died a plain English farm-hand, blessed only with health, remarkable
strength, and a wretched, but happy home. Much of their parents'
sturdiness and independence was passed on into the blood of their four
children, two boys and two girls, for in 1748, after long saving, they
all left England for America, "the promised land," and sailed for New
Amsterdam. Husbandmen they were, and for two generations painfully,
gravely, they tilled the semi-productive soil of their little farm,
west of the Hudson. Land was cheap in the New World. Their vegetables
and fruit grew, the market in the city grew, and the van der Veere
farms grew, and peace and contentment abode there.

After the War of 1812 two healthy, robust van der Veere brothers
tramped into New York City each carrying in his bundle nearly
$1000.00, his share of their father's recently divided farm. They
started a green-grocery shop. One attended the customers, the other,
through the summer months, worked their little truck garden away out
on the country road, a road which is to-day New York's Great White
Way. They prospered. One married, and his two boys founded the van der
Veere firm of importers. From the East this company's ship, later its
ships, brought rare curios, oriental tapestries and fine rugs to make
elegant the brown-stone front drawing-rooms of aristocratic,
residential New York of that generation. The sons of one of these
brothers to-day constitute the honorable van der Veere firm. The other
brother left one son, Clifford, and two daughters, Dora and Henrietta.
It is into the life-history of Clifford van der Veere that we now
intrude. He was a sturdy youth, with no illnesses, save occasional
sore throats which left him when he shed his tonsils. His father was a
reserved, kindly man, a quietly efficient man. His competitors never
understood the sure growth of his success--he was so unpretentious in
all that he did. Clifford's mother was a sensible woman, untouched by