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Once more Arcadian youth picnicked in the "bush" and coasted down Pinkster Hill past the squat Dutch church; the Tontine Coffee House sprang from dust, and through its doors walked Hamilton and Burr, Jerome Bonaparte, and a comic-pathetic émigré marquis, who in poverty awaited the greater Bonaparte's downfall, cherishing his order of Saint Louis and powdering his poll with Indian meal; the Livingstons and Clintons divided the land between them; Van Buren and the Regency came to power.
The earth was carpeted with beautiful grasses, mingled with tufts of moss, and bunches of fern. Blue and white flowers were scattered about almost as profusely as the "pinkster blossoms," in April, in the woods at home; and in sheltered places, the modest cape-jasmine was beginning to unfold its fragrant leaves.
His boys had all gone home to enjoy the Pinkster holiday, with the black servants of their respective families; and Jason had seized the opportunity to pay his first visit to the great capital of the colony. He was on his travels, like myself. "And what has brought you down here?"
As Dirck accompanied Miss Mordaunt to her father's house in Crown Street, I took an occasion to give Jason the slip, being in no humour to listen to his lectures on the proprieties of life, and left the Pinkster field as fast as I could. Notwithstanding the size and importance of New York, a holiday like this could not fail to draw great crowds of persons to witness the sports.
"Pinkster fields, and Pinkster frolics, are no novelties to us, sir, as they occur every season; and I am just old enough not to have missed one of them all, for the last twelve years." "We heard you had been 'out," put in another red-coat, whom I had heard called Billings, "accompanied by a little army, of what Bulstrode called, the Light Infantry."
Bulstrode; Pinkster is neither more nor less than the Festival of Whit-sunday, or the Feast of Pentecost. I suppose we shall now hear no more of your saint." Bulstrode took this little punishment, which was very sweetly but quite steadily uttered, with perfect good-humour, and with a manner so rebuked as to prove that Anneke possessed great control over him.
Here I was delighted to recognize the jollities of New Year's Day; the festivities of Paaes and Pinkster, and all the other merry-makings handed down in my native place from the earliest times of New Amsterdam, and which had been such bright spots in the year in my childhood.
The next day was the first of the three that are devoted to Pinkster, the great Saturnalia of the New York blacks. Although this festival is always kept with more vivacity at Albany than in York, it is far from being neglected, even now, in the latter place.
Anneke Mordaunt, whose grandmother was of a Dutch family, it will be remembered, had with her there, in the Pinkster field, a negress of just her own age, who was called Mari; not Mary, or Maria; but the last, as it would be pronounced without the final a.
I demanded, the pedagogue having already informed me that he had put up at a tavern in the suburbs, where horse-keeping and lodgings were "reasonable." "The Pinkster fields are up near the head of Broadway, on the common." "So I hear," answered Jason; "but I want to see a ship and all the sights this way, in the first place.
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