The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-06-02
THE NEW YORK OF LONG AGO.

In 1853 New Amsterdam was a village of 1000 people, with little fort, wind mill and a gallows as it's conspicuous appurtenances. The hamlet of Breuck len was reached from this ruffling metropolis by a sailboat, and if the breeze died out the tide was apt to land the passengers at the Wallabout or GoWanus. Far away among the groves Of Madison square, the misty reaches of Chelsea and the terra incognita of In- wood and Fort Washington, the red man was learning the goose step in the march of progress, attiring himself in the cast-off petticoat brooches of the settlers for the purpose. Occasionally in later times he made forays upon New Amsterdam, but was checked by the stone wall street and it's guards of two bottle-nosed citizens with musketoons and bikes.
 Simple days. those. People worked with their hands. There was no captain of industry except the man who raised more kraut and potatoes than his neighbors. For amusements there were bowls, played on bowling green in a tranquil fashion. Society sat on the front steps and smoked long pipes in the calm of the evening, and watched the fisherman trying to catch his supper at the Battery. No restaurants, no theaters, no stock exchange-but they had the stocks, and the occupant there of was willing to exchange them for even the pillory. especially when little Kiaas and Hendrick trickled his feet with sticks. There was no asphalt. for there were no bicycles and automobiles. When peppery Stuyvesant walked in the Bowery to cool his mind. he never winced at the thought of six-car trains racketing through the atmosphere above his head. The illumination was candles for even Standard oil was not. And the honest burghers assumed no airs. for they did not know that the knicker- bakkers, the humblest folk among them were the fathers of the most resplend- ent four hundred that ever lorded it through the society columns. For there weren't any society columns.
 Spook haunted not only the land, but the waters hereabout. Hell Gate was a fearsome place by night, and the Hudson was a stream of entertainments even before Rip Van Wrinkle slept his sleep on the Catskills. Men were near to the supernatural in those days, al- belt our local supernatural was never a domain of such terror as it was to the New Englander. When the Dutchman saw things that were not there his neighbors sympathized with him. When the Massachusetts colonist. saw things his neighbors took him out and hanged him, and perhaps that was the wisest way
 Tn the changes that occurred when New Amsterdam became New York, taking on the name Of a second-rate cathedral town, of England, the people suffered no more than they suffer to- day, when they change their mayor. They resigned themselves to the inevi- table and went on frying olykoeks and serving schnapps. Nor did they proud lily or loudly assert themselves when they found that they were falling into a minority that left them without poli- tical importance. Adventures came from everywhere. From far away Con- necticut, from placid Philadelphia, even from legendary Georgia. traders and pirates came seeking fortune and pleas ure, and they have been coming ever since. Finding them, too, sometimes. | This easy mixture of all people, of all