the house. The lady is
smiling.

The hostess with the powdered hair is Mrs. Mary Lindley Murray, wife of
Robert Murray, British sympathizer and Quaker, and mother of Lindley
Murray, the grammarian of later days; the house is the Murray
Homestead, or the Manor of Incleberg, that in Revoluntionary times stood
in the neighbourhood of what is now Park Avenue and Thirty-seventh
Street; the Red Coats whose march westward she has interrupted are the
troops of Lord Howe, in close pursuit of the badly demoralized soldiers
of General Washington; the day is one of September, 1776.

A few weeks before the disastrous battle of Long Island had been fought.
The Continental cause seemed at the point of immediate collapse. Day by
day the list of deserters swelled. Washington, leaving his campfires
burning to lull the suspicions of the confident victors, had transported
his men across the East River. On September 15th the British began
sending over boat-loads, landing them at Kip's Bay, where the Murray
estate ended, now the easterly point of Thirty-fourth Street. In
overwhelming numbers, fully equipped, and with elated morale, they began
the pursuit of the shattered Americans. The detachment of Continentals
left at Kip's Bay to oppose the landing had fled without firing a shot.
Washington, watching the debacle, had spurred his horse furiously
forward, striking the men with the flat of his sword, lashing them with
his tongue, in vain attempt to stop the panic. He was on the point of
advancing alone when his bridle-rein was seized by a young officer. In
an instant, again completely master of himself, he was building new
plans in the hopes of saving his army.

The situation on Manhattan Island was this. To the south was General
Knox, in command of a fort known as Bunker Hill on an eminence of what
is now Grand Street. Near-by was General Israel Putnam--probably less
known to posterity (above all, to youthful posterity) for his qualities
as a commander than for the mad dash down "Put's Hill" at Greenwich by
which he escaped the closely pursuing Red Coats. With Putnam was
Alexander Hamilton, in charge of a battery. To the generals Washington
sent word to retreat to the north in order to effect a junction of
forces. Knox withdrew men and cannon from Bunker Hill. The young man who
guided Putnam's troops along obscure paths and by winding lanes close to
the Hudson was named Aaron Burr. The busy Washington chanced to spend a
night in the Mur