When Lynde was seven or eight years old he had the misfortune to lose
his mother; his father was already dead. The child's nearest relative
was an uncle, David Lynde, a rich merchant of New York, a bachelor, and
a character. Old Lynde--I call him old Lynde not out of disrespect, but
to distinguish him from young Lynde--was at that period in his sixtieth
year, a gentleman of unsullied commercial reputation, and of regular if
somewhat peculiar habits. He was at his counting-room precisely at eight
in the morning, and was the last to leave in the evening, working as
many hours each day as he had done in those first years when he entered
as office-boy into the employment of Briggs & Livingstone--the firm at
the time of which I am now writing was Lynde, Livingstone & Co. Mr.
David Lynde lived in a set of chambers up town, and dined at his club,
where he usually passed the evenings at chess with some brother
antediluvian. A visit to the theatre, when some old English comedy or
some new English ballet happened to be on the boards, was the periphery
of his dissipation. What is called society saw nothing of him. He was a
rough, breezy, thickset old gentleman, betrothed from his birth to
apoplexy, enjoying life in his own secluded manner, and insisting on
having everybody about him happy. He would strangle an old friend rather
than not have him happy. A characteristic story is told of a quarrel he
had with a chum of thirty or forty years' standing, Ripley Sturdevant
Sen. Sturdevant came to grief in the financial panic of 1857. Lynde held
a mortgage on Sturdevant's house, and insisted on cancelling it.
Sturdevant refused to accept the sacrifice. They both were fiery old
gentlemen, arcades ambo. High words ensued. What happened never
definitely transpired; but Sturdevant was found lying across the office
lounge, with a slight bruise over one eyebrow and the torn mortgage
thrust into his shirt-bosom. It was conjectured that Lynde had actually
knocked him down and forced the cancelled mortgage upon him!