the patient husband sees the faithless messenger pass with a glass of lemonade, having utterly forgotten him and the lady in the black bonnet and gray eyes, who may be, for ought he knows to the contrary, wringing her hands at this moment on the wharf at New York. By this time the young ladies are tired of looking at the Pali- sades, and have taken out their novels, the old gentlemen are poring over their damp newspapers, and the captain has received his fourteen hundred or two thousand dollars, locked up his office, and gone to smoke with the black funnel and the engineer. The broad waters of the Tappan Zee open before the flying cut- water ; those who have never been up the river before think of poor Andr^ as they pass Tappan and Tarry town, and those who love gentle worth and true genius begin to look out for Sleepy Hollow and the house of Washington Irving. It is a quiet little spot, buried in trees and marked with an old Dutch vane. May his latter days, when they shall come, find there the rever- ence and repose which are his due ! Still the old order changes. As the white wings made way before the steamboat of Fulton's time and that in turn retired to give precedence to the swashbuckling river-craft of half a century ago, so these, too, have Digitized by Microsoft® 138 The Hudson River disappeared, and now the traveller finds great floating hotels, run to maintain, in comfort and fidelity to schedule time, a successful rivalry with the modern railroad service. Their appointments are no longer barbaric, their accommodations no longer uncomfort- able, their voyages no longer invitations to disaster and sudden death. By day, they sweep by the base of the echoing hills or into the open river reaches with a dignity of presence and a majesty of motion that fit well with their surroundings; and, by night, the inquisitive eye of the almost omniscient search-light explores the secrets of the sleeping shores. But it dis- covers no one ready to stand amazed at this or any other marvel, as the villagers and boatmen did when Fulton directed the little Clermont up the stream a century ago, and filled the night with coruscations of fat pine sparks, and the quiet sleepy hamlets with the rattle and splash of his primitive engine. Digitized by Microsoft® Chapter X Riverside to Inwood RIVERSIDE PARK has been called " the mere aggrandisement of a road." In a sense that is true and yet the aggrandisement of such a road in such a way suggests the embellishment of a book by extra illustration, till the original volume appreciates in value beyond computation. From 7 2d Street to 130th Street, between Eleventh and Twelfth Avenues — the latter near the river level — Riverside Drive winds over hill and dale for three miles. There are few roads in the world that can com- pare with it. Every turn is a revelation of natural beauty and every hillock is crowned with some historic association. This is not a single road, but a "cluster of ample ways" for pleasure riding and driving, with number- less nooks "that a bee might choose to dream in," and sudden revelations of the river at points where natural advantages have been seized with consummate art. Across to Fort Lee, along the sheer wall of the Pali- sades, or down past the busy shipping to where Bar- tholdi's statue lifts her unwearied arm, the outlook 139 Digitized by Microsoft® HO The Hudson River is a panoramic display of exquisite charm. There is nothing that seems trivial in all the prospect: in all that comes within the range of the eye the "large be- nignities" of sky and river conspire to delight it. The changing hues of colour, the evanescent shadows playing across the distant hills, the long lanes of wind- drift vanishing in perspective, present not one picture, but a never-ending succession of them. Near the southern end of Riverside Drive used to be a place of resort known as Elm Park. Mr. Benson J. Lossing describes it as a camp-ground for recruits during the Civil War, " once the seat of the Apthorpe family." The Apthorpe mansion stood at the corner of 9 1 st Street and Columbus Avenue. Wash- ington had his headquarters here for a very brief time. The de Lancey house, the property of General Oliver de Lancey, stood at about 86th Street. In the winter of 1777, while the owner was absent, a party of young men came down from Tarrytown, bent on retaliation for the burning of the Van Tassel house, not far from there. They were led by Martlings and others, and succeeded in passing the British