Old New York lies buried beneath the tidal wave of its own material prosperity. The modern city, busy with the present and its plans for gain, not only adds to itself, but incessantly rends itself in pieces. Caring little for the visible reminders of a storied past, it replaces and rebuilds with an unsparing hand. Nor is this violence confined to the invasion of domesticity by trade; it goes on without ceasing in the oldest trading quarters, and a white-haired veteran whose business life has been passed in and about the Rialto of Manhattan is authority for the statement that within his memory Wall Street has been thrice entirely rebuilt, with the exception of about half a dozen houses. Thus, the person who seeks to retrace in brick and mortar the New York of earlier days has small reward for his labor. Not here but across the sea to Holland must he go if he would find houses like those in which the stolid, sturdy burghers of New Amsterdam made their homes. He will search, too, almost in vain for structures belonging to the Revolutionary era, and for the homes of the city's makers during later periods of its history. And yet his quest, if followed with industry and a fair measure of patience, will be interesting and instructive in the highest degree.

If such a quest begins where New York began — at the Battery, one finds just south of the present Bowling Green the site of Fort Amsterdam, erected about 1626 to shelter the Dutch adventurers who had come to trade with the Indians. Under the protection of its guns, during the same year, was founded the town of New Amsterdam, hand in hand with which went the Dutch dynasty which lasted till 1664, when England seized the prize she had long secretly coveted. The tangle of streets below the Bowling Green still bears witness to the random, haphazard fashion in which the town came into being. Each settler built his house where he pleased, and made lanes and streets according to the dictates of his own fancy. One of the two important thoroughfares of  the town, following the line of the present Stone and Pearl Streets, — the latter then the water front, — led from the fort to the Brooklyn ferry, at about the present Peck Slip. The other, on the line of the present Broadway, led from the fort, past farms and gardens, as far as the present Park Row; and along the line of that thoroughfare, and of Chatham Street and of the Bowery, went on to the island's northern end.

When in August, 1664, an English fleet captured New Amsterdam, and renamed it in honor of the Duke of York, the western side of the town, from the Bowling Green northward, was a wilderness of orchards and gardens and green fields, while on the eastern side the farthest outlying dwelling was Wolfert Webber's roadside tavern near the present Chatham Square. There were then only a dozen buildings north of the present Wall Street, and the business interests of the town centred in the block between Bridge and Stone Streets, upon which stood the stone houses of the Dutch West India Company. On the line of Broad Street, then called the Heere Graft, ran a canal with a roadway on each side, and here dwelt much of the quality of that early day.

However, under both Dutch and English the Battery was the favorite promenade, and till the middle decades of the closing century some of the wealthiest and most socially distinguished people of the town lived in the lower part of Greenwich Street, in State Street, and around the Bowling Green. And well they might do so, for living there was living on a park with a grand park view. Indeed, the whilom prospect from the windows and balconies of such houses as the one yet standing at No. 7 State Street across the greensward and through the elms of the Battery included Castle Garden and the seawall, the bay with its islands, and the Long Island and Jersey shores. The Bay of New York, now made tame and commonplace by what is called prosperity, was then the pride of those who dwelt about it; and travelled strangers who had seen the Bay of Naples and the Golden Horn did not stint their praises of the beauty surrounded by which New York sat like a Western Venice upon the waters.

Superb was the view from the Battery in the old days, and glorious are the wraiths who still haunt its paves and shaded places. Talleyrand, self-exiled from France, an hundred-odd years ago often paced slowly along where thousands now move, who, perhaps, never heard of him. After Talleyrand came Louis Philippe and Jerome Bonaparte, both of whom knew and admired the Battery. Lafayette walked its sea-wall and gazed out on the bay, and here sauntered that audacious traitor, Benedict Arnold, ruined by an ungovernable temper and a Tory wife. Here, in the same strenuous days, came Clinton and Cornwallis, and here through the vista of half a century we witness the New World's loud-voiced welcome to Kossuth. Nor is the fact to be forgotten that in ancient Castle Garden, transformed from a fort into an opera house, Jenny Lind one autumn night in 1850 began the triumphal progress which made the name of that richly dowered queen of song a household word in every nook and corner of America.

Trending due east from State Street, the northern boundary of the Battery, and cutting it at right angles are two narrow passageways, which in these days would be looked upon almost as alleys. But one of them is the beginning of the once important thoroughfare, Pearl Street, known first as Great Queen Street, which, starting here in a line with Broadway, and within a few yards of its head, curves round towards the East River, and, expanding first at Hanover and then at Franklin Square, enters Broadway next above Duane Street, and directly opposite where the gray walls of the New York Hospital were seen a generation ago, removed from the rush and roar of the great thoroughfare by an avenue through grass that, we are told, seemed ever green and under elms that overtopped the highest house.

Before Water, Front, and South Streets were created by the filling in of the East River, Pearl Street faced the water front, and along its reaches a century ago all the shipping of the port was harbored. Here, too, were the yards of the ship-builders, and the shops and warehouses of the merchants. Hanover Square was long the shopping centre of fashion, and till within a few years there stood in Nassau and upper Pearl Streets residences of a stately elegance which would now be sought in vain below Central Park. All of these have since been swept away, and the only visible reminder of the Pearl Street of other days is ancient Fraunces's Tavern, still standing and in use on the corner of that thoroughfare and Broad Street. The site of this house once belonged to the De Lancey family, and in 1750 Oliver De Lancey seems to have had his residence either here or in the house adjoining, but in 1754 a tavern is found here, under the sign of the Queen's Head, and eight years later the property passed by deed into the ownership of Samuel Fraunces, a noted publican, who speedily made it the most popular hostelry in the growing town.

When the Revolution came Fraunces proved a stanch friend of the patriot cause, and played a worthy, if modest, part in the stirring events of the time. In 1776 he went out with the patriots, but appears later to have returned to the city, perhaps by British permission under arrangement with Washington, and to have resided there during at least part of the British occupation, as his generous advances to the American prisoners at that time confined in the city prompted a vote of thanks and a handsome grant of money from Congress. It was in the Long Room of Fraunces's Tavern that, at the close of the military movements attending the taking possession of the city on the evacuation by the British, November 25, 1783, Governor Clinton gave a dinner to the commander-in-chief and other general officers of the patriot forces, but the event by reason of which this famous old inn will always claim a place in our history occurred nine days later, when, on December 4, 1783, in this same Long Room, Washington took touching and solemn farewell of his generals before departing upon his journey to Annapolis, where he surrendered his commission to Congress. Mine host Fraunces was not forgotten in the bestowal of rewards which followed the success of the patriot cause and the founding of the republic.

When, in 1789, Washington returned to New York to be inaugurated President of the United States and took up his residence here, he made Fraunces steward of his household, a post for which the latter was admirably fitted, and which he filled to the satisfaction of all concerned; and so his humble name has a place in our annals side by side with that of his great patron.

Fraunces's Tavern was probably built in the summer or autumn of 1753. It was originally three stories high, a lofty building for those early days, and built of brick brought from Golden's yard in Amsterdam. It is still a public-house, and has never been otherwise since it was first opened for that purpose. In 1853 a fire visited the building, but did no serious damage. In the repairs made at that time the Dutch roof surmounting the house was torn down and replaced by two additional flat-topped stories. The lower floor of the house retained its original shape until 1890, when the old walls were torn down and replaced by a pretentious stone front, and the old tap-room, scene of so many merry gatherings in the vanished days, was converted into a modern barroom. Fortunately, however, these modern improvements stopped short of the Long Room on the second floor. This is an apartment forty-three feet in length and twenty in width. Its walls are hung with a picture of the old tavern, a faded and time-worn copy of the Declaration of Independence, a portrait of Washington, and other articles eloquent of the history and associations of the place. Save for the paper on the walls and the laying of a new floor, the Long Room has not been changed since Washington stood there. The antique wall-cupboard holds its long-accustomed place, and just across the narrow hallway is the old kitchen, unchanged save by the introduction of a modern range. On the third floor are several small rooms built for the guests of the tavern, rarely used at present, but which, except as to furniture, stand just as they did a hundred years ago.

Jumel Mansion, Washington Heights, New York

In the upper part of New York are two other houses associated with the Revolutionary period and its heroes, — the Jumel mansion and Hamilton Grange. No house in America has a more varied and interesting history than the first of these, which stands on Washington Heights. Frederick Philipse, descendant of a noble Bohemian family and second lord of Philipse Manor on the Hudson, had a charming daughter, Mary by name, who, tradition has it, declined the hand of George Washington, then a colonel of militia and counted one of the rising men of the province. She became a little later the wife of Roger Morris, aide to Braddock and Washington's companion in arms in the disastrous fight in which the British general lost his life. They were married in January, 1758, and the bride's dowry in her own right was a large domain, plate, jewelry, and money, while she received as a wedding present from her brother, third and last lord of the manor, the house on Washington Heights. Here Colonel Morris and his wife lived in princely style until the Revolution. Then the husband espoused the royalist cause, and with his family was compelled to seek safety in flight.

The Morris mansion was seized by the Continental troops, and in the summer of 1776 Washington made his head-quarters in the deserted home of his former successful rival for a fair woman's hand. The apartment occupied by Washington as a sleeping-room is shown to visitors, so also are the room at the end of the great hall used as a council-chamber by the general and his staff, and the tree on the lawn to which the former was accustomed to tie his horse. Compelled to face an army of veterans which outnumbered his band of raw recruits two to one, Washington, after several disastrous skirmishes, in the early autumn of 1776 retreated across the Hudson River into New Jersey. It was after this retreat that the Morris mansion played its part in one of the most exciting incidents of his military career. On the crown of the heights, a mile to the north of the mansion, the patriots at the opening of the war had built a fort with strong outworks, called Fort Washington. When the retreat into New Jersey was ordered, one thousand men were left behind to garrison the fort, but were at once besieged in strong force by the British and their Hessian and Tory allies. From Fort Lee, on the Palisades opposite, Washington anxiously watched their advance, and realizing the danger that menaced the garrison, decided to abandon the fort. His council, however, overruled him, and reënforcements were sent. Still, the siege went on, and a demand was made for a surrender. Informed of this, Washington crossed the river, with Generals Putnam, Greene, and Mercer, and cautiously made his way to the Morris mansion. From an upper room of the house he was making a hurried survey of the condition of affairs at the fort, when the pretty wife of a Pennsylvania soldier, who had followed her husband to the field, and who on the present occasion had followed the chief from the river, stole to his side and whispered something in his ear. Instantly Washington ordered his companions into the saddle, and they galloped posthaste back to the boats that had brought them from the Jersey shore. Fifteen minutes after their hurried flight from the house a British regiment, which had been quietly climbing the heights, appeared in front of it. A woman's quick eyes had been the first to discover its approach, and her timely warning had saved Washington and his generals from capture, and averted a heavy, perhaps a fatal blow to the patriot cause. The fort fell after a fight that strewed the Heights thick with graves.

Morris was an active royalist, and, as a consequence, at the close of the war his property, and his wife's as well, was declared confiscated; but the title to the house remained in dispute until, in 1810, John Jacob Astor bought up the claim of the Morris heirs. By Astor the house was sold, a little later, to Stephen Jumel, and thus entered upon another brilliant period of its history. Jumel, after a stirring and adventurous youth, had settled in New York, and, prospering in business, had become one of the merchant princes of his time. When his fortune was secured he wooed and courted a beautiful New England girl, and purchased the Morris mansion as a home for his bride. The old house was refitted with hangings, plate, and furniture brought from France, madame's drawing-room being furnished with chairs and divans that had been the property of hapless Marie Antoinette. The Jumels entertained on a lordly scale, and their New Year's feasts were counted among the most memorable social events of the period. Jerome Bonaparte, he who married and deserted high-spirited Betty Patterson, was a frequent visitor at their home, and when they visited Paris after the death of Napoleon they were received in the most exclusive salons. A portrait of madame painted during this trip shows a beautiful and charming matron, with finely cut, aristocratic features, and clad in a robe of blue velvet, with collars and lappets of lace.

The husband died in 1832, and a year later the widow made the acquaintance of Aaron Burr, the latter then almost an octogenarian, but still retaining in generous measure the powers of fascination that fifty years before had given him so much success with women. Burr was old and poor and under a cloud; madame was rich, courted, and unwilling to wed again; but he pushed his suit with an ardor that would not brook refusal, and finally, after repeated rebuffs, told her that on a certain day he should come with a clergyman, and she must then yield to his importunities. He kept his word; and one sunny afternoon in July, riding up in state to the great portico, accompanied by the minister who half a century before had married him to the mother of his daughter, Theodosia, he insisted that Madame Jumel should then and there become his wife. Alarmed and dismayed, but fearing a scandal, and urged by her relatives to give way, she reluctantly consented, and they were married in the great drawing-room of the mansion. In this same room, a few days later, — so the gossips told the story, — madame discovered Burr in the act of kissing a pretty maid, and soundly boxing his ears, ordered him from the house. Be this as it may, Parton, than whom we could have no better authority, says that Burr rapidly squandered his wife's wealth, and when she demanded an accounting coolly informed her that it was none of her affairs and that her husband could manage her estate. Quite naturally there were bitter quarrels between the ill-matched couple, followed by tardy reconciliations, and at last, in 1834, a divorce. Madame survived her separation from Burr thirty-one years, dying in 1865. Her last years contrasted strangely with her youth and middle life. Wilful always, her eccentricities became more manifest as age crept upon her. Towards the end she lived like a recluse and miser, seeing few visitors, and hoarding the fruits of her estate in an unused chamber, and her death was a sad and a lonely one. The Jumel mansion is now owned and occupied by a family of wealth and culture, who take pride in its history. Strongly built, it is in an excellent state of preservation, promising to outlive another century, and nowhere can a more delightful hour be spent than in wandering about its rooms and the surrounding grounds. Washington's old council-chamber is now a dancing-room, and the kitchen has been converted into a billiard-room, but the drawing-room in which madame and Burr were married, and the room on the second floor in which the former died, are unchanged, and no “modern improvements” mar the solid, antique exterior of the house, which reminds one of an aged aristocrat standing proudly silent among the noise and clamor of struggling nobodies.

Hamilton Grange, the country home that Alexander Hamilton built for himself and his family in 1802, no longer occupies its original site. It stood until a few years ago on Tenth Avenue and One Hundred and Forty-second Street, but now adjoins St. Luke's Protestant Episcopal Church, of which it is the rectory. Hamilton Grange, when bought by Hamilton and called after the family estate in Scotland, included the plot extending from St. Nicholas Avenue to Tenth Avenue, and from One Hundred and Forty-first to One Hundred and Forty-fifth Streets. It then stood eight miles from the centre of the city, and Hamilton chose it mainly for the quiet and seclusion it offered. Here, when the house was finished, he brought his gracious wife and seven young children, and here, no doubt, for he was then but forty-six, and in the full prime of his magnificent powers, he hoped to pass many happy and honored years. But a sad awakening was to follow this pleasant dream. On the morning of July 11, 1804, he rode forth to face the pistol of an adversary, and in the wooded glade at Weehawken Aaron Burr's bullet laid him low. A few hours later friends brought him, desperately wounded, to a house in Greenwich village, where he died the next day. He is buried in Trinity church-yard.

The old house is a square two-story structure, with a basement, plainly built of deal boards, and painted an olive green. There are verandas for the first story on the east and west sides, and at the rear a long flight of steps runs down sidewise from the rear porch. The main entrance is fronted by a roomy porch, where Mrs. Hamilton, the daughter of General Philip Schuyler, used to wait for her husband, when in the warm summer afternoons he came galloping up the King's Road from his office in the distant town, and where they sat together on pleasant evenings, and perhaps watched the growth of the thirteen gum-trees Hamilton had planted in honor of the thirteen original States. These trees are still standing, a little to the southeast of the first site of the house, while other trees stud the lawn, and a ragged border of box, showing the growth of years, runs along the abandoned carriage drive. The front door of the house opens into a small hallway, and to the right is a spacious room used by Hamilton as a library and study. Adjoining it, also on the right, is the dining-room, low-studded, octagonal in shape, and having a bay-window at the east. The wood-work, the white marble mantel, and the fireplace are severe in irony of human hopes and ambitions.

Three Presidents of the republic have lived and two have died in New York. The house at 123 Lexington Avenue was once the home of Chester A. Arthur, and it was there that he died; and an old-fashioned, Dutch-roofed structure, yet standing at the corner of Prince and Marion Streets, was the last residence of James Monroe. After the death of his wife, in 1830, ex-President Monroe removed to New York and lived with his son-in-law, Samuel L. Gouveneur, once postmaster of the city, at 63 Prince Street, then a fashionable thoroughfare. He was in feeble health when he came, and died on July 4, 1831. His body rested in the Marble Cemetery in East Second Street for twenty-seven years; but in 1858 it was disinterred at the request of the State of Virginia, and removed to Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond, where it now lies. The Prince Street house shows signs of age and neglect. It stands amid squalid surroundings, and now does duty as a Hungarian restaurant.

In the house at 3 East Sixty-sixth Street General Grant passed the most heroic period of his life. The house was bought by friends of the general and presented to Mrs. Grant soon after their return from Europe in 1879. Here the long illness that ended at Mount McGregor came upon him, and here, battling grimly with death, he wrote his memoirs, in order that his wife and children might not want after he was gone. It was the greatest battle of his life, and the picture of the hero who had earned and worn the highest earthly honors working amid the miseries of a sick-chamber to glean the gains he knew he could never enjoy, is one to which history offers no parallel. He won in this race with death, and finished his task a few days before the end came.

An apartment-house has replaced the old home of General Scott at 136 West Twentieth Street, but the house in which Admiral Farragut lived for several years, and in which he died in September, 1870, is still standing, at 113 East Thirty-sixth Street. The same is true of the house in which Horace Greeley erstwhile lived at 35 East Nineteenth Street. This is a three-story brick building, now devoted to business purposes. Here the founder of the Tribune and his daughters dwelt for many years, and in an upper room in this house he wrote his “History of the American Conflict” and did other notable work. The house at 10 Washington Place, in which Commodore Vanderbilt lived a score of years, and in which he died, was replaced a few years ago by a warehouse, and a similar fate has befallen the last home of the first John Jacob Astor, at 37 Lafayette Place. In Depau Row, in West Bleeker Street, stood until recently a dilapidated house in which Alexander T. Stewart lived for many years, before he built the marble pile which is now the home of the Manhattan Club. The old house of Peter Cooper is still standing, at the corner of Twenty-eighth Street and Fourth Avenue. It stood, when first built, on the present site of Cooper Institute. William M. Tweed, in the early days of his remarkable career, lived at 197 Henry Street, moving from there to 511 Fifth Avenue, from which he made his sensational escape. An earlier home of Tweed was 193 Madison Street.

The brownstone house at 5 West Twenty-second Street was for a long time the city home of Samuel F. B. Morse. Here he lived for many years after the invention of the telegraph brought him wealth and fame, and here he died on April 2, 1872. A modest house at 36 Beach Street was for nearly forty years the home of John Ericsson, and in this house the great engineer breathed his last March 8, 1889. Here the “Monitor” and many other famous inventions were designed and perfected. The house is now used as an industrial school, where the children of emigrants are given a training that in future years will make them useful and patriotic citizens, — a fitting and worthy mission for the old home of one of the greatest of the adopted sons of the republic.

The house at 173 Houston Street, long owned and occupied by William E. Burton, has given way to a business structure, and tenement-houses have replaced the early homes of Lester and James W. Wallack at 12½ and 151 Crosby Street. However, the house at 436 West Twenty-second Street, in which Edwin Forrest once lived, stands very much as he left it, even as to its interior and furniture. In this house the tragedian and his beautiful English wife, Catherine Sinclair, dwelt for several years, holding receptions at which William Cullen Bryant, Parke Goodwin, Nathaniel P. Willis, and other notable men were frequent guests; and here occurred the sudden, mysterious quarrel, of which no one has ever been able to discover the real cause, and which ended in the divorce suit that helped to make the fame of Charles O'Conor. It is a wide-front dwelling of brick, two stories and a basement, with a mansard roof that is really a third story. The entrance is by a broad stone staircase, set near the centre of the front. When Forrest bought the property it had a big garden in the rear, which is still there, fenced about with ornamental walls of wood, decked in these later days with a profusion of trailing vines and greenery. Tradition has it that the actor bought the place of a wealthy Englishman, who built it seventy years ago as the exact counterpart of the English home of his wife, designing thus to cure the homesickness to which the latter had fallen a victim.

It has been the home for many years past of a wealthy retired merchant, who, with a love for bric-à-brac and ample means for its gratification, has gather there one of the choice art collections of the town, and made it a storehouse literally overflowing with things as costly and curious as they are beautiful. Every inch of wall in the house is covered with art ornaments, and the old-fashioned spiral staircase, so often referred to by witnesses in the famous divorce trial, is decked with rugs and other trimmings.

A fortune has been expended on ivory carvings, displayed in cabinets of Louis XV.'s time, and there are rare old bronzes, queer andirons, and costly porcelains. Richly embroidered chairs from the castle at Fontainebleau are grouped around the open fireplace, and the north wall of the reception-parlor is crowded with fine old miniatures. On the eastern wall are two photographs in oval silver frames. They are portraits of Forrest and his wife. The actor's face has an amiable expression not found in his other photographs. The owner spent years in patient search before he secured the photograph of Mrs. Forest, which represents her in her youth, when her beauty of face was famous. Timepieces of bygone times, including both clocks and watches, are hung on the southern wall, over a satin-lined case filled with lotus-leaf carvings in ivory.

A noteworthy feature of the dining-room is a tall cabinet, containing a complete dinner service, which Louis Philippe once used at the Tuileries, and which bears the royal crest. Old silver fills other cabinets in the hallway outside, and oil-paintings, antique swords, and ancient armor cover the walls of the spiral stairway from floor to ceiling. When the owner could no longer find room for his treasures in the house itself he went out to the porch and the garden beyond. He put things among the plants and flowers, and filled the porch with armor, lamps, lanterns, panels, wood-carvings, and rare rugs. On this porch Forrest used to sit on summer evenings and sip, in the intervals of pleasant familiar talk, the delicious mint-juleps that his wife brewed for him and his friends, and of which he was very fond. Mint-juleps were then just coming into favor, and Mrs. Forrest had reduced the mixing of them to a fine art. Books are stored on the second floor of the house, where Forrest had his library; and the top story, where the tragedian had his wardrobe and dressing-room, has become a bachelor's den and library, where the present owner's son passes his leisure hours. All in all the old home of Forrest is a curiously beautiful house, made interesting not alone by past associations, but also by the patient zeal and enlightened taste which have wrought its present adornment.

There are few reminders in brick and mortar or wood of the literary New York of earlier days, but among them are the house Washington Irving built for his New York residence, and the Poe cottage at Fordham. The first named stands on the southwest corner of Irving Place and East Seventeenth Street, — a low-browed brick structure, looking as sturdy and strong as any of its more youthful neighbors. It was built for the great writer, and became the centre of a little family settlement, from which Irving Place took its name. It fronts on Irving Place, but can be entered only from Seventeenth Street. Irving would not permit a door and steps in front, for he loved to sit in the big room that in his day occupied the entire ground story of the house and to gaze through ample windows down the hill, at the East River, filled with craft bound to and from the Sound. This was Irving's favorite room. Here he wrote, drank, and sat on long winter evenings before the great fireplace, with his pipe and his thoughts for company. The house had, besides this big room, three sleeping-rooms upstairs, of which the front one was the author's, and in the basement a tiny kitchen and a good-sized dining-room. Before the front windows on Irving Place hangs an iron balcony, and this, on those rare summer evenings when he was in New York, was his favorite seat. Most of the pleasant summer days he passed, even while New York was his main place of residence, along the shores of the Hudson or in the Catskills. His occupancy of the house ended not long after his return from Spain, where he had filled the post of American minister; but the building remained the property of the Irving family for many years.

A few minutes' walk from the railroad station at Fordham, forty years ago a quiet country village, but now fast becoming a part of the Greater New York, stands the cottage in which Edgar Allan Poe passed the last and beyond doubt the most peaceful years of his feverish life. It is a simple affair, built more than seventy years ago, long, low, and box-shaped. The sides, as well as the roof, are shingled. A broad porch shades the entrance, and near by grows a vigorous cherry-tree planted by Poe in 1847, and which rarely fails to bring out a full crop of fruit. On the lower floor of the cottage there are two large square rooms and a kitchen. The middle room was used by Poe as a dining- and sitting-room, and here he received his visitors, until his wife became ill. She then occupied the front room as a bedroom, and it was there she died. The second floor has three low-ceilinged rooms, and the front room, which was the same size as the one below, was, it is said, Poe's favorite room. An old-fashioned brick chimney runs up through the roof, and has an open fireplace, where a cheerful fire can blaze and crackle in winter. In this room “Ullalume” and “Eureka,” two of his best-known poems, were written. Poe rented the cottage in the spring of 1846, and went with his wife and her mother, Mrs. Clemm, to live there. His wife, Virginia, was then suffering from consumption. She rallied for a time, but soon again began to fail, and died in the following year. The grounds about the cottage comprise about two acres, and slope away into a grassy, shady hollow. A ledge of rocks overlooks the cliff and the valley below. To the east the view stretches into Connecticut, and over the Sound to the hills of Long Island, blue and shadowy in the distance. Here Poe spent the quietest and happiest days of his life. His expenses were small, and his duties only such as he cared to assume. He took long walks, often going to the city on foot, and his labors were lightened by visits from friends and admirers. But the end came all too soon. A few months after the death of his wife Poe set out on his fatal trip to Baltimore, and a fortnight later silence had fallen upon one of the strangest geniuses of his time.

One other interesting reminder of the New York of other days calls for closing mention. Audubon, the ornithologist, after an adventurous career that had led him over half the world, in 1841, at the age of sixty, bought the property now known as Audubon Park. It consisted of forty-four acres, all heavily wooded, and at that time was almost as remote from the city as a lodge in the Catskills. Here he built his house, his nearest neighbor being Madame Jumel. The naturalist took with him a colony of workmen, — carpenters, blacksmiths, and masons, — and houses were built in the woods for their shelter while the manor-house went up. Fifty years ago the journey to New York was by no means an easy one, and Audubon raised his own vegetables, and at one time killed his own meat. The Audubon mansion was the scene of the final triumph of S. F. B. Morse, the inventor of the telegraph. In 1843, when Morse was setting up his first line of telegraph between Philadelphia and New York, its New Jersey terminus was at Fort Lee, opposite Audubon Park. The wire and instruments were carried across the river in a row-boat, and the instrument set up in the laundry of the mansion. From this old room, in which there has been no change in half a century, the first telegraph message ever sent from Manhattan Island was flashed across the wire to Philadelphia, recording the success of the experiment. It was sent in the presence of Morse, Audubon, and the latter's family. Between 1843 and 1845 Audubon was absent in the West. Soon after his return from this trip his health gave way, he being first afflicted with a loss of memory. He spent hours in endeavoring to paint, and would burst into tears to find that his efforts were in vain. He had broken his right arm in his youth by a fall from a horse, and had taught himself to paint equally well with either hand, but in this strait both hands had lost their cunning. In 1847 his bedchamber was moved downstairs, adjoining his old painting-room, and there he died, in February, 1851.

The old house has been much changed since it passed from the possession of the Audubon family in 1864. A mansard-roof has been added, and bow-windows extended from the front and rear sides. The basement, however, and the first floor have been little altered since the house was built, and standing, as it does, well out of the beaten tracks of trade and travel, it serves to add zest and pleasure to the quest of any searcher after brick-and-mortar reminders of old New York.