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I am the fine flower of my race, and in coming to this valley of dreams and this no-life I am merely fulfilling a destiny a fate, as you say and coming to my own." "But Emma, the worthy Verplancks?" "No, listen to me. For generations the Verplancks have been what people expected them to be, incarnate formulas of etiquette and timid living.
It had been in the family of the Verplancks ever since their ancestor Gulian Verplanck with Francis Rombout, in 1683, purchased it, with other lands, of the Wappinger Indians for a certain amount of money and merchandize, specified in a deed signed by the Sachem Sakoraghuck and other chiefs, the spelling of whose names seems to defy pronunciation.
It was easy enough now to silence Montgomery Carter, and the reconciliation of the Verplancks was assured. In the Star I made the case appear at the time to involve merely the capture of Australia Mac. When I dropped into the office the next day as usual, I found that I had another assignment that would take me out on Long Island. The story looked promising and I was rather pleased to get it.
What business had the Rensselaers, or the Livingstons, or the Hunters, or the Littlepages, or the Verplancks, or the Morgans, or the Wadsworths, or five hundred others similarly placed, to entertain "sentiments" that interfered with "business," or that interfered with the wishes of any straggling Yankee who had found his way out of New England, and wanted a particular farm on his own terms?
Dennis, whose sources of information were excellent, said it was rather an unhappy girlish affair with an unworthy cousin. Within the limits of the possible, the Verplancks always married cousins, and Emma, it was thought, had in her 'teens paid sentimental homage to the family tradition. In any case she remained surprisingly youthful under her nearly forty years.
The Stuyvesant Verplancks, I knew, were among the leaders of the rather recherche society at Bluffwood, and the pace at which Bluffwood moved and had its being was such as to guarantee a good story in one way or another.
They took their colour from the gossiping society in which they seemed to live. They prudently married other Verplancks, cousins or cousins' cousins. They hoarded their little fortunes without increasing them, and if what they called the rabble had not peopled New York and raised the price of land, which my people were merely too stolid to sell, we should long ago have gone under in penury.
Jan Steen was a well-known character, and his coming was looked upon as a special favor, only accorded to the servants because they belonged to the Verplancks, a family greatly honored and beloved among the Dutch settlers of Manhattan Island.
It is true, that old Daniel M'Cormick still held his levees on his venerable stoop, where all the heavy men in town used to congregate, and joke, and buy and sell, and abuse Boney; and that the Winthrops, the Wilkeses, the Jaunceys, the Verplancks, the Whites, the Ludlows, and other families of mark, then had their town residences in this well-known street; but coming events were beginning "to cast their shadows before," and it was easy to foresee that this single dwelling might at least double Rupert's income, under the rapid increase of the country and the town.
The two purchasers afterwards divided this domain, and to the Verplancks was assigned a tract which they have ever since held. This fine old estate has a long western border on the Hudson, and extends easterly for four or five miles to the village of Fishkill.
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