disappeared one by one. We came to smile at the uncouth dress and unshaven
faces of the "bush-bauer" Palatines--once so familiar, now well nigh
outlandish. Families from Connecticut and the Providence Plantations began
to come in numbers, and their English tongue grew more and more to be the
common language. People spoke now of the Winchester bushel, instead of the
Schoharie spint and skipple. The bounty on wolves' heads went up to a
pound sterling. The number of gentlemen who shaved every day, wore
ruffles, and even wigs or powder on great occasions, and maintained
hunting with hounds and horse-racing, increased yearly--so much so that
some innocent people thought England itself could not offer more
attractions.

There was much envy when John Johnson, now twenty-three years old, was
sent on a visit to England, to learn how still better to play the
gentleman--and even more when he came back a knight, with splendid London
clothes, and stories of what the King and the princes had said to him.

The Johnsons were a great family now, receiving visits from notable people
all over the colony at their new hall, which Sir William had built on the
hills back of his new Scotch settlement. Nothing could have better shown
how powerful Sir William had become, and how much his favor was to be
courted, than the fact that ladies of quality and strict propriety, who
fancied themselves very fine folk indeed, the De Lanceys and Phillipses
and the like, would come visiting the widower baronet in his hall, and
close their eyes to the presence there of Miss Molly and her half-breed
children. Sir William's neighbors, indeed, overlooked this from their love
for the man, and their reliance in his sense and strength. But the others,
the aristocrats, held their tongues from fear of his wrath, and of his
influence in London.