The grass grew about the unpaved streets, and relieved the eye by its refreshing verdure. Tall sycamores or pendent willows shaded

530 The Hudson River the houses, with caterpillars swinging, in long silken strings, from their branches; or moths, fluttering about like coxcombs, in joy at their gay transformation. The houses were built in the old Dutch style, with the gable-ends towards the street. The thrifty housewife was seated on a bench before her door, in close-crimped cap, bright-flowered gown, and white apron, busily employed in knitting. The husband smoked his pipe on the opposite bench; and the little pet negro girl, seated on the step at her mistress's feet, was industriously plying her needle. The swallows sported about the eaves, or skimmed along the streets, and brought back some rich bootv for their clamorous young; and the little housekeeping wren flew in and out of a Liliputian house, or an old hat nailed against the wall. The cows were coming home, lowing through the streets, to be milked at their owner's door; and if, perchance, there were any loiterers, some negro urchin, with a long goad, was gently urging them homewards.

In Gorham A. Worth's Rccollcctwjis of Albany, pubhshed first in 1 849, there is a description of an old Albany house, that of Balthazar Lydius, who died about the beginning of the nineteenth century: This old gentleman, if tradition may be relied upon, was something of a lion in his day. He was unusually tall, raw-boned, and of a most forbidding aspect -- singular in his habits and eccentric in his character -- but independent, honest, and gruff as a bear. He occupied, at the commencement of the present [nineteenth] century, the old and somewhat mysterious-looking mansion then standing at the southeast corner of North Pearl and State streets, and was, of course, next door ncii^hboiir. in an easterly line, to the old elm tree on the eorner.