pioneers of political freedom on the aged side of the Atlantic. The
merchants on Exchange, the Legislators in their Council Chambers, the
working men on the wharves and streets, the loveliest women in their
homes, and walks, and drives, alike wore the red cockade. The
Marseillaise was sung with The Star Spangled Banner; and the notorious
Carmagnole could be heard every hour of the day--on stated days,
officially, at the Belvedere Club. Love for France, hatred for England,
was the spirit of the age; it effected the trend of commerce, it
dominated politics, it was the keynote of conversation wherever men and
women congregated.

Yet the most pronounced public feeling always carries with it a note of
dissent, and it was just at this day that dissenting opinion began to
make itself heard. The horrors of Avignon, and of Paris, the brutality
with which the royal family had been treated, and the abolition of all
religious ties and duties, had many and bitter opponents. The clergy
generally declared that "men had better be without liberty, than without
God," and a prominent judge had ventured to say publicly that
"Revolution was a dangerous chief justice."

In these days of wonderful hopes and fears there was, in Maiden Lane, a
very handsome residence--an old house even in the days of Washington,
for Peter Van Clyffe had built it early in the century as a bridal
present to his daughter when she married Philip Moran, a lawyer who grew
to eminence among colonial judges. The great linden trees which shaded
the garden had been planted by Van Clyffe; so also had the high hedges
of cut boxwood, and the wonderful sweet briar, which covered the porch
and framed all the windows filling the open rooms in summer time with
the airs of Paradise. On all these lovely things the old Dutchman had
stamped his memory, so that, even to the third generation, he was