iety
reached that charming state of equality in which it became
impossible, by any outward costume, to distinguish masters
from servants. John Jay says, in one of his letters, that
with small clothes and buckles the high tone of society
departed. In the writer's early day this system of the past
was just going out. Wigs and powder and queues, breeches and
buckles, still lingered among the older gentlemen, vestiges
of an age which was vanishing away.

"But the high toned feeling of the last century was still in
the ascendant, and had not yet succumbed to the worship of
mammon, which characterizes this age. There was still in New
York a reverence for the colonial families, and the
prominent political men, like Duane, Clinton, Golden,
Radcliff, Hoffman and Livingston, were generally gentlemen,
both by birth and social standing. The time had not yet come
when this was to be an objection to an individual in a
political career. The leaders were men whose names were
historical in the State, and they influenced society. The
old families still formed an association among themselves,
and intermarried, one generation after another. Society was
therefore very restricted. The writer remembers in his
childhood, when he went out with his father for his
afternoon drive, he knew every carriage they met on the
avenues.

"The gentlemen of that day knew each other well, for they
had grown up together and their associations in the past
were the same. Yet, what friendships for after-life did
these associations form! There was, in those days, none of
the show and glitter of modern times. But there was, with
many of these families, particularly with those who had
retained their landed estates and were still living in their
old family homes, an elegance which has never been rivalled
in other parts of the country. In his early days the writer
has been much at the South, has staid at Mount Vernon when
it was held by the Washingtons; with Lord Fairfax's family,
at Ashgrove and Vancluse; but he has never elsewhere seen
such elegance of living as was formerly exhibited by the old
families of New York.

"One thing is certain, that there was a high tone prevailing
at that time, which is now nowhere to be seen. The community
then looked up to p