* * * * *

Almost sunset, the boys climbing up stairs, and Effie bringing a letter?
Yes, and from Lavinia Dorman, pages and pages--the dear soul! I must wait
for a light. What is this?--she wishes to see me--will make me a long
visit--in May--if I like--has no longer the conscience to ask me to leave
the twins to come to her--boys of their age need so much care--then
something about Josephus! Yes, Sylvia Latham is the daughter of the new
house on the Bluffs, etc. You blessed twins! here is another advantage I
owe to you--at last a promised visit from Lavinia Dorman!

Ah, as I push my book into the desk the reason for its title turns up
before me, worded in Martin Cortright's precise language:--

"Everything, my dear Barbara, has a precedent in history or the basis of
it. It is well known that the Indian tribes have taken their distinctive
names chiefly from geographical features, and these often in turn control
the pace of the people. The name for the island since called New
Amsterdam and York was Mon-ah-tan-uk, a phrase descriptive of the rushing
waters of Hell Gate that separated them from their Long Island
neighbours, the inhabitants themselves being called by these neighbours
Mon-ah-tans, _anglice_ Manhattans, literally, _People of the Whirlpool_,
a title which, even though the termagant humour of the waters be abated,
it beseems me as aptly fits them at this day."




II