Historical Society;
and the Jews were having it all their own way; and now people were
talking of free schools, and of laying out a map for the upper end of
the town to grow on, in the "system" of straight streets and avenues. To
the devil with systems and avenues! said he. That was all the doing of
those cursed Frenchmen. He knew how it would be when they brought their
plaguy frigate here in the first fever year--'93--and the fools marched
up from Peck's Slip after a red nightcap, and howled their cut-throat
song all night long.

It began to hum itself in his head as he walked toward Water Street--_Ca
ira--ca ira--les aristocrats a la lanterne_. A whiff of the wind that
blew through Paris streets in the terrible times had come across the
Atlantic and tickled his dull old Dutch nostrils.

But something worse than this vexed the conservative spirit of Abram Van
Riper. He could forgive John Pintard--whose inspiration, I think,
foreran the twentieth century--his fancy for free schools and historical
societies, as he had forgiven him his sidewalk-building fifteen years
before; he could proudly overlook the fact that the women were busying
themselves with all manner of wild charities; he could be contented
though he knew that the Hebrew Hart was president of that merchants'
club at Baker's, of which he himself would fain have been a member. But
there was some thing in the air that he could neither forgive nor
overlook, nor be contented with.

There was a change coming over the town--a change which he could not
clearly define, even in his own mind. There was a great keeping of
carriages, he knew. A dozen men had bought carriages, or were likely to
buy them at any time. The women were forming societies for the
improvement of this and that. And he, who had moved up-town from Dock
Street, was now in an old-fashioned quarter. All this he knew, but the
something which made him uneasy was more subtile.

Within the last few years he had observed an introduction of certain
strange distinctions in the social code of the town. It had been vaguely
intimated to him--perhaps by his wife, he could not remember--that there
was a difference between his trade and Jacob Dolph's trade. He was a
ship-chandler. Jacob Dolph sold timber. Their shops were side by side;
Jacob Dolph's rafts lay in the river in front of Abram Van Riper's shop,
and Abram Van Riper had gone on Jacob Dolph's note, only a few years
ago. Yet, it seemed that it was _gent