University of Virginia Library

3. CHAPTER III.

I have no intention of taking the reader with me through
college, where I remained the usual term of four years.
These four years were not idled away, as sometimes happens,
but were fairly improved. I read all of the New Testament,
in Greek; several of Cicero's Orations; every line of
Horace, Satires and Odes; four books of the Iliad; Tully
de Oratore, throughout; besides paying proper attention to
geography, mathematics, and other of the usual branches.
Moral philosophy, in particular, was closely attended to,
senior year, as well as Astronomy. We had a telescope
that showed us all four of Jupiter's moons. In other respects,
Nassau might be called the seat of learning. One
of our class purchased a second-hand copy of Euripides, in
town, and we had it in college all of six months; though it
was never my good fortune to see it, as the young man who
owned it, was not much disposed to let profane eyes view
his treasure. Nevertheless, I am certain the copy of the
work was in college; and we took good care to let the Yale
men hear of it more than once. I do not believe they ever
saw even the outside of an Euripides. As for the telescope,
I can testify of my own knowledge; having seen the moons
of Jupiter as often as ten times, with my own eyes, aided
by its magnifiers. We had a tutor who was expert among
the stars, and who, it was generally believed, would have
been able to see the ring of Saturn, could he have found the
planet; which, as it turned out, he was unable to do.

My four college years were very happy years. The vacations
came often, and I went home invariably; passing a
day or two with my aunt Legge, in going or coming. The
acquisition of knowledge was always agreeable to me; and
I may say it without vanity, I trust, at this time of life, I
got the third honour of my class. We should have graduated

four, but one of our class was compelled to quit us at
the end of junior year, on account of his health. He was
an unusually hard student, and it was generally admitted
that he would have taken the first honour had he remained.
We were thought to acquit ourselves with credit at the commencement;
although I afterwards heard my grandfather
tell Mr. Worden, that he was of opinion the addresses would
have been more masculine and commendable, had less been
said of the surprising growth, prosperity, and power of the
colonies. He had no objection to the encouragement of a
sound, healthful, patriotic feeling; but to him it appeared
that something more novel might have better pleased the
audience. This may have been true, as all three of us had
something to say on the subject; and it is a proof how much
we thought alike, that our language was almost as closely
assimilated as our ideas.

As for the Powles Hook Ferry, it was an unpleasant place
I will allow; though by the time I was junior I thought
nothing of it. My mother, however, was glad when it was
passed for the last time. I remember the very first words
that escaped her, after she had kissed me on my final return
from college, were, “Well, Heaven be praised, Corny!
you will never again have any occasion to cross that frightful
ferry, now college is completely done with!” My
poor mother little knew how much greater dangers I was
subsequently called on to encounter, in another direction.
Nor was she minutely accurate in her anticipations, since I
have crossed the ferry in question, several times in later life;
the distances not appearing to be as great, of late years, as
they certainly seemed to be in my youth.

It was a feather in a young man's cap to have gone through
college, in 1755, which was the year I graduated. It is true,
the University men, who had been home for their learning,
were more or less numerous; but they were of a class that
held itself aloof from the smaller gentry, and most of them
were soon placed in office, adding the dignity of public trusts
to their acquisitions—the former in a manner overshadowing
the latter. But, I was nearer to the body of the community,
and my position admitted more of comparative excellence,
as it might be. No one thinks of certain habits, opinions,
manners, and tastes, in the circle where they are expected

to be found; but, it is a different thing where all, or any of
these peculiarities form the exception. I am afraid more
was anticipated from my college education than has ever
been realized; but I will say this for my Alma Mater, that
I am not conscious my acquisitions at college have ever been
of any disadvantage to me; and I rather think they have,
in some degree at least, contributed to the little success that
has attended my humble career.

I kept up my intimacy with Dirck Follock, during the
whole time I remained at college. He continued the classics
with Mr. Worden, for two years after I left the school; but
I could not discover that his progress amounted to anything
worth mentioning. The master used to tell the Colonel,
that “Dirck's progress was slow and sure;” and this did
not fail to satisfy a man who had a constitutional aversion
to much of the head-over-heels rate of doing things among
the English population. Col. Follock, as we always called
him, except when my father or grandfather asked him to
drink a glass of wine, or drank his health in the first glass
after the cloth was removed, when he was invariably styled
Col. Van Valkenburgh, at full length; but Col. Follock was
quite content that his son and heir should know no more
than he knew himself, after making proper allowances for
the difference in years and experience. By the time I returned
home, however, a material change had been made
in the school. Mr. Worden fell heir to a moderate competency
at home, and he gave up teaching, a business he had
never liked, accordingly. It was even thought he was a
shade less zealous in his parochial duties, after the acquisition
of this fifty pounds sterling a-year, than he had previously
been; though I am far from insisting on the fact's
being so. At any rate, it was not in the power of £50 per
annum to render Mr. Worden apathetic on the subject of the
church; for he continued a most zealous churchman down
to the hour of his death; and this was something, even admitting
that he was not quite so zealous as a Christian.
The church being the repository of the faith, if not the faith
itself, it follows that its friends are akin to religion, though
not absolutely religious. I have always liked a man the
better for being what I call a sound, warm-hearted churchman,
though his habits may have been a little free.

It was necessary to supply the place left vacant by the
emigration of Mr. Worden, or to abandon a school that had
got to be the nucleus of knowledge in Westchester. There
was a natural desire, at first, to obtain another scholar from
home; but no such person offering, a Yale College graduate
was accepted, though not without sundry rebellions, and
plenty of distrust. The moment he appeared, Col. Follock,
and Major Nicholas Oothout, another respectable Dutch
neighbour, withdrew their sons; and from that hour Dirck
never went to school again. It is true, Westchester was
not properly a Dutch county, like Rockland, and Albany,
and Orange, and several others along the river; but it had
many respectable families in it, of that extraction, without
alluding to such heavy people as the Van Cortlands, Felipses,
Beekmans, and two or three others of that stamp. Most of
our important county families had a different origin, as in
the case of the Morrises, of Morrisania, and of the Manor of
Fordham, the Pells, of Pelham, the Heathcotes, of Mamanneck,
the branch of the de Lanceys, at West Farms, the
Jays, of Rye, &c., &c. All these came of the English, or
the Huguenot stock. Among these last, more or less Dutch
blood was to be found, however; though Dutch prejudices
were a good deal weakened. Although few of these persons
sent their boys to this school, they were consulted in the
selection of a master; and I have always supposed that
their indifference was the cause that the county finally obtained
the services of a Yankee, from Yale.

The name of the new pedagogue was Jason Newcome,
or, as he pronounced the latter appellation himself, Noocome.
As he affected a pedantic way of pronouncing the
last syllable long, or as it was spelt, he rather called himself
Noo-comb, instead of Newcùm, as is the English mode,
whence he soon got the nick-name of Jason Old Comb
among the boys; the lank, orderly arrangement of his jetblack,
and somewhat greasy-looking locks, contributing
their share towards procuring for him the sobriquet, as I
believe the French call it. As this Mr. Newcome will have
a material part to play in the succeeding portions of this
narrative, it may be well to be a little more minute in his
description.

I found Jason fully established in the school, on my return

from college. I remember we met very much like
two strange birds, that see each other for the first time on
the same dunghill; or two quardrupeds, in their original interview
in a common herd. It was New Haven against
Newark; though the institution, after making as many migrations
as the House of Loretto, finally settled down at
Princeton, a short time before I took my degree. I was
consequently entitled to call myself a graduate of Newark,—
a sort of scholar that is quite as great a curiosity in the country
as a Queen Anne's farthing, or a book printed in the fifteenth
century. I remember the first evening we two spent in
company, as well as if the meeting occurred only last night.
It was at Satanstoe, and Mr. Worden was present. Jason
had a liberal supply of puritanical notions, which were bred
in-and-in in his moral, and I had almost said, in his physical
system; nevertheless, he could unbend; and I did not fail
to observe that very evening, a gleam of covert enjoyment
on his sombre countenance, as the hot-stuff, the cards, and
the pipes were produced, an hour or two before supper,—a
meal we always had hot and comfortable. This covert
satisfaction, however, was not exhibited without certain
misgiving looks, as if the neophyte in these innocent enjoyments
distrusted his right to possess his share. I remember
in particular, when my mother laid two or three
new, clean packs of cards on the table, that Jason cast a
stealthy glance over his shoulder, as if to make certain that
the act was not noted by the minister, or the “neighbours.”
The neighbours! — what a contemptible being a man becomes,
who lives in constant dread of the comments and
judgments of these social supervisors! and what a wretch,
the habit of deferring to no principle better than their decision
has made many a being, who has had originally the
materials of something better in him, than has been developed
by the surveillance of ignorance, envy, vulgarity,
gossiping and lying! In those cases in which education,
social position, opportunities and experience have made any
material difference between the parties, the man who yields
to such a government, exhibits the picture of a giant held
in bondage by a pigmy. I have always remarked, too, that
they who are best qualified to sit in this neighbourhood-tribunal,
generally keep most aloof from it, as repugnant to
their tastes and habits, thus leaving its decisions to the portion
of the community least qualified to make such as are
either just or enlightened.

I felt a disposition to laugh outright, at the manner in
which Jason betrayed a sneaking consciousness of crime,
as he saw my meek, innocent, simple-minded, just and
warm-hearted mother lay the cards on the table that evening.
His sense of guilt was purely conventional, while
my mother's sense of innocence existed in the absence of
false instruction, and in the purity of her intentions. One
had been taught no exaggerated and false notion of sin,—
nay, a notion that is impious, as it is clearly impious in
man to torture acts that are perfectly innocent, per se, into
formal transgressions of the law of God,—while the other had
been educated under the narrow and exaggerated notions
of a provincial sect, and had obtained a species of conscience
that was purely dependent on his miserable schooling.
I heard my grandfather say that Jason actually showed
the white of his eyes the first time he saw Mr. Worden
begin to deal, and he still looked, the whole time we were
at whist, as if he expected some one might enter, and tell
of his delinquency. I soon discovered that Jason had
a much greater dread of being told of, than of doing such
things as taking a hand at whist, or drinking a glass of
punch, from which I inferred his true conscience drew perceptible
distinctions between the acts and the penalties he
had been accustomed to see inflicted on them. He was
much disposed to a certain sort of frailty; but it was a
sneaking disposition to the last.

But, the amusing part of the exhibition, that first evening
of our acquaintance, was Mr. Worden's showing off his
successor's familiarity with the classics. Jason had not the
smallest notion of quantity; and he pronounced the Latin
very much as one would read Mohawk, from a vocabulary
made out by a hunter, or a savant of the French Academy.
As I had received the benefit of Mr. Worden's own instruction,
I could do better, and, generally, my knowledge of the
classics went beyond that of Jason's. The latter's English,
too, was long a source of amusement with us all, though my
grandfather often expressed strong disgust at it. Even Col.
Follock did not scruple to laugh at Newcome's English,

which, as he frequently took occasion to say, “hat a ferry
remarkaple sount to it.” As this peculiarity of Jason's extended
a good way into the Anglo-Saxon race, in the part
of the country in which he was born, it may be well to
explain what I mean a little more at large.

Jason was the son of an ordinary Connecticut farmer, of
the usual associations, and with no other pretension to education
than such as was obtained in a common school, or any
reading which did not include the Scriptures, some half-dozen
volumes of sermons and polemical works, all the
latter of which were vigorously as well as narrowly one-sided,
and a few books that had been expressly written to praise
New England, and to undervalue all the rest of the earth.
As the family knew nothing of the world beyond the limits
of its own township, and an occasional visit to Hartford, on
what is called “election-day,” Jason's early life was necessarily
of the most contracted experience. His English, as
a matter of course, was just that of his neighbourhood and
class of life; which was far from being either very elegant
or very Doric. But on this rustic, provincial, or rather,
hamlet foundation, Jason had reared a superstructure of
New Haven finish and proportions. As he kept school
before he went to college, while he was in college, and after
he left college, the whole energies of his nature became
strangely directed to just such reforms of language as would
be apt to strike the imagination of a pedagogue of his calibre.
In the first place, he had brought from home with
him a great number of sounds that were decidedly vulgar
and vicious, and with these in full existence in himself, he
had commenced his system of reform on other people. As
is common with all tyros, he fancied a very little knowledge
sufficient authority for very great theories. His first step
was to improve the language, by adapting sound to spelling;
and he insisted on calling angel, an-gel, because a-n spelt
an; chamber, cham-ber, for the same reason; and so on
through a long catalogue of similarly constructed words.
“English,” he did not pronounce as “Inglish,” but as “Eng
lish,” for instance; and “nothing” (anglicè nuthing), as
noth-ing; or, perhaps, it were better to say “nawthin'.”
While Jason showed himself so much of a purist with these
and many other words, he was guilty of some of the grossest

possible mistakes, that were directly in opposition to his own
theory. Thus, while he affectedly pronounced “none,”
(nun,) as “known,” he did not scruple to call “stone,”
“stun,” and “home,” “hum.” The idea of pronouncing
“clerk,” as it should be, or “clark,” greatly shocked him,
as it did to call “hearth,” “h'arth;” though he did not hesitate
to call this good earth of ours, the “'arth.” “Been,” he
pronounced “ben,” of course, and “roof,” he called “ruff,”
in spite of all his purism.

From the foregoing specimens, half a dozen among a
thousand, the reader will get an accurate notion of this
weakness in Jason's character. It was heightened by the
fact that the young man commenced his education, such as
it was, late in life, and it is rare indeed that either knowledge
or tastes thus acquired are entirely free from exaggeration.
Though Jason was several years my senior, like
myself he was a recent graduate, and it will be easy
enough to imagine the numberless discussions that took
place between us, on the subject of our respective acquisitions.
I say `respective,' instead of mutual acquisitions,
because there was nothing mutual about it, or them. Neither
our classics, our philosophy, nor our mathematics would
seem to have been the same, but each man apparently had
a science, or a language of his own, and which had been
derived from the institution where he had been taught. In
the classics I was much the strongest, particularly in the
quantities, but Jason had the best of it in mathematics. In
spite of his conceit, his vulgarity, his English, his provincialism,
and the awkwardness with which he wore his tardily
acquired information, this man had strong points about
him, and a native shrewdness that would have told much
more in his favour had it not been accompanied by a certain
evasive manner, that caused one constantly to suspect
his sincerity, and which often induced those who were accustomed
to him, to imagine he had a sneaking propensity
that rendered him habitually hypocritical. Jason held New
York in great contempt; a feeling he was not always disposed
to conceal, and of necessity his comparisons were
usually made with the state of things in Connecticut, and
much to the advantage of the latter. To one thing, however,
he was much disposed to defer, and that was money.

Connecticut had not then, nor has it now, a single individual
who would be termed rich in New York; and Jason,
spite of his provincial conceit, spite of his overweening notions
of moral and intellectual superiority, could no more
prevent this profound deference for wealth, than he could
substitute for a childhood of vulgarity and neglect, the grace,
refinement and knowledge which the boys of the more fortunate
classes in life obtain as it might be without knowing
it. Yes, Jason bowed down to the golden calf, in spite of
his puritanism, his love of liberty, his pretension to equality
and the general strut of his disposition and manner.

Such is an outline of the character and qualifications of the
man whom I found, on my return from college, at the head
of Mr. Worden's school. We soon became acquainted, and
I do not know which got the most ideas from the other, in
course of the first fortnight. Our conversation and arguments
were free, almost to rudeness, and little mercy was
shown to our respective prejudices. Jason was ultra leveling
in his notions of social intercourse, while I had the
opinions of my own colony, in which the distinctions of
classes are far more strongly marked than is usual in New
England, out of Boston, and its immediate association. Still
Jason deferred to names, as well as money, though it was
in a way very different from my own. New England was,
and is, loyal to the crown; but having the right to name
many of its own governors, and possessing many other
political privileges through the charters that were granted to
her people, in order to induce them to settle that portion of
the continent, they do not always manifest the feeling in a
way to be agreeable to those who have a proper reverence
for the crown. Among other points, growing out of this
difference in training, Jason and I had sundry arguments on
the subject of professions, trades and callings. It was evident
he fancied the occupation of a schoolmaster next in
honour to that of a clergyman. The clergy formed a species
of aristocracy, according to his notions; but no man
could commence life under more favourable auspices, than
by taking a school. The following dialogue occurred between
us, on this subject; and I was so much struck with
the novelty of my companion's notions, as to make a note of
it, as soon as we parted.

“I wonder your folks don't think of giving you suthin'
to do, Corny,” commenced Jason, one day, after our acquaintance
had ripened into a sort of belligerent intimacy.
“You 're near nineteen, now, and ought to begin to think
of bringing suthin' in, to pay for all the outgoin's.”

By “your folks,” Jason meant the family of Littlepage;
and the blood of that family quickened a little within me,
at the idea of being profitably employed, in the manner intimated,
because I had reached the mature and profitable
age of nineteen.

“I do not understand you exactly, Mr. Newcome, by
your bringing something in,” answered I, with dignity
enough to put a man of ordinary delicacy on his guard.

“Bringing suthin' in is good English, I hope, Mr. Littlepage.
I mean that your edication has cost your folks
enough to warrant them in calling on you for a little interest.
How much do you suppose, now, has been spent on
your edication, beginning at the time you first went to Mr.
Worden, and leaving off the day you quitted Newark?”

“Really, I have not the smallest notion; the subject has
never crossed my mind.”

“Did the old folks never say anything to you about it?
—never foot up the total?”

“I am sure it is not easy to see how this could be done,
for I could not help them in the least.”

“But your father's books would tell that, as doubtless it
all stands charged against you.”

“Stands charged against me!—How, sir! do you imagine
my father makes a charge in a book against me, whenever
he pays a few pounds for my education?”

“Certainly; how else could he tell how much you have
had?—though, on reflection, as you are an only child, it
does not make so much difference. You probably will get
all, in the end.”

“And had I a brother, or a sister, do you imagine, Mr.
Newcome, each shilling we spent would be set down in a
book, as charges against us?”

“How else, in natur', could it be known which had had
the most, or any sort of justice be done between you?”

“Justice would be done, by our common father's giving
to each just as much of his own money as he might see fit.

What is it to me, if he chose to give my brother a few hundred
pounds more than he chose to give to me? The money
is his, and he may do with it as he choose.”

“An hundred pounds is an awful sight of money!” exclaimed
Jason, betraying by his countenance how deeply he
felt the truth of this. “If you have had money in such
large sums, so much the more reason why you should set
about doing suthin' to repay the old gentleman. Why not
set up a school?”

“Sir!”

“Why not set up a school, I say? You might have had
this of mine, had you been a little older; but once in, fast
in, with me. Still, schools are wanted, and you might get
a tolerable good recommend. I dare say your tutor would
furnish a certificate.”

This word “recommend” was used by Jason for “recommendation;”
the habit of putting verbs in the places of substantives,
and vice versa, being much in vogue with him.

“And do you really think that one who is destined to
inherit Satanstoe, would act advisedly to set up a school?
Recollect, Mr. Newcome, that my father and grandfather
have both borne the king's commission; and that the last
bears it, at this very moment, through his representative, the
Governor.”

“What of all that? What better business is there than
keeping a good school? If you are high in your notions,
get to be made a tutor in that New Jersey college. Recollect
that a tutor in a college is somebody. I did hope for
such a place, but having a Governor's son against me, as a
candidate, there was no chance.”

“A Governor's son a candidate for a tutorship in a college!
You are pleased to trifle with me, Mr. Newcome.”

“It's true as the gospel. You thought some smaller fish
put me down, but he was the son of the Governor. But,
why do you give that vulgar name to your father's farm—
Satanstoe is not decent; yet, Corny, I've heard you use
it before your own mother!”

“That you may hear every day, and my mother use it,
too, before her own son. What fault do you find with the
name of Satanstoe?”

“Fault!—In the first place it is irreligious and profane;

then it is ungenteel and vulgar, and only fit to be used in
low company. Moreover, it is opposed to history and
revelation, the Evil One having a huff, if you will, but no
toes. Such a name couldn't stand a fortnight before public
opinion in New England.”

“Yes, that may be very true; but we do not care
enough for His Satanic Majesty in the colony of New York,
to treat him with so much deference. As for the `huffs,'
as you call them—”

“Why, what do you call 'em, Mr. Littlepage?”

“Hoofs, Mr. Newcome; that is the New York pronunciation
of the word.”

“I care nothing for York pronunciation, which everybody
knows is Dutch and full of corruptions. You 'll never
do anything worth speaking of in this colony, Corny, until
you pay more attention to your schools.”

“I do not know what you call attention, Mr. Jason, unless
we have paid it already. Here, I have the caption, or
rather preamble of a law, on that very subject, that I copied
out of the statute-book on purpose to show you, and which
I will now read in order to prove to you how things really
stand in the colony.”

“Read away,” rejoined Jason, with an air of sufficient
disdain.

Read I did, and in the following sententious and comprehensive
language, viz:—“Whereas the youth of this colony
are found, by manifold experience, to be not inferior in
their natural geniuses to the youth of any other country in
the world, therefore be it enacted, &c.”[1]

“There, sir,” I said in exultation, “you have chapter
and verse for the true character of the rising generation in
the colony of New York.”

“And what does that preamble lead to?” demanded
Jason, a little staggered at finding the equality of our New
York intellects established so clearly by legislative enactment.

“It is the preamble to an act establishing the free schools
of New York, in which the learned languages have now
been taught these twenty years; and you will please to remember
that another law has not long been passed establishing
a college in town.”

“Well, curious laws sometimes do get into the statute-books,
and a body must take them as he finds them. I
dare say Connecticut might have a word to say on the same
subject, if you would give her a chance. Have you heard
the wonderful news from Philadelphia, Corny, that has just
come among us?”

“I have heard nothing of late; for you know I have
been over in Rockland, with Dirck Follock, for the last two
weeks, and news never reaches that family, or indeed that
county.”

“No, that is true enough,” answered Jason, drily; “News
and a Dutchman have no affinity, or attraction, as we would
say in philosophy; though there is gravitation enough on
one side, ha! boy?”

Here Jason laughed outright, for he was always delighted
whenever he could get a side-hit at the children of Holland,
whom he appeared to regard as a race occupying a position
between the human family and the highest class of the
unintellectual animals. But it is unnecessary to dwell
longer on this dialogue, my object being merely to show the
general character of Jason's train of thought, in order to

be better understood when I come to connect his opinions
with his acts.

Dirck and myself were much together after my return
from college. I passed weeks at a time with him, and he
returned my visits with the utmost freedom and good-will.
Each of us had now got his growth, and it would have
done the heart of Frederick of Prussia good, to have seen
my young friend after he had ended his nineteenth year.
In stature he measured exactly six feet three, and he gave
every promise of filling up in proportion. Dirck was none
of your roundly-turned, Apollo-built fellows, but he had
shoulders that his little, short, solid, but dumpy-looking
mother, who was of the true stock, could scarcely span,
when she pulled his head down to give him a kiss; which
she did regularly, as Dirck told me himself, twice each
year; that is to say, Christmas and New-Year. His complexion
was fair, his limbs large and well proportioned, his
hair light, his eyes blue, and his face would have been
thought handsome by most persons. I will not deny, however,
that there was a certain ponderosity, both of mind and
body, about my friend, that did not very well accord with
the general notion of grace and animation. Nevertheless,
Dirck was a sterling fellow, as true as steel, as brave as a
game-cock, and as honest as noon-day light.

Jason was a very different sort of person, in many essentials.
In figure, he was also tall, but he was angular, loose-jointed
and swinging—slouching would be the better word,
perhaps. Still, he was not without strength, having worked
on a farm until he was near twenty; and he was as active
as a cat; a result that took the stranger a little by surprise,
when he regarded only his loose, quavering sort of build.
In the way of thought, Jason would think two feet to Dirck's
one; but I am far from certain that it was always in so
correct a direction. Give the Dutchman time, he was very
apt to come out right; whereas Jason, I soon discovered,
was quite liable to come to wrong conclusions, and particularly
so in all matters that were a little adverse, and which
affected his own apparent interests. Dirck, moreover, was
one of the best-natured fellows that breathed; it being almost
impossible to excite him to anger; when it did come, however,
the earthquake was scarcely more terrific. I have

seen him enraged, and would as soon encounter a wild-boar,
in an open field, as run against his course, while in the fit.

Modesty will hardly permit me to say much of myself.
I was well-grown, active, strong, for my years; and, I am
inclined to think, reasonably well-looking; though I would
prefer that this much should be said by any one but myself.
Dirck and I often tried our manhood together, when youngsters,
and I was the better chap until my friend reached his
eighteenth year, when the heavy metal of the young Dutch
giant told in our struggles. After that period was past, I
found Dirck too much for me, in a close gripe, though my
extraordinary activity rendered the inequality less apparent
than it might otherwise have proved. I ought not to apply
the term of “extraordinary” to anything about myself, but
the word escaped me unconsciously, and I shall let it stand.
One thing I will say, notwithstanding, let the reader think
of it as he may: I was good-natured and well-disposed to
my fellow-creatures, and had no greater love of money than
was necessary to render me reasonably discreet.

Such is an outline of the characters and persons of three
of the principal actors in the scenes I am about to relate;
scenes that will possess some interest for those who love to
read accounts of adventures in a new country, however
much they may fail in interesting others, when I speak of
the condition and events of the more civilized condition of
society, that was enjoyed, even in my youth, in such old
counties as Westchester, and such towns as York.