University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.
Rural Scenes and rural Manners.

“Somewhere about the time of the old French
war,” there resided on the rich border that skirts the
Hudson, not a hundred miles from the good city of
Albany, a family of some distinction, which we shall
call Vancour, consisting of three brothers whose names
were Egbert, Dennis, and Ariel, or Auriel as it was
pronounced by the Dutch of that day. They were
the sons of one of the earliest as well as most respectable
of the emigrants from Holland, and honourably
sustained the dignity of their ancestry, by
sturdy integrity, liberal hospitality, and a generous
public spirit.

On the death of the old patriarch, who departed
this life almost a century old, according to the custom
of those early times, the estate was amicably
divided among his three sons; the portion of the eldest
being alone distinguished from that of the others by
comprising the old mansion-house. This was the
sole compliment paid to the right of primogeniture,
which in almost every other Christian country swallows
up the inheritance of the younger offspring, and
enables one man to wallow in overgrown luxury, at
the expense of all the rest of his blood and name.

This concession was rather a voluntary acknowledgment
of the younger, than claimed by the elder
brother. Neither at this early period of our infancy
was it the general custom for people that had children
to make their wills; and however singular it
may seem, there were fewer lawsuits concerning the
division of property among heirs, than there is now,
when such particular care is taken in the devising of
estates, that it generally takes three or four courts,
six or eight lawyers, and the like number of years
to interpret the oracle. And how can it be otherwise,
since I once heard a great pleader affirm, that
there never were three words put together, in any
language, that would not admit of three different interpretations.
Here, however, there was no necessity
for the interference of strangers; the children
knew the wishes of their parents, and for the most
part complied without a murmur.

The settlement of Mr. Vancour's affairs was actually
made without consulting a lawyer; partly, perhaps,
for the reason that there was no person of that
description within less than one hundred and sixty
miles, at New-York. According to Pliny, Rome
subsisted five hundred years without a physician;
which fact, however incredible it may appear, is
equalled by the miracle of the city of Albany and
the surrounding country having flourished for the
best part of a century without the aid of a single
lawyer. People can no more go to law without lawyers,
than to war without arms; deprive them of
both, and there would be no more occasion for peace
societies. But to return.

Among the many good old fashions that prevailed
in the days of ignorance and simplicity among our
forefathers, was that of paying their debts themselves,

instead of leaving it to their posterity. They knew
little or nothing of the virtues of the post obit; nor, I
believe, did it ever happen to occur to them, that it
was a capital speculation to revel in luxuries and
support a splendid establishment during life, leaving
the penalty to be paid by their offspring. When old
Mr. Vancour died, he paid the only debt he owed—
the debt of nature.

In the division of the estate, Egbert, the elder brother,
received the third part, which occupied the centre,
with the old mansion-house; Dennis, that on the
right, and Ariel, that on the left-hand. Each of these
occupied the space which lay between a range of
hills and the banks of the Hudson, on which they
bordered about two miles equally. With a view to
this arrangement, Mr. Vancour had erected, at different
times, a comfortable mansion on either of the
extremities of his estate; so that the two younger
brothers were saved the expense of building.

At the period in which our history commences, the
old gentleman had been dead many years, and Ariel,
the youngest of the three brothers, was fast verging
towards that stage of life in which a man runs imminent
risk of being set down as an old bachelor by
the young ladies. Dennis, the second brother, was
a widower without issue; and Egbert was blessed
with a most notable wife, the mother of an only daughter
verging towards womanhood, and finishing her
education at a boarding-school in New-York. The
house occupied by Mr. Vancour was built when it
was customary for men to anticipate the possibility
of their descendants', some one of them at least, inheriting
and dwelling in their old nestling places. It
was a large four square mansion of two low stories,
built of little yellow Dutch bricks, imported from

Holland, as much from veneration for the “Faderland,”
as from a certain unconsciousness of the
capacity to do any thing out of the ordinary way, that
long beset and still in some degree besets the occupants
of this western world. Right through the centre
ran a wide and stately hall, wainscotted with
oak; from the farther end of which a broad staircase
rose in such a gentle ascent as to be almost as
easy as a railway. This staircase was defended
on the outerside by a row of chubby mahogany banisters,
ranged so as almost to touch each other, and
presenting in their plump exuberance fit models for
the legs of all the gallant burghers of the country
round. We know not whether it was in sympathy
with these classical patterns, or from some other more
occult influence, but certain it is, there hath not, since
the fashion of them changed, been seen so goodly a
set of legs, not even in the picture of the Declaration
of our Independence, as was exhibited every
Sabbath-day in summer-time, in woollen hose, at
the little eight-square stone church of the Flats, at
the time of which we are treating.

The furniture of the mansion corresponded with
its Doric dignity and simplicity. There was nothing
too fine for use, or which was not used whenever occasion
required; although we are willing to confess,
there was one hallowed room, dignified with the
name of the spare room, which was difficult of access,
and into which no one intruded except on very
particular occasions. Here was the sacred deposite
of ancestral heirlooms. Chairs with high and haughty
backs and worked satin bottoms, from the old country;
a Brussels carpet; two vast china jars, on either
side of the chimney, nearly five feet high; and the
treasure of all treasures, a Dutch cabinet, exactly such

a one as is now to be seen at Hampton court, left there
by King William, so exuberantly and yet so tastefully
and richly ornamented with brass hinges and a lock
covering almost half its front, that when properly
rubbed, as it was every day, it was dazzling to behold.
The brass had a silvery whiteness, a delicate
lustre, such as is never exhibited by the bastard imitation
of these degenerate days. But the most valued
and valuable part of the embellishments, were a
number of fine pictures of the Flemish school, which
the elder Mr. Vancour had brought with him from
Holland, and which have since been lost by the burning
of the mansion of one of his later descendants.

The house stood about a quarter of a mile from
the river, in the midst of a rich meadow, dotted here
and there with a vast primeval elm, standing like a
wide umbrella, under which the lazy herds lay ruminating
free from the midday sun. Four of these surrounded
and almost hid the mansion, all but its front,
and furnished retreats for a host of twittering birds.
Within a hundred yards on one side ran a brook,
which descended from the hills about a mile in the
rear, and which in the course of ages had made a
deep ravine, skirted on either side with a wilderness
of various woods, and plants, and briers, and wild
flowers, and vines of every sort, where was, in the
genial season, a perpetual concert of nature's nevertiring
and never-tired songsters. This copse was
wide enough to shelter an invisible road, the only
passage to and from the home; so that all around it
was nothing but one fair carpet of delicious green,
unbroken by road or pathway.

The river in front slept between its verdant banks,
for its course was so slow, so quiet, so almost imperceptible,
that it seemed to partake in that repose which

it diffused all around. Besides the elms and sycamores
which the rich alluvion fostered into majestic
exuberance, its borders were fringed at intervals with
silvery willows drinking its pure moisture, and other
dwarfish fry, from whose branches hung grape
vines and vines of various other names, forming canopies,
through which the pattering shower could
scarcely win its way. The stream was about a
quarter of a mile wide, so that every rural sight and
rural sound could be clearly distinguished from side
to side; and at the extremity of the rich meadows on
the opposite shore, there rose a bold precipice of
gray-beard rocks, enamelled with light green mosses,
and bearing on its summit a crown of towering pines
of everlasting verdure.

There is certainly in the majesty of nature, its
hoary rocks, its silent shadowy glens, foaming torrents,
and lofty mountains, something that awakens
the soul to high contemplation and rouses its slumbering
energies. But there is in her gentler beauties,
her rich and laughing meadows enamelled with flowers,
and joyous with sprightly birds, her waving fields
of grain, her noiseless glassy streams, a charm not less
delightful and far more lasting than the high wrought
enthusiasm of the other. Both have, without doubt,
their influence on the human character. He who
dwells in the rude regions of the mountain solitude
will generally prefer dangerous and fatiguing enterprise
to easy and wholesome labours. He would
rather risk his safety for a meal, or go without it
entirely, than earn it by the sweat of his brow in the
cultivation of the earth. But the inhabitant of the
rich plain, that pours from its generous bosom an ample
reward for every hour of labour he bestows,
is enamoured of security; he hates all changes

but those of the revolving seasons; is seldom buffeted
by extremes of passion, never elevated to enthusiasm,
or depressed to despair. If let alone, his
life will probably glide away as noiselessly, if not as
pure, as the gentle stream that winds its way unheard
through his lowland domain. It has been said a thousand
times, that the inhabitants of mountains are
more attached to their homes than those of the lowlands;
but I doubt the truth of the observation.
Take any man away from his home and his accustomed
routine of life, and he will sigh to return to
them, the native of the plain, as well as the sojourner
among the hills. The former we doubt would be
as wretched among the rocks and torrents, the wild
beasts, and hunters equally wild, as the latter in the
laborious quiet of the fruitful valleys.

However this may be, the brothers to whom the
reader has just been introduced, partook in a great
degree of the character of the scene of their birth and
of their inheritance, but modified in some particulars
by certain peculiarities in their situation. Peaceful
as was the abode they inhabited, and the aspect of all
around them, they were not always reposing in the
lap of security. Within thirty or forty miles, in
almost every direction, roamed various tribes of Indians,
whose fierce, unsteady, and revengeful nature
made their friendship as precarious as their enmity
was terrible. True, they were now at peace, or rather
they had begun to submit to their inevitable destiny;
yet still their friendship could not be relied
on, and they not unfrequently approached the neighbouring
settlements in the dead of the night, where
they committed the most horrible atrocities. This
state of things contributed to keep up a warlike spirit
and habits of dangerous enterprise, among the early

settlers, and they partook of the opposite characters
of husbandman and soldier, in a degree which has seldom
been known in the inhabitants of the rest of the
world. The Vancours and their neighbours all found
it necessary to mingle the arts of peace and war together;
all had their arms at hand, and all knew how
to use them.

The Vancours were people of fashion, as well as
fortune. The elder more especially, from inhabiting
the family mansion, and having a regularly established
household, saw a great deal of company at times
from Albany, New-York, and elsewhere. His house,
indeed, was open to all respectable visiters, and was
seldom without the presence of some stranger, friend,
or relative from a distance. They were received
and treated with that plain, unostentatious, quiet hospitality
which always bespeaks a welcome. Madame
Vancour, as she was called by way of eminence,
was a New-York lady, born and bred, partaking
almost equally in the blood of the genuine Hollander,
the Englishman, and the Huguonot. New-York, being
at that time the residence of the English governor,
was of course, the focus of fashion. The governor
affected somewhat of the kingly state; and there
being always a considerable number of troops in garrison,
the place swarmed with red coats, as some of
our eating cellars now do with boiled lobsters. These
ruddy sons of Mars were the prime objects of the
ambition of our city belles, and happy was the damsel
and proud the mother that could unite their fate
and family with the lieutenant of a company of British
grenadiers. His excellency, like most other excellencies,
had plenty of aids-de-camp to keep up his
state, write his invitations, pick up news, and carve
at his table. These important functions, of course,

entitled them to great distinction among our provincial
belles, and it is on record in the traditions of those
times, that the good matrons of the capital could never
sleep quietly the night before a ball at the government-house,
for thinking whether their daughters
would dance with an aid-de-camp. They occasionally
demeaned themselves by marrying a provincial
heiress, and many of the largest estates in the province,
with a blooming damsel at the back of them,
were exchanged for a red coat and a pair of gorgeous
epaulettes, to the infinite contentment of the mothers,
who partook largely in the dignity of the connexion.
I cannot affirm that the fathers and brothers shared
in these triumphs; for already the fine airs of the
pompous intruders, and their undisguised assumptions
of superiority, had awakened in the bosoms of these
homely provincials a feeling, which, in after-times
mingling with others equally powerful, produced
a revolution, of which the world yet feels, and
will long feel the influence. The Vancours had
many connexions in New-York, among the most
wealthy and fashionable of the inhabitants, and seldom
missed paying them a visit of a few weeks in
the course of every autumn. They were always well
received, and as the governor never came to Albany,
without partaking in their hospitalities, he thought
himself bound to repay them when they visited the
place of his residence. This intercourse with the
gay world kept up certain feelings and habits, which
seldom fail to accompany it; but still, in the main,
their characters partook largely of the simplicity of
the country where they resided. In manners they
might not be particularly distinguished from the polite
and well-bred people of the world; but in habits
and modes of thinking they were essentially different.
There was a certain doric simplicity in their mode
of life, which has long since passed away, leaving
behind what I sometimes feel inclined to doubt is
but an inadequate compensation for its loss.

Dennis and Ariel, the two younger brothers, being
the one a lonely widower, the other an equally lonely
bachelor, spent a good deal of their time at the old
mansion, where they were as much at home as at
their own houses. The two elder brothers were
greatly attached to each other, and fond of being together
in their own quiet way. They sometimes
passed a whole morning without exchanging half a
dozen words. They had a way of communicating
their thoughts by certain little expressive inarticulate
sounds and unobtrusive gestures, which each one understood
as well as he did his mother tongue. Ariel,
on the contrary, was ungovernably impatient of idleness,
and never could sit still fifteen minutes at a
time without falling into a doze. He was a great
hand at grafting and inoculating fruit-trees; an industrious
seeker after mushrooms; and mighty in all
undertakings which had for their object the furtherance
of good eating. In truth, he was one of those
persons who are seldom without a project for the benefit
of their neighbours, and who, though they never
by any chance succeed in their own undertakings, can
always tell to a nicety what will be most for the advantage
of others. Dennis, on the other hand, had a
horror of all innovation and improvement in rural economy;
he despised labour-saving machines from the
bottom of his soul, and held it as incontrovertible, that
the human hand was the most perfect instrument ever
invented. Ariel one year spent the proceeds of a whole
crop in devising inventions for exterminating field
mice; while Egbert secured half of his by labour and

attention. Somehow or other, so it was, that one
grew richer every year, and the other was always in
want of money.

“They won't be here to-day,” said Dennis, one
morning, after his elder brother and himself had been
sitting with their heads inclined towards each other
about two hours, without exchanging a word.

“They won't be here to-day,” echoed Egbert, and
there ended the conversation for an hour at least.

“I think it will clear up before noon,” quoth Dennis,
eyeing the clouds as they separated above, disclosing
a little piece of clear blue sky.

“I think it will,” responded Egbert, and the matter
was settled.

The expected arrivals were Colonel Vancour's
wife and daughter, the latter of whom, having finished
her education at the boarding-school, was now on her
way home from New-York with her mother. The
reader will be pleased to recollect that this was long
before the invention of steamboats, and when a genuine
Albany packet never dreamed of sailing but
with a fair wind, nor scarcely ever passed the Overslaugh
without paying it the compliment of running
high and dry aground. We ourselves well remember,
in long after-times, having once lain there seven
days within seven miles of Albany; yet such appeared
the immeasurable distance, that no one on
board ever dreamed of leaving the vessel and going
to the city by land. All waited patiently for an
easterly-wind or a heavy rain, to float them off again;
and spent the time pleasantly in eating and smoking.
In truth, there is no greater help to patience than a
pipe of Blaze Moore's tobacco. But the fact is, people
were neither so much in a hurry, nor was their
time half so precious as it is now. In those days a

man was all his life in making a fortune; at present
he cannot spare so much time, because he has not
only to make, but to spend a fortune before he
dies. It would have been next to an impossibility to
persuade a man to risk a quick passage to the other
world, for the sake of shortening his journey in this.

The daughter, accompanied by her mother and
Tjerck, an old black servant, had been expected more
than a week, every day of which precisely the same
colloquy as that we have just recorded passed between
the two brothers. We ought to mention, that
Mr. Egbert Vancour was prevented attending the
ladies home by having been appointed a commissioner
to hold a treaty with the Five Nations at Schenectady.
The past week had been one of almost
continual rain, and the three brothers each began to
manifest impatience in his own way. The two elder
by frequent emigrations from the chimney corner to the
window; and the younger by marching out every five
minutes, in the intervals between his naps, squaring
himself with his thick short legs wide apart, and reconnoitring
the weathercock, which, I ought to mention,
was an iron shad, through whose sides were cut
the letters D. V., in honour of the family.

At length, towards evening the yellow sun broke
through the opening western clouds, most gorgeously
gilding the weeping landscape, and turning the cold
drops of rain which had condensed on the grass and
waving branches of the trees to sparkling diamonds
bright. A brisk yet mellow south wind sprung up,
and a fleet of sloops with snow white sails appeared
below, ploughing their merry way up the river. All
turned out to see if they could distinguish the “Patroon,”
the vessel in which the ladies had taken passage.
The indefatigable Ariel was down at the

wharf, in front of the mansion-house, making a prodigious
noise, and calling out to every vessel that passed
to know if the Patroon was coming, every now and
then clearing his throat, as was his custom, with
“a-hem!” that at length startled a flock of black ducks,
which had maintained its station in a little neighbouring
cove for several days past. Sloop after sloop
passed on, without stopping, until Ariel got out of all
patience; he stamped about from one side of the wharf
to the other; the Patroon was the worst of all vessels,
and the captain the most lazy, slow motioned,
stupid of all blockheads.

“I knew it; d—n him, I knew it. I'll bet my
life he is high and dry on the Overslaugh.—No! hey!
no: d—n it, there she comes—there she is at
last;” and he darted across the wharf towards her
with such enthusiasm, that he broke his shins against
a post; whereat he gave the Patroon and her captain
another broadside, not forgetting the post.

Ariel was not mistaken: it was the Patroon, and
in a few minutes, Madame Vancour and her daughter
Catalina were welcomed once more at the fireside
of their best friends, with a quiet speechless
warmth which nature dictated and nature understood.
All but Ariel spoke through their eyes; but it was the
characteristic of that worthy bachelor, to make a
noise on all occasions of merriment or sadness; the
more he felt, the more noise he made, and this propensity
followed him even in his sleep; he being a
most sonorous and indefatigable snorer, in all its varieties.
He paraded round the young woman, crying,
“A-hem! bless me, how you have grown; a-hem!
zounds, I should'nt have known you; why, ahem!
d—n it you're almost as tall as I am!” And then he
measured his little square stumpy figure with that of

the tall graceful girl. Finally, having exhausted all
his waking noises, he placed himself in an arm chair
and fell into a sleep, from which he was only roused by
the music of setting the supper-table, which above all
others was most agreeable to his ear. “Hey!—
d—n it, what have you got for supper—hey!” and
he marched round, taking special cognizance of the
ample board.

“But where is Sybrandt?” asked Madame Vancour,
“I expected, to be sure, he would be here to
welcome us home.”

“Oh, that's true, Dennis,” said Egbert, “what has
become of the boy?”

“I can't tell.”

Ariel broke into one of his inspiring laughs, “I
can,” said he; “the poor fellow sneaked away home,
as soon as he knew the Patroon was in sight.”

Egbert shrugged his shoulders; Dennis twisted a
piece of celery with such a petulant jirk, that he overturned
the whole arrangement of the dish, the pride
of Dame Phillis, presiding goddess of the kitchen.
Ariel cried, “A-hem!” like a stentor, and madame
and her daughter exchanged significant looks, and
smiled. Sybrandt appeared not that night, and nothing
more was said on the subject.

As this young gentleman is destined to make some
figure in our story, we will take this opportunity to
introduce him more particularly to the reader's notice.