tence of great interest, and then he
would fold up his spectacles and put them in their worn leather case,
and walk slowly out. He was always pleased when one of the younger
clerks bowed to him and said, "Good-day, Mr. Dolph!"

[Illustration]

It was in the fourth year of his widowhood that he bethought himself of
young Jacob's need of a more liberal social life than he had been
leading. The boy went about enough; he was a good deal of a beau, so
his father heard; and there was no desirable house in the town that did
not welcome handsome, amiable young Dolph. But he showed no signs of
taking a wife unto himself, and in those days the bachelor had only a
provisional status in society. He was expected to wed, and the whole
circle of his friends chorused yearly a deeper regret for the lost
sheep, as time made that detestable thing, an "old bachelor," of him.

Young Jacob was receiving many courtesies and was making no adequate
return. He felt it himself, but he was too tender of his father's
changeless grief to urge him to open the great empty house to their
friends. The father, however, felt that it was his duty to sacrifice his
own desire for solitude, and, when the winter of 1825 brought home the
city's wandering children--there were not so many of the wandering sort
in 1825--he insisted that young Jacob should give a dinner to his
friends among the gay young bachelors. That would be a beginning; and if
all went well they would have an old maiden aunt from Philadelphia to
spend the winter with them, and help them to give the dinner parties
which do not encourage bachelorhood, but rather convert and reform the
coy celibate.

The news went rapidly through the town. The Dolph hospitality had been
famous, and this was taken for a signal that the Dolph doors were to
open again. There was great excitement in Hudson Street and St. John's
Park. Maidens, bending over their tambour-frames, working secret hopes
and aspirations in with their blossoming silks and worsted, blushed,
with faint speculative smiles, as they thought of the vast social
possibilities of the mistress of the grand Dolph house. Young bachelors,
and old bachelors, too, rolled memories of the Dolph Madeira over
longing tongues.

The Dolph cellar, too, had been famous, and just at that period New
Yorkers had a fine and fanciful taste in wine, if they had any
self-respect whatever.

I think it must have been about then that Mr. Dominick Lynch began his
mis