_Robert R. Livingston._

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[Illustration: OLOFFE VAN KORTLANDT'S DREAM.]

Moreover, we should not forget that Communipaw outranks New York in
antiquity, and, according to Knickerbocker, whose quiet humor is
always read and re-read with pleasure, might justly be considered the
Mother Colony. For lo! the sage Oloffe Van Kortlandt dreamed a dream,
and the good St. Nicholas came riding over the tops of the trees,
and descended upon the island of Manhattan and sat himself down
and smoked, "and the smoke ascended in the sky, and formed a cloud
overhead; and Oloffe bethought him, and he hastened and climbed up to
the top of one of the tallest trees, and saw that the smoke spread
over a great extent of country; and, as he considered it more
attentively, he fancied that the great volume assumed a variety of
marvelous forms, where, in dim obscurity, he saw shadowed out palaces
and domes and lofty spires, all of which lasted but a moment, and then
passed away." So New York, like Alba Longa and Rome, and other cities
of antiquity, was under the immediate care of its tutelar saint. Its
destiny was foreshadowed, for now the palaces and domes and lofty
spires are real and genuine, and something more than dreams are made
of.

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Below the cliffs Manhattan's spires