The Ghosts
of their
Ancestors

Chapter One

here was a clanging, brassy melody upon the air. For three-score years since York of the Scarlet Coats died, and the tune "God Save the King" floated for the last time out of tavern door and mansion window, the bells of old St. Paul's had begun their ringing like this:

"Loud and full voiced at eight o'clock sends good cheer abroad," said the tottering sexton. "Softer and softer, as folks turn into bed, and faint and sweet at midnight, when our dear Lord rises with the dawn." Cheery bells full of hope—gentle chimes, as if the holy mother were dreaming of her babe. Joyous, jingling, jangling bells! Through the town their tones drifted, over the thousands of slate-colored roofs, now insistent on the Broadway, now lessening a little in some long winding alley, and then finally dying away on the bare Lispenard Meadows.

Vesey Street—the gentry street—heard them first. The bigwigs in the long ago, with the help of Gracious George, built the church, and who had a better right than their children to its voices. Calm and serene lay Vesey Street with its rows of leafing elms. Over the dim confusion of architectural forms slipped the moonlight in silver ribbons, seeming to make sport of the grave, smug faces of the antiquated domiciles. Like a line of deserted dowagers waiting for some recalcitrant Sir Roger de Coverley, they stood scowling at one another. No longer linkboys and running footmen stuck brave lights into the well-painted extinguishers at each doorstep. No longer fashion fluttered to their gates. The gallants who had been wont to pass them with, "Lud! what a pretty house!" were most of them asleep now on the green breast of mother England, forgetful of that wide thoroughfare, which had never reckoned life without them.

Into the parlor of Knickerbocker House, dubbed Knickerbocker Mansion some years after the bibulous Sir William Howe had laid down his sceptre as ruler of the town, the chorus of bells crashed.

"What a dastardly noise!" cried Jonathan Knickerbocker, throwing his newspaper over his head. "Can this Easter time never be kept without an infernal bell bombilation? I shall call a meeting of the vestry—that idiot Jenkins should be kept at home!" The head of the Knickerbocker family turned irately in his chair and glared at his daughters. Three timid pairs of blinking eyes were raised from short sacks in answer to his challenge, then lowered again over the wool. The fourth and fairest daughter of the house, seated on the walnut sofa in the bow-window, gave no heed to his vehemence but a suppressed sigh. With a final snort the Gazette was picked up again. The Easter melody was waning.

The Knickerbocker parlor—not the state parlor, which had long been closed—was a dismal place—so large that four candles and one Rumford lamp made but a patch of brightness in the gloom. Most of the furniture was ponderous and ugly, with two or three alien little chairs that looked as if they might once have belonged to some light-hearted lover of the Louis. On the almost barren chimney-piece stood a pair of tall nankeen beakers, sepulchrally reminiscent of buried Chinese years. Along the walls hung a score of mediocre portraits, the handiwork of the usurious limner John Watson and his compatriot Hessilius. Spans of sunlit days had stolen every tinge of carmine from their immobile and woodeny faces, leaving them the drab color of time, in keeping with the room.

Above the cornice, near the sofa where Patricia Knickerbocker sat, hung an empty frame. The portrait it contained had been banished to the attic while her three eldest sisters were still in Wellington pantalets.

"The woman looks like a Jezebel," Jonathan had sputtered. "Och! that leering smile." He tried to blot from his mind the stray leaves he knew of her story, and the disturbing thought that she was of his blood. "She shall not remain with the likenesses of my ancestors!" he had told his sisters, who were over from Goby House.

When this descendant of the Knickerbockers spoke of his progenitors he always held his head a trifle more erect, and puffed out his pompous figure, though, strange to relate, like many another worthy man of a later day having the same foible, he knew very little about them. Of course he could have told you that the lady over the east bookcase, wearing a blue tucker and holding a spray of milk-weed in her hand, was his Aunt Jane; and that his father was a noted New York judge, the pride of three circuits. Or if his digression were extended, there was his trump card, one of the first American Knickerbockers, labelled "The Friend of Lord Cornbury!" These were the firmest rocks in his family history, to which he could climb in safety, thence to look down with scorn on those unfortunates beneath his social eminence. He was a Knickerbocker, of Knickerbocker Mansion, Vesey Street, and a member of one of the oldest families in York and America.

Patricia, smiling little Patricia, rummaging one day among the dust-bins under the eaves, had found the banished portrait. Juma, the gray-wooled negro, a comparatively new member of the Knickerbocker household, who had appointed himself her body-servant ever since his arrival at the mansion, was with her.

A faithful slave to old Miss Johnstone of Crown Street, Juma had been forced by his mistress's death into new service. He was a picture of ebonized urbanity, a good specimen of the vanished race of Gotham blacks, gentler in manners and clearer in speech than their Southern cousins. In his youth he had been sent to one Jean Toussaint of Elizabethtown to learn the art of hair-dressing. He could impart much knowledge of wigs to a wigless age, and talked in a grandiloquent fashion of Spencers, Albemarles, and Lavants. Many a beau peruke and macaroni toupee his lithe fingers curled and sprinkled with sweet flower-water. The voices of the fine people who were his visitors made constant music in his memory, and his tongue was ever ready with anecdotes of wizened beauties and uncrowned cavaliers.

Juma was faithful to the period of his greatest splendor. Deep in his heart he despised the home to which freedom and poverty had led him after the demise of his protectress. "Gold braid on company coat and silk stockings done ravel out in dese days. Knickerbockers talk quality, but dey ain't got quality mannahs—Missy Patsy is de only one of dem with tone."

He loved to listen to the girl as she tripped through the great rooms, humming softly some air from Lennet's "London Song-Book"—one of the relics of his "ole Miss." Patricia always sang on the days when her sisters were visiting their aunts on the bluff. Juma loved her, and during his five years' residence in the family had many times taken her youthful mind in train with quaint eighteenth-century maxims and fetiches.

"De wise miss drop her fan when she enters de ballroom," he would say. "Den she gets de men on der knees from de start."

"I wish I were invited to balls," Patricia sighed. "The Kings and Grahams give one or two every year, but father never notices them."

"Well, you jes' know how to behave," he chuckled. "Doan' yo' forget de tricks your Uncle Juma taught yo'."

When the two had met in the attic that April day, Juma's spirits were as ebullient as usual.

"How lovely she is, Juma! See, there is a blush on each cheek. Her pink brocade makes me think of a rose dancing in the wind."

Patricia stared into the canvas face before her and the lips seemed to curve themselves into the shadow of a smile. "I know you were the fairest one of us," she whispered, "the fairest and the best."

"Dat's the real quality way of holding the head," vouchsafed Juma. "I'se pow'ful 'clined to think she looks like yo', missy." And then they had laughed, shut away with maimed chairs, tired spinets, and other voiceless things, glad to have escaped from Knickerbocker frowns.

It was a dismal household, that of the old mansion—the master absorbed in his passion for wealth and worship of family; the three eldest daughters, who might once have had some individuality but now were moulded in the form of their father. "Callow old maids," any individual of the lower ranks of York would have dubbed them. They wore little bunches of sedate curls over each ear, and dressed in sombre, genteel colors proper to their exalted rank. On the first day of the week they dozed through a long sermon; on its last day they simpered politely at the Whist Club. Fears of broken jelly-moulds or of the romping Patricia's next prank were the only disturbers of the tranquillity of their lives. Jonathan Knickerbocker was their one Almighty Mirror. When he labelled Mrs. Scruggins, the draper's niece, a person not fit to associate with, their stiff gowns obediently gave forth hisses at the said lady. When he prated of his father's shrewdness, they nodded discreet approval; and at the mere mention of the loyal friend of Lord Cornbury, they bobbed like grass before a gale.

Patricia's impressionable temperament was saved by Juma's advent from the sirocco of dulness that wafted her sisters over the lake of years. His "ole Miss," a looker on at the "Court of Florizel," had unconsciously taught him to imbibe the atmosphere surrounding the Graces. A democracy could not spoil her elegance, for Chesterfield's warning was ever before her eyes. She who copied the footsteps of Baccelli, adored her Sterne and Beattie, and though her eyes grew dim, never let romance pass her window unmolested, had left her impress upon the mind of the faithful servitor. Life to him was a gay-colored picture-book, brighter perhaps because he could not read the printed page. All his maids were cherry-ribboned and belaced; all his roystering sparks clinked gilded canakins. Love was ever smiling on them! For wellnigh half a century he had listened to tales of the gay god as he bound one romance-loving woman's silken tresses. Small wonder that he thought the urchin ruled the world!

When the bells rested their brassy throats for the first time that night, and Jonathan Knickerbocker could take up his West Indies accounts undisturbed, giving his daughters freedom to doze in peace, "Miss Patsy" stole on tiptoe from the room. She wanted to be alone. Juma, ambling through the dim hall to his pantry, caught sight of her fluttering garments, but did not speak. Only an hour or two before, he had placed in the chamber where she slept a bunch of arbutus which young Sheridan, the organist, had given into his keeping. The wild, sweet-scented flower grew in but one spot near the town—an island in the centre of the Woodbridge Swamp, where Captain Kidd in a freak of fancy had planted it over the body of a comrade, tradition said, and no one ever disputed the story. To reach it, even the most sure-footed ran the danger of being caught in the bog.

Patricia wondered as she mounted the stairs how her lover had been able to come with her gift unseen. The watching negro smiled sadly and shook his head when the last bit of her garment disappeared over the staircase like a white moth moving treeward.

Oh, how terrible it was never to see him in her father's house! Never to have seen him alone, only that one time, after twilight service, when she had stolen a meeting at the Battery, while her family were taking their Sabbath-day ride up the Bowery Road!

The old vehicle held but six, and as the aunts always rode home with their brother, Patricia was left to the escort of Juma, custodian of the prayer-books. By the clump of protecting boxwood at the end of the Marine Parade she had come upon him. The sea held his eyes until there was no mistaking the footsteps. Her approaching crinoline made soft little rustles, as if entreating him to leave his musings. Her body-guard's shuffles, too, were unmistakable. Like some young potentate her lover turned about, describing an elaborate bow with his white castor. The very picture of starched tranquillity he looked, but underneath the blue hammer-tail coat a heart was beating wildly, as she, made wise by love, knew well—for her own was its echo.

There was a brief moment while she watched the color mount to his sun-bronzed face, the blue eyes glow, the strong form quiver ever so slightly. Then her lips framed "Richard"—the key of the universe. "Patricia!" came the answer.

Juma, from his discreet distance, heard her compared to the magnolia worn on the lapel of the coat she admired so much. In her white and fragrant young womanhood she was like it from sheer inaccessibility. The flower expressed her character and position—Patricia Knickerbocker, a daughter of the autocrat of York. When he mentioned her father's name the girl shivered. An invisible wall seemed to rise between them. Then the feeling died away. Her soul grew wider awake each moment her lover gazed at her.

As he drew her closer to him Juma's figure in the background bent over a flower in the path.

"Let 'em kiss," he mumbled. "Ole Miss used to say de female dat never lub am a sour pippin, and dere's enough ter start a vinegar press in dis family."

"You'll not permit them to take you away from me? You will be mine forever and ever?" said the youth.

A sigh of happiness answered him.

"I know I'm poor, Patricia, and my family can never equal yours."

"Don't!" she whispered. "What does it matter, what does anything matter—only that I'm here with you!"

"See the night creeping in off there, dear heart. It holds nothing more wonderful than this moment."

"How black the water looks," she faltered.

"I will go to your father and demand your hand." She was trembling.

"You do not know what a Knickerbocker is—an awful creature with a hundred gorgon heads constantly leering and preaching; detecting flaws in other people's families. One head will tell you that you play the organ in St. Paul's, and another may see that your coat is a trifle worn. We're not the only clan of them in the land."

"We must not fear them—not to-night, when love is filling the world."

"Only one of my grandmothers married for love, and she was thought to be disgraced."

"You will follow her?" he asked, a catch in his voice.

Juma was signalling for them to part, and on his forehead she kissed "I will!"

Now alone on the dark staircase she meditated on his words. When that malignant crone, Gossip, started on her round, what would happen?

Suddenly the voice of her father adding up the indigo cargo fell upon her ears. He would end their happiness; a man powerful enough to kill the spirit of Easter in his home could do anything. Creeping through the narrow passage she came to the great north balcony window. There she paused and raised her eyes to the dome of the night. Long lines of stars were strung across the meadows of heaven. The dials of the world seemed suddenly stilled. Below the infinite peace a budding landscape sloped gently into a placid sea. Myriads of little lights in humble cots blinked an answer to the fires above. Leaning on the broad window-seat of blackened Jersey oak she tried to descry his dwelling, but the tree-tops shut it away.

A few hours before, he had asked her to be his wife, and she, a Knickerbocker, had thrilled at his words. Like a tide the memory of his love swept back to her. Then on its surges came the stupor of desolation. The gates of Knickerbocker pride were strong. A second David might fail to force them. All her dreams were fantasies, with no bearing upon reality. All her hopes were sunbeams vanquished by one dark shadow. To her distorted imagination her family seemed accursed. Every face bore some mark of it, even the row of dim portraits in the room below. But, ah! there was one, a face turned to the rafters of the attic, whose bright eyes and red lips knew love untinctured by the dross of the world. In the darkness it rose before her strangely insistent. As in a time-blurred mirror she looked and saw herself, and the feeling, though uncanny, gave her a sense of comfort.

A wind began to sigh in the garden. Through the boxwood maze and barren urns it swept Smiling Flora, sleeping Endymion, and all the fabulous court that had stood there years before the coming of the Knickerbockers grew more humanly colored as the moon passed behind a cloud. Since York had become a queenly city and the wonder of the western world, mute and peacefully passive they had watched the seasons come and go. Countless lovers must have known them. She saw back into the springs, the flower times. Sedan chairs and swaying post-chaises had borne these dainty lovers all away. Oh, strange, sweet thought! She, too, would have to go—with him.

Down by the pale and shivering elms the iron bar of the gate clicked. Dark figures were entering the garden. The gods and goddesses faded before her eyes. No one visited them on Easter eve. Her father did not keep the season.

She steadied her knees on the slippery seat. The spray of arbutus she was wearing over her heart cut her hands as she pressed closer to the pane.

"My aunts! they know!" she whispered to herself.

Terror of her father—of them all—swept over her, chilling the very recesses of her being. As the habiliments of her august relatives became more distinct, she grew calmer. With slow and measured tread they walked, while to their right minced Betty, a small abigail, swaying a lantern.

"It is the march of pride coming to crush me!" she cried.

Then the bells began to peal again—"Pride—pride" they seemed to mock. "Love must die for pride!"

Chapter Two

n the wreck of many social thrones—for the town named after the Duke of York passed through numerous transitions the world knows nothing of—Patricia's aunt, Miss Georgina Knickerbocker, had elected to raise her sceptre. "I rule by right" was her dictum. "My family is old; few families are older or more aristocratic. The famous Judge Josiah Knickerbocker was my father, and my brother Jonathan owns Knickerbocker Mansion, the finest dwelling in York."

No potentate ever wore a crown more blissfully than Miss Georgina. Tall, beak-nosed, gruff-voiced she was, always with her younger sister, Miss Julie, in tow and under good control—Miss Julie, who smirked and copied her when family pride was concerned, though she had her own misgivings and opinions on other matters. Miss Julie even had emotions and sentimentalities of her own, which she struggled to keep bottled up before her relatives and the world, uncovering them only in secret, as she did her jasmine scent and pomatum pot.

The little woman's real name was Jerusalem, bestowed upon her at a time when the judge her father's religious spirit was in its blossoming period. One great grief of her life was that she had given way to wickedness and changed this outlandish cognomen. She often brought the subject up before Dr. Slumnus, as he stopped in for a social game of chess. "Indeed, Miss Julie," he would answer soothingly, "the name is so Christian that it sounds heathenish. No well-conducted female should presume to bear the name of the holy city. Nay, ma'am, it would have come perilously near sacrilege to retain it!"

Thus assured, Miss Julie would give herself over to the excitement of endeavoring to queen a pawn. Later, in her chamber, ready to blow out her candle, alone with the crowd of memories waiting to conduct her to the land of dreams, she shuddered. Her father's stern eyes would glare at her reproachfully; sometimes she would try to mock at them, remembering the words of Dr. Slumnus—but oftener a tear or two trickled down her faded cheeks and stained the strings of her nightcap.

Together these two elderly Knickerbockers were unweary in their efforts to interpret high life to their circle. Their family pride was more expansive than their brother Jonathan's. He talked chiefly of his Aunt Jane, the milk-weed lady, of his renowned father, and of that dim shade of a Knickerbocker who was the friend of Lord Cornbury. Miss Georgina had climbed higher into her hereditary tree. She prated of a great-uncle who married a niece of Lord Campbell—a cousin underscored in her records as Laird of Barula—the grand Makemies, the high-stepping Gabies, and the learned Gobies. And, as for Aunt Jane, why, she was dowered with a larger chest of silver than any Jersey woman of her day. Those records of her paduasoys and alamodes would have sickened a Custis; and her love-affairs!—the wench herself might have been astounded at hearing that she once refused a patroon of Rensselaerswyck and a president of the College of New Jersey.

Quietly Miss Julie would sit and listen to her sister, but, once away from her, she would assume what she believed to be the Almack manner, call imagination to her aid, and discourse to her long-suffering acquaintance. Aunt Jane's chest of plate became a veritable crown furgeon laden with tasters, posset cups, punch-bowls, muffineers, and salvers of priceless and unique patterns. Her gowns would have done credit to a Drury Lane queen. The patroon of Rensselaerswyck drank a flask of camphor to forget his Jane. Scores of suitors died of lacerated hearts for her dear sake, and the president of the College of New Jersey vowed he could not hear the word love spoken in his presence, not even in his young gentlemen's conjugations.

It was the arrival, from the vulgarian camp of Trenton, of one Mrs. Snograss that first brought interference with the sway of these gentle ladies. That year, in which Richard Sheridan first played the organ in St. Paul's and Mrs. Snograss elected to reside in York, proved, indeed, an eventful one for the community. The genteel portion of Gotham society, like the family of the Vicar of Wakefield, was wont to lead a peaceful life. Most of its adventures befell it by its own fireside, or consisted of migrations from the blue bed to the brown. Or there was the yearly glimpse of the Branch, or Schooley's Mountain, and on rare occasions venturesome parents took their offspring to Hobuck for a fortnight—especially if they were marriageable daughters.

The Misses Knickerbocker had visited the latter place in its transition period. There Georgina purchased her Davenport tea-service for a song, and was fond of telling of the fact. And Julie treasured a sweeter memory of the green Elysium—a dried-up flower of memory, but once a rose, nevertheless, carefully guarded from the world, hidden indeed from herself most of the time.

No one knew exactly how it began—that social war over the two capitals of Trenton and York. Black "Rushingbeau," the York pronunciation for Mrs. Snograss's serving-man, Rochambeau, meeting Juma at the morning market in the centre of the green, had dubbed the Knickerbocker chickens "spinkle-shanked fowls."

"Wot you know 'bout hens in yo' small 'count town!" retorted the loyal champion of York. Like a mushroom the story grew, and spread from Vesey Street kitchens into sitting-rooms and parlors. Of course the aspersive attitude toward York was that of Mrs. Snograss reflected in Rochambeau.

"To think that a resident of Trenton, a city named after a mere merchant, should have the effrontery to speak disparagingly of our ancient capital!" cried Mrs. Rumbell, mother-in-law of Dr. Slumnus. "These are degenerate times, alack! What would poor Roberta Johnstone say if she were here? Let me see how many royal governors have lived amongst us."

Mrs. Rumbell counted on her slim, old fingers. The Knickerbocker ladies, who lacked the Rumbell knowledge of their city's past, brought all their brightest family banners to the fray.

"Lud," said Miss Georgina, and Miss Julie promptly echoed her, "I have never even visited the spot where the Snograss woman came from; I know that the Comte de Survilliers, or plain Mr. Bonaparte, as he prefers to be called, when he failed to secure Knickerbocker Mansion for a residence decided to repair thither. Poor man, he must have languished!" she added with a final snort.

"And he was such a showy man too!" sighed her sister.

Mrs. Snograss, learning of the ferment her servant had aroused, sagaciously remarked: "Let them talk; their chatter is a lecture to the wise; as for capitals, everybody knows, counting out the inhabitants of this mud-hole, that Trenton came near being the capital of the whole country!"

When this bombastic statement was hurled at Vesey Street, it made as much of a sensation as the late news from Cherubusco. Most of the Government officers were classed with the Snograss widow by the affronted Gothamites, and Mrs. Rumbell said openly that if she had her life to live over England should have welcomed her when the cross of St. George was torn down from the courthouse flag-staff.

The winter died and still there was no cessation of hostilities. The choir-room of St. Paul's, where the ladies of the Bengal mission met and listened to itinerant lecturers, or sewed garments for the needy, was the usual field for battle. When Mrs. Snograss arrived late one day for Mr. Timbuckey's talk on the piety of George Crabbe, she was unfortunately ushered to Miss Georgina Knickerbocker's bench. That haughty lady, the enemy being comfortably ensconced, arose and stalked over to Mrs. Rumbell's seat, followed by her sister and the Mansion girls, so that the bustle ensuing spoke to everybody of what was taking place. Patricia smiled a mortified, half-sad smile at Mrs. Snograss, but the Trentonian only accepted it as additional insult.

A month later Mrs. Rumbell fainted when her sewing-chair was placed by the disturber of her peace. She was one of the most violent in her aversion to the newcomer. The Rev. Samuel Slumnus shook his fat finger at his mother-in-law, as the crafty dowager, enjoying the excitement created by her feigned swoon, could see with her eyes half-opened. Such conduct was not to be borne. "Rebellion in my own family," fumed the perplexed dominie. "I must put a stop to it at once." In his agitation he clasped and unclasped his hands and caressed his sparse locks. When a hush fell at last upon the room, he was seen mounting the choir-platform.

"The meeting of the Easter Guild will be held this year at the residence of Mrs. Snograss," he sputtered. For a full minute silence reigned—then came a clangor of tongues. "He is almost as red in the face as if he choked on the prune-pits in the Knickerbocker fruit-cake," some irreverent one whispered. It was said afterward that Mrs. Snograss had put a five-dollar bill in the mission-box as she left the choir-room that morning—a performance not without effect. A few parishioners were even heard to lament the fact that Dr. Slumnus's family was not of the same standing as his wife's. Miss Georgina declared privately to her sister that any one who went to the Snograss woman's should never darken the door of Goby House again. But when the day preceding Easter came, and she heard from Julie of the delight the town was taking in the prospect of viewing the much-talked of Snograss interior, one venturesome housekeeper having even asserted that she intended going up to the chambers, Miss Georgina, wild with jealousy, decided to carry the war into the enemy's country.

As the night before that day of days died away and clarion cocks made the young dawn vocal, eager hands drew back the curtains of four-posters. Above the green-gray of spring-time streets and lanes, the sentinel tree-tops pointed to the translucent blue of a smiling sky. "Day's fair and all's well!" bawled the watch as they blew out their smoking lights. Voices cracked and rusted by sleep echoed the cry in the depths of soft, chintz-bound coverlets. "My best ferrandine coat," mumbled Miss Georgina to herself, in her delight over a pleasing picture of her entrance into the Snograss parlor. She let the bolster slip to the floor and precipitated her head against the carved laurel leaves of the top-board, all unconsciously. Bright were the visions of cherished falafals and gewgaws that came to the members of the Easter Guild as they parted company with Morpheus.

Mrs. Rumbell, looking from a casement in the rectory, felt the sweetness of the season fall upon her. That patch of fresh sky, suggestive of new life and a swift-footed May, was more to her than a volley of sermons. The snow still lay on hill and heath. Father Winter, neglectful of one of his worlds, was sporting among the northern mountains. Oh, the peace of it! Why should she care if the wealthy Mrs. Snograss had come to York with her Trenton innovations? All her past grievances were forgotten. In her blissful state she felt she could even go the length of sewing whalebone in her second-best silk skirt to conform to the ridiculous fashion of stiffened skirts, introduced by that lady. Everything was changing! What could she, frail and old, gain by wrestling with the times? Across the way, torn landscape shades blinded the windows of Johnstone House. Roberta was dead and her home awaited a new tenant. Beyond lay the Bowling Green, the background of her long life—witness to all the parts the stage-master, Fate, had dealt out to her. Joys and sorrows marked its worn paths. The city of her golden time was fading away. No halloos of eager huntsmen, ushering in Aurora, greeted her ears as of yore. Only a stray thrush, mistaking the season, trilled liquid notes to his lost mates on a hemlock by her chamber.

Soon the daylight's eyes were wide open, and the door-knockers, across the church-yard, began to glow like miniature suns. Festivals and holidays always brought the housekeepers of York to market, followed by their faithful blacks carrying little wicker baskets. They tripped first to Mrs. Sykes's booth, where one could find all the season's delicacies; then to the wintergreen-berry man, and on through the circle of venders. The mystical joy of Eastertide that flooded the heart of Mrs. Rumbell in the dawn swept through the concourse at the market. The perfume of the southern lilies, the merry cries of hucksters, and the shrill calls of gutter-waifs as they tugged at the skirts of Cock-a-nee-nae Bess were all permeated with it.

The prattling groups about Mrs. Sykes ofttimes broke away to take sly looks across the green at the distant Broadway. "Will she come?" "Shall we extend our hands to her, or just curtesy?" These and many like questions went for naught that morning. The blinds of Snograss house were parted; a turbaned negress came out and washed the entry. Once the opening of a door thrilled the curious dames. But the newcomer was waiting to enjoy her full triumph in the afternoon.

No one looked toward the house on Vesey Street. The Knickerbockers never frequented the market—Jonathan Knickerbocker forbade his family's participation in such vulgar customs.

Georgina did not descend to her sitting-room in as pleasant a humor as was to have been expected from her waking contemplations. She jangled her keys so ominously as she strutted through the halls and pantries that Julie was afraid to venture out. On the day before Easter the little woman was in the habit of stealing away to a by-lane near the market. From a discreet distance she directed her purchases. Children would run for her oranges, the cock-a-nee-nae necessary to her happiness, the boxes of Poppleton sweets and foreign nuts. When they were very swift she would reward them with as much as a dime apiece, so great was the delight she felt in providing a secret store of goodies.

To-day there was no escaping. The market was sold out and the booths carried away before she finished helping her sister tie up the Easter presents. It was a custom among the ladies of York to exchange chaste and useful gifts of their own handiwork. Worsted hat-bag covers and silk mittens were the favorites. Mrs. Rumbell was the one exception to the rule. She still cut up her father's brocade vests into small squares, which she filled with dried rose-geranium leaves and distributed among her acquaintance. Three generations had received these fragrant marks of her regard, and the wits accused her relative of having been a Hollander, addicted to the habit of swarthing himself in superfluous garments. Members of the Scruggins set went further, and hinted maliciously that he was a dealer in old clothes.

Miss Georgina preferred silk mittens, and gave and received no less than a dozen pairs a season. If the ones sent to her were of a color she did not like, she kept them for a year or two, and then packed them off again. This was quite permissible in York. On one occasion Georgina's own mittens were returned to her, but far from being angry, she smiled a grim welcome at them, and remarked to her household that she was glad to see them back for they were at least fashioned of pure silk, and that was more than she could say of many pairs that had been sent to her.

Quaint little ladies of Gothamtown—quaint little old-time figures!—flitting in and out of your ancient homes like shadows!—who cares to-day for your petty gifts, your plans, and jealousies? Only one or two remember you. The walks you trod are vanishing, the water-front gardens where you smiled and languished at sedate gentlemen are mostly hidden 'neath bricks and mortar, and the very buildings you were born in, that stood so long impervious to the rude hands of progress, are being demolished. Those musty garments of Juma's "ole Miss," the friend of Mrs. Rumbell, are now folded in some attic trunk with your own pet vanities. What would the haughty Miss Georgina have said if she could have gazed through the door of the future and seen a Scruggins brat grown into a leader of fashion and carrying her own tortoise fan—sold with other Knickerbocker effects at the last vendue?

If one had loitered in Vesey Street that afternoon before Easter so many years past, one would, no doubt, have joined the stragglers about the gates of Snograss House, and watched the members of St. Paul's Easter Guild mince up Broadway, carefully keeping to the pave. The Flying Swan from Elizabethtown was due at four o'clock, and those timid ladies of the long ago knew that the swaying, swaggering bedlam of a coach would enjoy spattering them as it rattled up to the City Hotel. On the porch of that fine hostelry, where Mr. Clarke once wooed his muse and scores of thirsty throats the wine-cup, stood the host, Davy Juniper, whose very name was synonymous with cheer. Through the half-opened door came loud gusts of unceremonious laughter as the portly innkeeper, curveting on tiptoe, swung his garland of Easter green over the sign-board. Davy's eyes were riveted on the flashing colors of feminine gear across the street. Now Mrs. Rumbell tottered by and bobbed to him; now a bevy of the Scruggins set passed the house opposite, and gazed in, like forbidden Peris at the door of Paradise. Sometimes the street was covered with pedestrians. The quality abroad affected the good man's spirits. He began to pipe some merry verses from a tap-room ditty: