A tour around New York, and My summer acre; being the recreations of MrFelix Oldboy . my ear,and sometimes the Sunday of my boyhood seems alto-gether lost. And this reminds me that New York, aswell as Philadelphia, is owner of an historic bell. Itwas cast in Amsterdam in 1731, and it is said thatmany citizens cast in quantities of silver coin at thefusing of the metals. The bell was a legacy of de Peyster, who died while the MiddleDutch Church, on Nassau Street, was building, and di-rected in his will that the bell should be procured fromHolland at his expense. When the city was ca
A tour around New York, and My summer acre; being the recreations of MrFelix Oldboy . my ear,and sometimes the Sunday of my boyhood seems alto-gether lost. And this reminds me that New York, aswell as Philadelphia, is owner of an historic bell. Itwas cast in Amsterdam in 1731, and it is said thatmany citizens cast in quantities of silver coin at thefusing of the metals. The bell was a legacy of de Peyster, who died while the MiddleDutch Church, on Nassau Street, was building, and di-rected in his will that the bell should be procured fromHolland at his expense. When the city was capturedby the British, and the church was turned into a riding-school for the dragoons (Johnny Battin has told meoften how he used to practise his troop there), the bellwas taken down by the De Peyster family and secreteduntil shortly after the evacuation of the city, when itwas restored to its original position. It never rang inhonor of British oppression, but was patriotic to thecore. When the church was sold to the Governmentfor a post-ofifice, the bell was removed to the church. THE MIDDLE DUTCH CHURCH on Ninth Street, near Broadway, and thirty years ago,when the building changed hands, it found anotherresting-place in the church on Lafayette Place. Nowit has made some other migration. But, of right, itshould pass to a place of honor in the rooms of theHistorical Society. A bell with such ancestry andhistory (and he who reads ancient Dutch may read itsstory in the inscription) deserves to be tenderly cher-ished by a city that has preserved too few of the me-mentos of its eventful story. A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK l6l CHAPTER XIV SUMMER BREEZES AT THE BATTERY—A SOLDIER OF THE LAST CENTURY—KNICKERBOCKERS AND THEIR HOMES—AN OLD-TIME STROLL UPBROADWAY The coolest spot in New York in the dog-days is theBattery Park. From some point in the compass abreeze is always blowing among its elms, and the elec-tric lights bathe it in perpetual moonshine. Even onthe most quiet of nights t
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