Chapter 4

"Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labour and to wait."

LONGFELLOW.

The spring of the year I was twenty, Dirck and myself paid our first visit
to town, in the characters of young men. Although Satanstoe was not more
than five-and-twenty miles from New York, by the way of King's-Bridge, the
road we always travelled in order to avoid the ferry, it was by no means as
common to visit the capital as it has since got to be. I know gentlemen who
pass in and out from our neighbourhood, now, as often as once a fortnight,
or even once a week; but thirty years since this was a thing very seldom
done. My dear mother always went to town twice a year; in the spring to
pass Easter week, and in the autumn to make her winter purchases. My father
usually went down four times, in the course of the twelve months, but he
had the reputation of a gadabout, and was thought by many people to leave
home quite as much as he ought to do. As for my grandfather, old age coming
on, he seldom left home now, unless it were to pay stated visits to certain
old brother campaigners who lived within moderate distances, and with whom
he invariably passed weeks each summer.

The visit I have mentioned occurred some time after Easter, a season of
the year that many of our country families were in the habit of passing
in town, to have the benefit of the daily services of Old Trinity, as the
Hebrews resorted to Jerusalem to keep the feast of the passover. My mother
did not go to town this year, on account of my father's gout, and I
was sent to supply her place with my aunt Legge, who had been so long
accustomed to have one of the family with her at that season, that I was
substituted. Dirck had relatives of his own, with whom he staid, and thus
every thing was rendered smooth. In order to make a fair start, my friend
crossed the Hudson the week before, and, after taking breath at Satanstoe
for three days, we left the Neck for the capital, mounted on a pair of as
good roadsters as were to be found in the county: and that is saying a good
deal; for the Morrises, and de Lanceys, and Van Cortlandts all kept racers,
and sometimes gave us good sport, in the autumn, over the county course.
West Chester, to say no more than she deserved, was a county with a
spirited gentry, and one of which no colony need be ashamed.

My mother was a tender-hearted parent, and full of anxiety in behalf of an
only child. She knew that travelling always has more or less of hazard,
and was desirous we should be off betimes, in order to make certain of our
reaching town before the night set in. Highway robbers, Heaven be praised!
were then, and are still, unknown to the colonies; but