s _en route_ to the station house
the officer granted his request. This good priest informed the policeman
with much reluctance that the candlesticks had formerly belonged to
him, and that he had given them to his prisoner to buy bread for his
family. My father was so deeply in sympathy with the life and character
of this priest that, although of a different faith, he seldom heard his
name mentioned without an expression of admiration for his life and
character.
There was a French Protestant church in Franklin Street ministered to by
the Rev. Dr. Antoine Verren, whose wife was a daughter of Thomas
Hammersley. I also remember very well a Presbyterian church on Laight
Street, opposite St. John's Park, the rector of which was the Rev. Dr.
Samuel H. Cox, an uncle of the late Bishop Arthur Cleveland Cox of the
Episcopal Church. Dr. Cox was a prominent abolitionist, and when we were
living on Hubert Street, just around the corner, this church was stoned
by a mob because the rector had expressed his anti-slavery views too
freely.
The mode of conducting funerals in former days in New York differed very
materially from the customs now in vogue. While the coffins of the
well-to-do were made entirely of mahogany and without handles, I have
always understood that persons of the Hebrew faith buried their dead in
pine coffins, as they believed this wood to be more durable.
Pall-bearers wore white linen scarfs three yards long with a rosette of
the same material fastened on one shoulder, which, together with a pair
of black gloves, was always presented by the family. It was originally
the intention that the linen scarf should be used after the funeral for
making a shirt. Funerals from churches were not as customary as at the
present time. If the body was to be interred within the city limits
every one attending the services, including the family, walked to the
cemetery. It was unusual for a woman to be seen at a funeral.
But the whole social tone of New York society was more _de rigueur_ than
now. Sometimes, for example, persons living under a cloud of
insufficient magnitude to place them behind prison bars, feeling their
disgrace, took flight for Texas. Instead of placing the conventional
_P.P.C._ on their cards the letters _G.T.T._ were used, meaning that the
self-expatriated ne'er-do-well had "gone to Texas." I have always
understood that in Great Britain the transgressor sought the Continent,
where he was often enabled to pa
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