ning Post_, and Jeremiah Thompson,
Collector of the Port, fought a duel to the death. It was indeed to
the death, for Thompson was wounded fatally. But duels were common
enough in those days; we feel still the thrill of indignation roused
by the shooting of Alexander Hamilton by Burr.

The old University of New York--where Professor Morse conducted his
great experiments in telegraphy, where Samuel Colt in his tower
workroom perfected his revolver, where the Historical Society of New
York was first established and where many of our most distinguished
citizens received their education--was never a financial success. For
a time they tried to make it pay by taking tenants--young students,
and bachelors who wished seclusion for writing or research. Then, in
the course of time, it was moved away to the banks of the Hudson. On
the site now stands a modern structure, where, to be sure, a few of
the old University departments are still conducted, but which is
chiefly celebrated as being the first all-bachelor apartment house
erected in town. It is appropriately called the "Benedick," after a
certain young man who scoffed at matrimony,--and incidentally got
married!

And a few of the families stay beneath the roofs their forefathers
built, watching, as they watched, the same quiet trees and lawns and
paths of the most charming square in all New York: De Forest,
Rhinelander, Delano, Stewart, De Rham, Gould, Wynkoop, Tailer,
Guinness, Claflin, Booth, Darlington, Gregory, Hoyt, Schell, Shattuck,
Weekes,--these, and others are still the names of the residents of
Washington Square North. Father Knickerbocker, coming to smoke his
pipe here, will be in good company, you perceive!

The recollections of many living persons who recall the old Square and
other parts of early New York, bring forcibly to us the realisation of
the speed with which this country of ours has evolved itself. In one
man's lifetime, New York has grown from a small town just out of its
Colonial swaddling clothes to the greatest city in the world. These
reminiscences, then, are but memories of yesterday or the day before.
We do not have to take them from history books but from the diaries of
men and women who are still wide-eyed with wonder at the changes which
have come to their city!

"The town was filled with beautiful trees," says one man (who
remembers Commodore Vanderbilt, with the splendid horses, the fine
manner and the unexampled profane eloquence), "but