<p>They talked for a while, and looked at the
+site as if they might see more in it than they
+saw yesterday, and then Weeks set off for the
+city, pledged to hire laborers and to begin the
+work on the morrow.</p>
+
+<p>"I think I can get you some of that stone<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20" href="#Page_20">[20]</a></span>
+that's going into the back of the City Hall,
+if you say so, Mr. Dolph. That stone was
+bought cheap, you know&mdash;bought for the
+city."</p>
+
+<p>"See what you can do, Weeks," said Mr.
+Dolph; and Mr. Weeks went whistling down
+the road.</p>
+
+<p>Jacob Dolph walked around his prospective
+domain. He kicked a wild blackberry bush
+aside, to look at the head of a stake, and tried
+to realize that that would be the corner of his
+house. He went to where the parlor fireplace
+would be, and stared at the grass and stones,
+wondering what it would be like to watch the
+fire flickering on the new hearth. Then he
+looked over toward the Hudson, and saw the
+green woods on Union Hill and the top of a
+white sail over the high river-bank. He
+hoped that no one would build a large house
+between him and the river.</p>
+
+<p>He lingered so long that the smoke of midday
+dinners was arising from Greenwich Village
+when he turned back toward town. When he
+reached the Commons on his homeward way
+he came across a knot of idlers who were wasting<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21" href="#Page_21">[21]</a></span>
+the hour of the noontide meal in gaping at
+the unfinished municipal building.</p>
+
+<p>They were admiringly critical. One man
+was vociferously enthusiastic.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a marvellous fine building, say I, sir!
+Worthy of the classic shades of antiquity. If
+Europe can show a finer than that will be
+when she's done, then, in <i>my</i> opinion, sir,
+Europe is doing well."</p>
+
+<p>"You admire the architecture, Mr. Huggins?"
+asked Mr. Dolph, coming up behind him.
+Mr. Huggins turned around, slightly disconcerted,
+and assumed an amiability of manner
+such as can only be a professional acquirement
+among us poor creatures of human nature.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, Mr. Dolph&mdash;Colonel, I should say! I
+have purposed to do myself the honor of presenting
+myself at your house this afternoon,
+Colonel Dolph, to inquire if you did not desire
+to have your peruke <i>fris�e</i>. For I had taken
+the liberty of observing you in conversation
+with Madam Des Anges this morning, in her
+equipage, and it had occurred to me that possibly
+the madam might be a-staying with you."</p>
+
+<p>"Madam Des Anges does not honor my<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22" href="#Page_22">[22]</a></span>
+house this time, Huggins," returned Mr. Dolph,
+with an indulgent little laugh; "and my poor
+old peruke will do very well for to-day."</p>
+
+<p>There was a perceptible diminution in Mr.
+Huggins's ardor; but he was still suave.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope the madam is in good health," he
+remarked.</p>
+
+<p>"She is, I believe," said Mr. Dolph.</p>
+
+<p>"And your good lady, sir? I have not had
+the pleasure of treating Mrs. Dolph professionally
+for some time, sir, I&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Dolph was wary. "I don't think Mrs.
+Dolph is fond of the latest modes, Huggins.
+But here comes Mr. Van Riper. Perhaps he
+will have his peruke <i>fris�e</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Huggins got out of a dancing-master's
+pose with intelligent alacrity, bade Mr. Dolph
+a hasty "Good-afternoon!" and hurried off
+toward his shop, one door above Wall Street.
+Mr. Van Riper did not like "John Richard
+Desbrosses Huggins, Knight of the Comb."</p>
+
+<p>There was something else that Mr. Van
+Riper did not like.</p>
+
+<p>"Hullo, Dolph!" he hailed his friend.
+"What's this I heard about you building a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23" href="#Page_23">[23]</a></span>
+preposterous tom-fool of a town-house out by
+Greenwich? Why don't you hire that house
+that Burr had, up near Lispenard's cow-pasture,
+and be done with it?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Dolph seized his chance.</p>
+
+<p>"It's not so preposterous as all that. By
+the way, talking of Burr, I hear from Richmond
+that he'll positively be tried next week.
+Did you know that young Irving&mdash;William's
+son, the youngest, the lad that writes squibs&mdash;has
+gone to Richmond for the defence?"</p>
+
+<p>"William Irving's son might be in better
+business," grunted Mr. Van Riper, for a moment
+diverted. "If we'd got at that devil
+when he murdered poor Hamilton&mdash;'fore gad,
+we'd have saved the trouble of trying him.
+Do you remember when we was for going to
+Philadelphia after him, and there the sly
+scamp was at home all the time up in his fine
+house, a-sitting in a tub of water, reading
+French stuff, as cool as a cowcumber, with the
+whole town hunting for him?" Then he came
+back. "But that house of yours. You
+haven't got this crazy notion that New York's
+going to turn into London while you smoke<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24" href="#Page_24">[24]</a></span>
+your pipe, have you? You're keeping some of
+your seven business senses, ain't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," Mr. Dolph mildly defended
+his hobby; "there is a great potentiality of
+growth in this city. Here's an estimate that
+John Pintard made the other day&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"John Pintard! He's another like <i>you</i>!"
+said Mr. Van Riper.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, look at it for yourself," pleaded the
+believer in New York's future.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Van Riper took the neatly written
+paper, and simply snorted and gasped as he
+read this:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Statistical</i>.</p>
+
+<p>By the numeration of the inhabitants of this city, recently
+published, the progress of population for the last 5 years appears
+to be at the rate of 25 per cent. Should our city continue
+to increase in the same proportion during the present
+century, the aggregate number at its close will far exceed that
+of any other city in the Old World, Pekin not excepted, as
+will appear from the following table. Progress of population
+in the city of New York, computed at the rate of 25 per cent,
+every 5 years:</p></div>
+
+
+
+<div class="center">
+<table summary="Population Estimates">
+<tr><td>1805</td><td align="right">75,770</td>
+    <td></td>
+    <td>1855</td><td align="right">705,650</td></tr>
+<tr><td>1810</td><td align="right">95,715</td>
+    <td></td>
+    <td>1860</td><td align="right">882,062</td></tr>
+<tr><td>1815</td><td align="right">110,390</td>
+    <td></td>
+    <td>1865</td><td align="right">1,102,577</td></tr>
+<tr><td>1820</td><td align="right">147,987</td>
+    <td></td>
+    <td>1870</td><td align="right">1,378,221</td></tr>
+<tr><td>1825</td><td align="right">184,923</td>
+    <td></td>
+    <td>1875</td><td align="right">1,722,776</td></tr>
+<tr><td>1830</td><td align="right">231,228</td>
+    <td></td>
+    <td>1880</td><td align="right">2,153,470</td></tr>
+<tr><td>1835</td><td align="right">289,035</td>
+    <td></td>
+    <td>1885</td><td align="right">2,691,837</td></tr>
+<tr><td>1840</td><td align="right">361,293</td>
+    <td></td>
+    <td>1890</td><td align="right">3,364,796</td></tr>
+<tr><td>1845</td><td align="right">451,616</td>
+    <td></td>
+    <td>1895</td><td align="right">4,205,995</td></tr>
+<tr><td>1850</td><td align="right">564,520</td>
+    <td></td>
+    <td>1900</td><td align="right">5,257,493</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25" href="#Page_25">[25]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When he had read it through he was a-quivering,
+crimson with that rage of Conservative
+indignation which is even more fervent than
+the flames of Radical enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he said; "there's seventy-five thousand
+people in this town, and there'll be seventy-five
+thousand bankrupts if this lunacy goes
+on. And there's seventy-five thousand maggots
+in your brain, and seventy-five thousand
+in John Pintard's; and if you two live to see
+nineteen hundred, you'll have twice five million
+two hundred and fifty-seven thousand four
+hundred and ninety-three&mdash;whatever that may
+be!" And he thrust the paper back at Jacob
+Dolph, and made for the Tontine and the society
+of sensible men.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The house was built, in spite of Abram Van
+Riper's remonstrance. It had a stone front,
+almost flush with the road, and brick gable-ends,
+in each one of which, high up near the
+roof, stood an arched window, to lift an eyebrow
+to the sun, morning and evening. But it
+was only a country-house, after all; and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26" href="#Page_26">[26]</a></span>
+Dolphs set up their carriage and drove out and
+in, from June to September.</p>
+
+<p>There was a garden at the side, where Mrs.
+Dolph could have the flowers her heart had
+yearned after ever since Jacob Dolph brought
+her from her home at Rondout, when she was
+seventeen.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Strengthened by the country air&mdash;so they
+said&mdash;young Jacob grew clean out of his dame-school
+days and into and out of Columbia College,
+and was sent abroad, a sturdy youth, to
+have a year's holiday. It was to the new
+house that he came back the next summer,
+with a wonderful stock of fine clothes and of
+finer manners, and with a pair of mustaches
+that scandalized everybody but Madam Des
+Anges, who had seen the like in France when she
+visited her brother. And a very fine young buck
+was young Jacob, altogether, with his knowledge
+of French and his ignorance of Dutch,
+and a way he had with the women, and another
+way he had with the men, and his heirship
+to old Jacob Dolph's money and his two houses.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27" href="#Page_27">[27]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>For they stayed in the old house until 1822.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>It was a close, hot night in the early summer;
+there was a thick, warm mist that turned
+now and then into a soft rain; yet every window
+in the Dolphs' house on State Street was
+closed.</p>
+
+<p>It had been a hideous day for New York.
+From early morning until long after dark had
+set in, the streets had been filled with frightened,
+disordered crowds. The city was again
+stricken with the old, inevitable, ever-recurring
+scourge of yellow fever, and the people had
+lost their heads. In every house, in every
+office and shop, there was hasty packing, mad
+confusion, and wild flight. It was only a question
+of getting out of town as best one might.
+Wagons and carts creaked and rumbled and
+rattled through every street, piled high with
+household chattels, up-heaped in blind haste.
+Women rode on the swaying loads, or walked
+beside with the smaller children in their arms.
+Men bore heavy burdens, and children helped
+according to their strength. There was only<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28" href="#Page_28">[28]</a></span>
+one idea, and that was flight&mdash;from a pestilence
+whose coming might have been prevented, and
+whose course could have been stayed. To
+most of these poor creatures the only haven
+seemed to be Greenwich Village; but some
+sought the scattered settlements above; some
+crossed to Hoboken; some to Bushwick; while
+others made a long journey to Staten Island,
+across the bay. And when they reached their
+goals, it was to beg or buy lodgings anywhere
+and anyhow; to sleep in cellars and garrets, in
+barns and stables.</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/ill-p028.jpg" >
+<img class="plain" src="images/ill-p028-thumb.jpg" width="400" height="230" alt="" title="" />
+</a>
+</div>
+
+<p>The panic was not only among the poor and
+ignorant. Merchants were moving their offices,
+and even the Post Office and the Custom<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29" href="#Page_29">[29]</a></span>
+House were to be transferred to Greenwich.
+There were some who remained faithful
+throughout all, and who labored for the
+stricken, and whose names are not even written
+in the memory of their fellow-men. But the
+city had been so often ravaged before, that at
+the first sight there was one mere animal impulse
+of flight that seized upon all alike.</p>
+
+<p>At one o'clock, when some of the better
+streets had once more taken on their natural
+quiet, an ox-cart stood before the door of the
+Dolphs' old house. A little behind it stood
+the family carriage, its lamps unlit. The
+horses stirred uneasily, but the oxen waited
+in dull, indifferent patience. Presently the
+door opened, and two men came out and awkwardly
+bore a plain coffin to the cart. Then
+they mounted to the front of the cart, hiding
+between them a muffled lantern. They wore
+cloths over the lower part of their faces, and
+felt hats drawn low over their eyes. Something
+in their gait showed them to be seafaring men,
+or the like.</p>
+
+<p>Then out of the open door came Jacob
+Dolph, moving with a feeble shuffle between<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30" href="#Page_30">[30]</a></span>
+his son and his old negro coachman&mdash;this man
+and his wife the only faithful of all the servants.
+The young man put his father in the carriage,
+and the negro went back and locked the
+doors and brought the keys to his young master.
+He mounted to the box, and through the darkness
+could be seen a white towel tied around
+his arm&mdash;the old badge of servitude's mourning.</p>
+
+<p>The oxen were started up, and the two vehicles
+moved up into Broadway. They travelled
+with painful slowness; the horses had to
+be held in to keep them behind the cart, for
+the oxen could be only guided by the whip,
+and not by word of mouth. The old man
+moaned a little at the pace, and quivered when
+he heard the distant sound of hammers.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" he asked, nervously.</p>
+
+<p>"They are boarding up some of the streets,"
+said his son; "do not fear, father. Everything
+is prepared; and if we make no noise, we shall
+not be troubled."</p>
+
+<p>"If we can only keep her out of the Potter's
+Field&mdash;the Potter's Field!" cried the father;
+"I'll thank God&mdash;I'll ask no more&mdash;I'll ask no
+more!"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31" href="#Page_31">[31]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And then he broke down and cried a little,
+feebly, and got his son's hand in the darkness
+and put on his own shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>It was nearly two when they came to St.
+Paul's and turned the corner to the gate. It
+was dark below, but some frenzied fools were
+burning tar-barrels far down Ann Street, and
+the light flickered on the top of the church
+spire. They crossed the churchyard to where
+a shallow grave had been dug, half way down
+the hill. The men lowered the body into it;
+the old negro gave them a little <i>rouleau</i> of
+coin, and they went hurriedly away into the
+night.</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/ill-p031.jpg" >
+<img class="plain" src="images/ill-p031-thumb.jpg" width="274" height="400" alt="" title="" />
+</a>
+</div>
+
+<p>The clergyman came out by and by, with the
+sexton behind him. He stood high up above
+the grave, and drew his long cloak about him
+and lifted an old pomander-box to his face.
+He was not more foolish than his fellows; in
+that evil hour men took to charms and to saying
+of spells. Below the grave and apart, for
+the curse rested upon them, too, stood Jacob
+Dolph and his son, the old man leaning on the
+arm of the younger. Then the clergyman began
+to read the service for the burial of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32" href="#Page_32">[32]</a></span>
+dead, over the departed sister&mdash;and wife and
+mother. He spoke low; but his voice seemed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33" href="#Page_33">[33]</a></span>
+to echo in the stillness. He came forward with
+a certain shrinking, and cast the handful of
+dust and ashes into the grave. When it was
+done, the sexton stepped forward and rapidly
+threw in the earth until he had filled the little
+hollow even with the ground. Then, with fearful
+precaution, he laid down the carefully cut
+sods, and smoothed them until there was no
+sign of what had been done. The clergyman
+turned to the two mourners, without moving
+nearer to them, and lifted up his hands. The
+old man tried to kneel; but his son held him
+up, for he was too feeble, and they bent their
+heads for a moment of silence. The clergyman
+went away as he had come; and Jacob
+Dolph and his son went back to the carriage.
+When his father was seated, young Jacob
+Dolph said to the coachman: "To the new
+house."</p>
+
+<p>The heavy coach swung into Broadway, and
+climbed up the hill out into the open country.
+There were lights still burning in the farmhouses,
+bright gleams to east and west, but
+the silence of the damp summer night hung
+over the sparse suburbs, and the darkness<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34" href="#Page_34">[34]</a></span>
+seemed to grow more intense as they drove
+away from the city. The trees by the roadside
+were almost black in the gray mist; the
+raw, moist smell of the night, the damp air,
+chilly upon the high land, came in through the
+carriage windows. Young Jacob looked out
+and noted their progress by familiar landmarks
+on the road; but the old man sat with his head
+bent on his new black stock.</p>
+
+<p>It was almost three, and the east was beginning
+to look dark, as though a storm were settling
+there in the grayness, when they turned
+down the straggling street and drew up before
+the great dark mass that was the new house.
+The carriage-wheels gritted against the loose
+stones at the edge of the roadway, and the
+great door of the house swung open. The
+light of one wavering candle-flame, held high
+above her head, fell on the black face of old
+Chloe, the coachman's wife. There were no
+candles burning on the high-pitched stairway;
+all was dark behind her in the empty house.</p>
+
+<p>Young Jacob Dolph helped his father to the
+ground, and between the young man and the
+negro old Jacob Dolph wearily climbed the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35" href="#Page_35">[35]</a></span>
+steps. Chloe lifted her apron to her face, and
+turned to lead them up the stair. Her husband
+went out to his horses, shutting the door
+softly after him, between Jacob Dolph's old
+life and the new life that was to begin in the
+new house.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="toc_link"><a href="#CONTENTS">[TOC]</a></span>
+<a name="Chapter_II" id="Chapter_II"></a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36" href="#Page_36">[36]</a></span></p>
+<h2>II.</h2>
+
+
+<p>When young Jacob Dolph came down
+to breakfast the next morning he
+found his father waiting for him in the breakfast-room.
+The meal was upon the table.
+Old Chloe stood with her black hands folded
+upon her white apron, and her pathetic negro
+eyes following the old gentleman as he moved
+wistfully about the room.</p>
+
+<p>Father and son shook hands in silence, and
+turned to the table. There were three chairs
+in their accustomed places. They hesitated a
+half-second, looking at the third great arm-chair,
+as though they waited for the mistress
+of the house to take her place. Then they
+sat down. It was six years before any one
+took that third chair, but every morning
+Jacob Dolph the elder made that little pause
+before he put himself at the foot of the table.</p>
+
+<p>On this first morning there was very little
+said and very little eaten. But when they
+had made an end of sitting at the table old<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37" href="#Page_37">[37]</a></span>
+Jacob Dolph said, with something almost like
+testiness in his husky voice:</p>
+
+<p>"Jacob, I want to sell the house."</p>
+
+<p>"Father!"</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/ill-p037.jpg" >
+<img class="plain" src="images/ill-p037-thumb.jpg" width="400" height="376" alt="" title="" />
+</a>
+</div>
+
+<p>"The old house, I mean; I shall never go
+back there."</p>
+
+<p>His son looked at him with a further inquiry.
+He felt a sudden new apprehension.
+The father sat back in his easy-chair, drumming
+on the arms with nervous fingers.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38" href="#Page_38">[38]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I shall never go back there," he said again.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you know best, sir," said young
+Jacob, gently; "but would it be well to be
+precipitate? It is possible that you may feel
+differently some time&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"There is no 'some time' for me!" broke
+in the old man, gripping the chair-arms,
+fiercely; "my time's done&mdash;done, sir!"</p>
+
+<p>Then his voice broke and became plaintively
+kind.</p>
+
+<p>"There, there! Forgive me, Jacob, boy.
+But it's true, my boy, true. The world's done,
+for me; but there's a world ahead for you, my
+son, thank God! I'll be patient&mdash;I'll be
+patient. God has been good to me, and I
+haven't many years to wait, in the course of
+nature."</p>
+
+<p>He looked vacantly out of the window, trying
+to see the unforeseen with his mental
+sight.</p>
+
+<p>"While I'm here, Jacob, let the old man
+have his way. It's a whimsey; I doubt 'tis
+hardly rational. But I have no heart to go
+home. Let me learn to live my life here.
+'Twill be easier."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39" href="#Page_39">[39]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But do you think it necessary to sell, sir?
+Could you not hold the house? Are you certain
+that you would like to have a stranger
+living there?"</p>
+
+<p>"I care not a pin who lives within those
+four walls now, sir!" cried the elder, with a
+momentary return of his vehemence. "It's
+no house to me now. Sell it, sir, sell it!&mdash;if
+there's any one will give money for it at a time
+like this. Bring every stick of furniture and
+every stitch of carpet up here; and let me
+have my way, Jacob&mdash;it won't be for long."</p>
+
+<p>He got up and went blindly out of the
+room, and his son heard him muttering, "Not
+for long&mdash;not for long, now," as he wandered
+about the house and went aimlessly into room
+after room.</p>
+
+<p>Old Jacob Dolph had always been an indulgent
+parent, and none kinder ever lived. But
+we should hardly call him indulgent to-day.
+Good as he was to his boy, it had always been
+with the goodness of a superior. It was the
+way of his time. A half-century ago the
+child's position was equivocal. He lived by
+the grace of God and his parents, and their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40" href="#Page_40">[40]</a></span>
+duty to him was rather a duty to society, born
+of an abstract morality. Love was given him,
+not as a right, but as an indulgence. And
+young Jacob Dolph, in all his grief and anxiety,
+was guiltily conscious of a secret thrill of
+pleasure&mdash;natural enough, poor boy!&mdash;in his
+sudden elevation to the full dignity of manhood,
+and his father's abdication of the headship
+of the house.</p>
+
+<p>A little later in the day, urged again by the
+old gentleman, he put on his hat and went to
+see Abram Van Riper. Mr. Van Riper was
+now, despite his objections to the pernicious
+institution of country-houses, a near neighbor
+of the Dolphs. He had yielded, not to fashion,
+but to yellow fever, and at the very first of
+the outbreak had bought a house on the outskirts
+of Greenwich Village, and had moved
+there in unseemly haste. He had also registered
+an unnecessarily profane oath that he
+would never again live within the city limits.</p>
+
+<p>When young Jacob Dolph came in front of
+the low, hip-roofed house, whose lower story
+of undressed stone shone with fresh whitewash,
+Mr. Van Riper stood on his stoop and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41" href="#Page_41">[41]</a></span>
+checked his guest at the front gate, a dozen
+yards away. From this distance he jabbed his
+big gold-headed cane toward the young man,
+as though to keep him off.</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/ill-p041.jpg" >
+<img class="plain" src="images/ill-p041-thumb.jpg" width="400" height="392" alt="" title="" />
+</a>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Stay there, sir&mdash;you, sir, you Jacob
+Dolph!" he roared, brandishing the big stick.
+"Stand back, I tell you! Don't come in, sir!
+Good-day, sir&mdash;good-day, good-day, good-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42" href="#Page_42">[42]</a></span>day!"
+(This hurried excursus was in deference
+to a sense of social duty.) "Keep away,
+confound you, keep away&mdash;consume your
+body, sir, stay where you are!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not coming any nearer, Mr. Van
+Riper," said Jacob Dolph, with a smile which
+he could not help.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't have you in here, sir," went on Mr.
+Van Riper, with no abatement of his agitation.
+"I don't want to be inhospitable; but I've got
+a wife and a son, sir, and you're infectious&mdash;damn
+it, sir, you're infectious!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll stay where I am, Mr. Van Riper," said
+young Jacob, smiling again. "I only came
+with a message from my father."</p>
+
+<p>"With a what?" screamed Mr. Van Riper.
+"I can't have&mdash;oh, ay, a message! Well, say
+it then and be off, like a sensible youngster.
+Consume it, man, can't you talk farther out in
+the street?"</p>
+
+<p>When Mr. Van Riper learned his visitor's
+message, he flung his stick on the white pebbles
+of the clam-shell-bordered path, and swore
+that he, Van Riper, was the only sane man in
+a city of lunatics, and that if Jacob Dolph tried<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43" href="#Page_43">[43]</a></span>
+to carry out his plan he should be shipped
+straightway to Bloomingdale.</p>
+
+<p>But young Jacob had something of his
+father's patience, and, despite the publicity of
+the interview, he contrived to make Mr. Van
+Riper understand how matters stood. To tell
+the truth, Van Riper grew quite sober and
+manageable when he realized that his extravagant
+imputation of insanity was not so wide
+of the mark as it might have seemed, and that
+there was a possibility that his old friend's
+mind might be growing weak. He even ventured
+a little way down the path and permitted
+Jacob to come to the gate while they discussed
+the situation.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor old Dolph&mdash;poor old Jacob!" he
+groaned. "We must keep him out of the
+hands of the sharks, that we must!" He did
+not see young Jacob's irrepressible smile at
+this singular extension of metaphor. "He
+mustn't be allowed to sell that house in open
+market&mdash;never, sir! Confound it, I'll buy it
+myself before I'll see him fleeced!"</p>
+
+<p>In the end he agreed, on certain strict conditions
+of precaution, to see young Jacob the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44" href="#Page_44">[44]</a></span>
+next day and discuss ways and means to save
+the property.</p>
+
+<p>"Come here, sir, at ten, and I'll see you in
+the sitting-room, and we'll find out what we
+can do for your father&mdash;curse it, it makes me
+feel bad; by gad, it does! Ten to-morrow,
+then&mdash;and come fumigated, young man, don't
+you forget that&mdash;come fumigated, sir!"</p>
+
+<p>It was Van Riper who bought the property
+at last. He paid eighteen thousand dollars for
+it. This was much less than its value; but it
+was more than any one else would have given
+just at that time, and it was all that Van Riper
+could afford. The transaction weighed on the
+purchaser's mind, however. He had bought
+the house solely out of kindness, at some momentary
+inconvenience to himself; and yet it
+looked as though he were taking advantage of
+his friend's weakness. Abram Van Riper was
+a man who cultivated a clear conscience, of a
+plain, old-fashioned sort, and the necessity for
+self-examination was novel and disagreeable to
+him.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Life lived itself out at Jacob Dolph's new<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45" href="#Page_45">[45]</a></span>
+house whether he liked it or not. The furniture
+came up-town, and was somewhat awkwardly
+disposed about its new quarters; and
+in this unhomelike combination of two homes
+old Mr. Dolph sat himself down to finish his
+stint of life. He awoke each morning and
+found that twenty-four hours of sleep and
+waking lay before him, to be got through in
+their regular order, just as they were lived
+through by men who had an interest in living.
+He went to bed every night, and crossed off
+one from a tale of days of which he could not
+know the length.</p>
+
+<p>Of course his son, in some measure, saved
+his existence from emptiness. He was proud
+of young Jacob&mdash;fond and proud. He looked
+upon him as a prince of men, which he was,
+indeed. He trusted absolutely in the young
+man, and his trust was well placed. And he
+knew that his boy loved him. But he had an
+old man's sad consciousness that he was not
+necessary to Jacob&mdash;that he was an adjunct, at
+the best, not an integral part of this younger
+existence. He saw Jacob the younger gradually
+recovering from his grief for the mother who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46" href="#Page_46">[46]</a></span>
+had left them; and he knew that even so would
+Jacob some day recover from grief when his
+father should have gone.</p>
+
+<p>He saw this; but it is doubtful if he felt it
+acutely. Nature was gradually dulling his sensibilities
+with that wonderful an�sthetic of
+hers, which is so much kinder to the patient
+than it is to his watching friends. After the
+first wild freak of selling the house, he showed,
+for a long time, no marked signs of mental impairment,
+beyond his lack of interest in the
+things which he had once cared about&mdash;even in
+the growth of the city he loved. And in a
+lonely and unoccupied man, sixty-five years of
+age, this was not unnatural. It was not unnatural,
+even, if now and then he was whimsical,
+and took odd fancies and prejudices. But
+nevertheless the work was going on within his
+brain, little by little, day by day.</p>
+
+<p>He settled his life into an almost mechanical
+routine, of which the most active part was his
+daily walk down into the city. At first he
+would not go beyond St. Paul's churchyard;
+but after awhile he began to take timorous
+strolls among the old business streets where<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47" href="#Page_47">[47]</a></span>
+his life had been passed. He would drop into
+the offices of his old friends, and would read
+the market reports with a pretence of great interest,
+and then he would fold up his spectacles
+and put them in their worn leather case,
+and walk slowly out. He was always pleased
+when one of the younger clerks bowed to him
+and said, "Good-day, Mr. Dolph!"</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/ill-p047.jpg" >
+<img class="plain" src="images/ill-p047-thumb.jpg" width="400" height="325" alt="" title="" />
+</a>
+</div>
+
+<p>It was in the fourth year of his widowhood
+that he bethought himself of young Jacob's
+need of a more liberal social life than he had
+been leading. The boy went about enough;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48" href="#Page_48">[48]</a></span>
+he was a good deal of a beau, so his father
+heard; and there was no desirable house in the
+town that did not welcome handsome, amiable
+young Dolph. But he showed no signs of taking
+a wife unto himself, and in those days the
+bachelor had only a provisional status in
+society. He was expected to wed, and the
+whole circle of his friends chorused yearly a
+deeper regret for the lost sheep, as time made
+that detestable thing, an "old bachelor," of
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Young Jacob was receiving many courtesies
+and was making no adequate return. He felt
+it himself, but he was too tender of his father's
+changeless grief to urge him to open the great
+empty house to their friends. The father,
+however, felt that it was his duty to sacrifice
+his own desire for solitude, and, when the winter
+of 1825 brought home the city's wandering
+children&mdash;there were not so many of the wandering
+sort in 1825&mdash;he insisted that young
+Jacob should give a dinner to his friends
+among the gay young bachelors. That would
+be a beginning; and if all went well they would
+have an old maiden aunt from Philadelphia to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49" href="#Page_49">[49]</a></span>
+spend the winter with them, and help them to
+give the dinner parties which do not encourage
+bachelorhood, but rather convert and reform
+the coy celibate.</p>
+
+<p>The news went rapidly through the town.
+The Dolph hospitality had been famous, and
+this was taken for a signal that the Dolph
+doors were to open again. There was great
+excitement in Hudson Street and St. John's
+Park. Maidens, bending over their tambour-frames,
+working secret hopes and aspirations
+in with their blossoming silks and worsted,
+blushed, with faint speculative smiles, as
+they thought of the vast social possibilities
+of the mistress of the grand Dolph house.
+Young bachelors, and old bachelors, too, rolled
+memories of the Dolph Madeira over longing
+tongues.</p>
+
+<p>The Dolph cellar, too, had been famous, and
+just at that period New Yorkers had a fine and
+fanciful taste in wine, if they had any self-respect
+whatever.</p>
+
+<p>I think it must have been about then that
+Mr. Dominick Lynch began his missionary
+labors among the smokers and drinkers of this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50" href="#Page_50">[50]</a></span>
+city; he who bought a vineyard in France and
+the Vuelta Abajo plantations in Cuba, solely
+to teach the people of his beloved New York
+what was the positively proper thing in wines
+and cigars. If it was not then, it could not
+have been much later that Mr. Dolph had got
+accustomed to receiving, every now and then,
+an unordered and unexpected consignment of
+wines or Havana cigars, sent up from Little
+Dock Street&mdash;or what we call Water Street
+now, the lower end of it. And I am sure that
+he paid Mr. Lynch's bill with glowing pride;
+for Mr. Lynch extended the evangelizing hand
+of culture to none but those of pre-eminent
+social position.</p>
+
+<p>It was to be quite a large dinner; but it was
+noticeable that none of the young men who
+were invited had engagements of regrettable
+priority.</p>
+
+<p>Jacob Dolph the elder looked more interested
+in life than he had looked in four years
+when he stood on the hearthrug in the drawing-room
+and received his son's guests. He
+was a bold figure among all the young men,
+not only because he was tall and white-haired,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51" href="#Page_51">[51]</a></span>
+and for the moment erect, and of a noble and
+gracious cast of countenance, but because he
+clung to his old style of dress&mdash;his knee-breeches
+and silk stockings, and his long coat,
+black, for this great occasion, but of the "shadbelly"
+pattern. He wore his high black stock,
+too, and his snow-white hair was gathered behind
+into a loose peruke.</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/ill-p051.jpg" >
+<img class="plain" src="images/ill-p051-thumb.jpg" width="315" height="400" alt="" title="" />
+</a>
+</div>
+
+<p>The young men wore trousers, or pantaloons,
+as they mostly called them, strapped under
+their varnished boots. Their coats were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52" href="#Page_52">[52]</a></span>
+cut like our dress-coats, if you can fancy them
+with a wild amplitude of collar and lapel.
+They wore large cravats and gaudy waistcoats,
+and two or three of them who had been too
+much in England came with shawls or rugs
+around their shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>They were a fashionable lot of people, and
+this was a late dinner, so they sat down at
+six o'clock in the great dining-room&mdash;not the
+little breakfast-room&mdash;with old Jacob Dolph at
+one end of the table and young Jacob Dolph
+at the other.</p>
+
+<p>It was a pleasant dinner, and the wine was
+good, and the company duly appreciative,
+although individually critical.</p>
+
+<p>Old Jacob Dolph had on his right an agreeable
+French count, just arrived in New York,
+who was creating a <i>furor</i>; and on his left was
+Mr. Philip Waters, the oldest of the young
+men, who, being thirty-five, had a certain consideration
+for old age. But old Jacob Dolph
+was not quite at his ease. He did not understand
+the remarkable decorum of the young
+men. He himself belonged to the age of
+"bumpers and no heel taps," and nobody at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53" href="#Page_53">[53]</a></span>
+his board to-night seemed to care about drinking
+bumpers, even out of the poor, little, newfangled
+claret-glasses, that held only a thimbleful
+apiece. He had never known a lot of gentlemen,
+all by themselves, to be so discreet.
+Before the evening was over he became aware
+of the fact that he was the only man who was
+proposing toasts, and then he proposed them
+no more.</p>
+
+<p>Things had changed since he was a young
+buck, and gave bachelor parties. Why, he
+could remember seeing his own good father&mdash;an
+irreproachable gentleman, surely&mdash;lock the
+door of his dining-room on the inside&mdash;ay, at
+just such a dinner as this&mdash;and swear that no
+guest of his should go out of that room sober.
+And his word had been kept. Times were
+changing. He thought, somehow, that these
+young men needed more good port in their
+veins.</p>
+
+<p>Toward the end of the festivities he grew silent.
+He gave no more toasts, and drank no
+more bumpers, although he might safely have
+put another bottle or two under his broad
+waistcoat. But he leaned back in his chair,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54" href="#Page_54">[54]</a></span>
+and rested one hand on the table, playing
+with his wineglass in an absent-minded way.
+There was a vague smile on his face; but
+every now and then he knit his heavy gray
+brows as if he were trying to work out some
+problem of memory. Mr. Philip Waters and
+the French count were talking across him;
+he had been in the conversation, but he had
+dropped out some time before. At last he
+rose, with his brows knit, and pulled out his
+huge watch, and looked at its face. Everybody
+turned toward him, and, at the other end
+of the table, his son half rose to his feet. He
+put the watch back in his pocket, and said, in
+his clear, deep voice: "Gentlemen, I think we
+will rejoin the ladies."</p>
+
+<p>There was a little impulsive stir around the
+table, and then he seemed to understand that
+he had wandered, and a frightened look came
+over his face. He tottered backward, and
+swayed from side to side. Mr. Philip Waters
+and the Frenchman had their arms behind
+him before he could fall, and in a second or two
+he had straightened himself up. He made a
+stately, tremulous apology for what he called<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55" href="#Page_55">[55]</a></span>
+his "infelicitous absence of mind," and then he
+marched off to bed by himself, suffering no one
+to go with him.</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/ill-p055.jpg" >
+<img class="plain" src="images/ill-p055-thumb.jpg" width="400" height="261" alt="And then he marched off to bed by himself, suffering no one to go with him." title="" />
+</a><p class="caption">And then he marched off to bed by himself, suffering no one to go with him.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>A little while later in the evening, Mr.
+Philip Waters, walking down Broadway (which
+thoroughfare was getting to have a fairly suburban
+look), informed the French count that
+in his, Mr. Waters's, opinion, young Jacob
+Dolph would own that house before long.</p>
+
+<p>Young Jacob Dolph's father insisted on repetitions
+of the bachelor dinner, but he never
+again appeared in the great dining-room.
+When there was a stag party he took his own
+simple dinner at five o'clock and went to bed
+early, and lay awake until his son had dismissed
+the last mild reveller, and he could hear
+the light, firm, young footstep mounting the
+stairs to the bedroom door opposite his own.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>That was practically the end of it for old
+Jacob Dolph. The maiden aunt, who had
+been invited, was notified that she could not
+come, for Mr. Dolph was not well enough to
+open his house that winter. But it was delicately<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56" href="#Page_56">[56]</a></span>
+intimated to her that if he grew worse
+she might still be sent for, and that alleviated
+her natural disappointment. She liked to give
+parties; but there is also a chastened joy for
+some people in being at the head of a house of
+mourning.</p>
+
+<p>Old Mr. Dolph grew no worse physically, except
+that he was inclined to make his daily walks
+shorter, and that he grew fonder of sitting at
+home in the little breakfast-room, where the sun
+shone almost all day long, and where Mrs. Dolph
+had once been fond of coming to sew. Her little
+square work-table of mahogany stood there
+still. There the old gentleman liked to dine,
+and often he dined alone. Young Jacob was in
+great demand all over town, and his father
+knew that he ought to go out and amuse himself.
+And the young man, although he was
+kind and loving, and never negligent in any
+office of respect or affection, had that strong
+youth in him which makes it impossible to sit
+every day of the week opposite an old man
+whose world had slipped by him, who knew
+nothing of youth except to love it and wonder
+at it.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57" href="#Page_57">[57]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In the morning, before he went out for his
+daily tramp into town, old Jacob would say to
+young Jacob:</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose I shall see you at dinner, my
+boy?"</p>
+
+<p>And young Jacob would say, "Yes, sir," or
+"No, sir, I think not. Mrs. Des Anges was in
+town yesterday, and she asked me to ride up
+there to-day and dine. And Diana" (Diana
+was his big black mare) "needs a little work;
+she's getting badly out of condition. So,
+if it doesn't matter to you, sir, I'll just
+run up there and get back before the moon
+sets."</p>
+
+<p>And the father would answer that it didn't
+matter, and would send his best respects,
+through Mrs. Des Anges at King's Bridge, to
+Madam Des Anges at New Rochelle; and at
+night he would sit down alone to his dinner in
+the breakfast-room, served by old Chloe, who
+did her humble best to tempt his appetite,
+which was likely to be feeble when Master
+Jacob was away.</p>
+
+<p>Master Jacob had taken to riding to King's
+Bridge of late. Sometimes he would start out<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58" href="#Page_58">[58]</a></span>
+early in the morning, just about the time
+when young Van Riper was plodding by on
+his way to the shop. Young Van Riper liked
+to be at the shop an hour earlier than his
+father. Old Mr. Dolph was always up, on
+these occasions, to see his son start off. He
+loved to look at the boy, in his English riding-boots
+and breeches, astride of black Diana,
+who pranced and curvetted up the unpaved
+road. Young Jacob had her well in hand, but
+he gave her her head and let her play until
+they reached Broadway, where he made her
+strike a rattling regular pace until they got
+well up the road; and then she might walk
+up Bloomingdale way or across to Hickory
+Lane.</p>
+
+<p>If he went up by the east he was likely to
+dismount at a place which you can see now,
+a little west and south of McComb's Dam
+Bridge, where there is a bit of a rocky hollow,
+and a sort of horizontal cleft in the rocks that
+has been called a cave, and a water-washed
+stone above, whose oddly shaped depression is
+called an Indian's footprint. He would stop
+there, because right in that hollow, as I can<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59" href="#Page_59">[59]</a></span>
+tell you myself, grew, in his time as in mine,
+the first of the spring flowers. It was full of
+violets once, carpeted fairly with the pale, delicate
+petals.</p>
+
+<p>And up toward the west, on a bridle-path
+between the hills and the river, as you came
+toward Fort Washington, going to Tubby
+Hook&mdash;we are refined nowadays, and Tubby
+Hook is "Inwood"&mdash;Heaven help it!&mdash;there
+were wonderful flowers in the woods. The
+wind-flowers came there early, nestling under
+the gray rocks that sparkled with garnets; and
+there bloomed great bunches of Dutchman's-breeches&mdash;not
+the thin sprays that come in
+the late New England spring, but huge clumps
+that two men could not enclose with linked
+hands; great masses of scarlet and purple, and&mdash;mostly&mdash;of
+a waxy white, with something
+deathlike in their translucent beauty. There,
+also, he would wade into the swamps around a
+certain little creek, lured by a hope of the
+jack-in-the-pulpit, to find only the odorous and
+disappointing skunk-cabbage. And there the
+woods were full of the aroma of sassafras, and
+of birch tapped by the earliest woodpecker,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60" href="#Page_60">[60]</a></span>
+whose drumming throbbed through the young
+man's deep and tender musing.</p>
+
+<p>And&mdash;strange enough for a young man who
+rides only to exercise his black mare&mdash;he never
+came out of those woods without an armful of
+columbine or the like. And&mdash;strange enough
+for any young man in this world of strange
+things&mdash;when he sat down at the table of Mrs.
+Des Anges, in her pleasant house near Harlem
+Creek, Miss Aline Des Anges wore a bunch of
+those columbines at her throat. Miss Aline
+Des Anges was a slim girl, not very tall, with
+great dark eyes that followed some people with
+a patient wistfulness.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>One afternoon, in May of 1827, young Jacob
+found his father in the breakfast-room, and said
+to him:</p>
+
+<p>"Father, I am going to marry Aline Des
+Anges."</p>
+
+<p>His father, who had been dozing in the sun
+by the south window, raised his eyes to his
+son's face with a kindly, blank look, and said,
+thoughtfully:</p>
+
+<p>"Des Anges. That's a good family, Jacob,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61" href="#Page_61">[61]</a></span>
+and a wonderful woman, Madam Des Anges.
+Is she alive yet?"</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>When Madam Des Anges, eighty years old,
+and strong and well, heard of this, she said:</p>
+
+<p>"It is the etiquette of France that one family
+should make the proposition to the other
+family. Under the circumstances <i>I</i> will be the
+family that proposes. I will make a precedent.
+The Des Anges make precedents."</p>
+
+<p>And she rode down to the Dolph house in
+the family carriage&mdash;the last time it ever went
+out&mdash;and made her "proposition" to Jacob
+Dolph the elder, and he brightened up most
+wonderfully, until you would have thought
+him quite his old self, and he told her what an
+honor he esteemed the alliance, and paid her
+compliments a hundred words long.</p>
+
+<p>And in May of the next year, King's Bridge
+being out of the question, and etiquette being
+waived at the universal demand of society, the
+young couple stood up in the drawing-room of
+the Dolph house to be wed.</p>
+
+<p>The ceremony was fashionably late&mdash;seven<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62" href="#Page_62">[62]</a></span>
+o'clock in the evening. And after it was over,
+and the young couple had digested what St.
+Paul had to say about the ordinance of wedlock,
+and had inaudibly promised to do and be
+whatever the domine required of them, they
+were led by the half-dozen groomsmen to the
+long glass between the front windows, and
+made to stand up there, with their faces toward
+the company, and to receive the congratulations
+of a mighty procession of friends, who
+all used the same formulas, except the very
+old ones, who were delicately indelicate.</p>
+
+<p>The bridegroom wore a blue coat and trousers,
+and a white satin waistcoat embroidered
+with silver-thread roses and lilies-of-the-valley.
+The coat was lined with cream-colored satin,
+quilted in a most elaborate pattern; and his
+necktie was of satin, too, with embroidered
+ends. His shirt was a miracle of fine linen.
+As to the bride, she was in white satin and
+lace, and at her throat she wore a little bunch
+of late white columbines, for which Mr. Jacob
+Dolph the younger had scoured the woods
+near Fort Washington.</p>
+
+<p>There was to be a grand supper, later; and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63" href="#Page_63">[63]</a></span>
+the time of waiting was filled up with fashionable
+conversation.</p>
+
+<p>That dear old doctor, who was then a dear
+young doctor, and whose fine snow-crowned
+face stood in later years as an outward and
+visible sign of all that was brave, kindly, self-sacrificing,
+and benevolent in the art of healing,
+was seated by Madam Des Anges, and was
+telling her, in stately phrase, suited to his
+auditor, of a certain case of heroism with which
+he had met in the course of his practice. Mr.
+Blank, it appeared, had been bitten by a dog
+that was supposed to be possessed by the rabies.
+For months he had suffered the agonies
+of mental suspense and of repeated cauterizing
+of the flesh, and during those months had concealed
+his case from his wife, that he might
+spare her pain&mdash;suffering in silence enough to
+unnerve most men.</p>
+
+<p>"It was heroic," said Dr. F.</p>
+
+<p>Madam Des Anges bowed her gray head approvingly.</p>
+
+<p>"I think," she said, "his conduct shows him
+to be a man of taste. Had he informed his
+wife of his condition, she might have experienced<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64" href="#Page_64">[64]</a></span>
+the most annoying solicitude; and I am
+informed that she is a person of feeble character."</p>
+
+<p>The doctor looked at her, and then down at
+the floor; and then he asked her if she did not
+hope that Almaviva Lynch would bring Garcia
+back again, with that marvellous Italian opera,
+which, as he justly observed, captivated the
+eye, charmed the ear, and awakened the profoundest
+emotions of the heart.</p>
+
+<p>And at that Madam Des Anges showed
+some animation, and responded that she had
+listened to some pleasing operas in Paris; but
+she did not know that they were of Italian origin.</p>
+
+<p>But if Madam Des Anges was surprised to
+learn that any good thing could come out of
+any other country than France, there was another
+surprise in store for her, and it did not
+long impend.</p>
+
+<p>It was only a little while after this that her
+grandson-in-law, finding her on his right and
+Abram Van Riper on his left&mdash;he had served
+out his time as a statue in front of the mirror&mdash;thought
+it proper to introduce to Madam<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65" href="#Page_65">[65]</a></span>
+Des Anges his father's old friend, Mr. Van
+Riper. Mr. Van Riper bowed as low as his
+waistcoat would allow, and courteously observed
+that the honor then accorded him he
+had enjoyed earlier in the evening through the
+kind offices of Mr. Jacob Dolph, senior.</p>
+
+<p>Madam Des Anges dandled her quizzing-glass
+as though she meant to put it up to her
+eye, and said, in a weary way:</p>
+
+<p>"Mr.&mdash;ah&mdash;Van Riper must pardon me. I
+have not the power of remembering faces that
+some people appear to have; and my eyes&mdash;my
+eyes are not strong."</p>
+
+<p>Old Van Riper stared at her, and he turned
+a turkey-cock purple all over his face, down to
+the double chin that hung over his white neckerchief.</p>
+
+<p>"If your ladyship has to buy spectacles," he
+sputtered, "it needn't be on my account."</p>
+
+<p>And he stamped off to the sideboard and
+tried to cool his red-hot rage with potations
+of Jamaica rum. There his wife found him.
+She had drawn near when she saw him talking
+with the great Madam Des Anges, and she
+had heard, as she stood hard by and smiled unobtrusively,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66" href="#Page_66">[66]</a></span>
+the end of that brief conversation.
+Her face, too, was flushed&mdash;a more fiery red
+than her flame-colored satin dress.</p>
+
+<p>She attacked him in a vehement whisper.</p>
+
+<p>"Van Riper, what are you doing? I'd almost
+believe you'd had too much liquor, if I
+didn't know you hadn't had a drop. Will you
+ever learn what gentility is? D'ye want us to
+live and die like toads in a hole? Here you
+are with your ill manners, offending Madam
+Des Anges, that everybody knows is the best
+of the best, and there's an end of all likelihood
+of ever seeing her and her folks, and two nieces
+unmarried and as good girls as ever was, and
+such a connection for your son, who hasn't
+been out of the house it's now twelve months&mdash;except
+to this very wedding here, and you've
+no thought of your family when once you lose
+that mighty fine temper of yours, that you're
+so prodigious proud of; and where you'll end
+us, Van Riper, is more than I know, I vow."</p>
+
+<p>But all she could get out of Van Riper was:</p>
+
+<p>"The old harridan! She'll remember my
+name this year or two to come, I'll warrant ye!"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67" href="#Page_67">[67]</a></span></p><hr />
+
+<p>It was all over at last, and old black Julius,
+who had been acting as a combination of link-boy
+and major-domo at the foot of the front
+steps, extinguished his lantern, and went to
+bed, some time before a little white figure
+stole up the stairs and slipped into a door
+that Chloe&mdash;black Chloe&mdash;held open.</p>
+
+<p>And the next day Jacob Dolph the elder
+handed the young bride into the new travelling-carriage
+with his stateliest grace, and Mr.
+and Mrs. Jacob Dolph, junior, rolled proudly
+up the road, through Bloomingdale, and across
+King's Bridge&mdash;stopping for luncheon at the
+Des Anges house&mdash;over to New Rochelle,
+where the feminine head of the house of Des
+Anges received them at her broad front door,
+and where they had the largest room in her
+large, old-fashioned house, for one night.
+Madam Des Anges wished to keep them
+longer, and was authoritative about it. But
+young Jacob settled the question of supremacy
+then and there, with the utmost courtesy,
+and Madam Des Anges, being great enough to
+know that she was beaten, sent off the victor
+on the morrow, with his trembling accomplice<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68" href="#Page_68">[68]</a></span>
+by his side, and wished them <i>bon voyage</i> as
+heartily as she possibly could.</p>
+
+<p>So they started afresh on their bridal tour,
+and very soon the travelling carriage struck the
+old Queen Anne's Road, and reached Yonkers.
+And there, and from there up to Fishkill, they
+passed from one country-house to another,
+bright particular stars at this dinner and at
+that supper, staying a day here and a night
+there, and having just the sort of sociable,
+public, restless, rattling good time that neither
+of them wanted.</p>
+
+<p>At every country-house where they stayed a
+day they were pressed to stay a week, and always
+the whole neighborhood was routed out
+to pay them social tribute. The neighbors
+came in by all manner of conveyances. One
+family of aristocrats started at six o'clock in
+the morning, and travelled fourteen miles
+down the river in an ox-cart, the ladies sitting
+bolt upright, with their hair elaborately
+dressed for the evening's entertainment. And
+once a regular assembly ball was given in their
+honor, at a town-hall, the use of which was
+granted for the purpose specified by unanimous<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69" href="#Page_69">[69]</a></span>
+vote of the town council. Of course,
+they had a very good time; but then there
+are various sorts of good times. Perhaps they
+might have selected another sort for themselves.</p>
+
+<p>There is a story that, on their way back,
+they put up for several days at a poor little
+hostelry under the hills below Peekskill, and
+spent their time in wandering through the
+woods and picking wild-flowers; but it lacks
+confirmation, and I should be sorry to believe
+that two well-brought-up young people would
+prefer their own society to the unlimited hospitality
+of their friends in the country.</p>
+
+<p>Old Jacob Dolph, at home, had the great
+house all to himself; and, although black
+Chloe took excellent care of his material comforts,
+he was restless and troubled. He took
+most pleasure in a London almanac, on whose
+smudgy pages he checked off the days. Letters
+came as often as the steamboat arrived
+from Albany, and he read them, after his fashion.
+It took him half the week to get through
+one missive, and by that time another had arrived.
+But I fear he did not make much out<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70" href="#Page_70">[70]</a></span>
+of them. Still, they gave him one pleasure.
+He endorsed them carefully with the name of
+the writer, and the date of receipt, and then he
+laid them away in his desk, as neatly as he had
+filed his business letters in his old days of active
+life.</p>
+
+<p>Every night he had a candle alight in the
+hallway; and if there were a far-off rumble of
+carriage-wheels late at night, he would rise
+from his bed&mdash;he was a light sleeper, in his age&mdash;and
+steal out into the corridor, hugging his
+dressing-robe about him, to peer anxiously
+down over the balusters till the last sound and
+the last faint hope of his son's return had died
+away.</p>
+
+<p>And, indeed, it was late in July when the
+travelling-carriage once more drew up in front
+of the Dolph house, and old Julius opened the
+door, and old Mr. Dolph welcomed them, and
+told them that he had been very lonely in their
+absence, and that their mother&mdash;and then he
+remembered that their mother was dead, and
+went into the house with his head bowed low.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="toc_link"><a href="#CONTENTS">[TOC]</a></span>
+<a name="Chapter_III" id="Chapter_III"></a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71" href="#Page_71">[71]</a></span></p>
+<h2>III.</h2>
+
+
+<p>St. John's Park and Hudson Street and
+all well-bred New York, for that matter,
+had its fill of the Dolph hospitality the next
+winter. It was dinner and ball and rout and
+merry-making of one sort or another, the season
+through. The great family sleighs and the
+little bachelor sleighs whirred and jingled up
+to the Dolph door surely two, and sometimes
+four, evenings in every week, and whirred and
+jingled away again at intensely fashionable
+hours, such as plain folk used for sleeping.</p>
+
+<p>They woke up Abram Van Riper, did the revellers
+northward bound to country houses on
+the river-side, and, lying deep in his feather-bed,
+he directed his rumbling imprecations at
+the panes of glass, that sparkled with frost in
+the mild moonlight.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Oh, come, maidens, come, o'er the blue, rolling wave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The lovely should still be the care of the brave&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Trancadillo, trancadillo, trancadillo, dillo, dillo, dillo!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72" href="#Page_72">[72]</a></span>sang the misguided slaves of fashion, as they
+sped out of hearing.</p>
+
+<p>"Trancadillo!" rumbled Mr. Van Riper.
+"I'd like to trancadillo them, consume 'em!"
+and then he cursed his old friend's social circle
+for a parcel of trumpery fools; and Mrs. Van
+Riper, lying by his side, sighed softly with
+chastened regret and hopeless aspiration.</p>
+
+<p>But everybody else&mdash;everybody who was
+anybody&mdash;blessed the Dolphs and the Dolphs'
+cellar, and their man-servant and their maid-servant,
+and their roasted ox and their saddle
+of venison, and the distinguished stranger who
+was within their gates; and young Mrs. Dolph
+was made as welcome as she made others.</p>
+
+<p>For the little girl with the great dark eyes
+took to all this giddiness as naturally as possible&mdash;after
+her quiet fashion. The dark eyes
+sparkled with subdued pleasure that had no
+mean pride in it when she sat at the head of
+her great mahogany table, and smiled at the
+double row of bright faces that hemmed in the
+gorgeous display of the Dolph silver and china
+and fine linen. And it was wonderful how
+charming were the famous Des Anges manners,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73" href="#Page_73">[73]</a></span>
+when they were softened and sweetened
+by so much grace and beauty.</p>
+
+<p>"Who would have thought she had it in
+her?" said the young ladies down in St. John's
+Park. "You remember her, don't you, what a
+shy little slip of a thing she was when we were
+at old Dumesnil's together? Who was it used
+to say that she had had the life grandmothered
+out of her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Fine little creature, that wife of Dolph's,"
+said the young men as they strolled about in
+Niblo's Garden. "Dolph wouldn't have had
+the road all to himself if that old dragon of a
+grandmother had given the girl half a chance.
+'Gad, she's an old grenadier! They say that
+Dolph had to put her through her facings the
+day after he was married, and that he did it
+in uncommon fine style, too."</p>
+
+<p>"He's a lucky devil, that Dolph," the
+younger ones would sigh. "Nothing to do,
+all the money he wants, pretty wife, and the
+best wine in New York! I wish <i>my</i> old man
+would cut the shop and try to get an education
+in wine."</p>
+
+<p>Their devotion to the frivolities of fashion<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74" href="#Page_74">[74]</a></span>
+notwithstanding, the young Dolphs were a loving,
+and, in a way, a domestic couple. Of
+course, everybody they knew had to give them
+a dinner or a ball, or pay them some such social
+tribute, and there were a myriad calls to
+be received and returned; but they found time
+for retired communings, even for long drives
+in the sleigh which, many a time in young
+Jacob Dolph's bachelor days, had borne the
+young man and a female companion&mdash;not always
+the same companion, either&mdash;up the
+Bloomingdale Road. And in the confidences
+of those early days young Jacob learned what
+his gentle little wife told him&mdash;without herself
+realizing the pathos of it&mdash;the story of her
+crushed, unchildlike youth, loveless till he
+came, her prince, her deliverer. Dolph understood
+it; he had known, of course, that she
+could not have been happy under the <i>r�gime</i>
+of Madam Des Anges; but when he heard the
+simple tale in all its monotonous detail, and
+saw spread out before him this poor young
+life, with its thousand little disappointments,
+submissions, abnegations, and undeserved punishments
+and needless restrictions, a generous<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75" href="#Page_75">[75]</a></span>
+rage glowed in his heart, and perhaps sprang
+once in a while to his indiscreet lips; and out
+of this grew a deeper and maturer tenderness
+than his honeymoon love for the sweet little
+soul that he had at first sought only for the
+dark eyes through which it looked out upon
+its joyless world.</p>
+
+<p>It is unwise to speak in profane language, it
+is injudicious to speak disrespectfully of old
+age, yet the Recording Angel, if he did not see
+fit to let a tear fall upon the page, perchance
+found it convenient to be mending his pen
+when young Jacob Dolph once uttered certain
+words that made his wife cry out:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Jacob, don't, <i>please</i> don't. She didn't
+mean it!"</p>
+
+<p>This is only a supposition. Perhaps Madam
+Des Anges really had meant well. But oh,
+how much happier this world would be if all
+the people who "mean well" and do ill would
+only take to meaning ill and doing well!</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Jacob Dolph the elder took but a doubtful
+part in all the festivities. The cloud that had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76" href="#Page_76">[76]</a></span>
+hung dimly over him had begun to show little
+rifts; but the dark masses between the rifts
+were thicker and heavier than ever. It was
+the last brief convulsive struggle of the patient
+against the power of the an�sthetic, when the
+nervous hand goes up to put the cloth away
+from the mouth, just before the work is done
+and consciousness slips utterly away, and life<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77" href="#Page_77">[77]</a></span>
+is no more for the sufferer, though his heart
+beat and the breath be warm between his
+lips.</p>
+
+<p>When he was bright he was almost like his
+old self, and these delusive periods came oftenest
+when he met some old friend, or in quiet
+morning hours when his daughter&mdash;so he always
+called her&mdash;sat at his feet in the sunny
+breakfast-room, and sewed and listened, or perhaps
+read to him from Scott's latest novel.</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/ill-p077.jpg" >
+<img class="plain" src="images/ill-p077-thumb.jpg" width="362" height="400" alt="" title="" />
+</a></div>
+
+<p>He may have had some faint sub-consciousness
+of his condition, for although he took the
+deepest interest in the balls and the dinners,
+he would never appear before his son's guests
+except when he was at his best and brightest.
+But he loved to sit, withdrawn in a corner,
+watching the young life that fluttered through
+the great rooms, smiling to himself, and gently
+pleased if some old crony sought him out and
+talked of old times&mdash;the older the times were,
+the better he remembered them. Indeed, he
+now recalled some things that he had not
+thought of since his far-off boyhood.</p>
+
+<p>In truth, the younger Dolphs often had
+small heart in their festal doings. But the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78" href="#Page_78">[78]</a></span>
+medical science of the day, positive, self-satisfied,
+and blinded by all manner of tradition,
+gave them, through its ministers, cruelly false
+hopes of the old man's ultimate recovery.
+Besides, they could not well order things otherwise.
+The extravagant hospitality of the day
+demanded such ceremonial, and to have abated
+any part of it would only have served to grieve
+and to alarm the object of their care.</p>
+
+<p>The whole business was a constant pride and
+joy to old Mr. Jacob Dolph. When there was
+a dinner to be given, he would follow Aline as
+she went about the house superintending the
+preparations of her servants, in her flowered
+apron of black silk, with her bunch of keys&mdash;honest
+keys, those, a good four inches long,
+with tongues as big as a domino&mdash;jingling at
+her side. He would himself overlook the making
+ready of the wines, and give oft-repeated
+instructions as to the proper temperature for
+the port, and see that the champagne was put
+on ice in the huge octagonal cellaret in the
+dining-room corner. And when all was ready,
+as like as not he would kiss Aline on the forehead,
+and say:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79" href="#Page_79">[79]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I have a headache to-night, my dear, and
+I think I shall take my dinner in my room."</p>
+
+<p>And he would go feebly up stairs, and when
+old Julius, who always waited upon him,
+brought up his tray, he would ask:</p>
+
+<p>"Is it a fine dinner, Julius? Did everybody
+come?"</p>
+
+<p>And Julius would invariably reply, with profound
+African dignity:</p>
+
+<p>"Mons'us gran' dinneh, seh! 'E fines' dinneh
+I eveh witness', seh! I have stood behin'
+you' chai', seh, this thutty y'ah, an' I neveh see
+no such a gran' dinneh, Misteh Do'ph, seh!"</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/ill-p079.jpg" >
+<img class="plain" src="images/ill-p079-thumb.jpg" width="286" height="400" alt="Mons'us gran' dinneh, Seh!" title="" />
+</a><p class="caption">"Mons'us gran' dinneh, Seh!"</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Except the dinner we gave Mr. Hamilton; in
+State Street, Julius," the old man would put in.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Ex</i>cep' that, seh," Julius would gravely
+reply: "<i>that</i> was a pol-litical dinneh, seh; an',
+<i>of</i> co'se, a pol'litical dinneh&mdash;" an expressive
+pause&mdash;"but this he' is sho'ly a mons'us fine
+dinneh, seh."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>His bodily vigor was unimpaired, however,
+and except that his times of entire mental
+clearness grew fewer and briefer as the months<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80" href="#Page_80">[80]</a></span>
+went on, there was little change in the old gentleman
+when the spring of 1829 came. He
+was not insane, he was not idiotic, even at the
+worst. It seemed to be simply a premature
+old age that clouded his faculties. He forgot
+many things, he was weakly absent-minded,
+often he did not recognize a familiar face, and he
+seemed ever more and more disinclined to think
+and to talk. He liked best to sit in silence,
+seemingly unconscious of the world about him;
+and if he was aroused from his dreamy trance,
+his wandering speech would show that his last
+thought&mdash;and it might have entered his mind
+hours before, at the suggestion of some special
+event&mdash;was so far back in the past that it dealt
+with matters beyond his son's knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>He was allowed to do as he pleased, for in
+the common affairs of daily life he seemed to
+be able to care for himself, and he plaintively
+resented anything that looked like guardianship.
+So he kept up his custom of walking
+down into the city, at least as far as St. Paul's.
+It was thought to be safe enough, for he was
+a familiar figure in the town, and had friends
+at every turn.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81" href="#Page_81">[81]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But one afternoon he did not return in time
+for dinner. Young Jacob was out for his afternoon
+ride, which that day had taken him in
+the direction of the good doctor's house. And
+when he had reached the house, he found the
+doctor likewise mounted for a ride. The doctor
+was going up to Bond Street&mdash;the Dolphs'
+quarter was growing fashionable already&mdash;to
+look at a house near Broadway that he had
+some thoughts of buying, for he was to be
+married the coming winter. So they had ridden
+back together, and after a long examination
+of the house, young Jacob had ridden off
+for a gallop through the country lanes; and it
+was five o'clock, and dinner was on the table,
+when he came to his father's house and
+learned from tearful Aline that his father was
+missing.</p>
+
+<p>The horse was at the stable door when young
+Jacob mounted him once more and galloped
+off to Bond Street, where he found the doctor
+just ready to turn down the Bowery; and they
+joined forces and hurried back, and down
+Broadway, inquiring of the people who sat on
+their front stoops&mdash;it was a late spring evening,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82" href="#Page_82">[82]</a></span>
+warm and fair&mdash;if they had seen old Mr.
+Dolph that day.</p>
+
+<p>Many had seen him as he went down; but
+no one could remember that the old gentleman
+had come back over his accustomed <ins class="correction" id="Note_1" title="Transcriber's note: period inserted">path.</ins> At
+St. Paul's, the sexton thought that Mr. Dolph
+had prolonged his walk down the street. Further
+on, some boys had seen him, still going
+southward. The searchers stopped at one or
+two of the houses where he might have called;
+but there was no trace of him. It was long
+since old Jacob Dolph had made a formal call.</p>
+
+<p>But at Bowling Green they were hailed by
+Mr. Philip Waters, who came toward them
+with more excitement in his mien than a
+young man of good society often exhibited.</p>
+
+<p>"I was going for a carriage, Dolph," he
+said: "your father is down there in the Battery
+Park, and I'm afraid&mdash;I'm afraid he's had
+a stroke of paralysis."</p>
+
+<p>They hurried down, and found him lying on
+the grass, his head on the lap of a dark-skinned,
+ear-ringed Spanish sailor. He had been seen
+to fall from the bench near by, another maritime
+man in the crowd about him explained.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83" href="#Page_83">[83]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It was only a minit or two ago," said the
+honest seafarer, swelled with the importance
+that belongs to the narrator of a tale of accident
+and disaster. "He was a-settin' there,
+had been for two hours 'most, just a-starin' at
+them houses over there, and all of a sudden
+chuck forward he went, right on his face. And
+then a man come along that knowed him, and
+said he'd go for a kerridge, or I'd 'a' took
+him on my sloop&mdash;she's a-layin' here now, with
+onions from Weathersfield&mdash;and treated him<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84" href="#Page_84">[84]</a></span>
+well; I see he wa'n't no disrespectable character.
+Here, Pedro, them's the old man's folks&mdash;let
+'em take him. A-settin' there nigh on
+two hours, he was, just a-studyin' them
+houses. B'long near here?"</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/ill-p084.jpg" >
+<img class="plain" src="images/ill-p084-thumb.jpg" width="400" height="341" alt="" title="" />
+</a></div>
+
+<p>Young Jacob had no words for the Connecticut
+captain. Waters had arrived, with somebody's
+carriage, confiscated on the highway,
+and they gently lifted up the old gentleman
+and set off homeward. They were just in time,
+for Waters had been the earliest of the evening
+promenaders to reach the Battery. It was
+dinner hour&mdash;or supper hour for many&mdash;and
+the park was given up to the lounging sailors
+from the river-side streets.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor's face was dark.</p>
+
+<p>"No, it is not paralysis," he said. "Let us
+proceed at once to your own home, Mr. Dolph.
+In view of what I am now inclined to consider
+his condition, I think it would be the most advisable
+course."</p>
+
+<p>He was as precise and exact in his speech,
+even then, as he was later on, when years had
+given an innocent, genial pomposity to his delivery
+of his rounded sentences.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85" href="#Page_85">[85]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>They put old Jacob Dolph to bed in the
+room which he had always occupied, in his
+married as in his widowed days. He never
+spoke again; that day, indeed, he hardly
+moved. But on the next he stirred uneasily,
+as though he were striving to change his position.
+The doctor bled him, and they shifted
+him as best they could, but he seemed no
+more comfortable. So the doctor bled him
+again; and even that did no good.</p>
+
+<p>About sunset, Aline, who had watched over
+him with hardly a moment's rest, left the room
+for a quarter of an hour, to listen to what the
+doctors had to say&mdash;there were four of them
+in the drawing-room below. When she and
+her husband entered the sick-room again, the
+old man had moved in his bed. He was lying
+on his side, his face to the windows that
+looked southward, and he had raised himself a
+little on his arm. There was a troubled gaze
+in his eyes, as of one who strains to see something
+that is unaccountably missing from his
+sight. He turned his head a little, as though
+to listen. Thus gazing, with an inward and
+spiritual vision only, at the bay that his eyes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86" href="#Page_86">[86]</a></span>
+might never again see, and listening to the
+waves whose cadence he should hear no more,
+the troubled look faded into one of inscrutable
+peace, and he sank back into the hollow of his
+son's arm and passed away.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The next time that the doctor was in the
+house it was of a snowy night a few days after
+New Year's Day. It was half-past two o'clock
+in the morning, and Jacob Dolph&mdash;no longer
+Jacob Dolph the younger&mdash;had been pacing
+furiously up and down the long dining-room&mdash;that
+being the longest room in the house&mdash;when
+the doctor came down stairs, and addressed
+him with his usual unruffled precision:</p>
+
+<p>"I will request of you, Dolph, a large glass
+of port. I need not suggest to you that it is
+unnecessary to stint the measure, for the hospitality
+of this house is&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"How is she, doctor? For God's sake, tell
+me&mdash;is she&mdash;is she&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"The hospitality of this house is prover&mdash;"
+the precise doctor recommenced.</p>
+
+<p>"Damn the hospitality!" cried Jacob Dolph:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87" href="#Page_87">[87]</a></span>
+"I mean&mdash;oh, doctor&mdash;tell me&mdash;is anything
+wrong?"</p>
+
+<p>"Should I request of you the cup of amity
+and geniality, Mr. Dolph, were there cause for
+anything save rejoicing in this house?" demanded
+the physician, with amiable severity.
+"I had thought that my words would have
+conveyed&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It's all over?"</p>
+
+<p>"And bravely over!" And the doctor nodded
+his head with a dignified cheerfulness.</p>
+
+<p>"And may I go to her?"</p>
+
+<p>"You may, sir, after you have given me my
+glass of port. But remember, sir&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Dolph turned to the sideboard, grasped a
+bottle and a glass, and thrust them into the
+doctor's hand, and started for the door.</p>
+
+<p>"But remember, sir," went on the unperturbed
+physician, "you must not agitate or excite
+her. A gentle step, a tranquil tone, and
+a cheerful and encouraging address, brief and
+affectionate, will be all that is permitted."</p>
+
+<p>Dolph listened in mad impatience, and was
+over the threshold before the doctor's peremptory
+call brought him back.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88" href="#Page_88">[88]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="floatl">
+<a href="images/ill-p088.jpg" >
+<img class="plain" src="images/ill-p088-thumb.jpg" width="273" height="400" alt="" title="" />
+</a></span>
+"What is it now?" he demanded, impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor looked at him with a gaze of
+wonder and reproach.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a male
+child, sir," he
+said.</p>
+
+<p>Jacob Dolph
+crept up the
+stairs on tiptoe.
+As he paused
+for a moment
+in front of a
+door at the
+head, he heard
+the weak, spasmodic
+wail of
+another Dolph.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>"There's no help for it&mdash;I've got to do it,"
+said Jacob Dolph.</p>
+
+<p>It was another wintry morning, just after
+breakfast. The snow was on the ground, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89" href="#Page_89">[89]</a></span>
+the sleigh-bells up in Broadway sent down a
+faint jingling. Ten winters had come and
+gone, and Mr. Dolph was as comfortably stout
+as a man should be who is well fed and forty.
+He stood with his back to the fire, pulling at
+his whiskers&mdash;which formed what was earlier
+known as a Newgate collar&mdash;with his right
+thumb and forefinger. His left thumb was
+stuck in the armhole of his flowered satin
+waistcoat, black and shiny.</p>
+
+<p>Opposite him sat a man of his own age,
+clean-shaven and sharp-featured. He had
+calm, somewhat cold, gray eyes, a deliberate,
+self-contained manner of speaking, and a pallid,
+dry complexion that suited with his thin features.
+His dress was plain, although it was
+thoroughly neat. He had no flowered satin
+waistcoat; but something in his bearing told
+you that he was a man who had no anxiety
+about the narrow things of the counting-room;
+who had no need to ask himself how much
+money was coming in to-morrow. And at the
+same time you felt that every cent of whatever
+might be to-morrow's dues would find its way
+to his hands as surely as the representative<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90" href="#Page_90">[90]</a></span>
+figures stood on his ledger's page. It was
+young Mr. Van Riper&mdash;but he, too, had lost
+his right to that title, not only because of his
+years, but because, in the garret of the house
+in Greenwich Village, a cobweb stretched from
+one of the low beams to the head of old
+Abram Van Riper's great walking-stick, which
+stood in the corner where it had been placed,
+with other rubbish, the day after Abram Van
+Riper's funeral.</p>
+
+<p>"I should not advise it, Dolph, if it can be
+helped," Mr. Van Riper observed, thoughtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"It can't be helped."</p>
+
+<p>"I can give you your price, of course," Van
+Riper went on, with deliberation; "but equally
+of course, it won't be anything like what the
+property will bring in the course of a few
+years."</p>
+
+<p>Dolph kicked at the hearthrug, as he answered,
+somewhat testily:</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not making a speculation of it."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Van Riper was unmoved.</p>
+
+<p>"And I'm not making a speculation of you,
+either," he said, calmly: "I am speaking only
+for your own benefit, Dolph."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91" href="#Page_91">[91]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mr. Dolph put his hands in his pockets,
+strode to the window and back again, and then
+said, with an uneasy little laugh:</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon, Van Riper; you're quite
+right, of course. The fact is, I've got to do it.
+I must have the money, and I must have it
+now."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Van Riper stroked his sharp chin.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it necessary to raise the money in that
+particular way? You are temporarily embarrassed&mdash;I
+don't wish to be intrusive&mdash;but why
+not borrow what you need, and give me a
+mortgage on the house?"</p>
+
+<p>Ten years had given Jacob Dolph a certain
+floridity; but at this he blushed a hot red.</p>
+
+<p>"Mortgage on the house? No, sir," he said,
+with emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, any other security, then," was Van
+Riper's indifferent amendment.</p>
+
+<p>Again Jacob Dolph strode to the window
+and back again, staring hard at the carpet, and
+knitting his brows.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Van Riper waited in undisturbed calm
+until his friend spoke once more.</p>
+
+<p>"I might as well tell you the truth, Van<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92" href="#Page_92">[92]</a></span>
+Riper," he said, at last; "I've made a fool of
+myself. I've lost money, and I've got to
+pocket the loss. As to borrowing, I've borrowed
+all I ought to borrow. I <i>won't</i> mortgage
+the house. This sale simply represents
+the hole in my capital."</p>
+
+<p>Something like a look of surprise came into
+Mr. Van Riper's wintry eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"It's none of my business, of course," he
+observed; "but if you haven't any objection
+to telling me&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What did it? What does for everybody
+nowadays? Western lands and Wall Street&mdash;that's
+about the whole story. Oh, yes, I know&mdash;I
+ought to have kept out of it. But I
+didn't. I was nothing better than a fool at
+such business. I'm properly punished."</p>
+
+<p>He sighed as he stood on the hearthrug,
+his hands under his coat-tails, and his head
+hanging down. He looked as though many
+other thoughts were going through his mind
+than those which he expressed.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish," he began again, "that my poor old
+father had brought me up to business ways.
+I might have kept out of it all. College is a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93" href="#Page_93">[93]</a></span>
+good thing for a man, of course; but college
+doesn't teach you how to buy lots in western
+cities&mdash;especially when the western cities
+aren't built."</p>
+
+<p>"College teaches you a good many other
+things, though," said Van Riper, frowning
+slightly, as he put the tips of his long fingers
+together; "I wish I'd had your chance,
+Dolph. <i>My</i> boy shall go to Columbia, that's
+certain."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Your</i> boy?" queried Dolph, raising his
+eyebrows.</p>
+
+<p>Van Riper smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he said, "my boy. You didn't
+know I had a boy, did you? He's nearly a
+year old."</p>
+
+<p>This made Mr. Jacob Dolph kick at the rug
+once more, and scowl a little.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I haven't been very neighborly,
+Van Riper&mdash;" he began; but the other interrupted
+him, smiling good-naturedly.</p>
+
+<p>"You and I go different ways, Dolph," he
+said. "We're plain folks over in Greenwich
+Village, and you&mdash;you're a man of fashion."</p>
+
+<p>Jacob Dolph smiled&mdash;not very mirthfully.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94" href="#Page_94">[94]</a></span>
+Van Riper's gaze travelled around the room,
+quietly curious.</p>
+
+<p>"It costs money to be a man of fashion,
+doesn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Dolph, "it does."</p>
+
+<p>There was silence for a minute, which Van
+Riper broke.</p>
+
+<p>"If you've got to sell, Dolph, why, it's a
+pity; but I'll take it. I'll see Ogden to-day, and
+we can finish the business whenever you wish.
+But in my opinion, you'd do better to borrow."</p>
+
+<p>Dolph shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been quite enough of a fool," he replied.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Mr. Van Riper, rising, "I must
+get to the office. You'll hear from Ogden to-morrow.
+I'm sorry you've got in such a
+snarl; but&mdash;" his lips stretched into something
+like a smile&mdash;"I suppose you'll know better
+next time. Good-day."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>After Mr. Dolph had bowed his guest to
+the door, Mrs. Dolph slipped down the stairs
+and into the drawing-room.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95" href="#Page_95">[95]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Did he take it?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course he took it," Dolph answered,
+bitterly, "at that price."</p>
+
+<p>"Did he say anything," she inquired again,
+"about its being hard for us to&mdash;to sell it?"</p>
+
+<p>"He said we had better not sell it now&mdash;that
+it would bring more a few years hence."</p>
+
+<p>"He doesn't understand," said Mrs. Dolph.</p>
+
+<p>"He <i>couldn't</i> understand," said Mr. Dolph.</p>
+
+<p>Then she went over to him and kissed
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"It's only selling the garden, after all," she
+said; "it isn't like selling our home."</p>
+
+<p>He put his arm about her waist, and they
+walked into the breakfast-room, and looked out
+on the garden which to-morrow would be
+theirs no longer, and in a few months would
+not be a garden at all.</p>
+
+<p>High walls hemmed it in&mdash;the walls of the
+houses which had grown up around them. A
+few stalks stood up out of the snow, the stalks
+of old-fashioned flowers&mdash;hollyhock and larkspur
+and Job's-tears and the like&mdash;and the
+lines of the beds were defined by the tiny
+hedges of box, with the white snow-powder<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96" href="#Page_96">[96]</a></span>
+sifted into their dark, shiny green. The bare
+rose-bushes were there, with their spikes of
+thorns, and little mounds of snow showed
+where the glories of the poppy-bed had
+bloomed.</p>
+
+<p>Jacob Dolph, looking out, saw the clear
+summer sunlight lying where the snow lay
+now. He saw his mother moving about the
+paths, cutting a flower here and a bud there.
+He saw himself, a little boy in brave breeches,
+following her about, and looking for the harmless
+toads, and working each one into one of
+the wonderful legends which he had heard
+from the old German gardener across the way.
+He saw his father, too, pacing those paths of
+summer evenings, when the hollyhocks nodded
+their pink heads, and glancing up, from time
+to time, at his mother as she sat knitting at
+that very window. And, last of all in the line,
+yet first in his mind, he saw his wife tripping
+out in the fresh morning, to smile on the flowers
+she loved, to linger lovingly over the beds
+of verbena, and to pick the little nosegay that
+stood by the side of the tall coffee-urn at every
+summer-morning breakfast.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97" href="#Page_97">[97]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And the wife, looking out by his side, saw
+that splendid boy of theirs running over path
+and bed, glad of the flowers and the air and
+the freedom, full of young life and boyish
+sprightliness, his long hair floating behind him,
+the light of hope and youth in his bright face.</p>
+
+<p>And to-morrow it would be Van Riper's;
+and very soon there would be houses there, to
+close up the friendly window which had seen
+so much, which had let so much innocent joy
+and gladness into the old breakfast-room; and
+there would be an end of flower-bordered
+paths and nodding hollyhocks. She put her
+face upon her husband's shoulder, and cried a
+little, though he pretended not to know it.
+When she lifted it, somehow she had got her
+eyes dry, though they were painfully bright
+and large.</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't like selling our house," she <ins class="correction" id="Note_2" title="Transcriber's note: period inserted">said.</ins></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="toc_link"><a href="#CONTENTS">[TOC]</a></span>
+<a name="Chapter_IV" id="Chapter_IV"></a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98" href="#Page_98">[98]</a></span></p>
+<h2>IV.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Jacob Dolph got out of the Broadway
+stage at Bowling Green, followed by Eustace
+Dolph. Eustace Dolph at twenty-two
+was no more like his father than his patrician
+name was like simple and scriptural Jacob.
+The elder Dolph was a personable man, certainly;
+a handsome man, even, who looked to
+be nearer forty than fifty-two; and he was well
+dressed&mdash;perhaps a trifle out of the mode&mdash;and
+carried himself with a certain genial dignity,
+and with the lightness of a man who has not
+forgotten that he has been a buck in his time.
+But Eustace was distinctly and unmistakably
+a dandy. There are superficial differences, of
+course, between the dandy of 1852 and the
+dandy of 1887; but the structural foundation
+of all types of dandy is the same through all
+ages. Back of the clothes&mdash;back of the ruffles,
+or the bright neckcloth, or the high pickardil&mdash;which
+may vary with the time or the individual,
+you will ever find clearly displayed to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99" href="#Page_99">[99]</a></span>
+your eyes the obvious and unmistakable spiritual
+reason for and cause of the dandy&mdash;and it
+is always self-assertion pushed beyond the
+bounds of self-respect.</p>
+
+<p>Now, as a matter of fact, young Eustace's
+garments were not really worse than many a
+man has worn from simple, honest bad taste.
+To be sure, the checked pattern of his trousers
+was for size like the design of a prison grating;
+he had a coat so blue that it shimmered in the
+sunlight; his necktie was of purple satin, and
+fearfully and wonderfully made and fringed,
+and decked with gems fastened by little gold
+chains to other inferior guardian gems; and
+his waistcoat was confected of satin and velvet
+and damask all at once; yet you might
+have put all these things on his father, and,
+although the effect would not have been pleasant,
+you would never have called the elder gentleman
+a dandy. In other words, it was <ins class="correction" id="Note_3" title="Transcriber's note: original reads 'Why'">why</ins>
+young Eustace wore his raiment that made it
+dandified, and not the inherent gorgeousness
+of the raiment itself.</p>
+
+<p>The exchange of attire might readily have
+been made, so far as the size of the two men<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100" href="#Page_100">[100]</a></span>
+was concerned. But only in size were they
+alike. There was nothing of the Dolph in
+Eustace's face. He bore, indeed, a strong resemblance
+to his maternal great-grandmother,
+now many years put away where she could no
+longer trouble the wicked, and where she had
+to let the weary be at rest. (And how poor
+little Aline had wept and wailed over that
+death, and lamented that she had not been
+more dutiful as a child!) But his face was not
+strong, as the face of Madam Des Anges had
+been. Some strain of a weaker ancestry reappeared
+in it, and, so to speak, changed the
+key of the expression. What had been pride in
+the old lady bordered on superciliousness in the
+young man. What had been sternness became
+a mere haughtiness. Yet it was a handsome
+face, and pleasant, too, when the young smile
+came across it, and you saw the white small teeth
+and the bright, intelligent light in the dark eyes.</p>
+
+<p>The two men strolled through the Battery,
+and then up South Street, and so around
+through Old Slip. They were on business;
+but this was also a pleasure trip to the elder.
+He walked doubly in spirit through those old<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101" href="#Page_101">[101]</a></span>
+streets&mdash;a boy by his father's side, a father
+with his son at his elbow. He had not been
+often in the region of late years. You remember,
+he was a man of pleasure. He was one
+of the first-fruits of metropolitan growth and
+social culture. His father had made an idler
+and <i>dilettante</i> of him. It was only half a life
+at best, he thought, happy as he had been;
+blessed as he was in wife and child. He was
+going to make a business man of his own boy.
+After all, it was through the workers that great
+cities grew. Perhaps we were not ripe yet for
+that European institution, the idler. He himself
+had certain accomplishments that other
+Americans had not. He could <i>fl�ner</i>, for
+instance. But to have to <i>fl�ner</i> through fifty
+or sixty or seventy years palled on the spirit,
+he found. And one thing was certain, if any
+Dolph was ever to be an accomplished <i>fl�neur</i>,
+and to devote his whole life to that occupation,
+the Dolph fortune must be vastly increased.
+Old Jacob Dolph had miscalculated. The sum
+he had left in 1829 might have done very well
+for the time, but it was no fortune to idle on
+among the fashionables of 1852.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102" href="#Page_102">[102]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Something of this Mr. Dolph told his son;
+but the young man, although he listened with
+respectful attention, appeared not to take a
+deep interest in his father's reminiscences.
+Jacob Dolph fancied even that Eustace did
+not care to be reminded of the city's day of
+small things. Perhaps he had something of
+the feeling of the successful struggler who
+tries to forget the shabbiness of the past. If
+this were the case, his pride must have been
+chafed, for his father was eloquent in displaying
+the powers of an uncommonly fine memory;
+and he had to hear all about the slips,
+and the Fly Market, and the gradual extension
+of the water-front, and the piles on which the
+old Tontine was built, and the cucumber-wood
+pipes of the old water-company, still lying
+under their feet. Once, at least, he showed a
+genuine enjoyment of his father's discourse,
+and that was when it ran on the great retinue
+of servants in which Jacob Dolph the elder
+had indulged himself. I think he was actually
+pleased when he heard that his grandfather
+had at one time kept slaves.</p>
+
+<p>Wandering in this way, to the running accompaniment<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103" href="#Page_103">[103]</a></span>
+of Mr. Dolph's lecture, they
+came to Water Street, and here, as though he
+were reminded of the object of their trip, the
+father summed up his reminiscences in shape
+for a neat moral.</p>
+
+<p>"The city grows, you see, my boy, and
+we've got to grow with it. I've stood still;
+but you sha'n't."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, governor," said the younger man,
+"I'll be frank with you. I don't like the prospect."</p>
+
+<p>"You will&mdash;you will, my boy. You'll live
+to thank me."</p>
+
+<p>"Very likely you're right, sir; I don't deny
+it; but, as I say, I don't like the prospect. I
+don't see&mdash;with all due respect, sir&mdash;how any
+gentleman can <i>like</i> trade. It may be necessary,
+and of course I don't think it's lowering,
+or any of that nonsense, you know; but it
+can't be <i>pleasant</i>. Of course, if <i>your</i> governor
+had to do it, it was all right; but I don't believe
+he liked it any better than I should, or
+he wouldn't have been so anxious to keep you
+out of it."</p>
+
+<p>"My poor father made a great mistake,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104" href="#Page_104">[104]</a></span>
+Eustace. He would admit it now, I'm sure, if
+he were alive."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir, I'm going to try it, of course.
+I'll give it a fair trial. But when the two
+years are up, sir, as we agreed, I hope you
+won't say anything against my going into the
+law, or&mdash;well, yes&mdash;" he colored a little&mdash;"trying
+what I can do on the Street. I know what
+you think about it, sir," he went on, hastily;
+"but there are two sides to the question, and
+it's my opinion that, for an intelligent man,
+there's more money to be made up there in
+Wall Street in one year than can be got out
+of haggling over merchandise for a lifetime."</p>
+
+<p>Jacob Dolph grew red in the face and shook
+his head vigorously.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't speak of it, sir, don't speak of it!"
+he said, vehemently. "It's the curse of the
+country. If you have any such infernal opinions,
+don't vent them in my presence, sir. I
+know what I am talking about. Keep clear of
+Wall Street, sir. It is the straight road to
+perdition."</p>
+
+<p>They entered one of a row of broad-fronted
+buildings of notable severity and simplicity of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105" href="#Page_105">[105]</a></span>
+architecture. Four square stone columns upheld
+its brick front, and on one of these faded
+gilt letters, on a ground of dingy black, said
+simply:</p>
+
+<p class="titles_large">
+<b>ABRAM VAN RIPER'S SON.</b>
+</p>
+
+<p>There was no further announcement of
+Abram Van Riper's Son's character, or of the
+nature of his business. It was assumed that
+all people knew who Abram Van Riper's Son
+was, and that his (Abram Van Riper's) ship-chandlery
+trade had long before grown into
+a great "commission merchant's" business.</p>
+
+<p>It was full summer, and there were no doors
+between the pillars to bar entrance to the
+gloomy cavern behind them, which stretched
+in semi-darkness the whole length and width
+of the building, save for a narrow strip at the
+rear, where, behind a windowed partition, clerks
+were writing at high desks, and where there
+was an inner and more secluded pen for Abram
+Van Riper's son.</p>
+
+<p>In the front of the cave, to one side, was a
+hoistway, where bales and boxes were drawn
+up from the cellar or swung twisting and twirling<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106" href="#Page_106">[106]</a></span>
+to the lofts above. Amidships the place
+was strewn with small tubs, matting-covered
+bales and boxes, coils of bright new rope, and
+odd-looking packages of a hundred sorts, all of
+them with gaping wounds in their envelopes,
+or otherwise having their pristine integrity
+wounded. From this it was not difficult to
+<span class="floatl">
+<a href="images/ill-p106.jpg" >
+<img class="plain" src="images/ill-p106-thumb.jpg" width="265" height="300" alt="" title="" />
+</a></span>
+guess that these
+were samples of
+merchandise.
+Most of them
+gave forth odors
+upon the air,
+odors ranging
+from the purely
+aromatic, suggestive
+of Oriental
+fancies or tropic
+dreams of spice, to the positively offensive&mdash;the
+latter varieties predominating.</p>
+
+
+<p>But certain objects upon a long table were
+so peculiar in appearance that the visitors
+could not pass them by with a mere glance of
+wonder. They looked like small leather pies,
+badly warped in the baking. A clerk in his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107" href="#Page_107">[107]</a></span>
+shirt sleeves, with his straw hat on one side of
+his head, whistled as he cut into these, revealing
+a livid interior, the color of half-cooked
+veal, which he inspected with care. Eustace
+was moved to positive curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>"What are they?" he inquired of the clerk,
+pride mingling with disgust in his tone, as he
+caught a smell like unto the smell which might
+arise from raw smoked salmon that had lain
+three days in the sun.</p>
+
+<p>"Central American," responded the clerk,
+with brevity, and resumed his whistling of</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"My name is Jake Keyser, I was born in Spring Garden;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To make me a preacher my father did try."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"Central American <i>what</i>?" pursued the inquirer.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Rubber!</i>" said the clerk, with a scorn so
+deep and far beyond expression that the combined
+pride of the Dolphs and the Des Anges
+wilted into silence for the moment. As they
+went on toward the rear office, while the clerk
+gayly whistled the notes of</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"It's no use a-blowing, for I am a hard 'un&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I'm bound to be a butcher, by heavens, or die!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108" href="#Page_108">[108]</a></span>
+Eustace recovered sufficiently to demand of
+his father:</p>
+
+<p>"I say, sir, shall I have to handle that
+damned stuff?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hush!" said his senior; "here's Mr. Van
+Riper."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Van Riper came to the office door to
+welcome them, with his thin face set in the
+form of a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" he said, "here's the young man, is
+he? Fine big fellow, Dolph. Well, sir, so
+you are going to embrace a mercantile career,
+are you? That's what they call it in these
+fine days, Dolph."</p>
+
+<p>"I am going to try to, sir," replied the
+young man.</p>
+
+<p>"He will, Van Riper," put in his father,
+hastily; "he'll like it as soon as he gets used
+to it&mdash;I know he will."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," returned Mr. Van Riper, with an
+attempt at facetious geniality, "we'll try to
+get his nose down to the grindstone, we will.
+Come into my office with me, Dolph, and I'll
+hand this young gentleman over to old Mr.
+Daw. Mr. Daw will feel his teeth&mdash;eh, Mr.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109" href="#Page_109">[109]</a></span>
+Daw?&mdash;see what he <i>doesn't</i> know&mdash;how's that,
+Mr. Daw? You remember Mr. Daw, Dolph&mdash;used
+to be with your father before he went out
+of business&mdash;been with us ever since. Let's
+see, how long is that, Daw? Most fifty years,
+ain't it?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Daw, who looked as though he might
+have been one hundred years at the business,
+wheeled around and descended with stiff deliberation
+from his high stool, holding his pen
+in his mouth as he solemnly shook hands with
+Jacob Dolph, and peered into his face. Then
+he took the pen out of his mouth.</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/ill-p109.jpg" >
+<img class="plain" src="images/ill-p109-thumb.jpg" width="400" height="256" alt="Looks like his father, was Mr. Daw's comment." title="" />
+</a><p class="caption">"Looks like his father," was Mr. Daw's comment.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Looks like his father," was Mr. Daw's comment.
+"Forty-five years the twenty-ninth of
+this month, sir. You was a little shaver then.
+I remember you comin' into the store and
+whittlin' timber with your little jack-knife. I
+was only eleven years with your father, sir&mdash;eleven
+years and six months&mdash;went to him
+when I was fourteen years old. That's fifty-six
+years and six months in the service of two
+of the best houses that ever was in New York&mdash;an'
+I can do my work with any two young
+shavers in the town&mdash;ain't missed a day in nineteen<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110" href="#Page_110">[110]</a></span>
+years now. Your father hadn't never
+ought to have gone out of business, Mr. Dolph.
+He did a great business for those days, and he
+had the makin' of a big house. Goin' to bring
+your boy up like a good New York merchant,
+hey? Come along here with me, young man,
+and I'll see if you're half the man your grandfather
+was. He hadn't never ought to have
+given up business, Mr. Dolph. But he was all
+for pleasuring an' the play-houses, an' havin'
+fine times. Come along, young man. What's
+your name?"</p>
+
+<p>"Eustace Dolph."</p>
+
+<p>"Hm! Jacob's better."</p>
+
+<p>And he led the neophyte away.</p>
+
+<p>"Curious old case," said Mr. Van Riper,
+dryly. "Best accountant in New York. See
+that high stool of his?&mdash;can't get him off it.
+Five years ago I gave him a low desk and an
+arm-chair. In one week he was back again,
+roosting up there. Said he didn't feel comfortable
+with his feet on the ground. He
+thought that sort of thing might do for
+aged people, but <i>he</i> wasn't made of cotton-batting."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111" href="#Page_111">[111]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Thus began Eustace Dolph's apprenticeship
+to business, and mightily ill he liked it.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>There came a day, a winter day in 1854,
+when there was great agitation among what
+were then called the real old families of New
+York. I cannot use the term "fashionable
+society," because that is more comprehensive,
+and would include many wealthy and ambitious
+families from New England, who were
+decidedly not of the Dolphs' set. And then,
+the Dolphs could hardly be reckoned among
+the leaders of fashion. To live on or near the
+boundaries of fashion's domain is to lower your
+social status below the absolute pitch of perfection,
+and fashion in 1854 drew the line pretty
+sharply at Bleecker Street. Above Bleecker
+Street the cream of the cream rose to the surface;
+below, you were ranked as skim milk.
+The social world was spreading up into the
+wastes sacred to the circus and the market-garden,
+although, if Admiral Farragut had
+stood on his sea-legs where he stands now, he
+might have had a fairly clear view of Chelsea<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112" href="#Page_112">[112]</a></span>
+Village, and seen Alonzo Cushman II., or
+Alonzo Cushman III., perhaps, going around
+and collecting his rents.</p>
+
+<p>But the old families still fought the tide of
+trade, many of them neck-deep and very uncomfortable.
+They would not go from St.
+John's Park, nor from North Moore and Grand
+Streets. They had not the <i>bourgeois</i> conservatism
+of the Greenwich Villagers, which has
+held them in a solid phalanx almost to this
+very day; but still, in a way, they resented the
+up-town movement, and resisted it. So that
+when they did have to buy lots in the high-numbered
+streets they had to pay a fine price
+for them.</p>
+
+<p>It was this social party that was stirred by a
+bit of scandal about the Dolphs. I do not
+know why I should call it scandal; yet I am
+sure society so held it. For did not society
+whisper it, and nod and wink over it, and tell
+it in dark corners, and chuckle, and lift its
+multitudinous hands and its myriad eyebrows,
+and say in innumerable keys: "Well, <i>upon</i> my
+word!" and "Well, I <i>should</i> think&mdash;&mdash;!" and
+"Who would <i>ever</i> have thought of such a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113" href="#Page_113">[113]</a></span>
+thing?" and the like? Did not society make
+very funny jokes about it, and did not society's
+professional gossips get many an invitation to
+dinner because they professed to have authentic
+details of the way Mr. and Mrs. Dolph
+looked when they spoke about it, and just what
+they had to say for themselves?</p>
+
+<p>And yet it was nothing more than this, that
+Mr. Dolph being fifty-four, and his wife but a
+few years younger, were about to give to the
+world another Dolph. It was odd, I admit; it
+was unusual; if I must go so far, it was, I suppose,
+unconventional. But I don't see that it
+was necessary for Mr. Philip Waters to make
+an epigram about it. It was a very clever epigram;
+but if you had seen dear old Mrs.
+Dolph, with her rosy cheeks and the gray in
+her hair, knitting baby-clothes with hands
+which were still white and plump and comely,
+while great dark eyes looked timorously into
+the doubtful, fear-clouded future, I think you
+would have been ashamed that you had even
+listened to that epigram.</p>
+
+<p>The expected event was of special and personal
+interest to only three people&mdash;for, after<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114" href="#Page_114">[114]</a></span>
+all, when you think of it, it was not exactly
+society's business&mdash;and it affected them in
+widely different ways.</p>
+
+<p>Jacob Dolph was all tenderness to his wife,
+and all sympathy with her fears, with her nervous
+apprehensions, even with her morbid
+forebodings of impossible ills. He did not
+repine at the seclusion which the situation
+forced upon them, although his life for years
+had been given up to society's demands, until
+pleasure-seeking and pleasure-giving had grown
+into a routine, which occupied his whole mind.
+His wife saw him more than she had for many
+years. Clubs and card-parties had few temptations
+for him now; he sat at home and read
+to her and talked to her, and did his best to
+follow the injunctions of the doctor, and "create
+and preserve in her a spirit of cheerful and
+hopeful tranquillity, free of unnecessary apprehension."</p>
+
+<p>But when he <i>did</i> go to the club, when he was
+in male society, his breast expanded, and if he
+had to answer a polite inquiry as to Mrs.
+Dolph's general health, I am afraid that he responded:
+"Mrs. Dolph is extremely well, sir,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115" href="#Page_115">[115]</a></span>
+extremely well!" with a pride which the moralists
+will tell you is baseless, unworthy, and
+unreasonable.</p>
+
+<p>As for Aline herself, no one may know what
+timorous hopes stirred in her bosom and
+charmed the years away, and brought back
+to her a lovely youth that was almost girlish
+in its innocent, half-frightened gladness. Outside,
+this great, wise, eminently proper world
+that she lived in girded <ins class="correction" id="Note_4" title="Transcriber's note: original reads 'at the the old'">at the old</ins> woman
+who was to bear a child, and laughed behind
+tasselled fans, and made wondrous merry over
+Nature's work; but within the old house she
+sat, and sewed upon the baby-clothes, or, wandering
+from cupboard to cupboard, found the
+yellowing garments, laid away more than a
+score of years before&mdash;the poor little lace-decked
+trifles that her first boy had worn; and
+she thanked heaven, in her humble way, that
+twenty-four years had not taken the love and
+joy of a wife and a mother out of her heart.</p>
+
+<p>She could not find all her boy's dresses and
+toys, for she was open-handed, and had given
+many of them away to people who needed
+them. This brought about an odd encounter.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116" href="#Page_116">[116]</a></span>
+The third person who had a special interest in
+the prospect of the birth of a Dolph was young
+Eustace, and he found nothing in it wherewith
+to be pleased. For Eustace Dolph was of the
+ultra-fashionables. He cared less for old family
+than for new ideas, and he did not let himself
+fall behind in the march of social progress,
+even though he was, as he admitted with humility
+born of pride, only a poor devil of a
+down-town clerk. If his days were occupied,
+he had his nights to himself, and he lengthened
+them to suit himself. At first this caused his
+mother to fret a little; but poor Aline had
+come into her present world from the conventional
+seclusion of King's Bridge, and her only
+authority on questions of masculine license was
+her husband. He, being appealed to, had to
+admit that his own hours in youth had been
+late, and that he supposed the hours of a
+newer generation should properly be later still.
+Mr. Dolph forgot, perhaps, that while his early
+potations had been vinous, those of the later age
+were distinctly spirituous; and that the early
+morning cocktail and the midnight brandy-and-soda
+were abominations unknown to his own<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117" href="#Page_117">[117]</a></span>
+well-bred youth. With port and sherry and
+good Bordeaux he had been familiar all his
+life; a dash of <i>liqueur</i> after dinner did not
+trouble his digestion; he found a bottle of
+champagne a pleasant appetizer and a gentle
+stimulant; but whiskey and gin were to him
+the drinks of the vulgar; and rum and brandy
+stood on his sideboard only to please fiercer
+tastes than his own. Perhaps, also, he was ignorant
+of the temptations that assail a young
+man in a great city, he who had grown up in
+such a little one that he had at one time
+known every one who was worth knowing in it.</p>
+
+<p>However this may have been, Eustace
+Dolph ruled for himself his going out and his
+coming in. He went further, and chose his
+own associates, not always from among the
+scions of the "old families." He found those
+excellent young men "slow," and he selected
+for his own private circle a set which was
+mixed as to origin and unanimously frivolous
+as to tendency. The foreign element was
+strongly represented. Bright young Irishmen
+of excellent families, and mysterious French
+and Italian counts and marquises, borrowed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118" href="#Page_118">[118]</a></span>
+many of the good gold dollars of the Dolphs,
+and forgot to return an equivalent in the
+local currency of the O'Reagans of Castle
+Reagan, or the D'Arcy de Montmorenci, or
+<span class="floatl">
+<a href="images/ill-p118.jpg" >
+<img class="plain" src="images/ill-p118-thumb.jpg" width="207" height="300" alt="" title="" />
+</a></span>
+the Montescudi di Bajocchi.
+Among this set there was
+much merry-making when the
+news from the Dolph household
+sifted down to them
+from the gossip-sieve of the
+best society. They could not
+very well chaff young Dolph
+openly, for he was muscular and high-tempered,
+and, under the most agreeable conditions,
+needed a fight of some sort every six
+months or so, and liked a bit of trouble in between
+fights. But a good deal of low and
+malicious humor came his way, from one
+source or another, and he, with the hot and
+concentrated egotism of youth, thought that
+he was in a ridiculous and trying position, and
+chafed over it.</p>
+
+<p>There had been innuendos and hints and
+glancing allusions, but no one had dared to
+make any direct assault of wit, until one evening<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119" href="#Page_119">[119]</a></span>
+young Haskins came into the club "a little
+flushed with wine." (The "wine" was brandy.)
+It seems that young Haskins had found at
+home an ivory rattle which had belonged to
+Eustace twenty years before, and which Mrs.
+Dolph had given to Mrs. Haskins when Eustace
+enlarged his horizon in the matter of
+toys.</p>
+
+<p>Haskins, being, as I have said, somewhat
+flushed with brandy, came up to young Dolph,
+who was smoking in the window, and meditating
+with frowning brows, and said to him:</p>
+
+<p>"Here, Dolph, I've done with this. You'd
+better take it back&mdash;it may be wanted down
+your way."</p>
+
+<p>There was a scene. Fortunately, two men
+were standing just behind Dolph, who were
+able to throw their arms about him, and hold
+him back for a few seconds. There would
+have been further consequences, however, if it
+had not been that Eustace was in the act of
+throwing the rattle back at Haskins when the
+two men caught him. Thus the toy went
+wide of its mark, and fell in the lap of Philip
+Waters, who, old as he was, generally chose to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120" href="#Page_120">[120]</a></span>
+be in the company of the young men at the
+club; and then Philip Waters did something
+that almost atones, I think, for the epigram.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at the date on the rattle, and then
+he rose up and went between the two young
+men, and spoke to Haskins.</p>
+
+<p>"Young man," he said, "when Mrs. Jacob
+Dolph gave your mother this thing, your father
+had just failed for the second time in three
+years. He had come to New York about five
+years before from Hartford, or Providence, or&mdash;Succotash,
+or whatever his confounded town
+was. Mr. Jacob Dolph got Mr. Van Riper to
+give your father an extension on his note, or
+he would have gone to the debtors' prison
+down by the City Hall. As it was, he had to
+sell his house, and the coat off his back, for all
+I know. If it hadn't been for the Dolphs, devil
+the rattle you'd have had, and you wouldn't
+have been living in Bond Street to-day."</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/ill-p120.jpg" >
+<img class="plain" src="images/ill-p120-thumb.jpg" width="400" height="258" alt="If it hadn't been for the Dolphs, devil the rattle you'd have had." title="" />
+</a><p class="caption">"If it hadn't been for the Dolphs, devil the rattle you'd have had."</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>After which Mr. Philip Waters sat down and
+read the evening paper; and when young Haskins
+was able to speak he asked young Dolph's
+pardon, and got it&mdash;at least, a formal assurance
+that he had it.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121" href="#Page_121">[121]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The baby was born in the spring, and everybody
+said she was the image of her mother.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>There will come a day, it may be, when advancing
+civilization will civilize sleighing out
+of existence, as far as New York is concerned.
+Year after year the days grow fewer that will
+let a cutter slip up beyond the farthest of the
+"road-houses" and cross the line into Westchester.
+People say that the climate is changing;
+but close observers recognize a sympathy
+between the decrease of snow-storms and the
+increase of refinement&mdash;that is, a sympathy in
+inverse ratio; a balanced progress in opposite
+directions. As we grow further and further
+beyond even old-world standards of polite
+convention, as we formalize and super-formalize
+our codes, and steadily eliminate every
+element of amusement from our amusements,
+Nature in strict conformity represses her joyous
+exuberance. The snow-storm of the past
+is gone, because the great public sleigh that
+held twenty-odd merry-makers in a shell like a
+circus band-wagon has gone out of fashion<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122" href="#Page_122">[122]</a></span>
+among all classes. Now we have, during severe
+winters, just enough snow from time to time to
+bear the light sleigh of the young man who,
+being in good society, is also horsy. When
+<i>he</i> finds the road vulgar, the poor plebeian
+souls who go sleighing for the sport of it may
+sell their red and blue vehicles, for Nature, the
+sycophant of fashion, will snow no more.</p>
+
+<p>But they had "good old-fashioned" snow-storms
+eighty years after the Declaration of
+Independence, and one had fallen upon New
+York that tempted Mrs. Jacob Dolph to leave
+her baby, ten months old, in the nurse's
+charge, and go out with her husband in the
+great family sleigh for what might be the last
+ride of the season.</p>
+
+<p>They had been far up the road&mdash;to Arcularius's,
+maybe, there swinging around and
+whirling back. They had flown down the long
+country road, and back into the city, to meet&mdash;it
+was early in the day&mdash;the great procession
+of sleighing folk streaming northward up
+Broadway. It was one of New York's great,
+irregular, chance-set carnivals, and every sleigh
+was out, from the "exquisite's" gilded chariot,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123" href="#Page_123">[123]</a></span>
+a shell hardly larger than a fair-sized easy-chair,
+to the square, low-hung red sledge of
+the butcher-boy, who braved it with the fashionables,
+his <i>Schneider</i>-made clothes on his
+burly form, and his girl by his side, in her best
+Bowery bonnet. Everybody was a-sleighing.
+The jingle of countless bells fell on the crisp
+air in a sort of broken rhythm&mdash;a rude <i>tempo
+rubato</i>. It was fashionable then. But we&mdash;we
+amuse ourselves less boisterously.</p>
+
+<p>They drew up at the door of the Dolph
+house, and Jacob Dolph lifted his wife out of
+the sleigh, and carried her up the steps into
+the breakfast-room, and set her down in her
+easy-chair. He was bending over her to ask
+her if her ride had done her good, when a servant
+entered and handed him a letter marked
+"Immediate."</p>
+
+<p>He read it, and all the color of the winter's
+day faded out of his face.</p>
+
+<p>"I've got to go down to Van Riper's," he
+said, "at once; he wants me."</p>
+
+<p>"Has anything happened to&mdash;to Eustace?"
+his wife cried out.</p>
+
+<p>"He doesn't say so&mdash;I suppose&mdash;I suppose<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124" href="#Page_124">[124]</a></span>
+it's only business of some sort," her husband
+said. His face was white. "Don't detain me,
+dear. I'll come back as soon as&mdash;as soon as I
+get through."</p>
+
+<p>He kissed her, and was gone. Half an hour
+later he sat in the office of Abram Van Riper's
+Son.</p>
+
+<p>There was no doubting it, no denying it, no
+palliating it even. The curse had come upon
+the house of Jacob Dolph, and his son was a
+thief and a fugitive.</p>
+
+<p>It was an old story and a simple story. It
+was the story of the Haskins's million and the
+Dolphs' hundred thousand; it was the story of
+the boy with a hundred thousand in prospect
+trying to spend money against the boy with
+a million in sight. It was the story of cards,
+speculation&mdash;another name for that sort of
+gambling which is worse than any on the
+green cloth&mdash;and what is euphemistically
+known as wine.</p>
+
+<p>There was enough oral and documentary
+evidence to make the whole story hideously
+clear to Jacob Dolph, as he sat in that dark
+little pen of Van Riper's and had the history<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125" href="#Page_125">[125]</a></span>
+of his son's fall spelled out to him, word by
+word. The boy had proved himself apt and
+clever in his office work. His education had
+given him an advantage over all the other
+clerks, and he had learned his duties with wonderful
+ease. And when, six months before,
+old Mr. Daw had let himself down from his
+stool for the last time, and had muffled up his
+thin old throat in his great green worsted
+scarf, and had gone home to die, young Dolph
+had been put temporarily in his place. In
+those six months he had done his bad work.
+Even Van Riper admitted that it must have
+been a sudden temptation. But&mdash;he had
+yielded. In those six months fifty thousand
+dollars of Abram Van Riper's money had
+gone into the gulf that yawned in Wall Street;
+fifty thousand dollars, not acquired by falsifying
+the books, but filched outright from the
+private safe to which he had access; fifty
+thousand dollars, in securities which he had
+turned into money, acting as the confidential
+man of the house.</p>
+
+<p>When Jacob Dolph, looking like a man of
+eighty, left the private office of Mr. Van<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126" href="#Page_126">[126]</a></span>
+Riper he had two things to do. One was to
+tell his wife, the other was to assign enough
+property to Van Riper to cover the amount of
+the defalcation. Both had been done before
+night.</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/ill-p126.jpg" >
+<img class="plain" src="images/ill-p126-thumb.jpg" width="300" height="267" alt="" title="" />
+</a></div>
+<p><br /></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="toc_link"><a href="#CONTENTS">[TOC]</a></span><a name="Chapter_V" id="Chapter_V"></a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127" href="#Page_127">[127]</a></span></p>
+<h2>V.</h2>
+
+
+<p>It is to be said for society that there was
+very little chuckling and smiling when this
+fresh piece of news about the Dolphs came out.
+Nor did the news pass from house to house like
+wildfire. It rather leaked out here and there,
+percolating through barriers of friendly silence,
+slipping from discreet lips and repeated in
+anxious confidence, with all manner of qualifications
+and hopeful suppositions and suggestions.
+As a matter of fact, people never really
+knew just what Eustace Dolph had done, or
+how far his wrong-doing had carried him. All
+that was ever positively known was that the
+boy had got into trouble down-town, and had
+gone to Europe. The exact nature of the
+trouble could only be conjectured. The very
+brokers who had been the instruments of
+young Dolph's ruin were not able to separate
+his authorized speculations from those which
+were illegitimate. They could do no more than
+guess, from what they knew of Van Riper's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128" href="#Page_128">[128]</a></span>
+conservative method of investment, that the
+young man's unfortunate purchases were made
+for himself, and they figured these at fifty-five
+thousand odd hundred dollars.</p>
+
+<p>Somebody, who looked up the deed which
+Jacob Dolph executed that winter day, found
+that he had transferred to Van Riper real
+estate of more than that value.</p>
+
+<p>No word ever came from the cold lips of
+Abram Van Riper's son; and his office was a
+piece of all but perfect machinery, which dared
+not creak when he commanded silence. And
+no one save Van Riper and Dolph, and their
+two lawyers, knew the whole truth. Dolph
+never even spoke about it to his wife, after
+that first night. It was these five people only
+who knew that Mr. Jacob Dolph had parted
+with the last bit of real estate that he owned,
+outside of his own home, and they knew that
+his other property was of a doubtful sort, that
+could yield at the best only a very limited income&mdash;hardly
+enough for a man who lived in
+so great a house, and whose doors were open
+to all his friends nine months in the year.</p>
+
+<p>Yet he stayed there, and grew old with an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129" href="#Page_129">[129]</a></span>
+age which the years have not among their gifts.
+When his little girl was large enough to sit
+upon his knee, her small hands clutched at a
+snowy-white mustache, and she complained
+that his great, dark, hollow eyes never would
+look "right into hers, away down deep." Yet
+he loved her, and talked more to her perhaps
+than to any one else, not even excepting Aline.</p>
+
+<p>But he never spoke to her of the elder
+brother whom she could not remember. It
+was her mother who whispered something of
+the story to her, and told her not to let papa
+know that she knew of it, for it would grieve
+him. Aline herself knew nothing about the
+boy save that he lived, and lived a criminal.
+Jacob himself could only have told her that
+their son was a wandering adventurer, known
+as a blackleg and sharper in every town in
+Europe.</p>
+
+<p>The doors of the great house were closed to
+all the world, or opened only for some old
+friend, who went away very soon out of the
+presence of a sadness beyond all solace of
+words, or kindly look, or hand-clasp. And so,
+in something that only the grace of their gentle<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130" href="#Page_130">[130]</a></span>
+lives relieved from absolute poverty, those
+three dwelt in the old house, and let the world
+slip by them.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>There was no sleep for any one of the little
+household in the great house on the night of
+the 14th of July, 1863. Doors and blinds were
+closed; only a light shone through the half-open
+slats at a second-story window, and in that room
+Aline lay sick, almost unto death, her white
+hair loosed from its usual dainty neatness, her
+dark eyes turning with an unmeaning gaze
+from the face of the little girl at her side to the
+face of her husband at the foot of her bed.
+Her hands, wrinkled and small, groped over
+the coverlet, with nervous twitchings, as every
+now and then the howls or the pistol-shots of
+the mob in the streets below them fell on her
+ear. And at every such movement the lips of
+the girl by her pillow twitched in piteous sympathy.
+About half-past twelve there was
+sharp firing in volleys to the southward of
+them, that threw the half-conscious sufferer
+into an agony of supersensitive disturbance.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131" href="#Page_131">[131]</a></span>
+Then there came a silence that seemed unnaturally
+deep, yet it was only the silence of a
+summer night in the deserted city streets.</p>
+
+<p>Through it they heard, sharp and sudden,
+with something inexplicably fearful about it,
+the patter of running feet. They had heard
+that sound often enough that night and the
+night before; but these feet stopped at their
+own door, and came up the steps, and the runner
+beat and pounded on the heavy panels.</p>
+
+<p>Father and child looked in each other's eyes,
+and then Jacob Dolph left his post at the foot
+of the bed, and, passing out of the room, went
+down the stairs with deliberate tread, and
+opened the door.</p>
+
+<p>A negro's face, almost gray in its mad fear,
+stared into his with a desperate appeal which
+the lips could not utter. Dolph drew the man
+in, and shut the door behind him. The negro
+leaned, trembling and exhausted, against the
+wall.</p>
+
+<p>"I knowed you'd take me in, Mist' Dolph,"
+he panted; "I'm feared they seen me, though&mdash;they
+was mighty clost behind."</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/ill-p131.jpg" >
+<img class="plain" src="images/ill-p131-thumb.jpg" width="313" height="400" alt="" title="" />
+</a></div>
+
+<p>They were close behind him, indeed. In<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132" href="#Page_132">[132]</a></span>
+half a minute the roar of the mob filled the
+street with one terrible howl and shriek of
+animal rage, heard high
+above the tramp of half a thousand
+feet; and the beasts of disorder, gathered
+from all the city's holes and dens of crime,
+wild for rapine and outrage, burst upon them,
+sweeping up the steps, hammering at the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133" href="#Page_133">[133]</a></span>
+great doors, crying for the blood of the helpless
+and the innocent.</p>
+
+<p>Foreign faces, almost all! Irish, mostly; but
+there were heavy, ignorant German types of
+feature uplifted under the gas-light; sallow,
+black-mustached Magyar faces; thin, acute,
+French faces&mdash;all with the stamp of old-world
+ignorance and vice upon them.</p>
+
+<p>The door opened, and the white-haired old
+gentleman, erect, haughty, with brightening
+eyes, faced the leader of the mob&mdash;a great
+fellow, black-bearded, who had a space to himself
+on the stoop, and swung his broad shoulders
+from side to side.</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/ill-p133.jpg" >
+<img class="plain" src="images/ill-p133-thumb.jpg" width="288" height="400" alt="Have you got a nigger here?" title="" />
+</a><p class="caption">"Have you got a nigger here?"</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Have you got a nigger here?" he began,
+and then stopped short, for Jacob Dolph was
+looking upon the face of his son.</p>
+
+<p>Vagabond and outcast, he had the vagabond's
+quick wit, this leader of infuriate crime,
+and some one good impulse stirred in him of
+his forfeited gentlehood. He turned savagely
+upon his followers.</p>
+
+<p>"He ain't here!" he roared. "I told you
+so&mdash;I saw him turn the corner."</p>
+
+<p>"Shtap an' burrn the bondholder's house!"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134" href="#Page_134">[134]</a></span>
+yelled a man behind. Eustace Dolph turned
+round with a furious, threatening gesture.</p>
+
+<p>"You damned fool!" he thundered; "he's
+no bondholder&mdash;he's one of <i>us</i>. Go on, I
+tell you! Will you let that nigger get
+away?"</p>
+
+<p>He half drove them down the steps. The
+old man stepped out, his face aflame under his
+white hair, his whole frame quivering.</p>
+
+<p>"You lie, sir!" he cried; but his voice was
+drowned in the howl of the mob as it swept
+around the corner, forgetting all things else in
+the madness of its hideous chase.</p>
+
+<p>When Jacob Dolph returned to his wife's
+chamber, her feeble gaze was lifted to the ceiling.
+At the sound of his footsteps she let it
+fall dimly upon his face. He was thankful
+that, in that last moment of doubtful quickening,
+she could not read his eyes; and she
+passed away, smiling sweetly, one of her white
+old hands in his, and one in her child's.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Age takes small account of the immediate
+flight of time. To the young, a year is a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135" href="#Page_135">[135]</a></span>
+mighty span. Be it a happy or an unhappy
+year that youth looks forward to, it is a
+vista that stretches far into the future. And
+when it is done, this interminable year, and
+youth, just twelve months older, looks back to
+the first of it, what a long way off it is! What
+tremendous progress we have made! How
+much more we know! How insufficient are
+the standards by which we measured the world
+a poor three hundred and sixty-five days
+back!</p>
+
+<p>But age has grown habituated to the flight
+of time. Years? we have seen so many of
+them that they make no great impression upon
+us. What! is it ten years since young Midas
+first came to the counting-room, asking humbly
+for an entry-clerk's place&mdash;he who is now the
+head of the firm? Bless us! it seems like yesterday.
+Is it ten years since we first put on
+that coat? Why, it must be clean out of the
+fashion by this time.</p>
+
+<p>But age does not carry out the thought, and
+ask if itself be out of the fashion. Age knows
+better. A few wrinkles, a stoop in the back, a
+certain slowness of pace, do not make a man<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136" href="#Page_136">[136]</a></span>
+old at sixty&mdash;nor at seventy, neither; for now
+you come to think of it, the ten years we were
+speaking of is gone, and it is seventy now, and
+not sixty. Seventy! Why, 'tis not to be
+thought of as old age&mdash;save when it may be
+necessary to rebuke the easy arrogance of
+youth.</p>
+
+<p>The time had come to Jacob Dolph when he
+could not feel that he was growing old. He
+was old, of course, in one sense. He was sixty-one
+when the war broke out; and they had not
+allowed him to form a regiment and go to the
+front at its head. But what was old for a
+soldier in active service was not old for a well-preserved
+civilian. True, he could never be
+the same man again, now that poor Aline was
+gone. True, he was growing more and more
+disinclined for active exercise, and he regretted
+he had led so sedentary a life. But though '64
+piled itself up on '63, and '65 on top of that,
+these arbitrary divisions of time seemed to him
+but trivial.</p>
+
+<p>Edith was growing old, perhaps; getting
+to be a great girl, taller than her mother
+and fairer of complexion, yet not unlike<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137" href="#Page_137">[137]</a></span>
+her, he sometimes thought, as she began to
+manage the affairs of the house, and to go
+about the great shabby mansion with her
+mother's keys jingling at her girdle. For the
+years went on crawling one over the other,
+and soon it was 1873, and Edith was eighteen
+years old.</p>
+
+<p>One rainy day in this year found Jacob
+Dolph in Wall Street. Although he himself
+did not think so, he was an old man to others,
+and kindly hands, such as were to be found
+even in that infuriate crowd, had helped him
+up the marble steps of the Sub-Treasury and
+had given him lodgment on one of the great
+blocks of marble that dominate the street.
+From where he stood he could see Wall Street,
+east and west, and the broad plaza of Broad
+Street to the south, filled with a compact mass
+of men, half hidden by a myriad of umbrellas,
+rain-soaked, black, glinting in the dim light.
+So might a Roman legion have looked, when
+each man raised his targum above his head and
+came shoulder to shoulder with his neighbor
+for the assault.</p>
+
+<p>There was a confused, ant-like movement in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138" href="#Page_138">[138]</a></span>
+the vast crowd, and a dull murmur came from
+it, rising, in places, into excited shouts. Here
+and there the fringe of the mass swelled up
+and swept against the steps of some building,
+forcing, or trying to force, an entry. Sometimes
+a narrow stream of men trickled into the
+half-open doorway; sometimes the great portals
+closed, and then there was a mad outcry
+and a low groan, and the foremost on the steps
+suddenly turned back, and in some strange
+way slipped through the throng and sped in
+all directions to bear to hushed or clamorous
+offices the news that this house or that bank
+had "suspended payment." "Busted," the
+panting messengers said to white-faced merchants;
+and in the slang of the street was conveyed
+the message of doom. The great panic
+of 1873 was upon the town&mdash;the outcome of
+long years of unwarranted self-confidence, of
+selfish extravagance, of conscienceless speculation&mdash;and,
+as hour after hour passed by, fortunes
+were lost in the twinkling of an eye, and
+the bread was taken out of the mouths of the
+helpless.</p>
+
+<p>After Jacob Dolph had stood for some time,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139" href="#Page_139">[139]</a></span>
+looking down upon the tossing sea of black
+umbrellas, he saw a narrow lane made through
+the crowd in the wake of a little party
+of clerks and porters, bearing aid perhaps to
+some stricken bank. Slipping down, he followed
+close behind them. Perhaps the jostling
+hundreds on the sidewalk were gentle with
+him, seeing that he was an old man; perhaps
+the strength of excitement nerved him, for he
+made his way down the street to the flight of
+steps leading to the door of a tall white building,
+and he crowded himself up among the
+pack that was striving to enter. He had even
+got so far that he could see the line pouring in
+above his head, when there was a sudden cessation
+of motion in the press, and one leaf of
+the outer iron doors swung forward, meeting
+the other, already closed to bar the crush,
+and two green-painted panels stood, impassable,
+between him and the last of the Dolph
+fortune.</p>
+
+<p>One howl and roar, and the crowd turned
+back on itself, and swept him with it. In five
+minutes a thousand offices knew of the greatest
+failure of the day; and Jacob Dolph was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140" href="#Page_140">[140]</a></span>
+leaning&mdash;weak, gasping, dazed&mdash;against the
+side wall of a hallway in William Street, with
+two stray office-boys staring at him out of
+their small, round, unsympathetic eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Let us not ask what wild temptation led
+the old man back again to risk all he owned
+in that hellish game that is played in the narrow
+street. We may remember this: that he
+saw his daughter growing to womanhood in
+that silent and almost deserted house, shouldered
+now by low tenements and wretched
+shops and vile drinking-places; that he may
+have pictured for her a brighter life in that
+world that had long ago left him behind it in
+his bereaved and disgraced loneliness; that he
+had had some vision of her young beauty fulfilling
+its destiny amid sweeter and fairer surroundings.
+And let us not forget that he
+knew no other means than these to win the
+money for which he cared little; which he
+found absolutely needful.</p>
+
+<p>After Jacob Dolph had yielded for the last
+time to the temptation that had conquered
+him once before, and had ruined his son's
+soul; after that final disastrous battle with the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141" href="#Page_141">[141]</a></span>
+gamblers of Wall Street, wherein he lost the
+last poor remnant of the great Dolph fortune,
+giving up with it his father's home forever,
+certain old bread of his father's casting
+came back to him upon
+strange waters.</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/ill-p141.jpg" >
+<img class="plain" src="images/ill-p141-thumb.jpg" width="400" height="372" alt="" title="" />
+</a></div>
+
+<p>Abram Van
+Riper came to the
+daughter of
+the house of Dolph, a little before it became
+certain that the house must be sold, and told
+her, in his dry way, that he had to make a
+business communication to her, for he feared
+that her father was hardly capable of understanding
+such matters any longer. She winced<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142" href="#Page_142">[142]</a></span>
+a little; but he took a load off her heart when
+he made his slow, precise explanation. The
+fact was, he said, that the business transactions
+between her father and himself, consequent
+upon the defalcation of her brother
+Eustace, had never been closed, in all these
+seventeen years. (Edith Dolph trembled.) It
+was known at the time that the property
+transferred by her father rather more than
+covered the amount of her brother's&mdash;peculation.
+But her father's extreme sensitiveness
+had led him to avoid a precise adjustment,
+and as the property transferred was subject to
+certain long leases, he, Mr. Van Riper, had
+thought it best to wait until the property was
+sold and the account closed, to settle the matter
+with Mr. Dolph. This had lately been
+done, and Mr. Van Riper found that, deducting
+charges, and interest on his money at
+seven per cent., he had made by the transaction
+six thousand three hundred and seventy
+dollars. This sum, he thought, properly belonged
+to Mr. Dolph. And if Miss Dolph
+would take the counsel of an old friend of her
+father's, she would leave the sum in charge of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143" href="#Page_143">[143]</a></span>
+the house of Abram Van Riper's Son. The
+house would invest it at ten per cent.&mdash;he
+stopped and looked at Edith, but she only
+answered him with innocent eyes of attention&mdash;and
+would pay her six hundred and thirty-seven
+dollars annually in quarterly payments.
+It might be of assistance to Mr. Dolph in his
+present situation.</p>
+
+<p>It was of assistance. They lived on it,
+father and daughter, with such aid as Decorative
+Art&mdash;just introduced to this country&mdash;gave
+in semi-remunerative employment for her
+deft fingers.</p>
+
+<p>Abram Van Riper, when he left the weeping,
+grateful girl, marched out into the street, turned
+his face toward what was once Greenwich Village,
+and said to his soul:</p>
+
+<p>"I think that will balance any obligation my
+father may have put himself under in buying
+that State Street house too cheap. Now then,
+old gentleman, you can lie easy in your grave.
+The Van Ripers ain't beholden to the Dolphs,
+that's sure."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>A few years ago&mdash;shall we say as many as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144" href="#Page_144">[144]</a></span>
+ten?&mdash;there were two small rooms up in a
+quiet street in Harlem, tenanted by an old
+gentleman and a young gentlewoman; and in
+the front room, which was the young woman's
+room by night, but a sort of parlor or sitting-room
+
+<span class="figleft">
+<a href="images/ill-p144.jpg">
+<img class="plain" src="images/ill-p144-thumb-a.jpg" width="179" height="77" alt="" title="" />
+</a></span>
+<span class="figleft">
+<a href="images/ill-p144.jpg">
+<img class="plain" src="images/ill-p144-thumb-b.jpg" width="278" height="223" alt="" title="" />
+</a></span>
+
+in the daytime, the
+old gentleman stood up,
+four times a year, to have
+his collar pulled
+up, and his
+necktie set
+right, and his
+coat dusted off
+by a pair of
+small white
+hands, so that
+he might be presentable when he went down
+town to collect certain moneys due him.</p>
+
+<p>They were small rooms, but they were
+bright and cheerful, being decorated with
+sketches and studies of an artistic sort, which
+may have been somewhat crude and uncertain
+as to treatment, but were certainly pleasant
+and feminine. Yet few saw them save the
+young woman and the old man. The most<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145" href="#Page_145">[145]</a></span>
+frequent visitor was a young artist from the
+West, who often escorted Miss Dolph to and
+from the Art League rooms. His name was
+Rand; he had studied in Munich; he had a
+future before him, and was making money
+on his prospects. He might just as well have
+lived in luxurious bachelor quarters in the
+lower part of the city; but, for reasons of his
+own, he preferred to live in Harlem.</p>
+
+<p>Old Mr. Dolph insisted on going regularly
+every quarter-day to the office of the Van
+Riper Estate, "to collect," as he said, "the interest
+due him." Four times a year he went
+down town on the Eighth Avenue cars, where
+the conductors soon learned to know him by
+his shiny black broadcloth coat and his snow-white
+hair. His daughter was always uneasy
+about these trips; but her father could not be
+dissuaded from them. To him they were his
+one hold on active life&mdash;the all-important
+events of the year. It would have broken his
+tender old heart to tell him that he could not
+go to collect his "interest." And so she set
+his necktie right, and he went.</p>
+
+<p>When he got out of the car at Abingdon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146" href="#Page_146">[146]</a></span>
+Square he tottered, in his slow, old way, to a
+neat structure which combined modern jauntiness
+with old-time solidity, and which was
+labelled simply: "Office of the Van Riper
+Estate," and there he told the smilingly indulgent
+clerk that he thought he would "take it
+in cash, this time," and, taking it in cash, went
+forth.</p>
+
+<p>And then he walked down through Greenwich
+Village into New York city, and into the
+street where stood the house that his father
+had built. Thus he had gone to view it four
+times a year, during every year save the first,
+since he had given it up.</p>
+
+<p>He had seen it go through one stage of decadence
+after another. First it was rented, by
+its new owner, to the Jewish pawnbroker, with
+his numerous family. Good, honest folk they
+were, who tried to make the house look fine,
+and the five daughters made the front stoop
+resplendent of summer evenings. But they
+had long ago moved up-town. Then it was
+a cheap boarding-house, and vulgar and flashy
+men and women swarmed out in the morning
+and in at eventide. Then it was a lodging<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147" href="#Page_147">[147]</a></span>-house,
+and shabby people let themselves out
+and in at all hours of the day and night. And
+last of all it had become a tenement-house, and
+had fallen into line with its neighbors to left
+and right, and the window-panes were broken,
+and the curse of misery and poverty and utter
+degradation had fallen upon it.</p>
+
+<p>But still it lifted its grand stone front, still it
+stood, broad and great, among all the houses
+in the street. And it was the old man's custom,
+after he had stood on the opposite sidewalk
+and gazed at it for a while, to go to
+a little French <i>caf�</i> a block to the eastward,
+and there to take a glass of <i>vermouth
+gomm�</i>&mdash;it was a mild drink, and pleasing to
+an old man. Sometimes he chanced to find
+some one in this place who would listen to
+his talk about the old house&mdash;he was very
+grand; but they were decent people who
+went to that <i>caf�</i>, and perhaps would go back
+with him a block and look at it. We would
+not have talked to chance people in an east-side
+French <i>caf�</i>. But then we have never
+owned such a house, and lost it&mdash;and everything
+else.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148" href="#Page_148">[148]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Late one hot summer afternoon young Rand
+sat in his studio, working enthusiastically on a
+"composition." A new school of art had invaded
+New York, and compositions were everything,
+for the moment, whether they composed
+anything or nothing. He heard a nervous rattling
+at his door-knob, and he opened the
+door. A young woman lifted a sweet, flushed,
+frightened face to his.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, John," she cried, "father hasn't come
+home yet, and it's five o'clock, and he left
+home at nine."</p>
+
+<p>John Rand threw off his flannel jacket, and
+got into his coat.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll find him; don't worry, dear," he
+said.</p>
+
+<p>They found him within an hour. The great
+city, having no further use for the old Dolph
+house, was crowding it out of existence. With
+the crashing of falling bricks, and the creaking
+of the tackle that swung the great beams downward,
+the old house was crumbling into a gap
+between two high walls. Already you could
+see through to where the bright new bricks<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149" href="#Page_149">[149]</a></span>
+were piled at the back to build the huge eight-story
+factory that was to take its place. But
+it was not to see this demolition that the crowd
+was gathered, filling the narrow street. It
+stood, dense, ugly, vulgar, stolidly intent, gazing
+at the windows of the house opposite&mdash;a
+poor tenement house.</p>
+
+<p>As they went up the steps they met the
+young hospital surgeon, going back to his ambulance.</p>
+
+<p>"You his folks?" he inquired. "Sorry to tell
+you so, but I can't do any good. Sunstroke,
+I suppose&mdash;may have been something else&mdash;but
+it's collapse now, and no mistake. You
+take charge, sir?" he finished, addressing
+Rand.</p>
+
+<p>Jacob Dolph was lying on his back in the
+bare front room on the first floor. His daughter
+fell on her knees by his side, and made as
+though she would throw her arms around
+him; but, looking in his face, she saw death
+quietly coming upon him, and she only bent
+down and kissed him, while her tears wet his
+brow.</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/ill-p149.jpg" >
+<img class="plain" src="images/ill-p149-thumb.jpg" width="400" height="344" alt="" title="" />
+</a></div>
+
+<p>Meanwhile a tall Southerner, with hair halfway<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150" href="#Page_150">[150]</a></span>
+down his neck, and kindly eyes that
+moved in unison with his broad gestures, was
+talking to Rand.</p>
+
+<p>"I met the ol' gentleman in the French
+<i>caf�</i>, neah heah," he said, "and he was jus'
+honing to have me come
+up and see his
+house, seh&mdash;house
+he used to have.
+Well, I came right
+along, an' when we got here, sure 'nough,
+they's taihin' down that house. Neveh felt so
+bad in all my life, seh. He wasn't expectin'
+of it, and I 'lowed 'twuz his old home like,
+and he was right hahd hit, fo' a fact. He said
+to me, 'Good-day, seh,' sezee; 'good-day,
+seh,' he says to me, an' then he starts across<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151" href="#Page_151">[151]</a></span>
+the street, an' first thing I know, he falls down
+flat on his face, seh. Saw that theah brick
+an' mortar comin' down, an' fell flat on his face.
+This hyeh pill-man 'lowed 'twuz sunstroke;
+but a Southern man like I am don't need to
+be told what a gentleman's feelings are when
+he sees his house a-torn down&mdash;no, seh. If
+you ever down oweh way, seh, I'd be right
+glad&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But Rand had lifted Edith from the floor,
+for her father would know her no more, and
+had passed out of this world, unconscious of
+all the squalor and ruin about him; and the
+poor girl was sobbing on his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>He was very tender with her, very sorry for
+her&mdash;but he had never known the walls that
+fell across the way; he was a young man, an
+artist, with a great future before him, and the
+world was young to him, and she was to be
+his wife.</p>
+
+<p>Still, looking down, he saw that sweetly
+calm, listening look, that makes beautiful the
+faces of the dead, come over the face of Jacob
+Dolph, as though he, lying there, heard the
+hammers of the workmen breaking down his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152" href="#Page_152">[152]</a></span>
+father's house, brick by brick&mdash;and yet the
+sound could no longer jar upon his ear or
+grieve his gentle spirit.</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/ill-p152.jpg" >
+<img class="plain" src="images/ill-p152-thumb.jpg" width="265" height="300" alt="" title="" />
+</a></div>
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<div class="tnote" id="Endnote">
+<p class="center">Transcriber's Note:</p>
+<p>The following printing errors have been corrected in this text and are shown within the text with <ins class = "correction" title ="Transcriber's Note: example">mouse-hover popups</ins>.</p>
+<p><a href="#Note_1">Page 82</a>, period added after 'path'.</p>
+<p><a href="#Note_2">Page 97</a>, period added after 'said'.</p>
+<p><a href="#Note_3">Page 99</a>, 'w' in 'why' changed to lower case.</p>
+<p><a href="#Note_4">Page 115</a>, repeated 'the' removed.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
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+Project Gutenberg's The Story of a New York House, by Henry Cuyler Bunner
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Story of a New York House
+
+Author: Henry Cuyler Bunner
+
+Illustrator: A. B. Frost
+
+Release Date: December 13, 2009 [EBook #30662]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Geetu Melwani, Rob Reid, David Garcia and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+(This book was produced from scanned images of public
+domain material from the Google Print project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Then out of the door came Jacob Dolph.]
+
+
+
+
+          THE STORY
+
+              OF
+
+       A NEW YORK HOUSE
+
+              BY
+
+         H. C. BUNNER
+
+
+  _ILLUSTRATED BY A. B. FROST_
+
+
+           NEW YORK
+    CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+             1887
+
+
+
+
+      COPYRIGHT, 1887, BY
+    CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.
+
+
+   Press of J. J. Little & Co.
+     Astor Place, New York.
+
+
+
+
+              TO
+
+           A. L. B.
+
+
+
+
+  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+  _Then out of the door came Jacob Dolph_                FRONTISPIECE
+
+                                                                 PAGE
+
+  _"I thumped him"_                                                14
+
+  _"It's a monstrous great place for a country-house, Mr. Dolph"_  18
+
+  _There was only one idea, and that was flight_                   28
+
+  _The light flickered on the top of the church spire_             32
+              (_By F. Hopkinson Smith._)
+
+  _They hesitated a second, looking at the great arm chair_        37
+
+  _"Stay there, sir--you, sir, you, Jacob Dolph!"_                 41
+
+  _After awhile he began to take timorous strolls_                 46
+
+  _Jacob Dolph the elder ... stood on his hearth rug_              51
+
+  _And then he marched off to bed by himself, suffering no one to
+  go with him_                                                     55
+
+  _In quiet morning hours ... when his daughter sat at his feet_   77
+
+  _"Mons'us gran dinneh, seh!"_                                    79
+
+  _"All of a sudden, chock forward he went, right on his face"_    83
+
+  _He heard the weak, spasmodic wail of another Dolph_             88
+
+  _"Central American," said the clerk_                            107
+
+  _"Looks like his father," was Mr. Daw's comment_                109
+
+  _O'Reagan of Castle Reagan_                                     118
+
+  _"If it hadn't been for the Dolphs, devil the rattle you'd
+  have had"_                                                      120
+
+  _"I know'd you'd take me in, Mist' Dolph," he panted_           132
+
+  _"Have you got a nigger here?"_                                 133
+
+  _Abram Van Riper makes a business communication._               141
+
+  _And so she set his necktie right, and he went_                 144
+
+  _Looking on his face, she saw death quietly coming upon him_    149
+
+  _Finial_                                                        151
+
+
+
+
+           THE STORY
+
+       OF A NEW YORK HOUSE.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+
+"I hear," said Mrs. Abram Van Riper, seated at her breakfast-table, and
+watching the morning sunlight dance on the front of the great Burrell
+house on the opposite side of Pine Street, "that the Dolphs are going to
+build a prodigious fine house out of town--somewhere up near the
+Rynders's place."
+
+"And I hear," said Abram Van Riper, laying down last night's _Evening
+Post_, "that Jacob Dolph is going to give up business. And if he does,
+it's a disgrace to the town."
+
+It was in the summer of 1807, and Abram Van Riper was getting well over
+what he considered the meridian line of sixty years. He was hale and
+hearty; his business was flourishing; his boy was turning out all that
+should have been expected of one of the Van Riper stock; the refracted
+sunlight from the walls of the stately house occupied by the Cashier of
+the Bank of the United States lit with a subdued secondary glimmer the
+Van Riper silver on the breakfast-table--the squat teapot and slop-bowl,
+the milk-pitcher, that held a quart, and the apostle-spoon in the broken
+loaf-sugar on the Delft plate. Abram Van Riper was decorously happy, as
+a New York merchant should be. In all other respects, he was pleased to
+think, he was what a New York merchant should be, and the word of the
+law and the prophets was fulfilled with him and in his house.
+
+"I'm sure," Mrs. Van Riper began again, somewhat querulously, "I can't
+see why Jacob Dolph shouldn't give up business, if he's so minded. He's
+a monstrous fortune, from all I hear--a good hundred thousand dollars."
+
+"A hundred thousand dollars!" repeated her husband, scornfully. "Ay, and
+twice twenty thousand pounds on the top of that. He's done well, has
+Dolph. All the more reason he should stick to his trade; and not go to
+lolling in the sun, like a runner at the Custom-House door. He's not
+within ten years of me, and here he must build his country house, and
+set up for the fine gentleman. Jacob Dolph! Did I go on his note, when
+he came back from France, brave as my master, in '94, or did I not? And
+where 'ud he have raised twenty thousand in this town, if I hadn't?
+What's got into folks nowadays? Damn me if I can see!"
+
+His wife protested, in wifely fashion. "I'm sure, Van Riper," she began,
+"you've no need to fly in such a huff if I so much as speak of folks who
+have some conceit of being genteel. It's only proper pride of Mr. Dolph
+to have a country house, and--" (her voice faltering a little,
+timorously) "ride in and--and out----"
+
+"_Ride!_" snorted Mr. Van Riper. "In a carriage, maybe?"
+
+"In a carriage, Van Riper. You may think to ride in a carriage is like
+being the Pope of Rome; but there's some that knows better. And if you'd
+set up your carriage," went on the undaunted Mrs. Van Riper, "and gone
+over to Greenwich Street two years ago, as I'd have had you, and made
+yourself friendly with those people there, I'd have been on the Orphan
+Asylum Board at this very minute; and _you_ would----"
+
+Mr. Van Riper knew all that speech by heart, in all its variations. He
+knew perfectly well what it would end in, this time, although he was not
+a man of quick perception: "He would have been a member of the new
+Historical Society."
+
+"Yes," he thought to himself, as he found his hat and shuffled out into
+Pine Street; "and John Pintard would have had my good check in his
+pocket for his tuppenny society. Pine Street is fine enough for me."
+
+Mr. Van Riper had more cause for his petulancy than he would have
+acknowledged even to himself. He was a man who had kept his shop open
+all through Clinton's occupancy, and who had had no trouble with the
+British. And when they were gone he had had to do enough to clear his
+skirts of any smirch of Toryism, and to implant in his own breast a
+settled feeling of militant Americanism. He did not like it that the
+order of things should change--and the order of things was changing.
+The town was growing out of all knowledge of itself. Here they had their
+Orphan Asylum, and their Botanical Garden, and their Historical Society;
+and the Jews were having it all their own way; and now people were
+talking of free schools, and of laying out a map for the upper end of
+the town to grow on, in the "system" of straight streets and avenues. To
+the devil with systems and avenues! said he. That was all the doing of
+those cursed Frenchmen. He knew how it would be when they brought their
+plaguy frigate here in the first fever year--'93--and the fools marched
+up from Peck's Slip after a red nightcap, and howled their cut-throat
+song all night long.
+
+It began to hum itself in his head as he walked toward Water Street--_Ca
+ira--ca ira--les aristocrats a la lanterne_. A whiff of the wind that
+blew through Paris streets in the terrible times had come across the
+Atlantic and tickled his dull old Dutch nostrils.
+
+But something worse than this vexed the conservative spirit of Abram Van
+Riper. He could forgive John Pintard--whose inspiration, I think,
+foreran the twentieth century--his fancy for free schools and historical
+societies, as he had forgiven him his sidewalk-building fifteen years
+before; he could proudly overlook the fact that the women were busying
+themselves with all manner of wild charities; he could be contented
+though he knew that the Hebrew Hart was president of that merchants'
+club at Baker's, of which he himself would fain have been a member. But
+there was some thing in the air that he could neither forgive nor
+overlook, nor be contented with.
+
+There was a change coming over the town--a change which he could not
+clearly define, even in his own mind. There was a great keeping of
+carriages, he knew. A dozen men had bought carriages, or were likely to
+buy them at any time. The women were forming societies for the
+improvement of this and that. And he, who had moved up-town from Dock
+Street, was now in an old-fashioned quarter. All this he knew, but the
+something which made him uneasy was more subtile.
+
+Within the last few years he had observed an introduction of certain
+strange distinctions in the social code of the town. It had been vaguely
+intimated to him--perhaps by his wife, he could not remember--that there
+was a difference between his trade and Jacob Dolph's trade. He was a
+ship-chandler. Jacob Dolph sold timber. Their shops were side by side;
+Jacob Dolph's rafts lay in the river in front of Abram Van Riper's shop,
+and Abram Van Riper had gone on Jacob Dolph's note, only a few years
+ago. Yet, it seemed that it was _genteel_ of Jacob Dolph to sell timber,
+and it was not genteel of Abram Van Riper to be a ship-chandler. There
+was, then, a difference between Jacob Dolph and Abram Van Riper--a
+difference which, in forty years, Abram Van Riper had never conceived
+of. There were folks who held thus. For himself, he did not understand
+it. What difference there was between selling the wood to make a ship,
+and selling the stores to go inside of her, he could not understand.
+
+The town was changing for the worse; he saw that. He did not wish--God
+forbid!--that his son John should go running about to pleasure-gardens.
+But it would be no more than neighborly if these young bucks who went
+out every night should ask him to go with them. Were William Irving's
+boys and Harry Brevoort and those young Kembles too fine to be friends
+with his boy? Not that he'd go with them a-rollicking--no, not that--but
+'twould be neighborly. It was all wrong, he thought; they were going
+whither they knew not, and wherefore they knew not; and with that he
+cursed their airs and their graces, and pounded down to the Tontine, to
+put his name at the head of the list of those who subscribed for a
+testimonial service of plate, to be presented to our esteemed
+fellow-citizen and valued associate, Jacob Dolph, on his retirement from
+active business.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Jacob Dolph at this moment was setting forth from his house in State
+Street, whose pillared balcony, rising from the second floor to the
+roof, caught a side glance of the morning sun, that loved the Battery
+far better than Pine Street. He had his little boy by the hand--young
+Jacob, his miniature, his heir, and the last and only living one of his
+eight children. Mr. Dolph walked with his stock thrust out and the lower
+end of his waistcoat drawn in--he was Colonel Dolph, if he had cared to
+keep the title; and had come back from Monmouth with a hole in his hip
+that gave him a bit of a limp, even now in eighteen-hundred-and-seven.
+He and the boy marched forth like an army with a small but enthusiastic
+left wing, into the poplar-studded Battery. The wind blew fresh off the
+bay; the waves beat up against the seawall, and swirled with a chuckle
+under Castle Garden bridge. A large brig was coming up before the wind,
+all her sails set, as though she were afraid--and she was--of British
+frigates outside the Hook. Two or three fat little boats, cat-rigged,
+after the good old New York fashion, were beating down toward Staten
+Island, to hunt for the earliest blue-fish.
+
+The two Dolphs crossed the Battery, where the elder bowed to his friends
+among the merchants who lounged about the city's pleasure-ground, lazily
+chatting over their business affairs. Then they turned up past Bowling
+Green into Broadway, where Mr. Dolph kept on bowing, for half the town
+was out, taking the fresh morning for marketing and all manner of
+shopping. Everybody knew Jacob Dolph afar off by his blue coat with the
+silver buttons, his nankeen waistcoat, and his red-checked Indian silk
+neckcloth. He made it a sort of uniform. Captain Beare had brought him a
+bolt of nankeen and a silk kerchief every year since 1793, when Mr.
+Dolph gave him credit for the timber of which the _Ursa Minor_ was
+built.
+
+And everybody seemed willing to make acquaintance with young Jacob's
+London-made kerseymere breeches, of a bright canary color, and with his
+lavender silk coat, and with his little _chapeau de Paris_. Indeed,
+young Jacob was quite the most prominent moving spectacle on Broadway,
+until they came to John Street, and saw something rolling down the
+street that quite cut the yellow kerseymeres out of all popular
+attention.
+
+This was a carriage, the body of which was shaped like a huge section of
+a cheese, set up on its small end upon broad, swinging straps between
+two pairs of wheels. It was not unlike a piece of cheese in color, for
+it was of a dull and faded grayish-green, like mould, relieved by
+pale-yellow panels and gilt ornaments. It was truly an interesting
+structure, and it attracted nearly as much notice on Broadway in 1807 as
+it might to-day. But it was received with far more reverence, for it was
+a court coach, and it belonged to the Des Anges family, the rich
+Huguenots of New Rochelle. It had been built in France, thirty years
+before, and had been sent over as a present to his brother from the
+Count des Anges, who had himself neglected to make use of his
+opportunities to embrace the Protestant religion.
+
+When the white-haired old lady who sat in this coach, with a very little
+girl by her side, saw Mr. Dolph and his son, she leaned out of the
+window and signalled to the old periwigged driver to stop, and he drew
+up close to the sidewalk. And then Mr. Dolph and his son came up to the
+window and took off their hats, and made a great low bow and a small low
+bow to the old lady and the little girl.
+
+"Madam Des Anges," said Mr. Dolph, with an idiom which he had learned
+when he was presented at the court of Louis the Sixteenth, "has surely
+not driven down from New Rochelle this morning? That would tax even her
+powers."
+
+Madam Des Anges did not smile--she had no taste for smiling--but she
+bridled amiably.
+
+"No, Mr. Dolph," she replied; "I have been staying with my
+daughter-in-law, at her house at King's Bridge, and I have come to town
+to put my little granddaughter to school. She is to have the privilege
+of being a pupil of Mme. Dumesnil."
+
+Madam Des Anges indicated the little girl with a slight movement, as
+though she did not wish to allow the child more consideration than a
+child deserved. The little girl turned a great pair of awed eyes, first
+on her grandmother, and then on the gentlemen, and spoke no word. Young
+Jacob Dolph stared hard at her, and then contemplated his kerseymeres
+with lazy satisfaction. He had no time for girls. And a boy who had his
+breeches made in London was a boy of consequence, and need not concern
+himself about every one he saw.
+
+"And this is your son, I make no doubt," went on Madam Des Anges; "you
+must bring him to see us at King's Bridge, while we are so near you.
+These young people should know each other."
+
+Mr. Dolph said he would, and showed a becoming sense of the honor of the
+invitation; and he made young Jacob say a little speech of thanks, which
+he did with a doubtful grace; and then Mr. Dolph sent his compliments to
+Madam Des Anges' daughter-in-law, and Madam Des Anges sent her
+compliments to Mrs. Dolph, and there was more stately bowing, and the
+carriage lumbered on, with the little girl looking timorously out of the
+window, her great eyes fixed on the yellow kerseymeres, as they twinkled
+up the street.
+
+"Papa," said young Jacob, as they turned the corner of Ann Street, "when
+may I go to a boys' school? I'm monstrous big to be at Mrs. Kilmaster's.
+And I don't like to be a girl-boy."
+
+"Are you a girl-boy?" inquired his father, smiling.
+
+"Aleck Cameron called me one yesterday. He said I was a girl-boy because
+I went to dame-school. He called me Missy, too!" the boy went on, with
+his breast swelling.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"We'll see about it," said Mr. Dolph, smiling again; and they walked on
+in silence to Mrs. Kilmaster's door, where he struck the knocker, and a
+neat mulatto girl opened the narrow door. Then he patted his boy on the
+head and bade him good-by for the morning, and told him to be a good boy
+at school. He took a step or two and looked back. Young Jacob lingered
+on the step, as if he had a further communication to make. He paused.
+
+"I thumped him," said young Jacob, and the narrow door swallowed him up.
+
+Mr. Dolph continued on his walk up Broadway. As he passed the upper end
+of the Common he looked with interest at the piles of red sandstone
+among the piles of white marble, where they were building the new City
+Hall. The Council had ordered that the rear or northward end of the
+edifice should be constructed of red stone; because red stone was cheap,
+and none but a few suburbans would ever look down on it from above
+Chambers Street. Mr. Dolph shook his head. He thought he knew better. He
+had watched the growth of trade; he knew the room for further growth; he
+had noticed the long converging lines of river-front, with their
+unbounded accommodation for wharves and slips. He believed that the day
+would come--and his own boy might see it--when the business of the city
+would crowd the dwelling-houses from the river side, east and west, as
+far, maybe, as Chambers Street. He had no doubt that the boy might find
+himself, forty years from then, in a populous and genteel neighborhood.
+Perhaps he foresaw too much; but he had a jealous yearning for a house
+that should be a home for him, and for his child, and for his
+grandchildren. He wanted a place where his wife might have a garden; a
+place which the boy would grow up to love and cherish, where the boy
+might bring a wife some day. And even if it were a little out of
+town--why, his wife did not want a rout every night; and it was likely
+his old friends would come out and see him once in a while, and smoke a
+pipe in his garden and eat a dish of strawberries, perhaps.
+
+As he thought it all over for the hundredth time, weighing for and
+against in his gentle and deliberative mind, he strolled far out of
+town. There was a house here and there on the road--a house with a trim,
+stiff little garden, full of pink and white and blue flowers in orderly,
+clam-shell-bordered beds. But it was certainly, he had to admit, as he
+looked about him, very _countrified_ indeed. It seemed that the city
+must lose itself if it wandered up here among these rolling meadows and
+wooded hills. Yet even up here, half way to Greenwich Village, there
+were little outposts of the town--clumps of neighborly houses, mostly of
+the poorer class, huddling together to form small nuclei for sporadic
+growth. There was one on his right, near the head of Collect Street.
+Perhaps that quizzical little old German was right, who had told him
+that King's Bridge property was a rational investment.
+
+He went across the hill where Grand Street crosses Broadway, and up past
+what was then North and is to-day Houston Street, and then turned down a
+straggling road that ran east and west. He walked toward the Hudson, and
+passed a farmhouse or two, and came to a bare place where there were no
+trees, and only a few tangled bushes and ground-vines.
+
+Here a man was sitting on a stone, awaiting him. As he came near, the
+man arose.
+
+"Ah, it's you, Weeks? And have you the plan?"
+
+"Yes, Colonel--Mr. Dolph. I've put the window where you want it--that
+is, my brother Levi did--though I don't see as you're going to have much
+trouble in looking over anything that's likely to come between you and
+the river."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Mr. Dolph took the crisp roll of parchment and studied it with loving
+interest. It had gone back to Ezra Weeks, the builder, and his brother
+Levi, the architect, for the twentieth time, perhaps. Was there ever an
+architect's plan put in the hands of a happy nest-builder where the
+windows did not go up and down from day to day, and the doors did not
+crawl all around the house, and the veranda did not contract and expand
+like a sensitive plant; or where the rooms and closets and corridors did
+not march backward and forward and in and out at the bidding of every
+fond, untutored whim?
+
+"It's a monstrous great big place for a country-house, Mr. Dolph," said
+Ezra Weeks, as he looked over Jacob Dolph's shoulder at the drawings of
+the house, and shook his head with a sort of pitying admiration for the
+projector's audacity.
+
+They talked for a while, and looked at the site as if they might see
+more in it than they saw yesterday, and then Weeks set off for the city,
+pledged to hire laborers and to begin the work on the morrow.
+
+"I think I can get you some of that stone that's going into the back of
+the City Hall, if you say so, Mr. Dolph. That stone was bought cheap,
+you know--bought for the city."
+
+"See what you can do, Weeks," said Mr. Dolph; and Mr. Weeks went
+whistling down the road.
+
+Jacob Dolph walked around his prospective domain. He kicked a wild
+blackberry bush aside, to look at the head of a stake, and tried to
+realize that that would be the corner of his house. He went to where the
+parlor fireplace would be, and stared at the grass and stones, wondering
+what it would be like to watch the fire flickering on the new hearth.
+Then he looked over toward the Hudson, and saw the green woods on Union
+Hill and the top of a white sail over the high river-bank. He hoped that
+no one would build a large house between him and the river.
+
+He lingered so long that the smoke of midday dinners was arising from
+Greenwich Village when he turned back toward town. When he reached the
+Commons on his homeward way he came across a knot of idlers who were
+wasting the hour of the noontide meal in gaping at the unfinished
+municipal building.
+
+They were admiringly critical. One man was vociferously enthusiastic.
+
+"It's a marvellous fine building, say I, sir! Worthy of the classic
+shades of antiquity. If Europe can show a finer than that will be when
+she's done, then, in _my_ opinion, sir, Europe is doing well."
+
+"You admire the architecture, Mr. Huggins?" asked Mr. Dolph, coming up
+behind him. Mr. Huggins turned around, slightly disconcerted, and
+assumed an amiability of manner such as can only be a professional
+acquirement among us poor creatures of human nature.
+
+"Ah, Mr. Dolph--Colonel, I should say! I have purposed to do myself the
+honor of presenting myself at your house this afternoon, Colonel Dolph,
+to inquire if you did not desire to have your peruke _frisee_. For I had
+taken the liberty of observing you in conversation with Madam Des Anges
+this morning, in her equipage, and it had occurred to me that possibly
+the madam might be a-staying with you."
+
+"Madam Des Anges does not honor my house this time, Huggins," returned
+Mr. Dolph, with an indulgent little laugh; "and my poor old peruke will
+do very well for to-day."
+
+There was a perceptible diminution in Mr. Huggins's ardor; but he was
+still suave.
+
+"I hope the madam is in good health," he remarked.
+
+"She is, I believe," said Mr. Dolph.
+
+"And your good lady, sir? I have not had the pleasure of treating Mrs.
+Dolph professionally for some time, sir, I----"
+
+Mr. Dolph was wary. "I don't think Mrs. Dolph is fond of the latest
+modes, Huggins. But here comes Mr. Van Riper. Perhaps he will have his
+peruke _frisee_."
+
+Mr. Huggins got out of a dancing-master's pose with intelligent
+alacrity, bade Mr. Dolph a hasty "Good-afternoon!" and hurried off
+toward his shop, one door above Wall Street. Mr. Van Riper did not like
+"John Richard Desbrosses Huggins, Knight of the Comb."
+
+There was something else that Mr. Van Riper did not like.
+
+"Hullo, Dolph!" he hailed his friend. "What's this I heard about you
+building a preposterous tom-fool of a town-house out by Greenwich? Why
+don't you hire that house that Burr had, up near Lispenard's
+cow-pasture, and be done with it?"
+
+Mr. Dolph seized his chance.
+
+"It's not so preposterous as all that. By the way, talking of Burr, I
+hear from Richmond that he'll positively be tried next week. Did you
+know that young Irving--William's son, the youngest, the lad that writes
+squibs--has gone to Richmond for the defence?"
+
+"William Irving's son might be in better business," grunted Mr. Van
+Riper, for a moment diverted. "If we'd got at that devil when he
+murdered poor Hamilton--'fore gad, we'd have saved the trouble of trying
+him. Do you remember when we was for going to Philadelphia after him,
+and there the sly scamp was at home all the time up in his fine house,
+a-sitting in a tub of water, reading French stuff, as cool as a
+cowcumber, with the whole town hunting for him?" Then he came back. "But
+that house of yours. You haven't got this crazy notion that New York's
+going to turn into London while you smoke your pipe, have you? You're
+keeping some of your seven business senses, ain't you?"
+
+"I don't know," Mr. Dolph mildly defended his hobby; "there is a great
+potentiality of growth in this city. Here's an estimate that John
+Pintard made the other day----"
+
+"John Pintard! He's another like _you_!" said Mr. Van Riper.
+
+"Well, look at it for yourself," pleaded the believer in New York's
+future.
+
+Mr. Van Riper took the neatly written paper, and simply snorted and
+gasped as he read this:
+
+                         _Statistical_.
+
+    By the numeration of the inhabitants of this city, recently
+    published, the progress of population for the last 5 years appears
+    to be at the rate of 25 per cent. Should our city continue to
+    increase in the same proportion during the present century, the
+    aggregate number at its close will far exceed that of any other city
+    in the Old World, Pekin not excepted, as will appear from the
+    following table. Progress of population in the city of New York,
+    computed at the rate of 25 per cent, every 5 years:
+
+      1805   75,770        1855    705,650
+      1810   95,715        1860    882,062
+      1815  110,390        1865  1,102,577
+      1820  147,987        1870  1,378,221
+      1825  184,923        1875  1,722,776
+      1830  231,228        1880  2,153,470
+      1835  289,035        1885  2,691,837
+      1840  361,293        1890  3,364,796
+      1845  451,616        1895  4,205,995
+      1850  564,520        1900  5,257,493
+
+When he had read it through he was a-quivering, crimson with that rage
+of Conservative indignation which is even more fervent than the flames
+of Radical enthusiasm.
+
+"Yes," he said; "there's seventy-five thousand people in this town, and
+there'll be seventy-five thousand bankrupts if this lunacy goes on. And
+there's seventy-five thousand maggots in your brain, and seventy-five
+thousand in John Pintard's; and if you two live to see nineteen hundred,
+you'll have twice five million two hundred and fifty-seven thousand four
+hundred and ninety-three--whatever that may be!" And he thrust the paper
+back at Jacob Dolph, and made for the Tontine and the society of
+sensible men.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The house was built, in spite of Abram Van Riper's remonstrance. It had
+a stone front, almost flush with the road, and brick gable-ends, in each
+one of which, high up near the roof, stood an arched window, to lift an
+eyebrow to the sun, morning and evening. But it was only a
+country-house, after all; and the Dolphs set up their carriage and
+drove out and in, from June to September.
+
+There was a garden at the side, where Mrs. Dolph could have the flowers
+her heart had yearned after ever since Jacob Dolph brought her from her
+home at Rondout, when she was seventeen.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Strengthened by the country air--so they said--young Jacob grew clean
+out of his dame-school days and into and out of Columbia College, and
+was sent abroad, a sturdy youth, to have a year's holiday. It was to the
+new house that he came back the next summer, with a wonderful stock of
+fine clothes and of finer manners, and with a pair of mustaches that
+scandalized everybody but Madam Des Anges, who had seen the like in
+France when she visited her brother. And a very fine young buck was
+young Jacob, altogether, with his knowledge of French and his ignorance
+of Dutch, and a way he had with the women, and another way he had with
+the men, and his heirship to old Jacob Dolph's money and his two
+houses.
+
+For they stayed in the old house until 1822.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a close, hot night in the early summer; there was a thick, warm
+mist that turned now and then into a soft rain; yet every window in the
+Dolphs' house on State Street was closed.
+
+It had been a hideous day for New York. From early morning until long
+after dark had set in, the streets had been filled with frightened,
+disordered crowds. The city was again stricken with the old, inevitable,
+ever-recurring scourge of yellow fever, and the people had lost their
+heads. In every house, in every office and shop, there was hasty
+packing, mad confusion, and wild flight. It was only a question of
+getting out of town as best one might. Wagons and carts creaked and
+rumbled and rattled through every street, piled high with household
+chattels, up-heaped in blind haste. Women rode on the swaying loads, or
+walked beside with the smaller children in their arms. Men bore heavy
+burdens, and children helped according to their strength. There was
+only one idea, and that was flight--from a pestilence whose coming
+might have been prevented, and whose course could have been stayed. To
+most of these poor creatures the only haven seemed to be Greenwich
+Village; but some sought the scattered settlements above; some crossed
+to Hoboken; some to Bushwick; while others made a long journey to Staten
+Island, across the bay. And when they reached their goals, it was to beg
+or buy lodgings anywhere and anyhow; to sleep in cellars and garrets, in
+barns and stables.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The panic was not only among the poor and ignorant. Merchants were
+moving their offices, and even the Post Office and the Custom House
+were to be transferred to Greenwich. There were some who remained
+faithful throughout all, and who labored for the stricken, and whose
+names are not even written in the memory of their fellow-men. But the
+city had been so often ravaged before, that at the first sight there was
+one mere animal impulse of flight that seized upon all alike.
+
+At one o'clock, when some of the better streets had once more taken on
+their natural quiet, an ox-cart stood before the door of the Dolphs' old
+house. A little behind it stood the family carriage, its lamps unlit.
+The horses stirred uneasily, but the oxen waited in dull, indifferent
+patience. Presently the door opened, and two men came out and awkwardly
+bore a plain coffin to the cart. Then they mounted to the front of the
+cart, hiding between them a muffled lantern. They wore cloths over the
+lower part of their faces, and felt hats drawn low over their eyes.
+Something in their gait showed them to be seafaring men, or the like.
+
+Then out of the open door came Jacob Dolph, moving with a feeble shuffle
+between his son and his old negro coachman--this man and his wife the
+only faithful of all the servants. The young man put his father in the
+carriage, and the negro went back and locked the doors and brought the
+keys to his young master. He mounted to the box, and through the
+darkness could be seen a white towel tied around his arm--the old badge
+of servitude's mourning.
+
+The oxen were started up, and the two vehicles moved up into Broadway.
+They travelled with painful slowness; the horses had to be held in to
+keep them behind the cart, for the oxen could be only guided by the
+whip, and not by word of mouth. The old man moaned a little at the pace,
+and quivered when he heard the distant sound of hammers.
+
+"What is it?" he asked, nervously.
+
+"They are boarding up some of the streets," said his son; "do not fear,
+father. Everything is prepared; and if we make no noise, we shall not be
+troubled."
+
+"If we can only keep her out of the Potter's Field--the Potter's Field!"
+cried the father; "I'll thank God--I'll ask no more--I'll ask no more!"
+
+And then he broke down and cried a little, feebly, and got his son's
+hand in the darkness and put on his own shoulder.
+
+It was nearly two when they came to St. Paul's and turned the corner to
+the gate. It was dark below, but some frenzied fools were burning
+tar-barrels far down Ann Street, and the light flickered on the top of
+the church spire. They crossed the churchyard to where a shallow grave
+had been dug, half way down the hill. The men lowered the body into it;
+the old negro gave them a little _rouleau_ of coin, and they went
+hurriedly away into the night.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The clergyman came out by and by, with the sexton behind him. He stood
+high up above the grave, and drew his long cloak about him and lifted an
+old pomander-box to his face. He was not more foolish than his fellows;
+in that evil hour men took to charms and to saying of spells. Below the
+grave and apart, for the curse rested upon them, too, stood Jacob Dolph
+and his son, the old man leaning on the arm of the younger. Then the
+clergyman began to read the service for the burial of the dead, over
+the departed sister--and wife and mother. He spoke low; but his voice
+seemed to echo in the stillness. He came forward with a certain
+shrinking, and cast the handful of dust and ashes into the grave. When
+it was done, the sexton stepped forward and rapidly threw in the earth
+until he had filled the little hollow even with the ground. Then, with
+fearful precaution, he laid down the carefully cut sods, and smoothed
+them until there was no sign of what had been done. The clergyman turned
+to the two mourners, without moving nearer to them, and lifted up his
+hands. The old man tried to kneel; but his son held him up, for he was
+too feeble, and they bent their heads for a moment of silence. The
+clergyman went away as he had come; and Jacob Dolph and his son went
+back to the carriage. When his father was seated, young Jacob Dolph said
+to the coachman: "To the new house."
+
+The heavy coach swung into Broadway, and climbed up the hill out into
+the open country. There were lights still burning in the farmhouses,
+bright gleams to east and west, but the silence of the damp summer night
+hung over the sparse suburbs, and the darkness seemed to grow more
+intense as they drove away from the city. The trees by the roadside were
+almost black in the gray mist; the raw, moist smell of the night, the
+damp air, chilly upon the high land, came in through the carriage
+windows. Young Jacob looked out and noted their progress by familiar
+landmarks on the road; but the old man sat with his head bent on his new
+black stock.
+
+It was almost three, and the east was beginning to look dark, as though
+a storm were settling there in the grayness, when they turned down the
+straggling street and drew up before the great dark mass that was the
+new house. The carriage-wheels gritted against the loose stones at the
+edge of the roadway, and the great door of the house swung open. The
+light of one wavering candle-flame, held high above her head, fell on
+the black face of old Chloe, the coachman's wife. There were no candles
+burning on the high-pitched stairway; all was dark behind her in the
+empty house.
+
+Young Jacob Dolph helped his father to the ground, and between the young
+man and the negro old Jacob Dolph wearily climbed the steps. Chloe
+lifted her apron to her face, and turned to lead them up the stair. Her
+husband went out to his horses, shutting the door softly after him,
+between Jacob Dolph's old life and the new life that was to begin in the
+new house.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+When young Jacob Dolph came down to breakfast the next morning he found
+his father waiting for him in the breakfast-room. The meal was upon the
+table. Old Chloe stood with her black hands folded upon her white apron,
+and her pathetic negro eyes following the old gentleman as he moved
+wistfully about the room.
+
+Father and son shook hands in silence, and turned to the table. There
+were three chairs in their accustomed places. They hesitated a
+half-second, looking at the third great arm-chair, as though they waited
+for the mistress of the house to take her place. Then they sat down. It
+was six years before any one took that third chair, but every morning
+Jacob Dolph the elder made that little pause before he put himself at
+the foot of the table.
+
+On this first morning there was very little said and very little eaten.
+But when they had made an end of sitting at the table old Jacob Dolph
+said, with something almost like testiness in his husky voice:
+
+"Jacob, I want to sell the house."
+
+"Father!"
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"The old house, I mean; I shall never go back there."
+
+His son looked at him with a further inquiry. He felt a sudden new
+apprehension. The father sat back in his easy-chair, drumming on the
+arms with nervous fingers.
+
+"I shall never go back there," he said again.
+
+"Of course you know best, sir," said young Jacob, gently; "but would it
+be well to be precipitate? It is possible that you may feel differently
+some time----"
+
+"There is no 'some time' for me!" broke in the old man, gripping the
+chair-arms, fiercely; "my time's done--done, sir!"
+
+Then his voice broke and became plaintively kind.
+
+"There, there! Forgive me, Jacob, boy. But it's true, my boy, true. The
+world's done, for me; but there's a world ahead for you, my son, thank
+God! I'll be patient--I'll be patient. God has been good to me, and I
+haven't many years to wait, in the course of nature."
+
+He looked vacantly out of the window, trying to see the unforeseen with
+his mental sight.
+
+"While I'm here, Jacob, let the old man have his way. It's a whimsey; I
+doubt 'tis hardly rational. But I have no heart to go home. Let me learn
+to live my life here. 'Twill be easier."
+
+"But do you think it necessary to sell, sir? Could you not hold the
+house? Are you certain that you would like to have a stranger living
+there?"
+
+"I care not a pin who lives within those four walls now, sir!" cried the
+elder, with a momentary return of his vehemence. "It's no house to me
+now. Sell it, sir, sell it!--if there's any one will give money for it
+at a time like this. Bring every stick of furniture and every stitch of
+carpet up here; and let me have my way, Jacob--it won't be for long."
+
+He got up and went blindly out of the room, and his son heard him
+muttering, "Not for long--not for long, now," as he wandered about the
+house and went aimlessly into room after room.
+
+Old Jacob Dolph had always been an indulgent parent, and none kinder
+ever lived. But we should hardly call him indulgent to-day. Good as he
+was to his boy, it had always been with the goodness of a superior. It
+was the way of his time. A half-century ago the child's position was
+equivocal. He lived by the grace of God and his parents, and their duty
+to him was rather a duty to society, born of an abstract morality. Love
+was given him, not as a right, but as an indulgence. And young Jacob
+Dolph, in all his grief and anxiety, was guiltily conscious of a secret
+thrill of pleasure--natural enough, poor boy!--in his sudden elevation
+to the full dignity of manhood, and his father's abdication of the
+headship of the house.
+
+A little later in the day, urged again by the old gentleman, he put on
+his hat and went to see Abram Van Riper. Mr. Van Riper was now, despite
+his objections to the pernicious institution of country-houses, a near
+neighbor of the Dolphs. He had yielded, not to fashion, but to yellow
+fever, and at the very first of the outbreak had bought a house on the
+outskirts of Greenwich Village, and had moved there in unseemly haste.
+He had also registered an unnecessarily profane oath that he would never
+again live within the city limits.
+
+When young Jacob Dolph came in front of the low, hip-roofed house, whose
+lower story of undressed stone shone with fresh whitewash, Mr. Van Riper
+stood on his stoop and checked his guest at the front gate, a dozen
+yards away. From this distance he jabbed his big gold-headed cane toward
+the young man, as though to keep him off.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"Stay there, sir--you, sir, you Jacob Dolph!" he roared, brandishing the
+big stick. "Stand back, I tell you! Don't come in, sir! Good-day,
+sir--good-day, good-day, good-day!" (This hurried excursus was in
+deference to a sense of social duty.) "Keep away, confound you, keep
+away--consume your body, sir, stay where you are!"
+
+"I'm not coming any nearer, Mr. Van Riper," said Jacob Dolph, with a
+smile which he could not help.
+
+"I can't have you in here, sir," went on Mr. Van Riper, with no
+abatement of his agitation. "I don't want to be inhospitable; but I've
+got a wife and a son, sir, and you're infectious--damn it, sir, you're
+infectious!"
+
+"I'll stay where I am, Mr. Van Riper," said young Jacob, smiling again.
+"I only came with a message from my father."
+
+"With a what?" screamed Mr. Van Riper. "I can't have--oh, ay, a message!
+Well, say it then and be off, like a sensible youngster. Consume it,
+man, can't you talk farther out in the street?"
+
+When Mr. Van Riper learned his visitor's message, he flung his stick on
+the white pebbles of the clam-shell-bordered path, and swore that he,
+Van Riper, was the only sane man in a city of lunatics, and that if
+Jacob Dolph tried to carry out his plan he should be shipped
+straightway to Bloomingdale.
+
+But young Jacob had something of his father's patience, and, despite the
+publicity of the interview, he contrived to make Mr. Van Riper
+understand how matters stood. To tell the truth, Van Riper grew quite
+sober and manageable when he realized that his extravagant imputation of
+insanity was not so wide of the mark as it might have seemed, and that
+there was a possibility that his old friend's mind might be growing
+weak. He even ventured a little way down the path and permitted Jacob to
+come to the gate while they discussed the situation.
+
+"Poor old Dolph--poor old Jacob!" he groaned. "We must keep him out of
+the hands of the sharks, that we must!" He did not see young Jacob's
+irrepressible smile at this singular extension of metaphor. "He mustn't
+be allowed to sell that house in open market--never, sir! Confound it,
+I'll buy it myself before I'll see him fleeced!"
+
+In the end he agreed, on certain strict conditions of precaution, to see
+young Jacob the next day and discuss ways and means to save the
+property.
+
+"Come here, sir, at ten, and I'll see you in the sitting-room, and we'll
+find out what we can do for your father--curse it, it makes me feel bad;
+by gad, it does! Ten to-morrow, then--and come fumigated, young man,
+don't you forget that--come fumigated, sir!"
+
+It was Van Riper who bought the property at last. He paid eighteen
+thousand dollars for it. This was much less than its value; but it was
+more than any one else would have given just at that time, and it was
+all that Van Riper could afford. The transaction weighed on the
+purchaser's mind, however. He had bought the house solely out of
+kindness, at some momentary inconvenience to himself; and yet it looked
+as though he were taking advantage of his friend's weakness. Abram Van
+Riper was a man who cultivated a clear conscience, of a plain,
+old-fashioned sort, and the necessity for self-examination was novel and
+disagreeable to him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Life lived itself out at Jacob Dolph's new house whether he liked it or
+not. The furniture came up-town, and was somewhat awkwardly disposed
+about its new quarters; and in this unhomelike combination of two homes
+old Mr. Dolph sat himself down to finish his stint of life. He awoke
+each morning and found that twenty-four hours of sleep and waking lay
+before him, to be got through in their regular order, just as they were
+lived through by men who had an interest in living. He went to bed every
+night, and crossed off one from a tale of days of which he could not
+know the length.
+
+Of course his son, in some measure, saved his existence from emptiness.
+He was proud of young Jacob--fond and proud. He looked upon him as a
+prince of men, which he was, indeed. He trusted absolutely in the young
+man, and his trust was well placed. And he knew that his boy loved him.
+But he had an old man's sad consciousness that he was not necessary to
+Jacob--that he was an adjunct, at the best, not an integral part of this
+younger existence. He saw Jacob the younger gradually recovering from
+his grief for the mother who had left them; and he knew that even so
+would Jacob some day recover from grief when his father should have
+gone.
+
+He saw this; but it is doubtful if he felt it acutely. Nature was
+gradually dulling his sensibilities with that wonderful anaesthetic of
+hers, which is so much kinder to the patient than it is to his watching
+friends. After the first wild freak of selling the house, he showed, for
+a long time, no marked signs of mental impairment, beyond his lack of
+interest in the things which he had once cared about--even in the growth
+of the city he loved. And in a lonely and unoccupied man, sixty-five
+years of age, this was not unnatural. It was not unnatural, even, if now
+and then he was whimsical, and took odd fancies and prejudices. But
+nevertheless the work was going on within his brain, little by little,
+day by day.
+
+He settled his life into an almost mechanical routine, of which the most
+active part was his daily walk down into the city. At first he would not
+go beyond St. Paul's churchyard; but after awhile he began to take
+timorous strolls among the old business streets where his life had been
+passed. He would drop into the offices of his old friends, and would
+read the market reports with a pretence of great interest, and then he
+would fold up his spectacles and put them in their worn leather case,
+and walk slowly out. He was always pleased when one of the younger
+clerks bowed to him and said, "Good-day, Mr. Dolph!"
+
+[Illustration]
+
+It was in the fourth year of his widowhood that he bethought himself of
+young Jacob's need of a more liberal social life than he had been
+leading. The boy went about enough; he was a good deal of a beau, so
+his father heard; and there was no desirable house in the town that did
+not welcome handsome, amiable young Dolph. But he showed no signs of
+taking a wife unto himself, and in those days the bachelor had only a
+provisional status in society. He was expected to wed, and the whole
+circle of his friends chorused yearly a deeper regret for the lost
+sheep, as time made that detestable thing, an "old bachelor," of him.
+
+Young Jacob was receiving many courtesies and was making no adequate
+return. He felt it himself, but he was too tender of his father's
+changeless grief to urge him to open the great empty house to their
+friends. The father, however, felt that it was his duty to sacrifice his
+own desire for solitude, and, when the winter of 1825 brought home the
+city's wandering children--there were not so many of the wandering sort
+in 1825--he insisted that young Jacob should give a dinner to his
+friends among the gay young bachelors. That would be a beginning; and if
+all went well they would have an old maiden aunt from Philadelphia to
+spend the winter with them, and help them to give the dinner parties
+which do not encourage bachelorhood, but rather convert and reform the
+coy celibate.
+
+The news went rapidly through the town. The Dolph hospitality had been
+famous, and this was taken for a signal that the Dolph doors were to
+open again. There was great excitement in Hudson Street and St. John's
+Park. Maidens, bending over their tambour-frames, working secret hopes
+and aspirations in with their blossoming silks and worsted, blushed,
+with faint speculative smiles, as they thought of the vast social
+possibilities of the mistress of the grand Dolph house. Young bachelors,
+and old bachelors, too, rolled memories of the Dolph Madeira over
+longing tongues.
+
+The Dolph cellar, too, had been famous, and just at that period New
+Yorkers had a fine and fanciful taste in wine, if they had any
+self-respect whatever.
+
+I think it must have been about then that Mr. Dominick Lynch began his
+missionary labors among the smokers and drinkers of this city; he who
+bought a vineyard in France and the Vuelta Abajo plantations in Cuba,
+solely to teach the people of his beloved New York what was the
+positively proper thing in wines and cigars. If it was not then, it
+could not have been much later that Mr. Dolph had got accustomed to
+receiving, every now and then, an unordered and unexpected consignment
+of wines or Havana cigars, sent up from Little Dock Street--or what we
+call Water Street now, the lower end of it. And I am sure that he paid
+Mr. Lynch's bill with glowing pride; for Mr. Lynch extended the
+evangelizing hand of culture to none but those of pre-eminent social
+position.
+
+It was to be quite a large dinner; but it was noticeable that none of
+the young men who were invited had engagements of regrettable priority.
+
+Jacob Dolph the elder looked more interested in life than he had looked
+in four years when he stood on the hearthrug in the drawing-room and
+received his son's guests. He was a bold figure among all the young men,
+not only because he was tall and white-haired, and for the moment
+erect, and of a noble and gracious cast of countenance, but because he
+clung to his old style of dress--his knee-breeches and silk stockings,
+and his long coat, black, for this great occasion, but of the
+"shadbelly" pattern. He wore his high black stock, too, and his
+snow-white hair was gathered behind into a loose peruke.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The young men wore trousers, or pantaloons, as they mostly called them,
+strapped under their varnished boots. Their coats were cut like our
+dress-coats, if you can fancy them with a wild amplitude of collar and
+lapel. They wore large cravats and gaudy waistcoats, and two or three of
+them who had been too much in England came with shawls or rugs around
+their shoulders.
+
+They were a fashionable lot of people, and this was a late dinner, so
+they sat down at six o'clock in the great dining-room--not the little
+breakfast-room--with old Jacob Dolph at one end of the table and young
+Jacob Dolph at the other.
+
+It was a pleasant dinner, and the wine was good, and the company duly
+appreciative, although individually critical.
+
+Old Jacob Dolph had on his right an agreeable French count, just arrived
+in New York, who was creating a _furor_; and on his left was Mr. Philip
+Waters, the oldest of the young men, who, being thirty-five, had a
+certain consideration for old age. But old Jacob Dolph was not quite at
+his ease. He did not understand the remarkable decorum of the young men.
+He himself belonged to the age of "bumpers and no heel taps," and nobody
+at his board to-night seemed to care about drinking bumpers, even out
+of the poor, little, newfangled claret-glasses, that held only a
+thimbleful apiece. He had never known a lot of gentlemen, all by
+themselves, to be so discreet. Before the evening was over he became
+aware of the fact that he was the only man who was proposing toasts, and
+then he proposed them no more.
+
+Things had changed since he was a young buck, and gave bachelor parties.
+Why, he could remember seeing his own good father--an irreproachable
+gentleman, surely--lock the door of his dining-room on the inside--ay,
+at just such a dinner as this--and swear that no guest of his should go
+out of that room sober. And his word had been kept. Times were changing.
+He thought, somehow, that these young men needed more good port in their
+veins.
+
+Toward the end of the festivities he grew silent. He gave no more
+toasts, and drank no more bumpers, although he might safely have put
+another bottle or two under his broad waistcoat. But he leaned back in
+his chair, and rested one hand on the table, playing with his wineglass
+in an absent-minded way. There was a vague smile on his face; but every
+now and then he knit his heavy gray brows as if he were trying to work
+out some problem of memory. Mr. Philip Waters and the French count were
+talking across him; he had been in the conversation, but he had dropped
+out some time before. At last he rose, with his brows knit, and pulled
+out his huge watch, and looked at its face. Everybody turned toward him,
+and, at the other end of the table, his son half rose to his feet. He
+put the watch back in his pocket, and said, in his clear, deep voice:
+"Gentlemen, I think we will rejoin the ladies."
+
+There was a little impulsive stir around the table, and then he seemed
+to understand that he had wandered, and a frightened look came over his
+face. He tottered backward, and swayed from side to side. Mr. Philip
+Waters and the Frenchman had their arms behind him before he could fall,
+and in a second or two he had straightened himself up. He made a
+stately, tremulous apology for what he called his "infelicitous
+absence of mind," and then he marched off to bed by himself, suffering
+no one to go with him.
+
+[Illustration: And then he marched off to bed by himself, suffering no
+one to go with him.]
+
+A little while later in the evening, Mr. Philip Waters, walking down
+Broadway (which thoroughfare was getting to have a fairly suburban
+look), informed the French count that in his, Mr. Waters's, opinion,
+young Jacob Dolph would own that house before long.
+
+Young Jacob Dolph's father insisted on repetitions of the bachelor
+dinner, but he never again appeared in the great dining-room. When there
+was a stag party he took his own simple dinner at five o'clock and went
+to bed early, and lay awake until his son had dismissed the last mild
+reveller, and he could hear the light, firm, young footstep mounting the
+stairs to the bedroom door opposite his own.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That was practically the end of it for old Jacob Dolph. The maiden aunt,
+who had been invited, was notified that she could not come, for Mr.
+Dolph was not well enough to open his house that winter. But it was
+delicately intimated to her that if he grew worse she might still be
+sent for, and that alleviated her natural disappointment. She liked to
+give parties; but there is also a chastened joy for some people in being
+at the head of a house of mourning.
+
+Old Mr. Dolph grew no worse physically, except that he was inclined to
+make his daily walks shorter, and that he grew fonder of sitting at home
+in the little breakfast-room, where the sun shone almost all day long,
+and where Mrs. Dolph had once been fond of coming to sew. Her little
+square work-table of mahogany stood there still. There the old gentleman
+liked to dine, and often he dined alone. Young Jacob was in great demand
+all over town, and his father knew that he ought to go out and amuse
+himself. And the young man, although he was kind and loving, and never
+negligent in any office of respect or affection, had that strong youth
+in him which makes it impossible to sit every day of the week opposite
+an old man whose world had slipped by him, who knew nothing of youth
+except to love it and wonder at it.
+
+In the morning, before he went out for his daily tramp into town, old
+Jacob would say to young Jacob:
+
+"I suppose I shall see you at dinner, my boy?"
+
+And young Jacob would say, "Yes, sir," or "No, sir, I think not. Mrs.
+Des Anges was in town yesterday, and she asked me to ride up there
+to-day and dine. And Diana" (Diana was his big black mare) "needs a
+little work; she's getting badly out of condition. So, if it doesn't
+matter to you, sir, I'll just run up there and get back before the moon
+sets."
+
+And the father would answer that it didn't matter, and would send his
+best respects, through Mrs. Des Anges at King's Bridge, to Madam Des
+Anges at New Rochelle; and at night he would sit down alone to his
+dinner in the breakfast-room, served by old Chloe, who did her humble
+best to tempt his appetite, which was likely to be feeble when Master
+Jacob was away.
+
+Master Jacob had taken to riding to King's Bridge of late. Sometimes he
+would start out early in the morning, just about the time when young
+Van Riper was plodding by on his way to the shop. Young Van Riper liked
+to be at the shop an hour earlier than his father. Old Mr. Dolph was
+always up, on these occasions, to see his son start off. He loved to
+look at the boy, in his English riding-boots and breeches, astride of
+black Diana, who pranced and curvetted up the unpaved road. Young Jacob
+had her well in hand, but he gave her her head and let her play until
+they reached Broadway, where he made her strike a rattling regular pace
+until they got well up the road; and then she might walk up Bloomingdale
+way or across to Hickory Lane.
+
+If he went up by the east he was likely to dismount at a place which you
+can see now, a little west and south of McComb's Dam Bridge, where there
+is a bit of a rocky hollow, and a sort of horizontal cleft in the rocks
+that has been called a cave, and a water-washed stone above, whose oddly
+shaped depression is called an Indian's footprint. He would stop there,
+because right in that hollow, as I can tell you myself, grew, in his
+time as in mine, the first of the spring flowers. It was full of violets
+once, carpeted fairly with the pale, delicate petals.
+
+And up toward the west, on a bridle-path between the hills and the
+river, as you came toward Fort Washington, going to Tubby Hook--we are
+refined nowadays, and Tubby Hook is "Inwood"--Heaven help it!--there
+were wonderful flowers in the woods. The wind-flowers came there early,
+nestling under the gray rocks that sparkled with garnets; and there
+bloomed great bunches of Dutchman's-breeches--not the thin sprays that
+come in the late New England spring, but huge clumps that two men could
+not enclose with linked hands; great masses of scarlet and purple,
+and--mostly--of a waxy white, with something deathlike in their
+translucent beauty. There, also, he would wade into the swamps around a
+certain little creek, lured by a hope of the jack-in-the-pulpit, to find
+only the odorous and disappointing skunk-cabbage. And there the woods
+were full of the aroma of sassafras, and of birch tapped by the earliest
+woodpecker, whose drumming throbbed through the young man's deep and
+tender musing.
+
+And--strange enough for a young man who rides only to exercise his black
+mare--he never came out of those woods without an armful of columbine or
+the like. And--strange enough for any young man in this world of strange
+things--when he sat down at the table of Mrs. Des Anges, in her pleasant
+house near Harlem Creek, Miss Aline Des Anges wore a bunch of those
+columbines at her throat. Miss Aline Des Anges was a slim girl, not very
+tall, with great dark eyes that followed some people with a patient
+wistfulness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One afternoon, in May of 1827, young Jacob found his father in the
+breakfast-room, and said to him:
+
+"Father, I am going to marry Aline Des Anges."
+
+His father, who had been dozing in the sun by the south window, raised
+his eyes to his son's face with a kindly, blank look, and said,
+thoughtfully:
+
+"Des Anges. That's a good family, Jacob, and a wonderful woman, Madam
+Des Anges. Is she alive yet?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Madam Des Anges, eighty years old, and strong and well, heard of
+this, she said:
+
+"It is the etiquette of France that one family should make the
+proposition to the other family. Under the circumstances _I_ will be the
+family that proposes. I will make a precedent. The Des Anges make
+precedents."
+
+And she rode down to the Dolph house in the family carriage--the last
+time it ever went out--and made her "proposition" to Jacob Dolph the
+elder, and he brightened up most wonderfully, until you would have
+thought him quite his old self, and he told her what an honor he
+esteemed the alliance, and paid her compliments a hundred words long.
+
+And in May of the next year, King's Bridge being out of the question,
+and etiquette being waived at the universal demand of society, the young
+couple stood up in the drawing-room of the Dolph house to be wed.
+
+The ceremony was fashionably late--seven o'clock in the evening. And
+after it was over, and the young couple had digested what St. Paul had
+to say about the ordinance of wedlock, and had inaudibly promised to do
+and be whatever the domine required of them, they were led by the
+half-dozen groomsmen to the long glass between the front windows, and
+made to stand up there, with their faces toward the company, and to
+receive the congratulations of a mighty procession of friends, who all
+used the same formulas, except the very old ones, who were delicately
+indelicate.
+
+The bridegroom wore a blue coat and trousers, and a white satin
+waistcoat embroidered with silver-thread roses and lilies-of-the-valley.
+The coat was lined with cream-colored satin, quilted in a most elaborate
+pattern; and his necktie was of satin, too, with embroidered ends. His
+shirt was a miracle of fine linen. As to the bride, she was in white
+satin and lace, and at her throat she wore a little bunch of late white
+columbines, for which Mr. Jacob Dolph the younger had scoured the woods
+near Fort Washington.
+
+There was to be a grand supper, later; and the time of waiting was
+filled up with fashionable conversation.
+
+That dear old doctor, who was then a dear young doctor, and whose fine
+snow-crowned face stood in later years as an outward and visible sign of
+all that was brave, kindly, self-sacrificing, and benevolent in the art
+of healing, was seated by Madam Des Anges, and was telling her, in
+stately phrase, suited to his auditor, of a certain case of heroism with
+which he had met in the course of his practice. Mr. Blank, it appeared,
+had been bitten by a dog that was supposed to be possessed by the
+rabies. For months he had suffered the agonies of mental suspense and of
+repeated cauterizing of the flesh, and during those months had concealed
+his case from his wife, that he might spare her pain--suffering in
+silence enough to unnerve most men.
+
+"It was heroic," said Dr. F.
+
+Madam Des Anges bowed her gray head approvingly.
+
+"I think," she said, "his conduct shows him to be a man of taste. Had he
+informed his wife of his condition, she might have experienced the most
+annoying solicitude; and I am informed that she is a person of feeble
+character."
+
+The doctor looked at her, and then down at the floor; and then he asked
+her if she did not hope that Almaviva Lynch would bring Garcia back
+again, with that marvellous Italian opera, which, as he justly observed,
+captivated the eye, charmed the ear, and awakened the profoundest
+emotions of the heart.
+
+And at that Madam Des Anges showed some animation, and responded that
+she had listened to some pleasing operas in Paris; but she did not know
+that they were of Italian origin.
+
+But if Madam Des Anges was surprised to learn that any good thing could
+come out of any other country than France, there was another surprise in
+store for her, and it did not long impend.
+
+It was only a little while after this that her grandson-in-law, finding
+her on his right and Abram Van Riper on his left--he had served out his
+time as a statue in front of the mirror--thought it proper to introduce
+to Madam Des Anges his father's old friend, Mr. Van Riper. Mr. Van
+Riper bowed as low as his waistcoat would allow, and courteously
+observed that the honor then accorded him he had enjoyed earlier in the
+evening through the kind offices of Mr. Jacob Dolph, senior.
+
+Madam Des Anges dandled her quizzing-glass as though she meant to put it
+up to her eye, and said, in a weary way:
+
+"Mr.--ah--Van Riper must pardon me. I have not the power of remembering
+faces that some people appear to have; and my eyes--my eyes are not
+strong."
+
+Old Van Riper stared at her, and he turned a turkey-cock purple all over
+his face, down to the double chin that hung over his white neckerchief.
+
+"If your ladyship has to buy spectacles," he sputtered, "it needn't be
+on my account."
+
+And he stamped off to the sideboard and tried to cool his red-hot rage
+with potations of Jamaica rum. There his wife found him. She had drawn
+near when she saw him talking with the great Madam Des Anges, and she
+had heard, as she stood hard by and smiled unobtrusively, the end of
+that brief conversation. Her face, too, was flushed--a more fiery red
+than her flame-colored satin dress.
+
+She attacked him in a vehement whisper.
+
+"Van Riper, what are you doing? I'd almost believe you'd had too much
+liquor, if I didn't know you hadn't had a drop. Will you ever learn what
+gentility is? D'ye want us to live and die like toads in a hole? Here
+you are with your ill manners, offending Madam Des Anges, that everybody
+knows is the best of the best, and there's an end of all likelihood of
+ever seeing her and her folks, and two nieces unmarried and as good
+girls as ever was, and such a connection for your son, who hasn't been
+out of the house it's now twelve months--except to this very wedding
+here, and you've no thought of your family when once you lose that
+mighty fine temper of yours, that you're so prodigious proud of; and
+where you'll end us, Van Riper, is more than I know, I vow."
+
+But all she could get out of Van Riper was:
+
+"The old harridan! She'll remember my name this year or two to come,
+I'll warrant ye!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was all over at last, and old black Julius, who had been acting as a
+combination of link-boy and major-domo at the foot of the front steps,
+extinguished his lantern, and went to bed, some time before a little
+white figure stole up the stairs and slipped into a door that
+Chloe--black Chloe--held open.
+
+And the next day Jacob Dolph the elder handed the young bride into the
+new travelling-carriage with his stateliest grace, and Mr. and Mrs.
+Jacob Dolph, junior, rolled proudly up the road, through Bloomingdale,
+and across King's Bridge--stopping for luncheon at the Des Anges
+house--over to New Rochelle, where the feminine head of the house of Des
+Anges received them at her broad front door, and where they had the
+largest room in her large, old-fashioned house, for one night. Madam Des
+Anges wished to keep them longer, and was authoritative about it. But
+young Jacob settled the question of supremacy then and there, with the
+utmost courtesy, and Madam Des Anges, being great enough to know that
+she was beaten, sent off the victor on the morrow, with his trembling
+accomplice by his side, and wished them _bon voyage_ as heartily as she
+possibly could.
+
+So they started afresh on their bridal tour, and very soon the
+travelling carriage struck the old Queen Anne's Road, and reached
+Yonkers. And there, and from there up to Fishkill, they passed from one
+country-house to another, bright particular stars at this dinner and at
+that supper, staying a day here and a night there, and having just the
+sort of sociable, public, restless, rattling good time that neither of
+them wanted.
+
+At every country-house where they stayed a day they were pressed to stay
+a week, and always the whole neighborhood was routed out to pay them
+social tribute. The neighbors came in by all manner of conveyances. One
+family of aristocrats started at six o'clock in the morning, and
+travelled fourteen miles down the river in an ox-cart, the ladies
+sitting bolt upright, with their hair elaborately dressed for the
+evening's entertainment. And once a regular assembly ball was given in
+their honor, at a town-hall, the use of which was granted for the
+purpose specified by unanimous vote of the town council. Of course,
+they had a very good time; but then there are various sorts of good
+times. Perhaps they might have selected another sort for themselves.
+
+There is a story that, on their way back, they put up for several days
+at a poor little hostelry under the hills below Peekskill, and spent
+their time in wandering through the woods and picking wild-flowers; but
+it lacks confirmation, and I should be sorry to believe that two
+well-brought-up young people would prefer their own society to the
+unlimited hospitality of their friends in the country.
+
+Old Jacob Dolph, at home, had the great house all to himself; and,
+although black Chloe took excellent care of his material comforts, he
+was restless and troubled. He took most pleasure in a London almanac, on
+whose smudgy pages he checked off the days. Letters came as often as the
+steamboat arrived from Albany, and he read them, after his fashion. It
+took him half the week to get through one missive, and by that time
+another had arrived. But I fear he did not make much out of them.
+Still, they gave him one pleasure. He endorsed them carefully with the
+name of the writer, and the date of receipt, and then he laid them away
+in his desk, as neatly as he had filed his business letters in his old
+days of active life.
+
+Every night he had a candle alight in the hallway; and if there were a
+far-off rumble of carriage-wheels late at night, he would rise from his
+bed--he was a light sleeper, in his age--and steal out into the
+corridor, hugging his dressing-robe about him, to peer anxiously down
+over the balusters till the last sound and the last faint hope of his
+son's return had died away.
+
+And, indeed, it was late in July when the travelling-carriage once more
+drew up in front of the Dolph house, and old Julius opened the door, and
+old Mr. Dolph welcomed them, and told them that he had been very lonely
+in their absence, and that their mother--and then he remembered that
+their mother was dead, and went into the house with his head bowed low.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+
+St. John's Park and Hudson Street and all well-bred New York, for that
+matter, had its fill of the Dolph hospitality the next winter. It was
+dinner and ball and rout and merry-making of one sort or another, the
+season through. The great family sleighs and the little bachelor sleighs
+whirred and jingled up to the Dolph door surely two, and sometimes four,
+evenings in every week, and whirred and jingled away again at intensely
+fashionable hours, such as plain folk used for sleeping.
+
+They woke up Abram Van Riper, did the revellers northward bound to
+country houses on the river-side, and, lying deep in his feather-bed, he
+directed his rumbling imprecations at the panes of glass, that sparkled
+with frost in the mild moonlight.
+
+  "Oh, come, maidens, come, o'er the blue, rolling wave,
+   The lovely should still be the care of the brave--
+   Trancadillo, trancadillo, trancadillo, dillo, dillo, dillo!"
+
+sang the misguided slaves of fashion, as they sped out of hearing.
+
+"Trancadillo!" rumbled Mr. Van Riper. "I'd like to trancadillo them,
+consume 'em!" and then he cursed his old friend's social circle for a
+parcel of trumpery fools; and Mrs. Van Riper, lying by his side, sighed
+softly with chastened regret and hopeless aspiration.
+
+But everybody else--everybody who was anybody--blessed the Dolphs and
+the Dolphs' cellar, and their man-servant and their maid-servant, and
+their roasted ox and their saddle of venison, and the distinguished
+stranger who was within their gates; and young Mrs. Dolph was made as
+welcome as she made others.
+
+For the little girl with the great dark eyes took to all this giddiness
+as naturally as possible--after her quiet fashion. The dark eyes
+sparkled with subdued pleasure that had no mean pride in it when she sat
+at the head of her great mahogany table, and smiled at the double row of
+bright faces that hemmed in the gorgeous display of the Dolph silver and
+china and fine linen. And it was wonderful how charming were the famous
+Des Anges manners, when they were softened and sweetened by so much
+grace and beauty.
+
+"Who would have thought she had it in her?" said the young ladies down
+in St. John's Park. "You remember her, don't you, what a shy little slip
+of a thing she was when we were at old Dumesnil's together? Who was it
+used to say that she had had the life grandmothered out of her?"
+
+"Fine little creature, that wife of Dolph's," said the young men as they
+strolled about in Niblo's Garden. "Dolph wouldn't have had the road all
+to himself if that old dragon of a grandmother had given the girl half a
+chance. 'Gad, she's an old grenadier! They say that Dolph had to put her
+through her facings the day after he was married, and that he did it in
+uncommon fine style, too."
+
+"He's a lucky devil, that Dolph," the younger ones would sigh. "Nothing
+to do, all the money he wants, pretty wife, and the best wine in New
+York! I wish _my_ old man would cut the shop and try to get an education
+in wine."
+
+Their devotion to the frivolities of fashion notwithstanding, the young
+Dolphs were a loving, and, in a way, a domestic couple. Of course,
+everybody they knew had to give them a dinner or a ball, or pay them
+some such social tribute, and there were a myriad calls to be received
+and returned; but they found time for retired communings, even for long
+drives in the sleigh which, many a time in young Jacob Dolph's bachelor
+days, had borne the young man and a female companion--not always the
+same companion, either--up the Bloomingdale Road. And in the confidences
+of those early days young Jacob learned what his gentle little wife told
+him--without herself realizing the pathos of it--the story of her
+crushed, unchildlike youth, loveless till he came, her prince, her
+deliverer. Dolph understood it; he had known, of course, that she could
+not have been happy under the _regime_ of Madam Des Anges; but when he
+heard the simple tale in all its monotonous detail, and saw spread out
+before him this poor young life, with its thousand little
+disappointments, submissions, abnegations, and undeserved punishments
+and needless restrictions, a generous rage glowed in his heart, and
+perhaps sprang once in a while to his indiscreet lips; and out of this
+grew a deeper and maturer tenderness than his honeymoon love for the
+sweet little soul that he had at first sought only for the dark eyes
+through which it looked out upon its joyless world.
+
+It is unwise to speak in profane language, it is injudicious to speak
+disrespectfully of old age, yet the Recording Angel, if he did not see
+fit to let a tear fall upon the page, perchance found it convenient to
+be mending his pen when young Jacob Dolph once uttered certain words
+that made his wife cry out:
+
+"Oh, Jacob, don't, _please_ don't. She didn't mean it!"
+
+This is only a supposition. Perhaps Madam Des Anges really had meant
+well. But oh, how much happier this world would be if all the people who
+"mean well" and do ill would only take to meaning ill and doing well!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Jacob Dolph the elder took but a doubtful part in all the festivities.
+The cloud that had hung dimly over him had begun to show little rifts;
+but the dark masses between the rifts were thicker and heavier than
+ever. It was the last brief convulsive struggle of the patient against
+the power of the anaesthetic, when the nervous hand goes up to put the
+cloth away from the mouth, just before the work is done and
+consciousness slips utterly away, and life is no more for the sufferer,
+though his heart beat and the breath be warm between his lips.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+When he was bright he was almost like his old self, and these delusive
+periods came oftenest when he met some old friend, or in quiet morning
+hours when his daughter--so he always called her--sat at his feet in the
+sunny breakfast-room, and sewed and listened, or perhaps read to him
+from Scott's latest novel.
+
+He may have had some faint sub-consciousness of his condition, for
+although he took the deepest interest in the balls and the dinners, he
+would never appear before his son's guests except when he was at his
+best and brightest. But he loved to sit, withdrawn in a corner, watching
+the young life that fluttered through the great rooms, smiling to
+himself, and gently pleased if some old crony sought him out and talked
+of old times--the older the times were, the better he remembered them.
+Indeed, he now recalled some things that he had not thought of since his
+far-off boyhood.
+
+In truth, the younger Dolphs often had small heart in their festal
+doings. But the medical science of the day, positive, self-satisfied,
+and blinded by all manner of tradition, gave them, through its
+ministers, cruelly false hopes of the old man's ultimate recovery.
+Besides, they could not well order things otherwise. The extravagant
+hospitality of the day demanded such ceremonial, and to have abated any
+part of it would only have served to grieve and to alarm the object of
+their care.
+
+The whole business was a constant pride and joy to old Mr. Jacob Dolph.
+When there was a dinner to be given, he would follow Aline as she went
+about the house superintending the preparations of her servants, in her
+flowered apron of black silk, with her bunch of keys--honest keys,
+those, a good four inches long, with tongues as big as a
+domino--jingling at her side. He would himself overlook the making ready
+of the wines, and give oft-repeated instructions as to the proper
+temperature for the port, and see that the champagne was put on ice in
+the huge octagonal cellaret in the dining-room corner. And when all was
+ready, as like as not he would kiss Aline on the forehead, and say:
+
+"I have a headache to-night, my dear, and I think I shall take my dinner
+in my room."
+
+[Illustration: "Mons'us gran' dinneh, Seh!"]
+
+And he would go feebly up stairs, and when old Julius, who always waited
+upon him, brought up his tray, he would ask:
+
+"Is it a fine dinner, Julius? Did everybody come?"
+
+And Julius would invariably reply, with profound African dignity:
+
+"Mons'us gran' dinneh, seh! 'E fines' dinneh I eveh witness', seh! I
+have stood behin' you' chai', seh, this thutty y'ah, an' I neveh see no
+such a gran' dinneh, Misteh Do'ph, seh!"
+
+"Except the dinner we gave Mr. Hamilton; in State Street, Julius," the
+old man would put in.
+
+"_Ex_cep' that, seh," Julius would gravely reply: "_that_ was a
+pol-litical dinneh, seh; an', _of_ co'se, a pol'litical dinneh--" an
+expressive pause--"but this he' is sho'ly a mons'us fine dinneh, seh."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+His bodily vigor was unimpaired, however, and except that his times of
+entire mental clearness grew fewer and briefer as the months went on,
+there was little change in the old gentleman when the spring of 1829
+came. He was not insane, he was not idiotic, even at the worst. It
+seemed to be simply a premature old age that clouded his faculties. He
+forgot many things, he was weakly absent-minded, often he did not
+recognize a familiar face, and he seemed ever more and more disinclined
+to think and to talk. He liked best to sit in silence, seemingly
+unconscious of the world about him; and if he was aroused from his
+dreamy trance, his wandering speech would show that his last
+thought--and it might have entered his mind hours before, at the
+suggestion of some special event--was so far back in the past that it
+dealt with matters beyond his son's knowledge.
+
+He was allowed to do as he pleased, for in the common affairs of daily
+life he seemed to be able to care for himself, and he plaintively
+resented anything that looked like guardianship. So he kept up his
+custom of walking down into the city, at least as far as St. Paul's. It
+was thought to be safe enough, for he was a familiar figure in the town,
+and had friends at every turn.
+
+But one afternoon he did not return in time for dinner. Young Jacob was
+out for his afternoon ride, which that day had taken him in the
+direction of the good doctor's house. And when he had reached the house,
+he found the doctor likewise mounted for a ride. The doctor was going up
+to Bond Street--the Dolphs' quarter was growing fashionable already--to
+look at a house near Broadway that he had some thoughts of buying, for
+he was to be married the coming winter. So they had ridden back
+together, and after a long examination of the house, young Jacob had
+ridden off for a gallop through the country lanes; and it was five
+o'clock, and dinner was on the table, when he came to his father's house
+and learned from tearful Aline that his father was missing.
+
+The horse was at the stable door when young Jacob mounted him once more
+and galloped off to Bond Street, where he found the doctor just ready to
+turn down the Bowery; and they joined forces and hurried back, and down
+Broadway, inquiring of the people who sat on their front stoops--it was
+a late spring evening, warm and fair--if they had seen old Mr. Dolph
+that day.
+
+Many had seen him as he went down; but no one could remember that the
+old gentleman had come back over his accustomed path. At St. Paul's, the
+sexton thought that Mr. Dolph had prolonged his walk down the street.
+Further on, some boys had seen him, still going southward. The searchers
+stopped at one or two of the houses where he might have called; but
+there was no trace of him. It was long since old Jacob Dolph had made a
+formal call.
+
+But at Bowling Green they were hailed by Mr. Philip Waters, who came
+toward them with more excitement in his mien than a young man of good
+society often exhibited.
+
+"I was going for a carriage, Dolph," he said: "your father is down there
+in the Battery Park, and I'm afraid--I'm afraid he's had a stroke of
+paralysis."
+
+They hurried down, and found him lying on the grass, his head on the lap
+of a dark-skinned, ear-ringed Spanish sailor. He had been seen to fall
+from the bench near by, another maritime man in the crowd about him
+explained.
+
+"It was only a minit or two ago," said the honest seafarer, swelled with
+the importance that belongs to the narrator of a tale of accident and
+disaster. "He was a-settin' there, had been for two hours 'most, just
+a-starin' at them houses over there, and all of a sudden chuck forward
+he went, right on his face. And then a man come along that knowed him,
+and said he'd go for a kerridge, or I'd 'a' took him on my sloop--she's
+a-layin' here now, with onions from Weathersfield--and treated him
+well; I see he wa'n't no disrespectable character. Here, Pedro, them's
+the old man's folks--let 'em take him. A-settin' there nigh on two
+hours, he was, just a-studyin' them houses. B'long near here?"
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Young Jacob had no words for the Connecticut captain. Waters had
+arrived, with somebody's carriage, confiscated on the highway, and they
+gently lifted up the old gentleman and set off homeward. They were just
+in time, for Waters had been the earliest of the evening promenaders to
+reach the Battery. It was dinner hour--or supper hour for many--and the
+park was given up to the lounging sailors from the river-side streets.
+
+The doctor's face was dark.
+
+"No, it is not paralysis," he said. "Let us proceed at once to your own
+home, Mr. Dolph. In view of what I am now inclined to consider his
+condition, I think it would be the most advisable course."
+
+He was as precise and exact in his speech, even then, as he was later
+on, when years had given an innocent, genial pomposity to his delivery
+of his rounded sentences.
+
+They put old Jacob Dolph to bed in the room which he had always
+occupied, in his married as in his widowed days. He never spoke again;
+that day, indeed, he hardly moved. But on the next he stirred uneasily,
+as though he were striving to change his position. The doctor bled him,
+and they shifted him as best they could, but he seemed no more
+comfortable. So the doctor bled him again; and even that did no good.
+
+About sunset, Aline, who had watched over him with hardly a moment's
+rest, left the room for a quarter of an hour, to listen to what the
+doctors had to say--there were four of them in the drawing-room below.
+When she and her husband entered the sick-room again, the old man had
+moved in his bed. He was lying on his side, his face to the windows that
+looked southward, and he had raised himself a little on his arm. There
+was a troubled gaze in his eyes, as of one who strains to see something
+that is unaccountably missing from his sight. He turned his head a
+little, as though to listen. Thus gazing, with an inward and spiritual
+vision only, at the bay that his eyes might never again see, and
+listening to the waves whose cadence he should hear no more, the
+troubled look faded into one of inscrutable peace, and he sank back into
+the hollow of his son's arm and passed away.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next time that the doctor was in the house it was of a snowy night a
+few days after New Year's Day. It was half-past two o'clock in the
+morning, and Jacob Dolph--no longer Jacob Dolph the younger--had been
+pacing furiously up and down the long dining-room--that being the
+longest room in the house--when the doctor came down stairs, and
+addressed him with his usual unruffled precision:
+
+"I will request of you, Dolph, a large glass of port. I need not suggest
+to you that it is unnecessary to stint the measure, for the hospitality
+of this house is----"
+
+"How is she, doctor? For God's sake, tell me--is she--is she----"
+
+"The hospitality of this house is prover--" the precise doctor
+recommenced.
+
+"Damn the hospitality!" cried Jacob Dolph: "I mean--oh, doctor--tell
+me--is anything wrong?"
+
+"Should I request of you the cup of amity and geniality, Mr. Dolph, were
+there cause for anything save rejoicing in this house?" demanded the
+physician, with amiable severity. "I had thought that my words would
+have conveyed----"
+
+"It's all over?"
+
+"And bravely over!" And the doctor nodded his head with a dignified
+cheerfulness.
+
+"And may I go to her?"
+
+"You may, sir, after you have given me my glass of port. But remember,
+sir----"
+
+Dolph turned to the sideboard, grasped a bottle and a glass, and thrust
+them into the doctor's hand, and started for the door.
+
+"But remember, sir," went on the unperturbed physician, "you must not
+agitate or excite her. A gentle step, a tranquil tone, and a cheerful
+and encouraging address, brief and affectionate, will be all that is
+permitted."
+
+Dolph listened in mad impatience, and was over the threshold before the
+doctor's peremptory call brought him back.
+
+"What is it now?" he demanded, impatiently.
+
+The doctor looked at him with a gaze of wonder and reproach.
+
+"It is a male child, sir," he said.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Jacob Dolph crept up the stairs on tiptoe. As he paused for a moment in
+front of a door at the head, he heard the weak, spasmodic wail of
+another Dolph.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"There's no help for it--I've got to do it," said Jacob Dolph.
+
+It was another wintry morning, just after breakfast. The snow was on the
+ground, and the sleigh-bells up in Broadway sent down a faint jingling.
+Ten winters had come and gone, and Mr. Dolph was as comfortably stout as
+a man should be who is well fed and forty. He stood with his back to the
+fire, pulling at his whiskers--which formed what was earlier known as a
+Newgate collar--with his right thumb and forefinger. His left thumb was
+stuck in the armhole of his flowered satin waistcoat, black and shiny.
+
+Opposite him sat a man of his own age, clean-shaven and sharp-featured.
+He had calm, somewhat cold, gray eyes, a deliberate, self-contained
+manner of speaking, and a pallid, dry complexion that suited with his
+thin features. His dress was plain, although it was thoroughly neat. He
+had no flowered satin waistcoat; but something in his bearing told you
+that he was a man who had no anxiety about the narrow things of the
+counting-room; who had no need to ask himself how much money was coming
+in to-morrow. And at the same time you felt that every cent of whatever
+might be to-morrow's dues would find its way to his hands as surely as
+the representative figures stood on his ledger's page. It was young Mr.
+Van Riper--but he, too, had lost his right to that title, not only
+because of his years, but because, in the garret of the house in
+Greenwich Village, a cobweb stretched from one of the low beams to the
+head of old Abram Van Riper's great walking-stick, which stood in the
+corner where it had been placed, with other rubbish, the day after Abram
+Van Riper's funeral.
+
+"I should not advise it, Dolph, if it can be helped," Mr. Van Riper
+observed, thoughtfully.
+
+"It can't be helped."
+
+"I can give you your price, of course," Van Riper went on, with
+deliberation; "but equally of course, it won't be anything like what the
+property will bring in the course of a few years."
+
+Dolph kicked at the hearthrug, as he answered, somewhat testily:
+
+"I'm not making a speculation of it."
+
+Mr. Van Riper was unmoved.
+
+"And I'm not making a speculation of you, either," he said, calmly: "I
+am speaking only for your own benefit, Dolph."
+
+Mr. Dolph put his hands in his pockets, strode to the window and back
+again, and then said, with an uneasy little laugh:
+
+"I beg your pardon, Van Riper; you're quite right, of course. The fact
+is, I've got to do it. I must have the money, and I must have it now."
+
+Mr. Van Riper stroked his sharp chin.
+
+"Is it necessary to raise the money in that particular way? You are
+temporarily embarrassed--I don't wish to be intrusive--but why not
+borrow what you need, and give me a mortgage on the house?"
+
+Ten years had given Jacob Dolph a certain floridity; but at this he
+blushed a hot red.
+
+"Mortgage on the house? No, sir," he said, with emphasis.
+
+"Well, any other security, then," was Van Riper's indifferent amendment.
+
+Again Jacob Dolph strode to the window and back again, staring hard at
+the carpet, and knitting his brows.
+
+Mr. Van Riper waited in undisturbed calm until his friend spoke once
+more.
+
+"I might as well tell you the truth, Van Riper," he said, at last;
+"I've made a fool of myself. I've lost money, and I've got to pocket the
+loss. As to borrowing, I've borrowed all I ought to borrow. I _won't_
+mortgage the house. This sale simply represents the hole in my capital."
+
+Something like a look of surprise came into Mr. Van Riper's wintry eyes.
+
+"It's none of my business, of course," he observed; "but if you haven't
+any objection to telling me----"
+
+"What did it? What does for everybody nowadays? Western lands and Wall
+Street--that's about the whole story. Oh, yes, I know--I ought to have
+kept out of it. But I didn't. I was nothing better than a fool at such
+business. I'm properly punished."
+
+He sighed as he stood on the hearthrug, his hands under his coat-tails,
+and his head hanging down. He looked as though many other thoughts were
+going through his mind than those which he expressed.
+
+"I wish," he began again, "that my poor old father had brought me up to
+business ways. I might have kept out of it all. College is a good thing
+for a man, of course; but college doesn't teach you how to buy lots in
+western cities--especially when the western cities aren't built."
+
+"College teaches you a good many other things, though," said Van Riper,
+frowning slightly, as he put the tips of his long fingers together; "I
+wish I'd had your chance, Dolph. _My_ boy shall go to Columbia, that's
+certain."
+
+"_Your_ boy?" queried Dolph, raising his eyebrows.
+
+Van Riper smiled.
+
+"Yes," he said, "my boy. You didn't know I had a boy, did you? He's
+nearly a year old."
+
+This made Mr. Jacob Dolph kick at the rug once more, and scowl a little.
+
+"I'm afraid I haven't been very neighborly, Van Riper--" he began; but
+the other interrupted him, smiling good-naturedly.
+
+"You and I go different ways, Dolph," he said. "We're plain folks over
+in Greenwich Village, and you--you're a man of fashion."
+
+Jacob Dolph smiled--not very mirthfully. Van Riper's gaze travelled
+around the room, quietly curious.
+
+"It costs money to be a man of fashion, doesn't it?"
+
+"Yes," said Dolph, "it does."
+
+There was silence for a minute, which Van Riper broke.
+
+"If you've got to sell, Dolph, why, it's a pity; but I'll take it. I'll
+see Ogden to-day, and we can finish the business whenever you wish. But
+in my opinion, you'd do better to borrow."
+
+Dolph shook his head.
+
+"I've been quite enough of a fool," he replied.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Van Riper, rising, "I must get to the office. You'll
+hear from Ogden to-morrow. I'm sorry you've got in such a snarl; but--"
+his lips stretched into something like a smile--"I suppose you'll know
+better next time. Good-day."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After Mr. Dolph had bowed his guest to the door, Mrs. Dolph slipped down
+the stairs and into the drawing-room.
+
+"Did he take it?" she asked.
+
+"Of course he took it," Dolph answered, bitterly, "at that price."
+
+"Did he say anything," she inquired again, "about its being hard for us
+to--to sell it?"
+
+"He said we had better not sell it now--that it would bring more a few
+years hence."
+
+"He doesn't understand," said Mrs. Dolph.
+
+"He _couldn't_ understand," said Mr. Dolph.
+
+Then she went over to him and kissed him.
+
+"It's only selling the garden, after all," she said; "it isn't like
+selling our home."
+
+He put his arm about her waist, and they walked into the breakfast-room,
+and looked out on the garden which to-morrow would be theirs no longer,
+and in a few months would not be a garden at all.
+
+High walls hemmed it in--the walls of the houses which had grown up
+around them. A few stalks stood up out of the snow, the stalks of
+old-fashioned flowers--hollyhock and larkspur and Job's-tears and the
+like--and the lines of the beds were defined by the tiny hedges of box,
+with the white snow-powder sifted into their dark, shiny green. The
+bare rose-bushes were there, with their spikes of thorns, and little
+mounds of snow showed where the glories of the poppy-bed had bloomed.
+
+Jacob Dolph, looking out, saw the clear summer sunlight lying where the
+snow lay now. He saw his mother moving about the paths, cutting a flower
+here and a bud there. He saw himself, a little boy in brave breeches,
+following her about, and looking for the harmless toads, and working
+each one into one of the wonderful legends which he had heard from the
+old German gardener across the way. He saw his father, too, pacing those
+paths of summer evenings, when the hollyhocks nodded their pink heads,
+and glancing up, from time to time, at his mother as she sat knitting at
+that very window. And, last of all in the line, yet first in his mind,
+he saw his wife tripping out in the fresh morning, to smile on the
+flowers she loved, to linger lovingly over the beds of verbena, and to
+pick the little nosegay that stood by the side of the tall coffee-urn at
+every summer-morning breakfast.
+
+And the wife, looking out by his side, saw that splendid boy of theirs
+running over path and bed, glad of the flowers and the air and the
+freedom, full of young life and boyish sprightliness, his long hair
+floating behind him, the light of hope and youth in his bright face.
+
+And to-morrow it would be Van Riper's; and very soon there would be
+houses there, to close up the friendly window which had seen so much,
+which had let so much innocent joy and gladness into the old
+breakfast-room; and there would be an end of flower-bordered paths and
+nodding hollyhocks. She put her face upon her husband's shoulder, and
+cried a little, though he pretended not to know it. When she lifted it,
+somehow she had got her eyes dry, though they were painfully bright and
+large.
+
+"It isn't like selling our house," she said.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+
+Jacob Dolph got out of the Broadway stage at Bowling Green, followed by
+Eustace Dolph. Eustace Dolph at twenty-two was no more like his father
+than his patrician name was like simple and scriptural Jacob. The elder
+Dolph was a personable man, certainly; a handsome man, even, who looked
+to be nearer forty than fifty-two; and he was well dressed--perhaps a
+trifle out of the mode--and carried himself with a certain genial
+dignity, and with the lightness of a man who has not forgotten that he
+has been a buck in his time. But Eustace was distinctly and unmistakably
+a dandy. There are superficial differences, of course, between the dandy
+of 1852 and the dandy of 1887; but the structural foundation of all
+types of dandy is the same through all ages. Back of the clothes--back
+of the ruffles, or the bright neckcloth, or the high pickardil--which
+may vary with the time or the individual, you will ever find clearly
+displayed to your eyes the obvious and unmistakable spiritual reason
+for and cause of the dandy--and it is always self-assertion pushed
+beyond the bounds of self-respect.
+
+Now, as a matter of fact, young Eustace's garments were not really worse
+than many a man has worn from simple, honest bad taste. To be sure, the
+checked pattern of his trousers was for size like the design of a prison
+grating; he had a coat so blue that it shimmered in the sunlight; his
+necktie was of purple satin, and fearfully and wonderfully made and
+fringed, and decked with gems fastened by little gold chains to other
+inferior guardian gems; and his waistcoat was confected of satin and
+velvet and damask all at once; yet you might have put all these things
+on his father, and, although the effect would not have been pleasant,
+you would never have called the elder gentleman a dandy. In other words,
+it was why young Eustace wore his raiment that made it dandified, and
+not the inherent gorgeousness of the raiment itself.
+
+The exchange of attire might readily have been made, so far as the size
+of the two men was concerned. But only in size were they alike. There
+was nothing of the Dolph in Eustace's face. He bore, indeed, a strong
+resemblance to his maternal great-grandmother, now many years put away
+where she could no longer trouble the wicked, and where she had to let
+the weary be at rest. (And how poor little Aline had wept and wailed
+over that death, and lamented that she had not been more dutiful as a
+child!) But his face was not strong, as the face of Madam Des Anges had
+been. Some strain of a weaker ancestry reappeared in it, and, so to
+speak, changed the key of the expression. What had been pride in the old
+lady bordered on superciliousness in the young man. What had been
+sternness became a mere haughtiness. Yet it was a handsome face, and
+pleasant, too, when the young smile came across it, and you saw the
+white small teeth and the bright, intelligent light in the dark eyes.
+
+The two men strolled through the Battery, and then up South Street, and
+so around through Old Slip. They were on business; but this was also a
+pleasure trip to the elder. He walked doubly in spirit through those
+old streets--a boy by his father's side, a father with his son at his
+elbow. He had not been often in the region of late years. You remember,
+he was a man of pleasure. He was one of the first-fruits of metropolitan
+growth and social culture. His father had made an idler and _dilettante_
+of him. It was only half a life at best, he thought, happy as he had
+been; blessed as he was in wife and child. He was going to make a
+business man of his own boy. After all, it was through the workers that
+great cities grew. Perhaps we were not ripe yet for that European
+institution, the idler. He himself had certain accomplishments that
+other Americans had not. He could _flaner_, for instance. But to have to
+_flaner_ through fifty or sixty or seventy years palled on the spirit,
+he found. And one thing was certain, if any Dolph was ever to be an
+accomplished _flaneur_, and to devote his whole life to that occupation,
+the Dolph fortune must be vastly increased. Old Jacob Dolph had
+miscalculated. The sum he had left in 1829 might have done very well for
+the time, but it was no fortune to idle on among the fashionables of
+1852.
+
+Something of this Mr. Dolph told his son; but the young man, although he
+listened with respectful attention, appeared not to take a deep interest
+in his father's reminiscences. Jacob Dolph fancied even that Eustace did
+not care to be reminded of the city's day of small things. Perhaps he
+had something of the feeling of the successful struggler who tries to
+forget the shabbiness of the past. If this were the case, his pride must
+have been chafed, for his father was eloquent in displaying the powers
+of an uncommonly fine memory; and he had to hear all about the slips,
+and the Fly Market, and the gradual extension of the water-front, and
+the piles on which the old Tontine was built, and the cucumber-wood
+pipes of the old water-company, still lying under their feet. Once, at
+least, he showed a genuine enjoyment of his father's discourse, and that
+was when it ran on the great retinue of servants in which Jacob Dolph
+the elder had indulged himself. I think he was actually pleased when he
+heard that his grandfather had at one time kept slaves.
+
+Wandering in this way, to the running accompaniment of Mr. Dolph's
+lecture, they came to Water Street, and here, as though he were reminded
+of the object of their trip, the father summed up his reminiscences in
+shape for a neat moral.
+
+"The city grows, you see, my boy, and we've got to grow with it. I've
+stood still; but you sha'n't."
+
+"Well, governor," said the younger man, "I'll be frank with you. I don't
+like the prospect."
+
+"You will--you will, my boy. You'll live to thank me."
+
+"Very likely you're right, sir; I don't deny it; but, as I say, I don't
+like the prospect. I don't see--with all due respect, sir--how any
+gentleman can _like_ trade. It may be necessary, and of course I don't
+think it's lowering, or any of that nonsense, you know; but it can't be
+_pleasant_. Of course, if _your_ governor had to do it, it was all
+right; but I don't believe he liked it any better than I should, or he
+wouldn't have been so anxious to keep you out of it."
+
+"My poor father made a great mistake, Eustace. He would admit it now,
+I'm sure, if he were alive."
+
+"Well, sir, I'm going to try it, of course. I'll give it a fair trial.
+But when the two years are up, sir, as we agreed, I hope you won't say
+anything against my going into the law, or--well, yes--" he colored a
+little--"trying what I can do on the Street. I know what you think about
+it, sir," he went on, hastily; "but there are two sides to the question,
+and it's my opinion that, for an intelligent man, there's more money to
+be made up there in Wall Street in one year than can be got out of
+haggling over merchandise for a lifetime."
+
+Jacob Dolph grew red in the face and shook his head vigorously.
+
+"Don't speak of it, sir, don't speak of it!" he said, vehemently. "It's
+the curse of the country. If you have any such infernal opinions, don't
+vent them in my presence, sir. I know what I am talking about. Keep
+clear of Wall Street, sir. It is the straight road to perdition."
+
+They entered one of a row of broad-fronted buildings of notable severity
+and simplicity of architecture. Four square stone columns upheld its
+brick front, and on one of these faded gilt letters, on a ground of
+dingy black, said simply:
+
+    ABRAM VAN RIPER'S SON.
+
+There was no further announcement of Abram Van Riper's Son's character,
+or of the nature of his business. It was assumed that all people knew
+who Abram Van Riper's Son was, and that his (Abram Van Riper's)
+ship-chandlery trade had long before grown into a great "commission
+merchant's" business.
+
+It was full summer, and there were no doors between the pillars to bar
+entrance to the gloomy cavern behind them, which stretched in
+semi-darkness the whole length and width of the building, save for a
+narrow strip at the rear, where, behind a windowed partition, clerks
+were writing at high desks, and where there was an inner and more
+secluded pen for Abram Van Riper's son.
+
+In the front of the cave, to one side, was a hoistway, where bales and
+boxes were drawn up from the cellar or swung twisting and twirling to
+the lofts above. Amidships the place was strewn with small tubs,
+matting-covered bales and boxes, coils of bright new rope, and
+odd-looking packages of a hundred sorts, all of them with gaping wounds
+in their envelopes, or otherwise having their pristine integrity
+wounded. From this it was not difficult to guess that these were samples
+of merchandise. Most of them gave forth odors upon the air, odors
+ranging from the purely aromatic, suggestive of Oriental fancies or
+tropic dreams of spice, to the positively offensive--the latter
+varieties predominating.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+But certain objects upon a long table were so peculiar in appearance
+that the visitors could not pass them by with a mere glance of wonder.
+They looked like small leather pies, badly warped in the baking. A clerk
+in his shirt sleeves, with his straw hat on one side of his head,
+whistled as he cut into these, revealing a livid interior, the color of
+half-cooked veal, which he inspected with care. Eustace was moved to
+positive curiosity.
+
+"What are they?" he inquired of the clerk, pride mingling with disgust
+in his tone, as he caught a smell like unto the smell which might arise
+from raw smoked salmon that had lain three days in the sun.
+
+"Central American," responded the clerk, with brevity, and resumed his
+whistling of
+
+  "My name is Jake Keyser, I was born in Spring Garden;
+     To make me a preacher my father did try."
+
+"Central American _what_?" pursued the inquirer.
+
+"_Rubber!_" said the clerk, with a scorn so deep and far beyond
+expression that the combined pride of the Dolphs and the Des Anges
+wilted into silence for the moment. As they went on toward the rear
+office, while the clerk gayly whistled the notes of
+
+  "It's no use a-blowing, for I am a hard 'un--
+     I'm bound to be a butcher, by heavens, or die!"
+
+Eustace recovered sufficiently to demand of his father:
+
+"I say, sir, shall I have to handle that damned stuff?"
+
+"Hush!" said his senior; "here's Mr. Van Riper."
+
+Mr. Van Riper came to the office door to welcome them, with his thin
+face set in the form of a smile.
+
+"Ah!" he said, "here's the young man, is he? Fine big fellow, Dolph.
+Well, sir, so you are going to embrace a mercantile career, are you?
+That's what they call it in these fine days, Dolph."
+
+"I am going to try to, sir," replied the young man.
+
+"He will, Van Riper," put in his father, hastily; "he'll like it as soon
+as he gets used to it--I know he will."
+
+"Well," returned Mr. Van Riper, with an attempt at facetious geniality,
+"we'll try to get his nose down to the grindstone, we will. Come into my
+office with me, Dolph, and I'll hand this young gentleman over to old
+Mr. Daw. Mr. Daw will feel his teeth--eh, Mr. Daw?--see what he
+_doesn't_ know--how's that, Mr. Daw? You remember Mr. Daw, Dolph--used
+to be with your father before he went out of business--been with us ever
+since. Let's see, how long is that, Daw? Most fifty years, ain't it?"
+
+[Illustration: "Looks like his father," was Mr. Daw's comment.]
+
+Mr. Daw, who looked as though he might have been one hundred years at
+the business, wheeled around and descended with stiff deliberation from
+his high stool, holding his pen in his mouth as he solemnly shook hands
+with Jacob Dolph, and peered into his face. Then he took the pen out of
+his mouth.
+
+"Looks like his father," was Mr. Daw's comment. "Forty-five years the
+twenty-ninth of this month, sir. You was a little shaver then. I
+remember you comin' into the store and whittlin' timber with your little
+jack-knife. I was only eleven years with your father, sir--eleven years
+and six months--went to him when I was fourteen years old. That's
+fifty-six years and six months in the service of two of the best houses
+that ever was in New York--an' I can do my work with any two young
+shavers in the town--ain't missed a day in nineteen years now. Your
+father hadn't never ought to have gone out of business, Mr. Dolph. He
+did a great business for those days, and he had the makin' of a big
+house. Goin' to bring your boy up like a good New York merchant, hey?
+Come along here with me, young man, and I'll see if you're half the man
+your grandfather was. He hadn't never ought to have given up business,
+Mr. Dolph. But he was all for pleasuring an' the play-houses, an' havin'
+fine times. Come along, young man. What's your name?"
+
+"Eustace Dolph."
+
+"Hm! Jacob's better."
+
+And he led the neophyte away.
+
+"Curious old case," said Mr. Van Riper, dryly. "Best accountant in New
+York. See that high stool of his?--can't get him off it. Five years ago
+I gave him a low desk and an arm-chair. In one week he was back again,
+roosting up there. Said he didn't feel comfortable with his feet on the
+ground. He thought that sort of thing might do for aged people, but _he_
+wasn't made of cotton-batting."
+
+Thus began Eustace Dolph's apprenticeship to business, and mightily ill
+he liked it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There came a day, a winter day in 1854, when there was great agitation
+among what were then called the real old families of New York. I cannot
+use the term "fashionable society," because that is more comprehensive,
+and would include many wealthy and ambitious families from New England,
+who were decidedly not of the Dolphs' set. And then, the Dolphs could
+hardly be reckoned among the leaders of fashion. To live on or near the
+boundaries of fashion's domain is to lower your social status below the
+absolute pitch of perfection, and fashion in 1854 drew the line pretty
+sharply at Bleecker Street. Above Bleecker Street the cream of the cream
+rose to the surface; below, you were ranked as skim milk. The social
+world was spreading up into the wastes sacred to the circus and the
+market-garden, although, if Admiral Farragut had stood on his sea-legs
+where he stands now, he might have had a fairly clear view of Chelsea
+Village, and seen Alonzo Cushman II., or Alonzo Cushman III., perhaps,
+going around and collecting his rents.
+
+But the old families still fought the tide of trade, many of them
+neck-deep and very uncomfortable. They would not go from St. John's
+Park, nor from North Moore and Grand Streets. They had not the
+_bourgeois_ conservatism of the Greenwich Villagers, which has held them
+in a solid phalanx almost to this very day; but still, in a way, they
+resented the up-town movement, and resisted it. So that when they did
+have to buy lots in the high-numbered streets they had to pay a fine
+price for them.
+
+It was this social party that was stirred by a bit of scandal about the
+Dolphs. I do not know why I should call it scandal; yet I am sure
+society so held it. For did not society whisper it, and nod and wink
+over it, and tell it in dark corners, and chuckle, and lift its
+multitudinous hands and its myriad eyebrows, and say in innumerable
+keys: "Well, _upon_ my word!" and "Well, I _should_ think----!" and "Who
+would _ever_ have thought of such a thing?" and the like? Did not
+society make very funny jokes about it, and did not society's
+professional gossips get many an invitation to dinner because they
+professed to have authentic details of the way Mr. and Mrs. Dolph looked
+when they spoke about it, and just what they had to say for themselves?
+
+And yet it was nothing more than this, that Mr. Dolph being fifty-four,
+and his wife but a few years younger, were about to give to the world
+another Dolph. It was odd, I admit; it was unusual; if I must go so far,
+it was, I suppose, unconventional. But I don't see that it was necessary
+for Mr. Philip Waters to make an epigram about it. It was a very clever
+epigram; but if you had seen dear old Mrs. Dolph, with her rosy cheeks
+and the gray in her hair, knitting baby-clothes with hands which were
+still white and plump and comely, while great dark eyes looked
+timorously into the doubtful, fear-clouded future, I think you would
+have been ashamed that you had even listened to that epigram.
+
+The expected event was of special and personal interest to only three
+people--for, after all, when you think of it, it was not exactly
+society's business--and it affected them in widely different ways.
+
+Jacob Dolph was all tenderness to his wife, and all sympathy with her
+fears, with her nervous apprehensions, even with her morbid forebodings
+of impossible ills. He did not repine at the seclusion which the
+situation forced upon them, although his life for years had been given
+up to society's demands, until pleasure-seeking and pleasure-giving had
+grown into a routine, which occupied his whole mind. His wife saw him
+more than she had for many years. Clubs and card-parties had few
+temptations for him now; he sat at home and read to her and talked to
+her, and did his best to follow the injunctions of the doctor, and
+"create and preserve in her a spirit of cheerful and hopeful
+tranquillity, free of unnecessary apprehension."
+
+But when he _did_ go to the club, when he was in male society, his
+breast expanded, and if he had to answer a polite inquiry as to Mrs.
+Dolph's general health, I am afraid that he responded: "Mrs. Dolph is
+extremely well, sir, extremely well!" with a pride which the moralists
+will tell you is baseless, unworthy, and unreasonable.
+
+As for Aline herself, no one may know what timorous hopes stirred in her
+bosom and charmed the years away, and brought back to her a lovely youth
+that was almost girlish in its innocent, half-frightened gladness.
+Outside, this great, wise, eminently proper world that she lived in
+girded at the old woman who was to bear a child, and laughed behind
+tasselled fans, and made wondrous merry over Nature's work; but within
+the old house she sat, and sewed upon the baby-clothes, or, wandering
+from cupboard to cupboard, found the yellowing garments, laid away more
+than a score of years before--the poor little lace-decked trifles that
+her first boy had worn; and she thanked heaven, in her humble way, that
+twenty-four years had not taken the love and joy of a wife and a mother
+out of her heart.
+
+She could not find all her boy's dresses and toys, for she was
+open-handed, and had given many of them away to people who needed them.
+This brought about an odd encounter. The third person who had a special
+interest in the prospect of the birth of a Dolph was young Eustace, and
+he found nothing in it wherewith to be pleased. For Eustace Dolph was of
+the ultra-fashionables. He cared less for old family than for new ideas,
+and he did not let himself fall behind in the march of social progress,
+even though he was, as he admitted with humility born of pride, only a
+poor devil of a down-town clerk. If his days were occupied, he had his
+nights to himself, and he lengthened them to suit himself. At first this
+caused his mother to fret a little; but poor Aline had come into her
+present world from the conventional seclusion of King's Bridge, and her
+only authority on questions of masculine license was her husband. He,
+being appealed to, had to admit that his own hours in youth had been
+late, and that he supposed the hours of a newer generation should
+properly be later still. Mr. Dolph forgot, perhaps, that while his early
+potations had been vinous, those of the later age were distinctly
+spirituous; and that the early morning cocktail and the midnight
+brandy-and-soda were abominations unknown to his own well-bred youth.
+With port and sherry and good Bordeaux he had been familiar all his
+life; a dash of _liqueur_ after dinner did not trouble his digestion; he
+found a bottle of champagne a pleasant appetizer and a gentle stimulant;
+but whiskey and gin were to him the drinks of the vulgar; and rum and
+brandy stood on his sideboard only to please fiercer tastes than his
+own. Perhaps, also, he was ignorant of the temptations that assail a
+young man in a great city, he who had grown up in such a little one that
+he had at one time known every one who was worth knowing in it.
+
+However this may have been, Eustace Dolph ruled for himself his going
+out and his coming in. He went further, and chose his own associates,
+not always from among the scions of the "old families." He found those
+excellent young men "slow," and he selected for his own private circle a
+set which was mixed as to origin and unanimously frivolous as to
+tendency. The foreign element was strongly represented. Bright young
+Irishmen of excellent families, and mysterious French and Italian counts
+and marquises, borrowed many of the good gold dollars of the Dolphs,
+and forgot to return an equivalent in the local currency of the
+O'Reagans of Castle Reagan, or the D'Arcy de Montmorenci, or the
+Montescudi di Bajocchi. Among this set there was much merry-making when
+the news from the Dolph household sifted down to them from the
+gossip-sieve of the best society. They could not very well chaff young
+Dolph openly, for he was muscular and high-tempered, and, under the most
+agreeable conditions, needed a fight of some sort every six months or
+so, and liked a bit of trouble in between fights. But a good deal of low
+and malicious humor came his way, from one source or another, and he,
+with the hot and concentrated egotism of youth, thought that he was in a
+ridiculous and trying position, and chafed over it.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+There had been innuendos and hints and glancing allusions, but no one
+had dared to make any direct assault of wit, until one evening young
+Haskins came into the club "a little flushed with wine." (The "wine" was
+brandy.) It seems that young Haskins had found at home an ivory rattle
+which had belonged to Eustace twenty years before, and which Mrs. Dolph
+had given to Mrs. Haskins when Eustace enlarged his horizon in the
+matter of toys.
+
+Haskins, being, as I have said, somewhat flushed with brandy, came up to
+young Dolph, who was smoking in the window, and meditating with frowning
+brows, and said to him:
+
+"Here, Dolph, I've done with this. You'd better take it back--it may be
+wanted down your way."
+
+There was a scene. Fortunately, two men were standing just behind Dolph,
+who were able to throw their arms about him, and hold him back for a few
+seconds. There would have been further consequences, however, if it had
+not been that Eustace was in the act of throwing the rattle back at
+Haskins when the two men caught him. Thus the toy went wide of its mark,
+and fell in the lap of Philip Waters, who, old as he was, generally
+chose to be in the company of the young men at the club; and then
+Philip Waters did something that almost atones, I think, for the
+epigram.
+
+He looked at the date on the rattle, and then he rose up and went
+between the two young men, and spoke to Haskins.
+
+"Young man," he said, "when Mrs. Jacob Dolph gave your mother this
+thing, your father had just failed for the second time in three years.
+He had come to New York about five years before from Hartford, or
+Providence, or--Succotash, or whatever his confounded town was. Mr.
+Jacob Dolph got Mr. Van Riper to give your father an extension on his
+note, or he would have gone to the debtors' prison down by the City
+Hall. As it was, he had to sell his house, and the coat off his back,
+for all I know. If it hadn't been for the Dolphs, devil the rattle you'd
+have had, and you wouldn't have been living in Bond Street to-day."
+
+[Illustration: "If it hadn't been for the Dolphs, devil the rattle you'd
+have had."]
+
+After which Mr. Philip Waters sat down and read the evening paper; and
+when young Haskins was able to speak he asked young Dolph's pardon, and
+got it--at least, a formal assurance that he had it.
+
+The baby was born in the spring, and everybody said she was the image of
+her mother.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There will come a day, it may be, when advancing civilization will
+civilize sleighing out of existence, as far as New York is concerned.
+Year after year the days grow fewer that will let a cutter slip up
+beyond the farthest of the "road-houses" and cross the line into
+Westchester. People say that the climate is changing; but close
+observers recognize a sympathy between the decrease of snow-storms and
+the increase of refinement--that is, a sympathy in inverse ratio; a
+balanced progress in opposite directions. As we grow further and further
+beyond even old-world standards of polite convention, as we formalize
+and super-formalize our codes, and steadily eliminate every element of
+amusement from our amusements, Nature in strict conformity represses her
+joyous exuberance. The snow-storm of the past is gone, because the great
+public sleigh that held twenty-odd merry-makers in a shell like a circus
+band-wagon has gone out of fashion among all classes. Now we have,
+during severe winters, just enough snow from time to time to bear the
+light sleigh of the young man who, being in good society, is also horsy.
+When _he_ finds the road vulgar, the poor plebeian souls who go
+sleighing for the sport of it may sell their red and blue vehicles, for
+Nature, the sycophant of fashion, will snow no more.
+
+But they had "good old-fashioned" snow-storms eighty years after the
+Declaration of Independence, and one had fallen upon New York that
+tempted Mrs. Jacob Dolph to leave her baby, ten months old, in the
+nurse's charge, and go out with her husband in the great family sleigh
+for what might be the last ride of the season.
+
+They had been far up the road--to Arcularius's, maybe, there swinging
+around and whirling back. They had flown down the long country road, and
+back into the city, to meet--it was early in the day--the great
+procession of sleighing folk streaming northward up Broadway. It was one
+of New York's great, irregular, chance-set carnivals, and every sleigh
+was out, from the "exquisite's" gilded chariot, a shell hardly larger
+than a fair-sized easy-chair, to the square, low-hung red sledge of the
+butcher-boy, who braved it with the fashionables, his _Schneider_-made
+clothes on his burly form, and his girl by his side, in her best Bowery
+bonnet. Everybody was a-sleighing. The jingle of countless bells fell on
+the crisp air in a sort of broken rhythm--a rude _tempo rubato_. It was
+fashionable then. But we--we amuse ourselves less boisterously.
+
+They drew up at the door of the Dolph house, and Jacob Dolph lifted his
+wife out of the sleigh, and carried her up the steps into the
+breakfast-room, and set her down in her easy-chair. He was bending over
+her to ask her if her ride had done her good, when a servant entered and
+handed him a letter marked "Immediate."
+
+He read it, and all the color of the winter's day faded out of his face.
+
+"I've got to go down to Van Riper's," he said, "at once; he wants me."
+
+"Has anything happened to--to Eustace?" his wife cried out.
+
+"He doesn't say so--I suppose--I suppose it's only business of some
+sort," her husband said. His face was white. "Don't detain me, dear.
+I'll come back as soon as--as soon as I get through."
+
+He kissed her, and was gone. Half an hour later he sat in the office of
+Abram Van Riper's Son.
+
+There was no doubting it, no denying it, no palliating it even. The
+curse had come upon the house of Jacob Dolph, and his son was a thief
+and a fugitive.
+
+It was an old story and a simple story. It was the story of the
+Haskins's million and the Dolphs' hundred thousand; it was the story of
+the boy with a hundred thousand in prospect trying to spend money
+against the boy with a million in sight. It was the story of cards,
+speculation--another name for that sort of gambling which is worse than
+any on the green cloth--and what is euphemistically known as wine.
+
+There was enough oral and documentary evidence to make the whole story
+hideously clear to Jacob Dolph, as he sat in that dark little pen of Van
+Riper's and had the history of his son's fall spelled out to him, word
+by word. The boy had proved himself apt and clever in his office work.
+His education had given him an advantage over all the other clerks, and
+he had learned his duties with wonderful ease. And when, six months
+before, old Mr. Daw had let himself down from his stool for the last
+time, and had muffled up his thin old throat in his great green worsted
+scarf, and had gone home to die, young Dolph had been put temporarily in
+his place. In those six months he had done his bad work. Even Van Riper
+admitted that it must have been a sudden temptation. But--he had
+yielded. In those six months fifty thousand dollars of Abram Van Riper's
+money had gone into the gulf that yawned in Wall Street; fifty thousand
+dollars, not acquired by falsifying the books, but filched outright from
+the private safe to which he had access; fifty thousand dollars, in
+securities which he had turned into money, acting as the confidential
+man of the house.
+
+When Jacob Dolph, looking like a man of eighty, left the private office
+of Mr. Van Riper he had two things to do. One was to tell his wife, the
+other was to assign enough property to Van Riper to cover the amount of
+the defalcation. Both had been done before night.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+
+It is to be said for society that there was very little chuckling and
+smiling when this fresh piece of news about the Dolphs came out. Nor did
+the news pass from house to house like wildfire. It rather leaked out
+here and there, percolating through barriers of friendly silence,
+slipping from discreet lips and repeated in anxious confidence, with all
+manner of qualifications and hopeful suppositions and suggestions. As a
+matter of fact, people never really knew just what Eustace Dolph had
+done, or how far his wrong-doing had carried him. All that was ever
+positively known was that the boy had got into trouble down-town, and
+had gone to Europe. The exact nature of the trouble could only be
+conjectured. The very brokers who had been the instruments of young
+Dolph's ruin were not able to separate his authorized speculations from
+those which were illegitimate. They could do no more than guess, from
+what they knew of Van Riper's conservative method of investment, that
+the young man's unfortunate purchases were made for himself, and they
+figured these at fifty-five thousand odd hundred dollars.
+
+Somebody, who looked up the deed which Jacob Dolph executed that winter
+day, found that he had transferred to Van Riper real estate of more than
+that value.
+
+No word ever came from the cold lips of Abram Van Riper's son; and his
+office was a piece of all but perfect machinery, which dared not creak
+when he commanded silence. And no one save Van Riper and Dolph, and
+their two lawyers, knew the whole truth. Dolph never even spoke about it
+to his wife, after that first night. It was these five people only who
+knew that Mr. Jacob Dolph had parted with the last bit of real estate
+that he owned, outside of his own home, and they knew that his other
+property was of a doubtful sort, that could yield at the best only a
+very limited income--hardly enough for a man who lived in so great a
+house, and whose doors were open to all his friends nine months in the
+year.
+
+Yet he stayed there, and grew old with an age which the years have not
+among their gifts. When his little girl was large enough to sit upon his
+knee, her small hands clutched at a snowy-white mustache, and she
+complained that his great, dark, hollow eyes never would look "right
+into hers, away down deep." Yet he loved her, and talked more to her
+perhaps than to any one else, not even excepting Aline.
+
+But he never spoke to her of the elder brother whom she could not
+remember. It was her mother who whispered something of the story to her,
+and told her not to let papa know that she knew of it, for it would
+grieve him. Aline herself knew nothing about the boy save that he lived,
+and lived a criminal. Jacob himself could only have told her that their
+son was a wandering adventurer, known as a blackleg and sharper in every
+town in Europe.
+
+The doors of the great house were closed to all the world, or opened
+only for some old friend, who went away very soon out of the presence of
+a sadness beyond all solace of words, or kindly look, or hand-clasp. And
+so, in something that only the grace of their gentle lives relieved
+from absolute poverty, those three dwelt in the old house, and let the
+world slip by them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was no sleep for any one of the little household in the great
+house on the night of the 14th of July, 1863. Doors and blinds were
+closed; only a light shone through the half-open slats at a second-story
+window, and in that room Aline lay sick, almost unto death, her white
+hair loosed from its usual dainty neatness, her dark eyes turning with
+an unmeaning gaze from the face of the little girl at her side to the
+face of her husband at the foot of her bed. Her hands, wrinkled and
+small, groped over the coverlet, with nervous twitchings, as every now
+and then the howls or the pistol-shots of the mob in the streets below
+them fell on her ear. And at every such movement the lips of the girl by
+her pillow twitched in piteous sympathy. About half-past twelve there
+was sharp firing in volleys to the southward of them, that threw the
+half-conscious sufferer into an agony of supersensitive disturbance.
+Then there came a silence that seemed unnaturally deep, yet it was only
+the silence of a summer night in the deserted city streets.
+
+Through it they heard, sharp and sudden, with something inexplicably
+fearful about it, the patter of running feet. They had heard that sound
+often enough that night and the night before; but these feet stopped at
+their own door, and came up the steps, and the runner beat and pounded
+on the heavy panels.
+
+Father and child looked in each other's eyes, and then Jacob Dolph left
+his post at the foot of the bed, and, passing out of the room, went down
+the stairs with deliberate tread, and opened the door.
+
+A negro's face, almost gray in its mad fear, stared into his with a
+desperate appeal which the lips could not utter. Dolph drew the man in,
+and shut the door behind him. The negro leaned, trembling and exhausted,
+against the wall.
+
+"I knowed you'd take me in, Mist' Dolph," he panted; "I'm feared they
+seen me, though--they was mighty clost behind."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+They were close behind him, indeed. In half a minute the roar of the
+mob filled the street with one terrible howl and shriek of animal rage,
+heard high above the tramp of half a thousand feet; and the beasts of
+disorder, gathered from all the city's holes and dens of crime, wild for
+rapine and outrage, burst upon them, sweeping up the steps, hammering at
+the great doors, crying for the blood of the helpless and the
+innocent.
+
+[Illustration: "Have you got a nigger here?"]
+
+Foreign faces, almost all! Irish, mostly; but there were heavy, ignorant
+German types of feature uplifted under the gas-light; sallow,
+black-mustached Magyar faces; thin, acute, French faces--all with the
+stamp of old-world ignorance and vice upon them.
+
+The door opened, and the white-haired old gentleman, erect, haughty,
+with brightening eyes, faced the leader of the mob--a great fellow,
+black-bearded, who had a space to himself on the stoop, and swung his
+broad shoulders from side to side.
+
+"Have you got a nigger here?" he began, and then stopped short, for
+Jacob Dolph was looking upon the face of his son.
+
+Vagabond and outcast, he had the vagabond's quick wit, this leader of
+infuriate crime, and some one good impulse stirred in him of his
+forfeited gentlehood. He turned savagely upon his followers.
+
+"He ain't here!" he roared. "I told you so--I saw him turn the corner."
+
+"Shtap an' burrn the bondholder's house!" yelled a man behind. Eustace
+Dolph turned round with a furious, threatening gesture.
+
+"You damned fool!" he thundered; "he's no bondholder--he's one of _us_.
+Go on, I tell you! Will you let that nigger get away?"
+
+He half drove them down the steps. The old man stepped out, his face
+aflame under his white hair, his whole frame quivering.
+
+"You lie, sir!" he cried; but his voice was drowned in the howl of the
+mob as it swept around the corner, forgetting all things else in the
+madness of its hideous chase.
+
+When Jacob Dolph returned to his wife's chamber, her feeble gaze was
+lifted to the ceiling. At the sound of his footsteps she let it fall
+dimly upon his face. He was thankful that, in that last moment of
+doubtful quickening, she could not read his eyes; and she passed away,
+smiling sweetly, one of her white old hands in his, and one in her
+child's.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Age takes small account of the immediate flight of time. To the young, a
+year is a mighty span. Be it a happy or an unhappy year that youth
+looks forward to, it is a vista that stretches far into the future. And
+when it is done, this interminable year, and youth, just twelve months
+older, looks back to the first of it, what a long way off it is! What
+tremendous progress we have made! How much more we know! How
+insufficient are the standards by which we measured the world a poor
+three hundred and sixty-five days back!
+
+But age has grown habituated to the flight of time. Years? we have seen
+so many of them that they make no great impression upon us. What! is it
+ten years since young Midas first came to the counting-room, asking
+humbly for an entry-clerk's place--he who is now the head of the firm?
+Bless us! it seems like yesterday. Is it ten years since we first put on
+that coat? Why, it must be clean out of the fashion by this time.
+
+But age does not carry out the thought, and ask if itself be out of the
+fashion. Age knows better. A few wrinkles, a stoop in the back, a
+certain slowness of pace, do not make a man old at sixty--nor at
+seventy, neither; for now you come to think of it, the ten years we were
+speaking of is gone, and it is seventy now, and not sixty. Seventy! Why,
+'tis not to be thought of as old age--save when it may be necessary to
+rebuke the easy arrogance of youth.
+
+The time had come to Jacob Dolph when he could not feel that he was
+growing old. He was old, of course, in one sense. He was sixty-one when
+the war broke out; and they had not allowed him to form a regiment and
+go to the front at its head. But what was old for a soldier in active
+service was not old for a well-preserved civilian. True, he could never
+be the same man again, now that poor Aline was gone. True, he was
+growing more and more disinclined for active exercise, and he regretted
+he had led so sedentary a life. But though '64 piled itself up on '63,
+and '65 on top of that, these arbitrary divisions of time seemed to him
+but trivial.
+
+Edith was growing old, perhaps; getting to be a great girl, taller than
+her mother and fairer of complexion, yet not unlike her, he sometimes
+thought, as she began to manage the affairs of the house, and to go
+about the great shabby mansion with her mother's keys jingling at her
+girdle. For the years went on crawling one over the other, and soon it
+was 1873, and Edith was eighteen years old.
+
+One rainy day in this year found Jacob Dolph in Wall Street. Although he
+himself did not think so, he was an old man to others, and kindly hands,
+such as were to be found even in that infuriate crowd, had helped him up
+the marble steps of the Sub-Treasury and had given him lodgment on one
+of the great blocks of marble that dominate the street. From where he
+stood he could see Wall Street, east and west, and the broad plaza of
+Broad Street to the south, filled with a compact mass of men, half
+hidden by a myriad of umbrellas, rain-soaked, black, glinting in the dim
+light. So might a Roman legion have looked, when each man raised his
+targum above his head and came shoulder to shoulder with his neighbor
+for the assault.
+
+There was a confused, ant-like movement in the vast crowd, and a dull
+murmur came from it, rising, in places, into excited shouts. Here and
+there the fringe of the mass swelled up and swept against the steps of
+some building, forcing, or trying to force, an entry. Sometimes a narrow
+stream of men trickled into the half-open doorway; sometimes the great
+portals closed, and then there was a mad outcry and a low groan, and the
+foremost on the steps suddenly turned back, and in some strange way
+slipped through the throng and sped in all directions to bear to hushed
+or clamorous offices the news that this house or that bank had
+"suspended payment." "Busted," the panting messengers said to
+white-faced merchants; and in the slang of the street was conveyed the
+message of doom. The great panic of 1873 was upon the town--the outcome
+of long years of unwarranted self-confidence, of selfish extravagance,
+of conscienceless speculation--and, as hour after hour passed by,
+fortunes were lost in the twinkling of an eye, and the bread was taken
+out of the mouths of the helpless.
+
+After Jacob Dolph had stood for some time, looking down upon the
+tossing sea of black umbrellas, he saw a narrow lane made through the
+crowd in the wake of a little party of clerks and porters, bearing aid
+perhaps to some stricken bank. Slipping down, he followed close behind
+them. Perhaps the jostling hundreds on the sidewalk were gentle with
+him, seeing that he was an old man; perhaps the strength of excitement
+nerved him, for he made his way down the street to the flight of steps
+leading to the door of a tall white building, and he crowded himself up
+among the pack that was striving to enter. He had even got so far that
+he could see the line pouring in above his head, when there was a sudden
+cessation of motion in the press, and one leaf of the outer iron doors
+swung forward, meeting the other, already closed to bar the crush, and
+two green-painted panels stood, impassable, between him and the last of
+the Dolph fortune.
+
+One howl and roar, and the crowd turned back on itself, and swept him
+with it. In five minutes a thousand offices knew of the greatest failure
+of the day; and Jacob Dolph was leaning--weak, gasping, dazed--against
+the side wall of a hallway in William Street, with two stray office-boys
+staring at him out of their small, round, unsympathetic eyes.
+
+Let us not ask what wild temptation led the old man back again to risk
+all he owned in that hellish game that is played in the narrow street.
+We may remember this: that he saw his daughter growing to womanhood in
+that silent and almost deserted house, shouldered now by low tenements
+and wretched shops and vile drinking-places; that he may have pictured
+for her a brighter life in that world that had long ago left him behind
+it in his bereaved and disgraced loneliness; that he had had some vision
+of her young beauty fulfilling its destiny amid sweeter and fairer
+surroundings. And let us not forget that he knew no other means than
+these to win the money for which he cared little; which he found
+absolutely needful.
+
+After Jacob Dolph had yielded for the last time to the temptation that
+had conquered him once before, and had ruined his son's soul; after that
+final disastrous battle with the gamblers of Wall Street, wherein he
+lost the last poor remnant of the great Dolph fortune, giving up with it
+his father's home forever, certain old bread of his father's casting
+came back to him upon strange waters.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Abram Van Riper came to the daughter of the house of Dolph, a little
+before it became certain that the house must be sold, and told her, in
+his dry way, that he had to make a business communication to her, for he
+feared that her father was hardly capable of understanding such matters
+any longer. She winced a little; but he took a load off her heart when
+he made his slow, precise explanation. The fact was, he said, that the
+business transactions between her father and himself, consequent upon
+the defalcation of her brother Eustace, had never been closed, in all
+these seventeen years. (Edith Dolph trembled.) It was known at the time
+that the property transferred by her father rather more than covered the
+amount of her brother's--peculation. But her father's extreme
+sensitiveness had led him to avoid a precise adjustment, and as the
+property transferred was subject to certain long leases, he, Mr. Van
+Riper, had thought it best to wait until the property was sold and the
+account closed, to settle the matter with Mr. Dolph. This had lately
+been done, and Mr. Van Riper found that, deducting charges, and interest
+on his money at seven per cent., he had made by the transaction six
+thousand three hundred and seventy dollars. This sum, he thought,
+properly belonged to Mr. Dolph. And if Miss Dolph would take the counsel
+of an old friend of her father's, she would leave the sum in charge of
+the house of Abram Van Riper's Son. The house would invest it at ten per
+cent.--he stopped and looked at Edith, but she only answered him with
+innocent eyes of attention--and would pay her six hundred and
+thirty-seven dollars annually in quarterly payments. It might be of
+assistance to Mr. Dolph in his present situation.
+
+It was of assistance. They lived on it, father and daughter, with such
+aid as Decorative Art--just introduced to this country--gave in
+semi-remunerative employment for her deft fingers.
+
+Abram Van Riper, when he left the weeping, grateful girl, marched out
+into the street, turned his face toward what was once Greenwich Village,
+and said to his soul:
+
+"I think that will balance any obligation my father may have put himself
+under in buying that State Street house too cheap. Now then, old
+gentleman, you can lie easy in your grave. The Van Ripers ain't beholden
+to the Dolphs, that's sure."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A few years ago--shall we say as many as ten?--there were two small
+rooms up in a quiet street in Harlem, tenanted by an old gentleman and a
+young gentlewoman; and in the front room, which was the young woman's
+room by night, but a sort of parlor or sitting-room in the daytime, the
+old gentleman stood up, four times a year, to have his collar pulled up,
+and his necktie set right, and his coat dusted off by a pair of small
+white hands, so that he might be presentable when he went down town to
+collect certain moneys due him.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+They were small rooms, but they were bright and cheerful, being
+decorated with sketches and studies of an artistic sort, which may have
+been somewhat crude and uncertain as to treatment, but were certainly
+pleasant and feminine. Yet few saw them save the young woman and the old
+man. The most frequent visitor was a young artist from the West, who
+often escorted Miss Dolph to and from the Art League rooms. His name was
+Rand; he had studied in Munich; he had a future before him, and was
+making money on his prospects. He might just as well have lived in
+luxurious bachelor quarters in the lower part of the city; but, for
+reasons of his own, he preferred to live in Harlem.
+
+Old Mr. Dolph insisted on going regularly every quarter-day to the
+office of the Van Riper Estate, "to collect," as he said, "the interest
+due him." Four times a year he went down town on the Eighth Avenue cars,
+where the conductors soon learned to know him by his shiny black
+broadcloth coat and his snow-white hair. His daughter was always uneasy
+about these trips; but her father could not be dissuaded from them. To
+him they were his one hold on active life--the all-important events of
+the year. It would have broken his tender old heart to tell him that he
+could not go to collect his "interest." And so she set his necktie
+right, and he went.
+
+When he got out of the car at Abingdon Square he tottered, in his slow,
+old way, to a neat structure which combined modern jauntiness with
+old-time solidity, and which was labelled simply: "Office of the Van
+Riper Estate," and there he told the smilingly indulgent clerk that he
+thought he would "take it in cash, this time," and, taking it in cash,
+went forth.
+
+And then he walked down through Greenwich Village into New York city,
+and into the street where stood the house that his father had built.
+Thus he had gone to view it four times a year, during every year save
+the first, since he had given it up.
+
+He had seen it go through one stage of decadence after another. First it
+was rented, by its new owner, to the Jewish pawnbroker, with his
+numerous family. Good, honest folk they were, who tried to make the
+house look fine, and the five daughters made the front stoop resplendent
+of summer evenings. But they had long ago moved up-town. Then it was a
+cheap boarding-house, and vulgar and flashy men and women swarmed out in
+the morning and in at eventide. Then it was a lodging-house, and shabby
+people let themselves out and in at all hours of the day and night. And
+last of all it had become a tenement-house, and had fallen into line
+with its neighbors to left and right, and the window-panes were broken,
+and the curse of misery and poverty and utter degradation had fallen
+upon it.
+
+But still it lifted its grand stone front, still it stood, broad and
+great, among all the houses in the street. And it was the old man's
+custom, after he had stood on the opposite sidewalk and gazed at it for
+a while, to go to a little French _cafe_ a block to the eastward, and
+there to take a glass of _vermouth gomme_--it was a mild drink, and
+pleasing to an old man. Sometimes he chanced to find some one in this
+place who would listen to his talk about the old house--he was very
+grand; but they were decent people who went to that _cafe_, and perhaps
+would go back with him a block and look at it. We would not have talked
+to chance people in an east-side French _cafe_. But then we have never
+owned such a house, and lost it--and everything else.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Late one hot summer afternoon young Rand sat in his studio, working
+enthusiastically on a "composition." A new school of art had invaded New
+York, and compositions were everything, for the moment, whether they
+composed anything or nothing. He heard a nervous rattling at his
+door-knob, and he opened the door. A young woman lifted a sweet,
+flushed, frightened face to his.
+
+"Oh, John," she cried, "father hasn't come home yet, and it's five
+o'clock, and he left home at nine."
+
+John Rand threw off his flannel jacket, and got into his coat.
+
+"We'll find him; don't worry, dear," he said.
+
+They found him within an hour. The great city, having no further use for
+the old Dolph house, was crowding it out of existence. With the crashing
+of falling bricks, and the creaking of the tackle that swung the great
+beams downward, the old house was crumbling into a gap between two high
+walls. Already you could see through to where the bright new bricks
+were piled at the back to build the huge eight-story factory that was to
+take its place. But it was not to see this demolition that the crowd was
+gathered, filling the narrow street. It stood, dense, ugly, vulgar,
+stolidly intent, gazing at the windows of the house opposite--a poor
+tenement house.
+
+As they went up the steps they met the young hospital surgeon, going
+back to his ambulance.
+
+"You his folks?" he inquired. "Sorry to tell you so, but I can't do any
+good. Sunstroke, I suppose--may have been something else--but it's
+collapse now, and no mistake. You take charge, sir?" he finished,
+addressing Rand.
+
+Jacob Dolph was lying on his back in the bare front room on the first
+floor. His daughter fell on her knees by his side, and made as though
+she would throw her arms around him; but, looking in his face, she saw
+death quietly coming upon him, and she only bent down and kissed him,
+while her tears wet his brow.
+
+Meanwhile a tall Southerner, with hair halfway down his neck, and
+kindly eyes that moved in unison with his broad gestures, was talking to
+Rand.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"I met the ol' gentleman in the French _cafe_, neah heah," he said, "and
+he was jus' honing to have me come up and see his house, seh--house he
+used to have. Well, I came right along, an' when we got here, sure
+'nough, they's taihin' down that house. Neveh felt so bad in all my
+life, seh. He wasn't expectin' of it, and I 'lowed 'twuz his old home
+like, and he was right hahd hit, fo' a fact. He said to me, 'Good-day,
+seh,' sezee; 'good-day, seh,' he says to me, an' then he starts across
+the street, an' first thing I know, he falls down flat on his face, seh.
+Saw that theah brick an' mortar comin' down, an' fell flat on his face.
+This hyeh pill-man 'lowed 'twuz sunstroke; but a Southern man like I am
+don't need to be told what a gentleman's feelings are when he sees his
+house a-torn down--no, seh. If you ever down oweh way, seh, I'd be right
+glad----"
+
+But Rand had lifted Edith from the floor, for her father would know her
+no more, and had passed out of this world, unconscious of all the
+squalor and ruin about him; and the poor girl was sobbing on his
+shoulder.
+
+He was very tender with her, very sorry for her--but he had never known
+the walls that fell across the way; he was a young man, an artist, with
+a great future before him, and the world was young to him, and she was
+to be his wife.
+
+Still, looking down, he saw that sweetly calm, listening look, that
+makes beautiful the faces of the dead, come over the face of Jacob
+Dolph, as though he, lying there, heard the hammers of the workmen
+breaking down his father's house, brick by brick--and yet the sound
+could no longer jar upon his ear or grieve his gentle spirit.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+  +----------------------------------------------------------+
+  |Transcriber's Note:                                       |
+  |The following printing errors were corrected in this text.|
+  |  Page 82, period added after 'path'.                     |
+  |           (back over his accustomed path. At)            |
+  |  Page 97, period added after 'said'.                     |
+  |           (selling our house," she said.)                |
+  |  Page 99, 'w' in 'why' changed to lower case.            |
+  |           (it was why young Eustace)                     |
+  |  Page 115, repeated 'the' removed.                       |
+  |           (girded at the old woman)                      |
+  +----------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Story of a New York House, by
+Henry Cuyler Bunner
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author	Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org>	2025-10-14 19:54:13 -0700
committer	Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org>	2025-10-14 19:54:13 -0700
commit	e1c26864277718583d18e260f5bc707a28102f08 (patch)
tree	a561c12603171461a154c515b07a550c89746b83