a plash. In
the winter-time the river was allowed to freeze over, and then every
schoolboy walked across to Camden and back, as if it had been a
pilgrimage or religious duty, while meantime there was always a kind of
Russian carnival on the ice, oxen being sometimes roasted whole, and all
kinds of "fakirs," as they are now termed, selling doughnuts,
spruce-beer, and gingerbread, or tempting the adventurous with
thimblerig; many pedestrians stopping at the old-fashioned inn on Smith's
Island for hot punch. Juleps and cobblers, and the "one thousand and one
American fancy drinks," were not as yet invented, and men drank
themselves unto the devil quite as easily on rum or brandy straight,
peach and honey, madeira and punch, as they now do on more varied
temptations. Lager beer was not as yet in the land. I remember drinking
it in after years in New Street, where a German known as _der dicke
Georg_ first dealt it in 1848 to our American public. Maize-whisky could
then be bought for fifteen cents a gallon; even good "old rye" was not
much dearer; and the best Havanna cigars until 1840 cost only three cents
a-piece. As they rose in price they depreciated in quality, and it is
now many years since I have met with a really aromatic old-fashioned
Havanna.

It was a very well-shaded, peaceful city, not "a great village," as it
was called by New Yorkers, but like a pleasant English town of earlier
times, in which a certain picturesque rural beauty still lingered. The
grand old double houses, with high flights of steps, built by the
Colonial aristocracy--such as the Bird mansion in Chestnut Street by
Ninth Street--had a marked and pleasing character, as had many of the
quaint black and red-brick houses, whose fronts reminded one of the
chequer-board map of our city. All of this quiet charm departed from
them after they were surrounded by a newer and noisier life. I well
remember one of these fine old Colonial houses. It had been the old
Penington mansion, but belonged in my early boyhood to Mr. Jones, who was
one of my father's partners in business. It stood at the corner of
Fourth and Race Streets, and was surrounded on all sides by a garden.
There was a legend to the effect that a beautiful lady, who had long
before inhabited the house, had been so fond of this garden, that after
death her spirit was often seen of summer nights tending or watering the
flowers. She was a gentle ghost, and the story made a great impress