University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.
GUERT ROSEVELT AND HIS GRANDSONS.

Within view of those mystic mountains, which were long since
rendered classic soil by the pen of Irving, and on the banks of that
beautiful Hudson, whose charms defy even the power of genius to
depict, was the quiet home of Walter Vrail. Not in the days
when the ghostly Hendrick and his phantom followers made the
rocky halls of the Catskills reverberate with their rumbling balls,
and with the clatter of their falling nine-pins, and when their spectral
flagon-bearer could be dimly seen at twilight, toiling up the
misty ascent to join the shadow revellers, but in these later
days, when the quaint old bowlers in doublet and jerkin, have
retired deep within the bowels of the mountain, to pursue their
endless game undisturbed by the plash of the swift steamboat, or
the roar of the linked cars, plunging through dark passes, trembling
along narrow ledges, and sending up their shrill scream
through all the far recesses of a once holy solitude.

Ah, how much has modern utilitarianism to answer for at the
tribunal of Poetry. How many a fairy dream has it dispelled;
how many a cherished illusion has it dissipated! How has it

measured out with square and compass all the sacred precincts of
Romance, and run its surveyors' chains along the moonlit haunts of
the Naiad and the Hamadryad! There are no haunted wells, no
spell-bound treasures now. No restless spirits tramp along our
darkened halls at night, and lead the way, all voiceless, to their hidden
gold. No headless horseman scours the plain, frightening
belated travellers, and vanishing at churchyard gate. No solemn
conclave of grey-bearded men ancient dames, around the
ample hearth, discuss the last new apparition with uplifted hands,
and look askance at darkling corners of the room, while the wild
tale is told.

Progress has changed all this. Our old men talk of stocks
instead of ghosts; our children, fancy dwarfed, prefer philosophy
to fairy tales, and laugh at good old Santa Claus, for whom the
pendent stockings gaped by a thousand chimneys in the days of
yore. We search no more for Kidd's deep coffers, or if we do, a
spook-defying joint-stock company, with shares commanding premium
on 'change, attempts the work, disdaining other incantation
than the power of steam.

Progress has wrought these changes. Progress has opened to
us a land of gold, outvieing a thousand fold, the fabled stores of
brigand wealth. Progress has—

“Done nothing for your story yet, Mr. Romancer,” we hear
some querulous reader object, and accepting the rebuke, we bid
adieu to goblins, and “chimeras dire.”

We said that Walter Vrail lived; yet, almost in the same paragraph,
are we to record that he ceased to live. Called, in his
meridian years, to relinquish life, he left besides it, two much
loved sons, the education and welfare of whom had long been the
object of his earnest solicitude. Both had passed out of the age
of boyhood, Harry, the elder, having attained to his twenty-third
year, and Thomas just verging upon legal manhood; but, although
brothers, there was a diversity in their character and appearance

which would have prevented a stranger from suspecting them of
even a remoter affinity.

Both were handsome in face and in figure, yet Harry alone possessed
that indefinable beauty of expression and manner, which we
so often see without the power to analyze, and which won many
fair hearts whose peace he never dreamed of disturbing, and some
far above his aspirations. Aspirations, indeed, he could scarcely
be said to have. Never, perhaps, was mortal more devoid of self-esteem,
his deficiency in which quality might have been considered
almost reprehensible, had it not been a natural hiatus in his character
which no education could supply.

Elegant, well-educated, witty and graceful, he really believed
himself to be a very ordinary mortal, who owed all his consideration
to the extreme good-nature of his acquaintances, and to the
great merits of his younger brother. His friends were all quite or
nearly faultless in his estimation, but Tom was a perfect paragon
of excellence. So talented, so learned, so very, very deep, so ambitious,
too, that he was sure to become a very great man ere long,
and to shed a rich lustre upon the family name. Ah! how he
regretted that his parents, whose pet Tom had ever been, could
not have been permitted to live to see that coming day which
was to realize their predictions and his own expectations.

It was true, he thought, his brother had some failings of character,
though perhaps he ought rather to call them eccentricities.
Genius is always eccentric, and cannot be expected to be governed
by the same laws which bind ordinary mortals. He had thought
that Tom lacked in—what should he call it?—thoughtfulness, consideration
for others—not for him, indeed; there was no need of
thinking about him—but for his now solitary old grandfather, and
sometimes for other friends. Then, Tom was a little irritable—
that was the genius, of course, but it was a pity; and sometimes he
was a little, a very little vain—yet how could the poor fellow help
it, thought Harry, with so much to be vain of?

Mr. Vrail had been wealthy, but in his mistaken anxiety to
increase his property for his children's sake, it had been reduced,
within the last year of his life, by a failing speculation, to less than
a competence. His small farm and homestead, situated in a village
on the bank of the Hudson, formed the whole of his possessions,
and to this estate the brothers were equal heirs.

Brought up in the expectation of so great wealth, it seemed indeed
but a pittance to them, and they became speedily aware of the
necessity of making some exertion for their support.

Harry, unfortunately, had learned no business. When his
collegiate course had terminated, he had been advised, but
not urged, by his indulgent parents, to select a profession and
pursue it, and he had often nearly resolved to do so. But what
was Harry fit for, in his own estimation? He thought, at times,
of the law; but what was the use of studying law, when young
Tom could outspeak him already in the debating society, and could
make more noise in five minutes than he would dare to make in
the whole evening. To be sure, Tom was not very perspicuous in
his arguments, and often forgot and misstated historical facts,
but then he did everything with an air, and made the weakest
point of his case seem strong by the force and fire of his declamation.

The practice of medicine had also been recommended to Harry
as a genteel and easy business, but the idea of ever having a
human life dependent on his poor judgment made him tremble;
and as for the pulpit, he thought that a man, like himself, who
was good for nothing else, certainly had no right to think of that
So Harry had wasted year after year in a sort of elegant leisure,
reading, indeed, a great deal of history, biography and classic lore,
and constantly finding among his departed heroes prototypes of
what Tom was going to become one of these days.

When Mr. Vrail's losses occurred, his sons were far from knowing
the extent of them, for the kind father, still hopeful of retrieving
his fortunes, would not look poverty in the face, nor teach his

children to contemplate what seemed to him so hideous a spectre.
It was not, therefore, until his sudden death that they became
aware of their comparative penury, and of the necessity of turning
to some account the excellent education which he had bestowed
upon them. The younger son had, indeed, for several years been
nominally a student in the office of a village attorney, more with
a view to the acquirement of that renown which he was sure
must follow his first forensic efforts, than with any expectation
of making his business a source of profit. But now, when
poverty had come so suddenly upon him, he felt entirely impatient
of the slow process of regaining his lost wealth which his profession
offered, and he longed to discover some “open sesame” to the
magic portals of Mammon.

It is difficult to convince a man who has once been affluent that
there is not some short and certain road which will lead him back
to the golden highway from which he has strayed, and Tom was
particularly sanguine on this point.

“We must sell the homestead to begin with,” he said to Harry,
when, a few months after his father's decease, the brothers had
their first business consultation; “we must turn everything into
money”—

“Grandfather included, I suppose,” said Harry, smilling; “for
your plan would leave him no home.”

“Oh, I did not think of grandfather,” replied Tom; and then
added, after a pause, “How very old he is—isn't he?”

“Why, bless you Tom, no! He isn't seventy-five yet, and he is
as hale and hearty as ever—he is good for a dozen years, at least,
yet, I hope.”

“And nothing to live on. Well, we must manage some way in
relation to him, and then we must sell out everything. There
are many fields open for speculation when once one has a little
money on hand. But nothing can be done without that. At
present we can scarcely buy a barrel of flour.”

“Tom talks like a book,” thought Harry; “but what does he
mean to do with grandfather?”

Their conversation was interrupted by the entrance of the venerable
subject of their remarks, a hale, hearty old man, bent, indeed
with years, and slightly crippled with rheumatism, yet with a face
red, and fresh, and unwrinkled, shining out of its setting of snowy
hair, like the sun breaking through a white fog.

Guert Rosevelt was a Dutchman at all points, and his consent
had with difficulty been obtained, twenty-five years before, to the
marriage of his loved Katrina with an American who could boast
no Flemish blood or affinities—but these scruples had long been
forgotten, and he now cherished the memory of his son-in-law
with an affection scarcely inferior to that with which he mourned
his departed daughter. His grandsons were all that he had left
on earth to love, and his old heart clung to them as the oak, riven,
but not uprooted, clings to its native soil. Yet it was not with an
equal affection that he regarded the orphaned youths, for Harry
had been his pet in childhood, and, though unacknowledged as
such, was greatly his favorite still.

“I am glad you have come, grandpa,” exclaimed the elder brother,
impulsively; “we were just speaking of”—

“Of business,” said Tom, interrupting his brother, and slightly
coloring as he spoke; “and we shall, perhaps, want your advice.”

“Vell, den, boys, what is it, now?” said the old man, complacently,
seating himself between the youths.

“Why, you see,” answered the younger brother, “it is time for
us to be seeking our fortunes, Harry and I—we are poor enough
now, you know, and we ought to be up and doing. But what we
are to do, is the question.”

“Yes—yes,” said the grandfather, quickly, nodding his head
energetically, “I hef been thinking of it too. This reeting of
books and blowing on the flute will never make a poor man rich.”

“That's you, Harry,” said Tom, chuckling.

“Neither will this shmoking eigars in a lawyer's shop, and talking
politics,” continued the mentor, shaking his white locks still
more earnestly.

“That's you, Tom,” said Harry.

“Yes—yes—it is both of you. If Tommy means to be a lawyer,
well and goot. 'Tish a trade I don't much like—but he is a
shmart lad, and may get to be a Justice of the Peace or Supervisor
one of these days.”

“Justice of the Peace or Supervisor!” echoed Tom, contemptuously.

“Hush!” whispered his brother.

“Yes—yes,” continued the old man, “that you may, ef you are
shmart—you will be a Squire, perhaps a Judge some day,
Tommy.”

“Like Judge Boory, I suppose, to wake up and say, `I concur,'
when the first judge gives an opinion, and then go to sleep again.”

“Yes, like Judge Boory,” added Guert, who had not understood
the latter part of the young man's reply; “yes, you will do very
well, if you try—but as to Harry, here”—

“Oh, I shall rise to be first flageolet to some travelling Punch
and Judy, grandfather,” said Harry, laughing, and taking down
his flute; “you will see if I don't. Just listen to this new air
from the Beggar's Opera, which I have been learning.”

“'Tish the right thing for you to learn, poy,” replied the old
man, smiling, and laying his hand affectionately upon the head of
his grandson. “The Beggar's Opera—yesh—yesh!” and the old
gentleman's head gave a great many little nods, the playful smile
still lingering upon his lips.

Harry took advantage of the pause in conversation to play the
air half through, and he would have played it over a dozen times
before his grandfather would have interrupted him in anything
which gave him so much pleasure; but Tom frowned, and Harry
stopped.

“We have no time for music now,” said the younger brother,
“if you call that music—but I think I have heard cornstalk flutes
give clearer notes than that cracked and patched tube of yours.”

“It was father's flute,” replied Harry, in a low voice, which
certainly was most musical, if the instrument was not.

“As to the law,” said Tom, recurring to business, and, of course,
to his own prospects, “I don't half like it; and, besides, it is too
slow a path for me without some auxiliary. I must try something
else. I want to get rich first, and then I will practise law afterwards
for the honor and éclat of it. But the money—the money
is what I want now, grandfather, and what Harry wants too, I
suppose.”

“Why don't one of you go and marry little Getty Van Kleeck?”
asked Guert, addressing them both, but looking at his favorite.
“She is almost as rich as the Patroon, and a pretty little chub she
is too.”

Harry rose, and turned aside to lay his flute on the shelf, and
Tom replied,

“By George! I never thought of that. It wouldn't be a bad
idea—though, to be sure, she isn't exactly the kind of wife a man
would like to introduce to—to distinguished circles.”

“To distinguished what?” said the old man, sharply.

“Why to distinguished people, grandfather—fashionable
acquaintances, you know.”

“She is a goot girl,” said the old man, earnestly; “as clean as
a pink and as fresh as a rose.”

“She is short and fat,” answered Tom; “but she must be very
rich, of course. A queer old codger her father was, and he died
of a surfeit of sour crout.”

“He was a goot man,” said Guert.

“And died like a great one,” added Harry, smiling. “Frederick
the Great killed himself by over eating, and there are plenty of
royal precedents for gluttony.”

“He was a goot man!” reiterated Guert, sharply.

“I don't know,” muttered Tom, musingly, “I don't know but I
will take Getty. She is squabby, certainly; but—a—what do you
think, Harry? You are much better acquainted with her than I
am.”

There was the slightest perceptible increase of color on Harry's
cheek as he was thus applied to, but he answered without hesitation.

“I think you could get her, Tom.”

“Get her! You think I could get her! Well, I did not want
your opinion on that point—but the question is, whether it would
be quite the thing?”

“I think Gertrude a very amiable and sensible young lady,”
replied Harry.

“Well, I guess that is the first time the little dumpling was
ever called a young lady, and I don't think she would recognize
herself by the title. However, she might be transformed into a
young lady—stranger metamorphoses have taken place. I will
certainly think about it. Will you go over there with me some
evening? I am almost a stranger to her.”

“Yes,” said Harry, unhesitatingly.