city that was still
under the shadow of the Knickerbockers.

First, at the southern extremity of the island, was the Battery and
Battery Park. When, in "The Story of a New York House," the late H.C.
Bunner described the little square of green jutting into the waters of
the upper bay, it was as it had been some years before the earliest
venturesome pioneers builded in lower Fifth Avenue. From the pillared
balcony of his house on State Street--the house may still be seen--Jacob
Dolph caught a glimpse of the morning sun, that loved the Battery far
better than Pine Street, where Dolph's office was. It was a
poplar-studded Battery in those days, and the tale tells how the wind
blew fresh off the bay, and the waves beat up against the sea-wall, and
a large brig, with all sails set, loomed conspicuous to the view, and
two or three fat little boats, cat-rigged, after the good old New York
fashion, were beating down towards Staten Island, to hunt for the
earliest bluefish. That was in 1808, and sixteen years later, the
Battery, with its gravelled, shady paths, and its somewhat irregular
plots of grass, was still the city's favourite breathing spot. There, of
summer evenings, after the stately walk down Broadway, the crinolined
ladies and the beaux with their bell-crowned hats gathered to watch the
sun set behind the low Jersey hills, and perhaps to inspect the review
of the Tompkins Blues, or the Pulaski Cadets. There was fierce rivalry
between these two commands, one under Captain Vincent, and the other
under Captain McArdle, and each corps had its admiring sympathizers.
Both Blues and Cadets presented a fine, martial appearance as they swung
across the Battery, marching like veterans who had faced fire and would
not flinch. "Sure it was," a flippant chronicler has recorded, "both had
an undisputed reputation for charging upon a well-loaded board with a
will that left no tell-tale vestige." Very likely, in the throng, all
were not of New York. There were doubtful strangers, too, looking with
yearning eyes out over the dancing waters of the blue bay--swarthy,
weather-beaten men with huge earrings. They called themselves
"privateers-men." But there were those who smiled at the word, for
romance had it that there were still buccaneers in the Spanish Main.

In many families that daily visit to the Battery was all the summer
change. Mr. Dayton, in his "Last Days of Knickerbocker Life," informed
us that neither belle nor gallant lo