d the Harlem that they both loved
so well, and there by the side of the Bronx streamlet the poet Drake
was buried. In the depth of his grief Halleck wrote the lines:

Green be the turf above thee,
Friend of my better days;
None knew thee but to love thee,
None named thee but to praise.

And now after more than three quarters of a century the words still
murmur their message of friendship and sorrow above Drake's grave. The
city has sped on far beyond the little graveyard, and harsh sounds
throb where once was only the singing of birds; but the consecrated
spot remains, cared for year by year as well as may be in despite of
relic-hunting vandals.

Halleck outlived his friend by many long years. He gave up bookkeeping
for Jacob Barker, and during eighteen years was the confidential
manager of the affairs of John Jacob Astor. But he never failed to
regret the comrade of his youth, losing with him much of his
inspiration.

[Illustration: The Jumel Mansion]

Half an hour's journey from Drake's grave, on the western side of the
Harlem River, there stands, at One Hundred and Sixtieth Street and
Edgecombe Avenue, a house on a bluff so high above the river that it
can be seen from afar--white in the sunlight. This is the Morris
house, where Mary Philipse lived after she became the wife of Roger
Morris; where Washington had his headquarters; where Madame Jumel
lived, and where she married Aaron Burr. To the one who strolls in the
footsteps of _litterateurs_ of a bygone day, it is, more than all, the
house where Halleck visited, and where he wrote _Marco Bozzaris_.
Although this was his most widely known poem, and though it was
written five years after the death of Drake, the memory of his friend
was like a fresh sorrow to him while he wrote. During forty odd years
from that time he continued the gently courteous, witty talker, the
dignified life of each gathering he attended. But, as he knew so well,
his Muse was sorely wounded when Drake died, and the fuller poetic
life that might have been his was buried on the green slope of the
Bronx with his friend.

Chapter VII

Cooper and His Friends

In that cheerless precinct of New York City to which still clings the
name St. John's Park, though there has been no park there this
half-century,--in Beach Street, a dozen or perhaps twenty steps from
Hudson Street, there stands a house that could not fail to attract the
attention of an observant