The Emporia news. [volume] (Emporia, Kan.) 1859-1881, 1879-02-07
"REMINISCENCES OF OLD NEW YORK.

Observation-Disclosures We S44O NE w 4Ohhs
Two of the pleasantest papers in the
Talisman ]1827-9] are "SOme Reminis-
cences of New York, !" in which the writ
er, playfully exaggerating its metropOi-
tan character, says: "a learned and un-
travelled medical friend of mine who has
dwelt in New York for fifty years, dur
ing a considerable part of which was
wandering in various countries, has an
ticipated me in seeing even ything went
abroad to see except Mrs. Siddons, Ma
dame Catalina, Mount Etna, and st. Pc
ter's." His father, he says, used to show
him when he was boy, which was at
the beginning of the century, the spot on
the North River just above the Barclay
street ferry, where Jonathan Edwards,
when temporary pastor OF the Wall street
church, used to pace the solitary pebbly
shore-a fact which adds a new and
striking figure to the old associations of
the city. But with singular inaccuracy,
the writer, who was evidently born
New Yorker, says that as Edwards
walked there "fell upon his ear the muir
muFs of that ocean which is the symbol
of eternity and power" But even iona
than Edwards could hardly have heard
upon the shores of the Hudson the roar
of the ocean. There was little church
back of the John street Methodist chapel
where Whitefeld preached. General
OglethOrpe, on his philanthropic way to
Georgia, lived in Stone street; and Gen.
Wolfe for time had his headquarters
at the corner of Broadway, looking upon
the Battery. The pleasant gossip de-
scribes the Inauguration of Washington
at the old city hall in Wall street, where
the tres sury building now stands, com
handing a view of the wide and winding
avenue of Broad street," and adds-with
IA strong side light upon the origin of the
name of our square, even if the Tesolu-
ton of the Aldermen had not been dis
covered, for the bank was probably
named from DIR. Franklin-that after his
Inauguration Washington held an after
noon levee, but Il forget whether it was
held at the fine old house at the head of
Pearl street, occupied by the late Frank
lin bank, or the other spacious mansion
in Broadway, now Bunker's Hotel"
The writer celebrates host of famous
people who lived for q longer or shorter
time in New York, and some wholly do
mestic heroes, like the Hewletts, dane
ing masters for four generations, and
contemporaries of the successive Yes
trises, the first Vestris having taught the
arst Hewlett. They taught dancing to
| the bellies who captivated the members
| of the first congress, and tried to teach
some of the MEMBERS" Roger Sherman,
perhaps, or Fisher Ames, or Benson, or
BOudinOt, or James Madison, Jr. But
the French revolution threw new men,
new dancing masters, new manners and
new steps upon our shores, and the dap
per legs and Silken hose of the last of the
Hewletts pirouetted and pigeOn-winged
out of fashion and history: The Duke
of Clarence skated on the Collect Pond,
where the old arsenal in Franklin street
stands, and his Royal Highness fell into
hole. The future William the Fourth
preferred our oysters also to the copper
favored productions of the British Chan
nell"
There are graphic sketches of the
| emigre, and among them of Pierre de
Landais, who fought under Paul Jones,
and who died after long lite of genteel
poverty. His income was one hundred
and five dollars, which, as he said, gave
him just two dollars a week for his liv-
ing, and an odd dollar for charity at the
end of the year. His head-Stone stood
| in the church yard of St. Patrick's Ca
| thedral, and his French epitaph stated
that he disappeared in June, 1918, aged
eighty-seven years. But no personal
| "reminiscences were richer than those
| of fine mansion at the corner of Charl-
ton and Varick streets, built in the mid
die of the last century by "a gallant Brit
ish officer" where John Adams lived as
Vice President during the time that con-
gress sat in New York, and where Aaron
Burr during the whole of his Vice Pres
idency kept up an elegant hospitality.
1t was in this house, doubtless, that Burr
gave breakfast to Volney, which Burr's
nephew, the late Judge Edwards, desert
bed to the Easy Chair as the most brill
| liant and 6o1i nrhX f1l ~ l.
ry. Here at an earlier day Lord Amherst
had sat at dinner; and Sands, if he be
| the writer, describes later dinner given
by Vice President Adams, who sat in the
centre of the table ''in full dress, with
his bag and solitaire, his hair fFizzed out
each side of his face as you see in Staurt's
older pictures of him." Baron Steuben
was at his right; Mr.. Jefferson, fresh
| from France, in red waist coat and
breeches, at his left. Mrs Adams sat
opposite, with the Count du Monsters,
the French minister, in red-heeled shoes
and ear rings, on one side, and the learn
ed formal Dutch envoy, Van Birkel, on
the other. There, too, sat Chancellor
Livingston, so deaf that it was hard to
talk with him, but so full of wit and elo-
! quence and information that his deafness
was forgotten.
The Easy Chair is itself becoming the
gossip, but it remembers that the mass
of Its readers are not New Workers, and
know nothing of Charlton and Varick
streets, of Richmond Hill, or the Collect.
But they do know the famous names
which 1t has recalled, and it is the asso-
citation of such names with city that
much of its charm for the imagination
lies. 1t was the fate of New York to be
in the hands of the British during the
Resolution, and the Tory element was
strong. Its great historic interest in our
heroic period Is therefore less than that
of Boston 1t has no tales like those OF
Paul Revere and the march to Lexing.
ton and Concord, no tea ships with Sam
Adams and his Mohawks, no lurid spec
tacle of Bunker Hill rattle. But it was
always metropolitan. The stranger took
to it kindly, and the variety of its life.
Of its characters, and of its local incident,
as they appear in some such chronicle as
that we have recalled, invests it with &
charm which '+palatial stores" and eleva-
ted railroads can not destrOy.-EdItor'
Easy Chair, in Harper's Magazine for