houses, ^^a single sloop at a small wharf, and the gray walls and roof of a venerable structure, which you may see stretching among the trees parallel with the river, comprised the whole borough. That building is the Philipse Manor house, now occupied for municipal purposes by the public authorities of Yonkers. The city of Van der Donk and Philipse is now a thriving one, much given to factories and the enjoy- ment of a busy local life ; but to the outsider its chief attraction centres about the names of a few eminent people who have made it their home. Foremost among these appears the name of one who for years was looked upon as the natural leader of one of the great political parties of the land; a disciple of Martin Van Buren; one who had received the highest Digitized by Microsoft® From Spuyten Duyvil to Yonkers 209 honour in the gift of the people of the State and had been a candidate for the chief magistracy of the nation. Samuel Jones Tilden was an American of the Americans. Bom in an old-fashioned house in Columbia County, N. Y., in which four generations of his family had lived, he passed the declining years of his busy and influential life within the walls of "Graystone," his substantial and costly home at Yonkers. His house is situated to the north of the city on an elevated plateau and is massive and ample rather than ornate. Its granite walls and Mansard roof, rising from the surrounding verdure, do not easily pass un- noticed in the general view. But if we accord to Mr. Tilden the first niche in the local temple of fame, we would not leave him to soli- tude. Somewhere there would be a statue to Frederick Swartwout Cozzens, wine merchant and author, and the friend of most of the "Knickerbocker" authors. His Sparrowgrass Papers, originally published in Put- nam's Magazine, take rank among the classic works of American humour. The author of Nothing to Wear is also claimed proudly by Yonkers, and so are Doctor Wendell Prime, Mr. T. Astley Atkins, Doctor Armitage, and a score of other widely known people.' Along the river shore the towns and villages are devouring the rural scenery and replacing its natural charm with a more lively human interest: but still ' Since the above went to press Mr. William Allen Butler, the author of Nothing to Wear, has passed away. His death occurred at Yonkers on September 9th, 1902. 14 Digitized by Microsoft® 2IO The Hudson River between the little centres of population there are fra- grant miles of tree-shaded banks where the violets and anemones nod in the spring and the scarlet spires of the cardinal flower hide in August by the watercourses. Half a century ago Alfred B. Street wrote a charac- teristic description of the woodland scenery which in his day formed so striking a feature of the Hudson, and which even now in many places challenges the admiration of the observer. . Here the Spruce thrusts in Its bristling plume, tipped with its pale green points The scallop'd beech leaf and the birch's, cut Into fine ragged edges, interlace: While here and there, through clefts, the laurel lifts Its snowy chalices, half brimmed with dew. Digitized by Microsoft® Chapter XIV Spectres of the Tappan Zee THE little sea that expands between Haverstraw and the Palisades is a rare cruising place for ghosts and goblins. There is not a shadowy hall that rounds Piermont or tacks across from the Slaperig Hafen to the Hoeck but is freighted deep with legends. How briefly told, yet how suggestive, is the melan- choly history of Rambout Van Dam, the unresting oarsman that some witchery compels to never-ending labour upon the tides of the Tappan Zee ! He was one of those uneasy Dutch blades that counted neither dis- tance nor labour as of any moment when a pleasure was in view. There had been some notice or rumour of a frolic at Kakiat, a secluded hamlet hidden away among the hills of Rockland County, and Van Dam on hearing the news rowed from his home at Spuyten Duyvil the whole length of the Tappan Zee and the Palisades to boot in order to be there. Most modern youngsters would be conscious of some slight fatigue after such a pull, but not so dehcate were the Dutchmen of that early day. Rambout Digitized by Microsoft® 212 The Hudson River danced and drank, drank and danced as though he had had no exercise for a week. It was a Saturday- night, and midnight came and passed before he knew it. But when he started for home sohcitous companions warned him against the peril of sabbath-breaking; for upon all matters of religious observance the