ability as a man of business, giving a careful attention, even to the
minutest details. But he was most agreeably employed in his large and well
stored library. Here were different editions of the Greek and Latin
classics, some of them rare and enriched with sumptuous
illustrations--thirty different ones of Horace and nearly as many of
Virgil. With the Greek tragedians he was as familiar as with our own
Shakespeare. In this library he wrote for the Crayon his entertaining
paper on Garrick and his portrait, and his charming little volume
entitled "Twelfth Night at the Century Club." Here also he wrote several
papers respecting the true interpretation of certain passages in Virgil,
which were published in the 'Evening Post.' It is to be regretted that he
did not collect and publish his literary papers, which would form a very
agreeable miscellany. He seemed, however, almost indifferent to literary
fame, and when he had once sent forth into the world an essay or a
treatise, left it to its fate as an affair which was now off his hands. On
Sunday morning he was alway at the old church in the village of Fishkill,
one of the most attentive and devout worshippers there. It is an ancient
building of homely architecture, looking now just as it did a century ago,
with a big old pulpit and sounding board in the midst of the church, which
the people would have been glad to remove, but refrained, because Mr.
Verplanck, whom they so venerated, preferred that it should remain.

The patrimonial mansion at Fishkill had historical associations which must
have added to the interest with which our friend regarded it. Mr.
Tuckerman relates, in the "North American Review," though without naming
the place or the persons, a story in which they were brought out in a
singular manner. He was there fifteen or twenty years since, a guest at
Verplanck's table. He describes the June sunshine which played through the
shifting branches of tall elms on the smooth oaken floor of the old
dining room, the plate of antique pattern on the sideboard and the