achers embroidered with silver and
seed pearls, their short, stiff brocade skirts swinging to show their
silk stockings and high-heeled shoes, much as ours do now; the men
taking a sly pinch of snuff, and brushing it hastily off their blue or
gray coats; tie-wigs, silver buttons, and knee breeches glittering in
the sunshine of such a day as this, away back in sixteen hundred and
something. I can see neat, consciously aristocratic and good Dominie
Mutzelius or Dominie Ritzema in irreproachable black, with a touch of
white, going as guest to Sunday dinner at Philipsburg Manor, after the
"great people" had listened to his eloquence, seated in their cushioned
"boxes" in the seven-windowed church. There are only six windows now;
but in those days you had to keep your window and weather eye open, even
during the dominie's discourse, for Indians might take a fancy to scalp
the congregation if it could be taken unawares. Luckily the lord of the
manor, and his friends, and the sturdy farmers with their families, were
not to be caught napping, even if the sermon were dull and the weather
hot. Besides, in case of emergency, they could turn their church into a
fort at a few minutes' notice. The walls were nearly three feet thick;
the seven windows were barred with iron, and so high up that, if the
Indians wanted to peep, they had to climb on each other's shoulders. As
for the doors, they could hardly be knocked in with a battering ram; so
you had no excuse to stop at home on Sunday, even in "Indian Summer." Of
course we went to see the grave where all that is mortal of Washington
Irving lies in the Sleepy Hollow cemetery; and the famous bridge--or,
rather, the new edition of it built by William Rockefeller.

Do you remember that Major Andre was taken on the Albany Post Road at
Tarrytown on his way to New York, with dispatches from the traitor
Benedict Arnold hidden in his stockings? I've always had a sneaking
sympathy with Andre, because he was gallant and young and good looking,
but Tarrytown isn't the place, I find, in which to express any such
sentimental feeling. He is still the villain of the piece there, a mere
spy, travelling in disguise, a treacherous wretch who long and
stealthily worked to corrupt a hitherto honourable general. He is the
villain, and David Williams, John Paulding, and Isaac Van Waart, the
scouting militiamen who took and searched him, are the heroes of that
drama of 1780. Tarrytown people are delighted to