University of Virginia Library

PREFACE.

The following story was written prior to
its very recent predecessor on the publisher's
table, “The First of the Knickerbockers,”
but having been prepared with more
especial reference to the holidays, its publication
has been deferred for the purpose of
bringing it within the influence of that charmed
season. This explanation is made, partly because
the writer is unwilling to subject himself
to the charge of offering to the public a hastily
written work, and partly because he hopes to
escape that closer criticism, which is usually
and appropriately applied to an author's second
book.

The subject is one which, to New Yorkers

at least, will probably not require apology.
There is a charm hanging about the idea of
the ancient city, and the old-fashioned populace
which were identified with its peculiarities,
most tempting to a vagrant pen. Moving on
that distant stage, under the hazy light of an
imperfect history, and looking down upon us
through the vista of two hundred years, our
venerated ancestors are freed, for the time,
from the more rugged features which a nearer
scrutiny might compel us to discern. For one,
I confess to a love, more than lineal, for these
worthy fathers, the founders of this great metropolis,
the explorers of these majestic rivers,
the hospitable, humane, generous, stubborn,
obstinate “old smokers of Manhattan.” Nor
for them alone, but for those gentler spirits,
whose reign was over the domestic hearth, and
in the social circle, and to whom pertained in a
larger degree than is generally believed, those
feminine graces and beauties which impart to
human life so much of its poetry, and cast an
air of romance over all its dull realities.

Ye dear and venerated visions, voiceless, yet
eloquent, who have long cheered my solitary
hours, and who now go forth to meet the gaze
of less partial eyes—farewell! I weep to think
that ye must pass that Ithuriel band which
guards the portals of literature, and that when
next we meet, some of you, alas! touched by
transforming wand, may be changed into “monsters
and chimeras dire.”