e was taken on
excursions to the shores of a pleasant lake, called the Collect,
quite a journey from the city. It was there that John Fitch's boat
sailed years before Fulton's successful boat was launched into the
Hudson. When the city outgrew its early bounds, the lake was drained
and solid ground made, and the Tombs Prison rose in gloomy majesty
where the deep waters had been.

[Illustration: THE DEBTORS' PRISON.]

Eliza Schuyler preserved a lively memory of playing about a little
square frame building on the Common, and though she never spoke of it
by name it was the first Poor House of the city. She wrote, too, of a
certain day when she went to the Common with her father--he was an
important man that day and served on a committee--to see laid the
first stone of another building. It was only a Debtors' Prison, but it
was looked upon as the most beautiful structure in the city for many a
day. For it was in the main patterned after the temple of Diana of
Ephesus. The townsmen of those early days admired the building, and
would have grieved if they could have foreseen that the day would come
when city officials would forget that the old prison had been copied
from so perfect a model; would forget that it had been a military
prison when the British held possession of the city; would forget that
many a brave officer of the Continental Army and many a true patriot
soldier had passed bitter days there, and dying had left memories of
sentiment and poetry and historic interest hovering about the old
place.

Still, though it could not be foretold, the day did come when it was
no longer a prison but had become the Hall of Records, when it was
called an ugly and unsightly structure which obstructed the view of
newer and taller ones--buildings that Tammany architects considered
the perfection of beauty perhaps on account of their costliness. So it
must be torn down.

At the age between girlhood and womanhood, Eliza Schuyler left New
York to live in the village of Tomhannock, and when news of her again
reached her friends in the city she was the wife of John J. Bleecker.
Only twice after that did she revisit the scenes of her early life,
and it was not until her death that the writings of this first poetess
of New York became well known and popular.

The short and peaceful life of Eliza Bleecker was nearing an end
before--his college days being over--Philip Freneau again trod the
streets of New York. Already his tireless pe