It should be a matter for congratulation that back of the proudest aristocracy of New York we find "the nobility of labour, the long pedigree of toil." Mrs. Grant, the " American Lady," whose memoirs are classic, says: " The very idea of being ashamed of anything that was neither vicious nor indecent never entered the head of an Albanian." Theirs must have been an almost ideally peaceable life, neither too laborious nor given up to repose, but preserving always the happy medium. They cultivated their gardens -- paas hloomtjcs and cabbages, no doubt, cheek by jowl, like the parlour and the countinghouse. The wilderness around Pearl and Jonkers and Handlers Streets blossomed with May roses and tulips, and the vernal procession swept up to the gates of winter, like an army with banners; though at the very

An Old Dutch Town 529

doors of the settlers the wolf, aetnal as well as metaphorieal, was ready to howl when the snow l)cgan to fly, and the deer came from the forest to browse im])artiallv u])on tulijjs and cabljages, and any intermission in the dail_\' fight against the encroaching wilderness meant a backsliding into original cussedness. One fact should be recorded to the everlasting credit of the Albanians of a centur\' and a half ago. They had a court-house, it is true, -- a room upon the second floor of a house within the fort, -- but Vander Donck, the first and at th^it time the only law)'er of the ])laee, was not permitted to practice, as there -was no one to o Pilose hi in. The Schepeii heard and decided, without haste or delay, upon the few cases that were brought before him, ruling by a code as simple and effectual as that of Solomon. From the pages of Dol])h He}diger we may borrow a vi\4d i)icture of the Albany of that day :