From reading the book I turned--my head still filled with
the vision of Father Knickerbocker and Sleepy Hollow and
Tarrytown--to examine the extract. I read it in a sort
of half-doze, for the dark had fallen outside, and the
drowsy throbbing of the running train attuned one's mind
to dreaming of the past.

"The town of New York"--so ran the extract pasted in the
little book--"is pleasantly situated at the lower extremity
of the Island of Manhattan. Its recent progress has been
so amazing that it is now reputed, on good authority, to
harbour at least twenty thousand souls. Viewed from the
sea, it presents, even at the distance of half a mile,
a striking appearance owing to the number and beauty of
its church spires, which rise high above the roofs and
foliage and give to the place its characteristically
religious aspect. The extreme end of the island is heavily
fortified with cannon, commanding a range of a quarter
of a mile, and forbidding all access to the harbour.
Behind this Battery a neat greensward affords a pleasant
promenade, where the citizens are accustomed to walk with
their wives every morning after church."

"How I should like to have seen it!" I murmured to myself
as I laid the book aside for a moment. "The Battery, the
harbour and the citizens walking with their wives, their
own wives, on the greensward."

Then I read on: