sionary labors among the smokers and drinkers of this city; he who
bought a vineyard in France and the Vuelta Abajo plantations in Cuba,
solely to teach the people of his beloved New York what was the
positively proper thing in wines and cigars. If it was not then, it
could not have been much later that Mr. Dolph had got accustomed to
receiving, every now and then, an unordered and unexpected consignment
of wines or Havana cigars, sent up from Little Dock Street--or what we
call Water Street now, the lower end of it. And I am sure that he paid
Mr. Lynch's bill with glowing pride; for Mr. Lynch extended the
evangelizing hand of culture to none but those of pre-eminent social
position.

It was to be quite a large dinner; but it was noticeable that none of
the young men who were invited had engagements of regrettable priority.

Jacob Dolph the elder looked more interested in life than he had looked
in four years when he stood on the hearthrug in the drawing-room and
received his son's guests. He was a bold figure among all the young men,
not only because he was tall and white-haired, and for the moment
erect, and of a noble and gracious cast of countenance, but because he
clung to his old style of dress--his knee-breeches and silk stockings,
and his long coat, black, for this great occasion, but of the
"shadbelly" pattern. He wore his high black stock, too, and his
snow-white hair was gathered behind into a loose peruke.

[Illustration]

The young men wore trousers, or pantaloons, as they mostly called them,
strapped under their varnished boots. Their coats were cut like our
dress-coats, if you can fancy them with a wild amplitude of collar and
lapel. They wore large cravats and gaudy waistcoats, and two or three of
them who had been too much in England came with shawls or rugs around
their shoulders.

They were a fashionable lot of people, and this was a late dinner, so
they sat down at six o'clock in the great dining-room--not the little
breakfast-room--with old Jacob Dolph at one end of the table and young
Jacob Dolph at the other.

It was a pleasant dinner, and the wine was good, and the company duly
appreciative, although individually critical.

Old Jacob Dolph had on his right an agreeable French count, just arrived
in New York, who was creating a _furor_; and on his left was Mr. Philip
Waters, the oldest of the young men, who, being thirty-five, had a
certain consideration for old age. But old Jacob Dolph wa