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Standing well back from the street, and separated from it by a splendid sweep of velvety lawn, is the Dutch residency, a dignified building whose classic lines reminded me of the manor houses built by the Dutch patroons along the Hudson.
"This sky-watching, and turning of night into day, will be the destruction of thy beauty, niece; and then we shall see how plenty Patroons are for husbands! A bright eye and a blooming cheek are thy stock in trade, girl; and she is a spendthrift of both, who is out of her bed when the clock hath struck ten."
In their new homes in the cheerless climate of New England we see traits which did not characterize the Dutch settlers of New York; we find no patroons, no ambition to be great landed proprietors, no desire to live like country squires, as in Virginia. They were more restless and enterprising than their Dutch neighbors, and with greater public spirit in dangers.
In 1631 De Vries settled Swaanendael, on the South River, as the Dutch called the Delaware; but in a few months the Indians attacked the place and massacred the settlers. Soon the patroons became rivals of the West India Company in the fur trade, and in 1632 Minuit, who favored them, was recalled and Wouter van Twiller was made governor.
He was finally elected a member of the Patroons Club, without serious opposition; he had dined twice with the Kemp Ferralls; he and Major Belwether were seen together at the Caithness dance, and in the Caithness box at the opera.
In my judgment, the privileged classes in this country are your patroons and your landlords; men that's not satisfied with a reasonable quantity of land, but who wish to hold more than the rest of their fellow-creatur's."
It was Georgia that led the way in decreeing the equal distribution of intestate property, both real and personal; and between 1784 and 1796 the example was followed by all the other states. At the same time entails were either definitely abolished, or the obstacles to cutting them off were removed. In New York the manorial privileges of the great patroons were swept away.
I'll not mince matters. You know that the Patroons have dropped me, and you know what for." "Yes, I know." "When I was called before the Board of Governors to explain the matter, if I could, you were sitting on that Board." "Yes." "I denied the charge, but refused to explain. You remember?" Quarrier nodded coldly. "And I was dropped by the club!"
In a few years indifference to Siward had changed to passive disapproval; that, again, to an emotionless dislike; and when the scandal at the Patroons Club occurred, for the first time in his life he understood what it was to fear the man he disliked.
Then came his note, written at the Patroons' Club very brief, curiously stilted and formal, with a strange tone of finality through it, as though he were taking perfunctory leave of people who had come temporarily into his life, and as though the chances were agreeably even of his ever seeing them again. The girl was not hurt, as yet; she remained merely confused, incredulous, unreconciled.
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