nity Church for all time), it took the last
name that it was to have and became the Church Farm--a name that was
to cling to it after every vestige of country green had disappeared
from its surface, and when houses had been set upon it as thick as the
stalks of grain that once ripened upon its rolling bosom.

[Illustration: "The Church called Trinity"]

The library in the City Hall was yet quite a new thing, the church
called Trinity had stood on the historic ground but a few years, the
French church was barely completed, and the town was so sprightly and
full of activity that 't is small wonder Madame Sarah Knight, coming
at such a time, should find much to wonder at and to write about. Her
coming marks another advance in literary New York, for Madame Knight
was a bookish woman come from far-off Boston town, and was a teacher
well versed in the "art of composition." She found all quite different
as compared with her own Massachusetts, where her father had been
sentenced to stand for two hours in the stocks, his conduct having
been found "lewd and unseemly" when, on a Sabbath day, after an
absence of three years, he had kissed his wife when she met him at his
own door-step! No wonder Madame Knight thought New York society quite
gay and reckless, for at this time Lord Cornbury governed, and he had
an odd fancy for wearing women's clothing indoors for his own
delectation and to the amusement of the citizens as he walked the
walls of the fort. Though Madame Knight met many persons of quality
and witnessed many interesting scenes, had her visit in the city been
extended, say for half a dozen years, until the coming of Governor
Robert Hunter, she would have met a man truly in full accord with her
ideas and tastes.

Had Governor Hunter's hopes been fulfilled there might have been a far
different writing of literary history. He came from England in the
summer of 1710, from the midst of a busy and troublous life, seeing
before him in imagination quiet and peaceful years with the wife he
cherished, and a career which should be helped on by his
correspondence with his English friends, Dean Swift, Richard Steele,
Joseph Addison, and some others. It would be an ideal life; he had
planned it well. But the repose he sought he scarce for an hour
realized. Undreamed-of turmoil kept him in a whirl of unsettledness.
And though the wife of his heart stood by his side, and he gained
comfort from knowing that nothing could turn her away,