Lawrence." n:t was built, the chronicler tells us, by Wolfert Acker, a privy councillor of Peter Stuyvesant, "a worthy, but ill-starred man, whose aim through life had been to live in peace and quiet." He sadly failed. "It was his doom, in fact, to meet a head wind at every turn, and be kept in a constant fume and fret by the perverseness of mankind. Had he served on a modern jury, he would have been sure to have eleven unreasonable men opposed to him." He retired in disijust to this then wilderness, built the gabled house, and

wolfeet's Hoosr when irvjng prEciiASF

"inscribed over llio door (his teeth clenched at the time) his favourite Dutch motto, 'Lust in Rust' (pleasure in quiet). Tlie mansion was thence culled Wolfert's Rust (Wolfert's Rest), but by the uneducated, who did not understand Dutch, "Wolfert's Roost.'') It passed into the hands of Jacob Yan Tassel, a valiant Dutchman, who espoused the cause of the Republicans. The hostile ships of the British were often seen in Tappan Bay, in front of the Roost, and Cow Boys infested the land thereabout. Van Tassel had much trouble : his house was finally plundered and burnt, and he was carried a prisoner to New York. When

THE HUDSON. 351

the war was over, he rebuilt the Roost, but in more modest style, as seen in our sketch. "The Indian spring" -- the one brought from Rotterdam -- "still welled up at the bottom of*the green bank; and the wild brook, wild as evei', came babbling down the ravine, and threw itself into the little cove where of yore the water-guard harboured their whale-boats."