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THE UNIVERSITY OF 
 
 NORTH CAROLINA 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 THE WILMER COLLECTION 
 
 OF CIVIL WAR NOVELS 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 RICHARD H. WILMER, JR. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2009 with funding from 
 
 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/storyofnewyorkhoOObunn 
 
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 
 
CorVRIGHT, 1887, BY 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS. 
 
 Press of J. J. Little & Co. 
 Astor Place, New York. 
 
TO 
 
 A. L. B. 
 
 531613 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Then out of the door came Jacob Dolph . Frontispiece 
 
 PAGE 
 
 "/ thiunped him " . . . . . . . -14 
 
 " It's a monstrous great place for a country-house, 
 
 Mr. Dolph'' i8 
 
 There was only one idea, and that was flight . . 28 
 
 The light flickered o?i the top of the church spire . 32 
 
 (Bji F. Hopkinson Smith.) 
 
 They hesitated a second, looking at the great arm chair yj 
 
 " Stay there, sir — you, sir, you, Jacob Dolph .' " . . 41 
 
 After awhile he began to take timorous strolls . . 46 
 
vi List of IllMstrations. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Jacob Dolph the elder * ^ * stood on his hearth rug . 51 
 
 And thc7i he marched off to bed by himself, suffering no 
 
 one to go with him . . . . . . -55 
 
 /;/ qtiict morning hours * * -^^ when his daughter sat at 
 
 his feet ......... 77 
 
 " Mons'us gra7t di?t7ieh, seh f" ..... 79 
 
 "A/l of a suddoi, 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 hadji't been for the Dolphs, devil the rattle 
 
 you'd hai'c had" . . . . . . .120 
 
List of Illustrations, vii 
 
 PAGE 
 
 '' I know'd yoii\i take nie in, Misf Dolph,'" he panted 132 
 ''Have you got a nigger here? " . , . . .133 
 Abrain Van Riper makes a business couDnunication . 141 
 And so she set his necktie right, and he went . -144 
 
 Looking on his face, she saw death quietly coining 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 watch- 
 ing 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, lay- 
 ing 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 con- 
 sidered the meridian line of sixty years. He 
 was hale and hearty; his business was flourish- 
 ing ; his boy was turning out all that should 
 
2 The Story of a Nciv York House. 
 
 have been expected of one of the Van Riper 
 stock ; the refracted sunHght from the walls of 
 the stately house occupied by the Cashier of 
 the Bank of the United States lit with a sub- 
 dued 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 w^as 
 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 twen- 
 ty 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 
 
The Story of a Nezu York House. 3 
 
 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 I 
 
 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 
 
4 The Story of a Nciv York House. 
 
 have had you, and made yourself friendly with 
 those people there, I'd have been on the 
 Orphan Asylum Board at this very minute ; 
 ditid 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 Histor- 
 ical 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 petu- 
 lancy 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 
 
TJie Story of a New York House, 5 
 
 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 lay- 
 ing 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 — qa 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 
 
6 TJic Story of a New York House. 
 
 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 them- 
 selves 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 
 
TJie Story of a Nezu York House. j 
 
 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. Ja- 
 cob 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 oi 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 i*:. What dif- 
 ference 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 
 
S The Story of a Nciv York House. 
 
 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 gi aces, 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 pre- 
 sented to our esteemed fellow-citizen and 
 valued associate, Jacob Dolph, on his retire- 
 ment from active business. 
 
 Jacob Dolph at this moment was setting 
 forth from his house in State Street, whose pil- 
 lared 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 — 
 
The Story of a New York House. g 
 
 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 sea- 
 wall, 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 mer- 
 chants who lounged about the city's pleasure- 
 ground, lazily chatting over their business af- 
 fairs. Then they turned up past Bowling 
 
lo The Story of a Neiv York House. 
 
 Green into Broadway, where Mr. Dolph kept 
 on bowing, for half the town was out, taking 
 the fresh morning for marketing and all man- 
 ner 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 Mijwr 
 was built. 
 
 And everybody seemed willing to make ac- 
 quaintance with young Jacob's London-made 
 kerseymere breeches, of a bright canary color, 
 and with his lavender silk coat, and with his 
 little chapemi de Paris. Indeed, young Jacob 
 was quite the most prominent moving spec- 
 tacle 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 
 
The Story of a Nczv York House. 1 1 
 
 between two pairs of wheels. It was not un- 
 like a piece of cheese in color, for it was of a 
 dull and faded grayish-green, like mould, re- 
 lieved by pale-yellow panels and gilt orna- 
 ments. 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 pres- 
 ent to his brother from the Count des Anges, 
 who had himself neglected to make use of his 
 opportunities to embrace the Protestant re- 
 ligion. 
 
 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 peri- 
 wigged 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. 
 
12 The Story of a Neiv York House. 
 
 " Madam Des Angcs," 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 Ro- 
 chelle 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 
 
The Story of a New York House, 1 3 
 
 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 be- 
 coming 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 Mad- 
 am 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. 
 
14 The Story of a Nciu York House. 
 
 *' 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. 
 
 • ■■■- ^\^-AV - .- * 
 
 "We'll see about it," said Mr. Dolph, smil- 
 ing 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 
 
The Story of a New York House. 1 5 
 
 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 fur- 
 ther 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 Broad- 
 way. As he passed the upper end of the Com- 
 mon 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 con- 
 structed 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 fur- 
 ther growth ; he had noticed the long con- 
 verging lines of river-front, with their un- 
 bounded accommodation for wharves and 
 slips. He believed that the day would come 
 —and his own boy might see it — w^hen the 
 
1 6 The Story of a Nciu York House. 
 
 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 gar- 
 den, full of pink and white and blue flowers in 
 orderly, clam-shell-bordered beds. But it was 
 
TJic Story of a Nciv York House. 17 
 
 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 Green- 
 wich 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 Ger- 
 man 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 ? " 
 
8 The Story of a Nciv York House. 
 
 " Yes, Colonel — Mr. Dolph. I've put the 
 window where you want it — that is, my brother 
 Levi did — thoui^h I don't see as you're going to 
 
 'Mm., 
 
 
 i^M 
 
 r ^'^ lif.X; 
 
 
 ;^:^f^w.. -^ 
 
 have much trouble in looking over anything 
 that's likely to come between you and the 
 river." 
 
 Mr. Dolph took the crisp roll of parchment 
 
The Story of a New York House. 19 
 
 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 bauds 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 coun- 
 try-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 
 
20 The Story of a Nciu York House. 
 
 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 mid- 
 day 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 wast- 
 
The Story of a New York House. 21 
 
 ing 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 7ny opinion, sir, 
 Europe is doing well." 
 
 ** You admire the architecture, Mr. Hug- 
 gins ? " asked Mr. Dolph, coming up behind 
 him. Mr. Huggins turned around, slightly dis- 
 concerted, and assumed an amiability of man- 
 ner such as can only be a professional acquire- 
 ment among us poor creatures of human nature. 
 
 " Ah, Mr. Dolph— Colonel, I should say ! I 
 have purposed to do myself the honor of pre- 
 senting myself at your house this afternoon. 
 Colonel Dolph, to inquire if you did not desire 
 to have your peruke /r/j-/^. 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 pos- 
 sibly the madam might be a-staying w^ith you." 
 
 " Madam Des Anges does not honor my 
 
22 The Story of a New York House. 
 
 house this time, Huggins," returned Mr. Dolph, 
 with an indulgent Httle 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 profession- 
 ally for some time, sir, I " 
 
 Mr. Dolph was weary. '' 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 /rz>/^." 
 
 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 
 
The Story of a New York House. 23 
 
 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-pas- 
 ture, 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 Rich- 
 mond 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 mo- 
 ment 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 
 
24 The Story of a New York House. 
 
 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 ap- 
 pears to be at the rate of 25 per cent. Should our city con- 
 tinue 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.^^50 
 
 1810 95,715 i860 882,062 
 
 1815 110,390 1S65 1,102,577 
 
 1820 147,987 1S70 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 
 
The Story of a Nciv York House. 25 
 
 When he had read it through he was a-quiv- 
 ering, 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 thou- 
 sand people in this town, and there'll be seven- 
 ty-five thousand bankrupts if this lunacy goes 
 on. And there's seventy-five thousand mag- 
 gots 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 soci- 
 ety 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 eye- 
 brow to the sun, morning and evening. But it 
 was only a country-house, after all ; and the 
 
26 TJie Story of a Nciu York House. 
 
 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 Col- 
 lege, 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 knowl- 
 edge of French and his ignorance of Dutch, 
 and a way he had with the women, and an- 
 other way he had with the men, and his heirship 
 to old Jacob Dolph 's money and his two houses. 
 
The Story of a New York House. 27 
 For they stayed in the old house until 1822. 
 
 It was a close, hot night in the early sum- 
 mer ; there was a thick, warm mist that turned 
 now and then into a soft rain ; yet every win- 
 dow 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 fright- 
 ened, 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 
 ofifice and shop, there was hasty packing, mad 
 confusion, and wild flight. It was only a ques- 
 tion 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 
 
28 
 
 The Story of a New York House. 
 
 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 
 
 i %MMk:i%'- 
 
 
 %*^ 
 
 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. 
 
 The panic was not only among the poor and 
 ignorant. Merchants were moving their offices, 
 and even the Post Office and the Custom 
 
The Story of a New York House. 29 
 
 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 im- 
 pulse 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 tw^o men came out and awk- 
 wardly bore a plain cofifin 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 
 
30 The Story of a New York House. 
 
 his son and his old negro coachman — this man 
 and his wife the only faithful of all the serv- 
 ants. The young man put his father in the car- 
 riage, 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 dark- 
 ness 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 ve- 
 hicles moved up into Broadway. They trav- 
 elled 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 
 pield— the Potter's Field!" cried the father; 
 'Til thank God — I'll ask no more — I'll ask no 
 
The Story of a Nezv York House. 3 1 
 
 And then he broke down and cried a httle, 
 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 I ody into it ; 
 the old negro gave them a little rouleau of 
 coin, and they went hurriedly away into the 
 night. 
 
 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 say- 
 ing 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 be- 
 gan to read the service for the burial of the 
 
32 The Story of a .Vi-u' York House. 
 
 dead, over the departed sister — and wife and 
 
 mother. He spoke low ; but his voice seemed 
 
TJie Story of a New York House. 33 
 
 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 fear- 
 ful 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 clergy- 
 man 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 farm- 
 houses, bright gleams to east and west, but 
 the silence of the damp summer night hung 
 over the sparse suburbs, and the darkness 
 3 
 
34 The Story of a Nciv York House. 
 
 seemed to grow more intense as they drov^e 
 away from the city. The trees by the road- 
 side 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 begin- 
 ning to look dark, as though a storm were set- 
 tling 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 
 
The Story of a Nciv York House. 35 
 
 steps. Chloe lifted her apron to her face, and 
 turned to lead them up the stair. Her hus- 
 band 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 break- 
 fast-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 
 
The Story of a Nezv York House. 37 
 
 Jacob Dolph said, with something almost Hke 
 testiness in his husky voice: 
 
 *' Jacob, I want to sell the house." 
 
 "Father!" 
 
 ''The old house, I mean; I shall never go 
 back there." 
 
 His son looked at him with a further in- 
 quiry. He felt a sudden new^ apprehension. 
 The father sat back in his easy-chair, drum- 
 ming on the arms with nervous fingers. 
 
38 The Story of a Nezv York House. 
 
 " 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 plain- 
 tively 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, try- 
 ing 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." 
 
The Story of a New York House. 39 
 
 "But do you think it necessary to sell, sir? 
 Could you not hold the house? Are you cer- 
 tain 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 indul- 
 gent 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 
 
40 TJic Story of a New York House. 
 
 duty to him was rather a duty to society, born 
 of an abstract moraHty. Love was given him, 
 not as a right, but as an indulgence. And 
 young Jacob Dolph, in all his grief and anx- 
 iety, was guiltily conscious of a secret thrill of 
 pleasure — natural enough, poor boy I — in his 
 sudden elevation to the full dignity of man- 
 hood, and his father's abdication of the head- 
 ship 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 fash- 
 ion, but to yellow fever, and at the very first of 
 the outbreak had bought a house on the out- 
 skirts of Greenwich Village, and had moved 
 there in unseemly haste. He had also regis- 
 tered 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 white- 
 wash, Mr. Van Riper stood on his stoop and 
 
The Story of a Neiu York House. 41 
 
 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. 
 
 ^li r 
 
 ^' 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- 
 
42 The Story of a New York House. 
 
 day I " (This hurried excursus was in defer- 
 ence 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 peb- 
 bles 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 
 
The Story of a New York House. 43 
 
 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 extrav- 
 agant 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 vent- 
 ured a little way down the path and permit- 
 ted Jacob to come to the gate while they dis- 
 cussed 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 con- 
 ditions of precaution, to see young Jacob the 
 
44 The Story of a Nciu York House. 
 
 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 mo- 
 mentary 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. 
 
 * ^ * 4f -Jfr -x- * 
 
 Life lived itself out at Jacob Dolph's new 
 
The Story of a Nezv York House. 45 
 
 house whether he hked it or not. The furni- 
 ture came up-town, and was somewhat awk- 
 wardly disposed about its new quarters ; and 
 in this unhomehke 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 
 
4-6 The Story of a New York House. 
 
 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 sen- 
 sibilities 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 im- 
 pairment, 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 un- 
 natural, even, if now and then he was whim- 
 sical, 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 
 
The Story of a Nezv York House. 47 
 
 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 in- 
 terest, and then he would fold up his specta- 
 cles 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 ! " 
 
 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 ; 
 
48 The Story of a Nciv York House. 
 
 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 tak- 
 ing 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 win- 
 ter of 1825 brought home the city's wandering 
 children — there were not so many of the wan- 
 dering 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 
 
The Story of a Nciv York House. 49 
 
 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 
 
50 The Story of a New York House. 
 
 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 inter- 
 ested in life than he had looked in four years 
 when he stood on the hearthrug in the draw- 
 ing-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, 
 
The Story of a New York House, 51 
 
 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 '* shad- 
 
 belly " pattern. He wore his high black stock, 
 too, and his snow-white hair was gathered be- 
 hind into a loose peruke. 
 
 The young men wore trousers, or panta- 
 loons, as they mostly called them, strapped un- 
 der their varnished boots. Their coats were 
 
52 TJic Story of a Nciv York House. 
 
 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 agree- 
 able 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 con- 
 sideration for old age. But old Jacob Dolph 
 was not quite at his ease. He did not under- 
 stand the remarkable decorum of the young 
 men. He himself belonged to the age of 
 '' bumpers and no heel taps," and nobody at 
 
The Story of a New York House. 53 
 
 his board to-night seemed to care about drink- 
 ing bumpers, even out of the poor, Httle, new- 
 fangled claret-glasses, that held only a thimble- 
 ful apiece. He had never known a lot of gen- 
 tlemen, 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 si- 
 lent. 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, 
 
54 The Story of a New York House. 
 
 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. Every- 
 body 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 
 
Tlie Story of a Nciv York House. 55 
 
 his " infelicitous absence of mind," 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 sub- 
 urban 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 re- 
 petitions 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 dis- 
 missed 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 del- 
 
56 The Story of a Nczv York House. 
 
 icatcly 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, ex- 
 cept 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 v/here 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 him- 
 self. And the young man, although he was 
 kind and loving, and never negligent in any 
 ofifice 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, 
 
The Story of a New York House. 57 
 
 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 
 
58 TJic Story of a Nczv York House, 
 
 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 ahvays 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 
 
The Story of a New York House, 59 
 
 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, del- 
 icate petals. 
 
 And up toward the west, on a bridlepath 
 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, 
 
6o Tlic Story of a New York House. 
 
 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. 
 
 **•?«•■?«• ^ * -x- 
 
 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, 
 
The Story of a New York House. 6i 
 
 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 fam- 
 ily should make the proposition to the other 
 family. Under the circumstances /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 
 
62 TJie Story of a Neiv York House. 
 
 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 wed- 
 lock, 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 to- 
 ward the company, and to receive the congrat- 
 ulations 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 trou- 
 sers, 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 Story of a Neiv York House. 63 
 
 the time of waiting was filled up with fashion- 
 able 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 heal- 
 ing, 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 ra- 
 bies. For months he had suffered the agonies 
 of mental suspense and of repeated cauterizing 
 of the flesh, and during those months had con- 
 cealed 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 ap- 
 provingly. 
 
 '' 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 experi- 
 
64 The Story of a Nczu York House. 
 
 enced the most annoying solicitude ; and I am 
 informed that she is a person of feeble char- 
 acter." 
 
 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 pro- 
 foundest 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 ori- 
 gin. 
 
 But if Madam Des Anges was surprised to 
 learn that any good thing could come out of 
 any other country than France, there was an- 
 other 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 
 
The Story of a New York House. 65 
 
 Des Anges his father's old friend, Mr. Van 
 Riper. Mr. Van Riper bowed as low as his 
 waistcoat would allow, and courteously ob- 
 served 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 neck- 
 erchief. 
 
 '' 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 un- 
 
66 TJie Story of a New York House, 
 
 obtrusively, 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 al- 
 most 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, ofl"ending 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 ! " 
 
 * V ^V H< -vv % Ht 
 
TJic Story of a Nciv York House. 6^ 
 
 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 travel- 
 ling-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 suprem- 
 acy then and there, with the utmost courtesy, 
 and Madam Des Anges, being great enough to 
 know that she was beaten, sent ofT the victor 
 on the morrow, with his trembling accomplice 
 
68 The Story of a New York House, 
 
 by his side, and wished them boji 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 al- 
 ways 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 sit- 
 ting 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 unani- 
 
The Story of a New York House. 69 
 
 mous 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 them- 
 selves. 
 
 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 hos- 
 pitality 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 com- 
 forts, he was restless and troubled. He took 
 most pleasure in a London almanac, on whose 
 smudgy pages he checked off the days. Let- 
 ters came as often as the steamboat arrived 
 from Albany, and he read them, after his fash- 
 ion. It took him half the week to get through 
 one missive, and by that time another had ar- 
 rived. But I fear he did not make much out 
 
yo The Story of a Xezv York House. 
 
 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 sea- 
 son 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 rev- 
 ellers 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 ! " 
 
72 The Story of a New York House. 
 
 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 possi- 
 ble — 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 man- 
 
The Story of a New York House. 73 
 
 ners, 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 educa- 
 tion in wine." 
 
 Their devotion to the frivolities of fashion 
 
74 The Story of a New York House, 
 
 notwithstanding, the young Dolphs were a lov- 
 ing, 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 so- 
 cial 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 al- 
 ways 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 under- 
 stood 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 pun- 
 ishments and needless restrictions, a generous 
 
TJie Story of a Neiv York House. 75 
 
 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 
 
jd The Story of a Neiv York House. 
 
 hung dimly over him had begun to show Httle 
 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 
 
The Story of a New York House. jj 
 
 is no more for the sufferer, though his heart 
 beat and the breath be warm between his 
 lips. 
 
 When he was bright he was almost like his 
 old self, and these delusive periods came often- 
 est when he met some old friend, or in quiet 
 morning hours when his daughter — so he al- 
 ways called her— sat at his feet in the sunny 
 breakfast-room, and sewed and listened, or per- 
 haps read to him from Scott's latest novel. 
 
 He may have had some faint sub-conscious- 
 ness 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 
 
78 TJlc Story of a New York House. 
 
 medical science of the day, positive, self-satis- 
 fied, 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 other- 
 wise. 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 mak- 
 ing 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 tne huge octagonal cellaret in the 
 dining-room corner. And when all was ready, 
 as like as not he would kiss Aline on the fore- 
 head, and say : 
 
Mons'us gran' dinneh, Seh ! " 
 
The Story of a New York House. 79 
 
 *' I have a headache to-night, my dear, and 
 I think I shall take m}' dinner in my room." 
 
 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 pro- 
 found African dignity: 
 
 " Mons'us gran' dinneh, seh ! 'E fines' din- 
 neh 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. 
 
 *' -£";ircep' 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 
 
8o The Story of a Nciv York House. 
 
 went on, there was little change in the old gen- 
 tleman 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 w^as 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 guardian- 
 ship. 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. 
 
The Story of a New York House. 8 1 
 
 But one afternoon he did not return in time 
 for dinner. Young Jacob was out for his after- 
 noon 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 doc- 
 tor 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 rid- 
 den back together, and after a long examina- 
 tion 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 even- 
 
82 The Story of a Nczv York House. 
 
 ing, 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 c<!>me back over his accustomed path At 
 St. Paul's, the sexton thought that Mr. Dolph 
 had prolonged his walk down the street. Fur- 
 ther 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, w^ho came toward them 
 with more excitement in his mien than a 
 young man of good society often exhibited. 
 
 " I w^as going for a carriage, Dolph," he 
 said : " your father is down there in the Bat- 
 tery 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. 
 
TJie Story of a New York House. 83 
 
 *' 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 acci- 
 dent 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 
 
84 The Story of a Nciv York House. 
 
 well ; I see he wa'n't no disrespectable charac- 
 ter. 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?" 
 
 Young Jacob had no words for the Connec- 
 ticut captain. Waters had arrived, with some- 
 body'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 ev^en- 
 ing 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 ad- 
 visable 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 de- 
 livery of his rounded sentences. 
 
The Story of a New York House. 85 
 
 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 posi- 
 tion. The doctor bled him, and they shifted 
 him as best they could, but he seemed ho 
 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 some- 
 thing 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 
 
86 The Story of a New York House. 
 
 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 ad- 
 dressed 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 hos- 
 pitality 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 : 
 
The Story of a Neiv York House. 87 
 
 '' 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?" de- 
 manded the physician, with amiable severity. 
 '* I had thought that my words would have 
 conveyed " 
 
 " It's all over? " 
 
 *' And bravely over ! " And the doctor nod- 
 ded 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 unper- 
 turbed physician, ''you must not agitate or ex- 
 cite 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 peremp- 
 tory call brought him back. 
 
88 
 
 TJic Story of a Nciv York House. 
 
 "What is it now?" he demanded, impa- 
 tiently. 
 
 The doctor looked at him with a gaze of 
 
 wonder and re- 
 
 proach. 
 
 " It is a male 
 child, sir," he 
 said. 
 
 Jacob Dolph 
 crept up the 
 1' •— stairs on tiptoe. 
 As he paused 
 for a moment 
 i n front of a 
 door at the 
 head, he heard 
 the weak, spas- 
 modic w^ail 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 Story of a New York House. 89 
 
 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 feat- 
 ures. 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 sureh/ as the representative 
 
90 Tlic Story of a New York House. 
 
 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 an- 
 swered, 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." 
 
The Story of a New York House, 91 
 
 Mr. Dolph put his hands in his pockets, 
 strode to the window and back again, and then 
 said, with an uneasy Httle 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 embar- 
 rassed — 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 
 Acridity ; 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 
 
92 The Story of a New York House. 
 
 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 bor- 
 rowed all I ought to borrow. I woiit mort- 
 gage 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 
 
The Story of a Wio York' House. (jj 
 
 good thiiiij; for a man, of course ; Inil collci^v 
 doesn't leach xoii how to hu)' lots in western 
 cities — esj^eci^ill}' when the western cities 
 aren't buih." 
 
 " ColIeL;e teaches yon a i;"oo(l inan\' otlier 
 things, ihouL^li," said \'an Riper. frowninL; 
 shrill 1)', as he put the tijis of liis Ioul;" hn- 
 gers toL^ether; "1 wish I'd had Nonr chance. 
 Dolph. My bo\' shall i;o to C'ohnnhia, that's 
 certain." 
 
 " Your boy?" queried Holph, raisini^ his 
 eyebrows. 
 
 Van Riper smiled, 
 
 *' Yes," he s.iid. " ni)- bo)-. \ o\\ didn't 
 know I had a boy, did yt)u ? lie's nearl)' a 
 year old." 
 
 This made Mr. Jacob Dolph kick at the rut; 
 once more, and scowl a little. 
 
 " I'm afraid I haven't been ver}- neii^hborl)-. 
 Van Riper — "he be^an ; but the other inter- 
 rupted him, smiling good-naturedly. 
 
 "You and I go different wa)s, Dolph." he 
 said. " We're plain folks o\er in (ireenwich 
 Village, and }n)u you're a man of f.ishion." 
 
 Jacob Dolph smiled not very mirthfull)'. 
 
94 The Story of a New York House. 
 
 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 re- 
 plied. 
 
 " 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. 
 
The Story of a Neiv York House. 95 
 
 *' 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 couldnt 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 lark- 
 spur 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 
 
96 Tlic Story of a New York House. 
 
 sifted into their dark, shiny green. The bare 
 rose-bushes were there, with their spikes of 
 thorns, and Httle 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 harm- 
 less 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 flow- 
 ers 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. 
 
The Story of a New York House. 97 
 
 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 
 7 
 
IV. 
 
 JACOB DOLPH got out of the Broadway 
 stage at Bowling Green, followed by Eus- 
 tace Dolph. Eustace Dolph at twenty- 
 two was no more like his father than his patri- 
 cian name was like simple and scriptural Jacob. 
 The elder Dolph was a personable man, cer- 
 tainly ; 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 indi- 
 vidual, you will ever find clearly displayed to 
 
The Story of a Neiv York House. 99 
 
 your eyes the obvious and unmistakable spir- 
 itual reason for and cause of the dandy — and it 
 is always self-assertion pushed beyond the 
 bounds of self-respect. 
 
 Nov/, 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 vel- 
 vet and damask all at once ; yet you might 
 have put all these things on his father, and, 
 although the effect would not have been pleas- 
 ant, you would never have called the elder gen- 
 tleman 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 
 
lOO The Story of a Nezv York House. 
 
 was concerned. But only in size were they 
 alike. There was nothing of the Dolph in 
 Eustace's face. He bore, indeed, a strong re- 
 semblance 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 re- 
 appeared 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 
 
The Story of a New York House. lOi 
 
 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 remem- 
 ber, 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 him- 
 self had certain accomplishments that other 
 Americans had not. He could fldner, for 
 instance. But to have to fldner 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. 
 
I02 The Story of a Nezv York House. 
 
 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 display- 
 ing the powers of an uncommonly fine mem- 
 ory ; 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 ac- 
 
The Story of a New York House. 103 
 
 companiment 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 pros- 
 pect." 
 
 "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 neces- 
 sary, 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 be- 
 lieve 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, 
 
I04 TJic Story of a New York Hoiisc. 
 
 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 — " try- 
 ing 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 opin- 
 ions, 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 
 
The Story of a New York House. 105 
 
 architecture. Four square stone columns up- 
 held 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 twirl- 
 
io6 TJic Story of a New York House. 
 
 ing 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, sugges- 
 tive of Oriental 
 fancies or tropic 
 dreams of spice, to the positively offensive — 
 the latter varieties predominating. 
 
 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 
 
The Story of a New York House. 107 
 
 shirt sleeves, with his straw hat on one side of 
 his head, whistled as he cut into these, reveal- 
 ing 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 in- 
 quirer. 
 
 ** Rubber ! " said the clerk, with a scorn so 
 deep and far beyond expression that the com- 
 bined pride of the Dolphs and the Des Anges 
 wilted into silence for the moment. As they 
 went on toward the rear ofifice, 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 ! " 
 
io8 TJic Story of a New York House. 
 
 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 I" 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. 
 
The Story of a Nezv York House. 109 
 
 Daw ? — see what he doesiit know — how's that, 
 Mr, Daw ? You remember Mr. Daw, Doiph — 
 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 ? " 
 
 Mr. Daw, who looked as though he might 
 have been one hundred years at the business, 
 wheeled around and descended with stiff de- 
 liberation 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 com- 
 ment. " Forty-five years the twenty-ninth of 
 this month, sin 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 nine- 
 
1 1 o The Story of a Nciv York House. 
 
 teen 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 Hke a good New York merchant, 
 hey ? Come along here with me, young man, 
 and I'll see if you're half the man your grand- 
 father was. He hadn't never ought to have 
 given up business, Mr. Dolph. But he was all 
 for pleasurin', 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. 
 
 *' Curigus 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 com- 
 fortable with his feet on the ground. He 
 thought that sort of thing might do for 
 aged people, but he wasn't m^de of cotton- 
 batting." 
 
The Story of a New York House. 1 1 1 
 
 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 ambi- 
 tious 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 per- 
 fection, and fashion in 1854 drew the line pretty 
 sharply at Bleecker Street. Above Bleecker 
 Street the cream of the cream rose to the sur- 
 face ; 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 
 
1 1 2 Tlic Story of a Nciv York House, 
 
 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 un- 
 comfortable. They would not go from St. 
 John's Park, nor from North Moore and Grand 
 Streets. They had not the bourgeois conser- 
 vatism of the Greenwich Villagers, which has 
 held them in a solid phalanx almost to this 
 very day ; but still, in a v/ay, 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 sJiould think ! '* and 
 
 ''Who would ever have thought of such a 
 
The Story of a New York House. 1 1 3 
 
 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 authen- 
 tic 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 sup- 
 pose, 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 epi- 
 gram ; 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 per- 
 sonal interest to only three people — for, after 
 
114 TJie Story of a Nezu York House. 
 
 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 ner- 
 vous 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 temp- 
 tations 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 " cre- 
 ate and preserve in her a spirit of cheerful and 
 hopeful tranquillity, free of unnecessary appre- 
 hension." 
 
 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 re- 
 sponded : " Mrs. Dolph is extremely well, sir, 
 
The Story of a New York House. 1 1 5 
 
 extremely well ! " with a pride which the mor- 
 alists 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. Out- 
 side, this great, wise, eminently proper world 
 that she lived in girded at the 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, wan- 
 dering 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. 
 
I 1 6 The Story of a Nciv York House. 
 
 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 fam- 
 ily than for new ideas, and he did not let him- 
 self fall behind in the march of social progress, 
 even though he was, as he admitted with hu- 
 mility 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 conven- 
 tional 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 
 
The Story of a New York House. 1 1 7 
 
 well-bred youth. With port and sherry and 
 good Bordeaux he had been famiHar 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 ig- 
 norant 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 
 
1 8 The Story of a New York House. 
 
 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 house- 
 hold 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-tem- 
 pered, and, under the most agreeable condi- 
 tions, needed a fight of some sort every six 
 months or so, and liked a bit of trouble in be- 
 tween fights. But a good deal of low and 
 malicious humor came his wa)', 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. 
 
 There had been innuendos and hints and 
 glancing allusions, but no one had dared to 
 make any direct assault of wit, until one even- 
 
The Story of a New York House. 1 1 9 
 
 ing 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 Eus- 
 tace 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 medi- 
 tating 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 
 
1 20 The Story of a Nciu York House. 
 
 be in the company of the young men at the 
 club; and then PhiHp 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." 
 
 After which Mr. Philip Waters sat down and 
 read the evening paper ; and when young Has- 
 kins was able to speak he asked young Dolph's 
 pardon, and got it — at least, a formal assurance 
 that he had it. 
 
'''i'B}Pi '" ' I 
 
The Story of a New York House, 121 
 
 The baby was born in the spring, and every- 
 body said she was the image of her mother. 
 
 There will come a day, it may be, when ad- 
 vancing 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 West- 
 chester. People say that the climate is chang- 
 ing ; 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-for- 
 malize our codes, and steadily eliminate every 
 element of amusement from our amusements, 
 Nature in strict conformity represses her joy- 
 ous 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 
 
122 The Story of a Nczu York House. 
 
 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 Arcu- 
 larius'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 proces- 
 sion 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, 
 
The Story of a Nezv York House. 123 
 
 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 fash- 
 ionables, his Sc/meider-mdidQ 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 ser- 
 vant 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 
 
124 TJic Story of a New York House. 
 
 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 ofifice 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 
 
The Story of a New York House. 125 
 
 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 won- 
 derful 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 falsify- 
 ing 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 
 
126 TJic Story of a New York House, 
 
 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. 
 
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 qualifi- 
 cations and hopeful suppositions and sugges- 
 tions. 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 
 
128 The Story of a Nciu York House, 
 
 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 in- 
 come — 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 
 
The Story of a Nczv York House. 129 
 
 age which the years have not among their gifts. 
 When his Httle 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 
 9 
 
1 30 The Story of a New York House. 
 
 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 sym- 
 pathy. 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. 
 
The Story of a New York House. 131 
 
 Then there came a silence that seemed un- 
 naturally 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 run- 
 ner 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." 
 
 They were close behind him, indeed. In 
 
32 The Story of a Nezv York House. 
 
 half a minute the roar of the mob filled the 
 street with one terrible howl and shriek of 
 
 ^■-'rh 
 
 1 
 
 ^ 
 
 lifr. 
 
 W 
 
 '■'i, 
 
 animal rage, heard high 
 above the tramp of half a thou- 
 sand 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 
 
Have you got a nigger here' 
 
The Story of a New York House. 1 3 3 
 
 great doors, crying for the blood of the help- 
 less and the innocent. 
 
 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 him- 
 self on the stoop, and swung his broad shoul- 
 ders 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 vaga- 
 bond'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 ! " 
 
134 The Story of a New York 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 lis. 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 I " 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 ceil- 
 ing. At the sound of his footsteps she let it 
 fall dimly upon his face. He was thankful 
 that, in that last moment of doubtful quicken- 
 ing, 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 
 
The Story of a New York House. 135 
 
 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 yes- 
 terday. 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 
 
136 The Story of a New York House. 
 
 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 
 
The Story of a New York House. 137 
 
 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 
 
138 The Story of a New York House. 
 
 the vast crowd, and a dull nuirnuir 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. Some- 
 times a narrow stream of men trickled into the 
 half-open doorway; sometimes the great por- 
 tals 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 spetl in 
 all directions to bear to hushed or clamorous 
 ofifices the news that this house or that bank 
 had " suspended payment." '* Busted," the 
 panting messengers said to white-faced mer- 
 chants ; and in the slang of the street was con- 
 veyed 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 specula- 
 tion — and, as hour after hour passed by, fort- 
 unes 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, 
 
TJic Story of a New York House. \ 39 
 
 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 io 
 some stricken bank. Slipping down, he fi>l- 
 lowed 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 wa)' down the street to the flight of 
 steps leading to the tloor of a tall white build- 
 ing, and he crowded liimself up among the 
 pack that was striving to enter. He had even 
 got so far that he ccnild see the line pouring in 
 above his head, when there w.is a sudden ces- 
 sation 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, impassa- 
 ble, between him antl the last of the Dolph 
 fortune. 
 
 One howl and roar, and the crowd turnetl 
 back on itself, and swept him with it. In five 
 minutes a thousand offices knew (^f the great- 
 est failure of the da\' ; and Jacob l)ol[)h was 
 
I40 TJic Story of a Nciv York House. 
 
 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 nar- 
 row street. We may remember this : that he 
 saw his daughter growing to womanhood in 
 that silent and almost deserted house, shoul- 
 dered 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 loneline. s ; that he 
 had had some vision of her young beauty ful- 
 filling its destiny amid sweeter and fairer sur- 
 roundings. 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 
 
TJic Story of a New York House. 141 
 
 gamblers of Wall Street, wherein he lost the 
 last poor remnant of the great Dolph fort- 
 une, giving up with it his father's home for- 
 ever, certain old bread of his fathers casting 
 came back to him upon 
 
 A b r a m V" a n 
 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 under- 
 standing such matters any longer. She winced 
 
142 The Story of a Nczv York House. 
 
 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 transac- 
 tions between her father and himself, conse- 
 quent 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 — pecu- 
 lation. 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 mat- 
 ter with Mr. Dolph. This had lately been 
 done, and Mr. Van Riper found that, deduct- 
 ing charges, and interest on his money at 
 seven per cent., he had made by the trans- 
 action six thousand three hundred and seventy 
 dollars. This sum, he thought, properly be- 
 longed 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 Story of a New York House. 143 
 
 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 Decora- 
 tive 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 Vil- 
 lage, and said to his soul: 
 
 " I think that v/ill 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." 
 
 •jf ^ ^ ^ •» -^ ^ 
 
 A few years ago — shall we say as many as 
 
144 The Story of a New York House. 
 
 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 A\' h i t e 
 hands, so that 
 he might be presentable when he went down 
 town to collect certain moneys due him. 
 
 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 
 
The Story of a New York House. 145 
 
 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 in- 
 terest 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 
 
146 The Story of a New York House, 
 
 Square he tottered, in his slow, old way, to a 
 neat structure which combined modern jaunti- 
 ness with old-time solidity, and which was 
 labelled simply: ''Office of the Van Riper 
 Estate," and there he told the smilingly indul- 
 gent 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 Green- 
 wich 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 de- 
 cadence 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- 
 
The Story of a New York House. 147 
 
 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 cus- 
 tom, after he had stood on the opposite side- 
 walk and gazed at it for a while, to go to 
 a little French cafe a block to the east- 
 ward, and there to take a glass of vermouth 
 gomme—\t 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 every- 
 thing else. 
 
148 TJic Story of a New York House, 
 
 ■Jf -X- 74- ^ 4f -X- Tf 
 
 Late one hot summer afternoon young Rand 
 sat in his studio, working enthusiastically on a 
 " composition." A new school of art had in- 
 vaded New York, and compositions were every- 
 thing, for the moment, whether they composed 
 anything or nothing. He heard a nervous rat- 
 tling 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 down- 
 ward, the old house was crumbling into a gap 
 between two high walls. Already you could 
 see through to where the bright new bricks 
 
The Story of a New York House. 149 
 
 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, gaz- 
 ing 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 am- 
 bulance. 
 
 " 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 daugh- 
 ter 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 half- 
 
150 The Story of a New York House, 
 
 way down his neck, and kindly eyes that 
 moved in unison with his broad gestures, was 
 talking to Rand. 
 
 '' 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 Story of a NcikJ York House. 1 5 1 
 
 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 sorr>' 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 
 
152 The Story of a New York House. 
 
 father's house, brick by brick — and yet the 
 sound could no longer jar upon his ear or 
 grieve his gentle spirit. 
 
 
RARE BOOK 
 COLLECTION 
 
 THE LIBRARY OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 
 NORTH CAROLINA 
 
 AT 
 
 CHAPEL HILL 
 
 Wilmer 
 175