Chapter 1

"Look you,
Who comes here: a young man, and an old, in solemn talk."

_As You Like it_.

It is easy to foresee that this country is destined to undergo great and
rapid changes. Those that more properly belong to history, history will
doubtless attempt to record, and probably with the questionable veracity
and prejudice that are apt to influence the labours of that particular
muse; but there is little hope that any traces of American society, in
its more familiar aspects, will be preserved among us, through any of the
agencies usually employed for such purposes. Without a stage, in a national
point of view at least, with scarcely such a thing as a book of memoirs
that relates to a life passed within our own limits, and totally without
light literature, to give us simulated pictures of our manners, and the
opinions of the day, I see scarcely a mode by which the next generation can
preserve any memorials of the distinctive usages and thoughts of this.
It is true, they will have traditions of certain leading features of the
colonial society, but scarcely any records; and, should the next twenty
years do as much as the last, towards substituting an entirely new race for
the descendants of our own immediate fathers, it is scarcely too much to
predict that even these traditions will be lost in the whirl and excitement
of a throng of strangers. Under all the circumstances, therefore, I have
come to a determination to make an effort, however feeble it may prove, to
preserve some vestiges of household life in New York, at least; while I
have endeavoured to stimulate certain friends in New Jersey, and farther
south, to undertake similar tasks in those sections of the country. What
success will attend these last applications, is more than I can say, but,
in order that the little I may do myself shall not be lost for want of
support, I have made a solemn request in my will, that those who come after
me will consent to continue this narrative, committing to paper their own
experience, as I have here committed mine, down as low at least as my
grandson, if I ever have one. Perhaps, by the end of the latter's career,
they will begin to publish books in America, and the fruits of our joint
family labours may be thought sufficiently matured to be laid before the
world.

It is possible that which I am now about to write will be thought too
homely, to relate to matters much too personal and private, to have
sufficient interest for the public eye; but it must be remembered that the
loftiest interests of man are made up of a collection of those that are
lowly; and, that he who makes a faithful picture of only a single important
scene in the events of single life, is doing something towards painting the
greatest