The good old rule, the simple plan,
That they should take who have the power
And they should keep who can."

A great merchant may have more than one way of doing business, and I
would not undertake to account for every barrel and box that was
unladen at that little landing. Nor would I be surprised to encounter
sometime, among the ghosts of Philipse Manor Hall, that of the
immortal Kidd himself, seated at dead of night, across the table from
the first lord of the manor, before a blazing log in the seven-foot
fireplace, drinking liquor too good for the church-founding lord to
have questioned whence it came; and leaving the next day without an
introduction to the family.

This 1682 part of the house, in facing south, had the Albany road at
its left, the Hudson at its right, and at its front the lane that ran
by the Neperan, from the road to the river. Thus was the house for
sixty-three years. When the first lord's grandson, Elizabeth's
grandfather, in 1745 made the addition at the north, what was the east
gable-end of the old house became part of the east front of the
completed mansion. The east rooms of the old house were thus the
southeast rooms of the completed mansion, and, being common to both
fronts, gained by the change of relation, becoming the principal
parlor and the principal chamber. The east parlor, entered on the
west from the old hall, was entered on the north from the new hall;
and the new hall was almost a duplicate of the old, but its ceiling
decorations and the mahogany balustrade of its stairway were the more
elaborate. This stairway, like its fellow in the old hall, ascended,
with two turns, to a hall in the second story. Besides the new halls,
the addition included, on the first floor, a large dining-room and the
great kitchen; on the second floor, five sleeping-chambers, and, in
the space beneath the roof-tree, dormitories for servants and slaves.
Elizabeth's grandfather gave the house the balustrade that crowns its
roof from its northern to its southern, and thence to its western end.
He had the interior elaborately finished. The old part and its
decorations were Dutch, but now things in the province were growing
less Dutch and more English,--like the Philipse name and blood
themselves,--and so the new embellishments were English. The second
lord imported marble mantels from England, had the walls beautifully
wainscoted, adorned the ceilings richly with arabesque work in wood.
He laid out,