clover growing like any other fine fields. Only a big hole from the
cellar, with some little heaps of broken stone, green with grass and
weeds, identified the place. Even the copious old brook and spring
seem'd to have mostly dwindled away. The whole scene, with what it
arous'd, memories of my young days there half a century ago, the vast
kitchen and ample fireplace and the sitting-room adjoining, the plain
furniture, the meals, the house full of merry people, my grandmother
Amy's sweet old face in its Quaker cap, my grandfather "the
Major," jovial, red, stout, with sonorous voice and characteristic
physiognomy, with the actual sights themselves, made the most
pronounc'd half-day's experience of my whole jaunt.

For there with all those wooded, hilly, healthy surroundings, my
dearest mother, Louisa Van Velsor, grew up--(her mother, Amy Williams,
of the Friends' or Quakers' denomination--the Williams family, seven
sisters and one brother--the father and brother sailors, both of whom
met their deaths at sea.) The Van Velsor people were noted for fine
horses, which the men bred and train'd from blooded stock. My mother,
as a young woman, was a daily and daring rider. As to the head of the
family himself, the old race of the Netherlands, so deeply grafted on
Manhattan island and in Kings and Queens counties, never yielded a
more mark'd and full Americanized specimen than Major Cornelius Van
Velsor.


TWO OLD FAMILY INTERIORS

Of the domestic and inside life of the middle of Long Island, at and
just before that time, here are two samples: