he high-road into the curious transverse valley, or swale,
which at 125th Street crosses Manhattan Island from east to west, stood,
at the top of a steep lawn, a mansion imposing still in spite of age,
decay, and sorry days. The great Ionic columns of the portico, which
stood the whole height and breadth of the front, were cracked in their
length, and rotten in base and capital. The white and yellow paint was
faded and blistered. Below the broad flight of crazy front-steps the
grass grew rank in the gravel walk, and died out in brown, withered
patches on the lawn, where only plantain and sorrel throve. It was a sad
and shabby old house enough, but even the patches of newspaper here and
there on its broken window-panes could not take away a certain simple,
old-fashioned dignity from its weather-beaten face.

[Illustration]

Here, the boys used to say, the Crazy Woman lived; but she was not
crazy. I knew the old lady well, and at one time we were very good
friends. She was the last daughter of an old, once prosperous family; a
woman of bright, even brilliant mind, unhinged by misfortune,
disappointment, loneliness, and the horrible fascination which an
inherited load of litigation exercised upon her. The one diversion of
her declining years was to let various parts and portions of her
premises, on any ridiculous terms that might suggest themselves, to any
tenants that might offer; and then to eject the lessee, either on a nice
point of law or on general principles, precisely as she saw fit. She was
almost invariably successful in this curious game, and when she was not,
she promptly made friends with her victorious tenant, and he usually
ended by liking her very much.

Her family, if I remember rightly, had distinguished itself in public
service. It was one of those good old American houses where the
men-children are born with politics in their veins--that is, with an
inherited sense of citizenship, and a conscious pride in bearing their
share in the civic burden. The young man just out of college, who has
got a job at writing editorials on the Purification of Politics, is very
fond of alluding to such men as "indurated professional
office-holders." But the good old gentleman who pays the young
ex-collegian's bills sometimes takes a great deal of pleasure--in his
stupid, old-fashioned way--in uniting with his fellow-merchants of the
Swamp or Hanover Square, to subscribe to a testimonial to some one of
the best abused o