Chapter 18 - Page 2

the moderate and immoderate. Of the first, he had two or
three turns a year; and these were the occasions on which he commonly
visited Satanstoe or had my father with him at Rockrockarock, as his own
place, in Rockland, was called. On these visits, whether to or from, there
was a large consumption of tobacco, beer, cider, wine, rum, lemons, sugar,
and the other ingredients of punch, toddy and flip; but no outrageously
durable excesses. There was much laughing, a great deal of good feeling,
many stories, and regular repetitions of old adventures, in the way of
traditional narrations; but nothing that could be called decided excesses.
It is true, that my grand father, and my father, and the Rev. Mr. Worden,
and Col. Follock, were much in the habit of retiring to their beds a little
confused in their brains, the consequence of so much tobacco-smoke, as Mr.
Worden always maintained; but everything was decent, and in order. The
parson, for instance, invariably pulled up on a Friday; and did not take
his place in the circle until Monday evening, again; which gave him fully
twenty-four hours, to cool off in, before he ascended the pulpit. I will
say this, for Mr. Worden, that he was very systematic and methodical in the
observance of all his duties; and I have known him, when he happened to be
late at dinner, on discovering that my father had omitted to say grace,
insist on everybody's laying down their knives and forks, while he asked a
blessing; even though it were after the fish was actually eaten. No, no;
Mr. Worden was a particular person, about all such things; and it was
generally admitted, that he had been the means of causing grace to be
introduced into several families, in Westchester; in which it had never
been the practice to have it, before his examples and precepts were known
to them.

I had not been acquainted with Guert Ten Eyck a fortnight, before I saw
he had a tendency to the same sort of excesses as those to which Col. Van
Valkenburgh was addicted. There was an old French Huguenot living near
Satanstoe--or rather, the son of one, who still spoke his father's
language--and who used to call Col. Follock's frolics his "_grands
couchers_" and his "_petit couchers_;" [27] inasmuch as he usually got
to bed at the last, without assistance; while at the first, it was
indispensable that some aid should be proffered. It was these "grands
couchers" at which my father never assisted. On these occasions, the
colonel invariably held his orgies over in Rockland, in the society of
men of purely Dutch extraction; there being something exclusive in the
enjoyment. I have heard it said that these last frolics sometimes lasted
a week, on really important occasions; during the whole of which time