Canandaigua, New York

“ One of the show places of New York State, many years ago, was the residence of John Greig, a polished Scotch gentleman who presided with dignity over his princely estate in Canandaigua in central New York, and there dispensed a generous hospitality. Mr. Greig was the agent for some of the English nobility, many of whom owned extensive tracts of land in America. The village of Canandaigua was also the home of the Honorable Francis Granger, a son of Gideon Granger, Postmaster General under Jefferson and Madison. ”

“ At all events, I have at present no time for further reflections; for the waggon is waiting at the door, the traps are all in, and there stand mine host and his lady, as ready to speed the parting as they were to welcome the coming guest. A hearty shake of the hand, and farewell to Hospitality Hall. May no cloud ever shade the happiness of its worthy inmates!
As we drive on, I may as well tell you that Canandaigua is a beautiful little village, situated on a slope descending towards a lake of the same name, and therefore commanding a lovely view—for when is a sheet of water not lovely? ”

“ And he would be a wretched ghost indeed if doomed to haunt only upper New York. But it happens that he has a sanctuary, a haven after his own heart, where he can still draw a breath of relief, among buildings small but full of age and dignity and with the look of homes about them; on restful, crooked little streets where there remain trees and grass-plots; in the old-time purlieus of Washington Square and Greenwich Village!
The history of old New York reads like a romance. ”

“ And everywhere to north, south, and east, the endless waste of city, stark, clean-cut, naked alike of tree and of art, unsoftened even by the haze of its own exudations—everywhere the window-riddled blocks of oblongs and cubes gridironed with steel rails—New York in all the painted squalor of its Pueblo splendour. ”

“ When Greater New York becomes a city of 10,000,000 people, it may become the axis for magnificent public buildings both in Manhattan and Brooklyn. But Canal Street today is a locality of small business and it is premature to try to force its Brooklyn continuation into prominence as a civic center. Although Manhattan's new court house will be built on Center Street, yet the front door of Manhattan's civic center will be the City Hall Park for the-9- next thirty or forty years, and Canal Street at its best will be only the back door. ”

“ In the State of New York, where the dark, foaming waters of the Black River, after roaring and surging through many pleasant fields, beautiful groves, and dense woodlands, commingle with the clear, cold waters of Lake Ontario, the wandering pedestrian or the lone fisherman may see, resting upon a gravelly flat, the remains of an old Indian canoe, whose once beautiful proportions, now untraceable in its rottenness, bore a prominent part in the tragic event I am about to narrate. ”

“ One, too, is deformed, the other a person of desirable appearance. Jealousy crept in with love. But, at last, the preference was made, and disappointment, like a thunderbolt, overset the mental balance of the first itinerant minister in Canada.” He subsequently removed to New York, where he continued to live for many years, and recovered his mental health. He had purchased lots in Kingston, which he returned to sell in 1816; at this time he was perfectly sound in mind, and was a good man. He visited Adolphustown, and other places, preaching here and there, and finally returned to New York. ”

“ In Niagara we have a wonder that typifies the rugged grandeur, the restless, tireless energy of the Western World. In contemplating it one almost invariably thinks of New York city, that human Niagara, where the restless, crowding, surging waves of humanity are dashed against the rough crags of adversity where many are crushed and broken in body and spirit. ”

“ But however that may be, its wonderful development as a summer resort has only come since the Civil War. It has a hard and gently-sloping beach facing the Atlantic, and can be so easily and cheaply reached, by so many routes on land and water, that it is no wonder, on hot afternoons and holidays, the people of New York and Brooklyn go down there by the hundreds of thousands. Coney Island is about five miles long, and from a quarter-mile to a mile in width, being separated from the adjacent low-lying mainland only by a little crooked creek and some lagoons. ”

“ By the events of the civil war in the United States, we, the descendants of those who occupied the same relative position in the American Revolution, feel it right to be guided.
The most of the loyalists were Americans by birth. Their feelings of attachment to the realm, preponderated over the attachments which bound them to the homes of their childhood and maturer years. The great majority of those who settled Upper Canada were from the Provinces of New York, Pennsylvania, and the New England States. New York, originally a Dutch colony, had many loyal sons. ”

“ The pond has an outlet, but it rarely overflows. It is a very deep and a very clear body of water.
Canarsie, now so written and applied to a hamlet in the town of Flatlands, Kings County, is of record Canari See, Canarisse, Canarise, Canorise (treaty of 1655) , Kanarisingh (Dutch) , and in other forms, as the name of a place or feature from which it was extended to an Indian sub-tribe or family occupying the southwest coast of Long Island, and to their village, primarily called Keshaechquereren (1636) . On the Lower Potomac and Chesapeake Bay the name is written Canais, Conoys, Ganawese, etc. ”

“ The State is not without valuable resources of field, forest, and mine, and counts also among its advantages the sources of an abundant water-power, including the Niagara Falls. But its advanced position is the outgrowth rather of its superior situation with respect to both home and foreign markets. The construction of the Erie Canal westward through the Mohawk Valley—the only natural break in the Appalachian Mountain range—established early communication between the Hudson River and the Great Lakes, and brought to New York much of the commerce of the West. ”

“ It is not squalid like Birmingham, or cramped like Canton, or scattered like Edmonton, or sham like Berlin, or hellish like New York, or tiresome like Nice. It is all right. The only depressing thing is that it will always be what it is, only larger, and that no Canadian city can ever be anything better or different. If they are good they may become Toronto. ”

“ But after a time the fickle taste of metropolitan New York seemed to change. New Yorkers did not seem to care quite as much for the gay creations of paint and tinsel, the eerie cities that were born anew each night in the glories of electric lighting. Fire came to Coney island—again and again. It scoured the paint and tinsel cities, thrust the highest of their towers, a blackened ruin, to the ground. Pious folk said that God was scourging Coney island for its contempt for His laws. ”

“ Last Sunday morning I went to church with my friends—to a beautiful church with painted windows, which give a somewhat gloomy appearance to the church; people here are so afraid of sunshine. The building was fine, but the sermon, by a Unitarian preacher, was of the most meagre description. In the afternoon, we drove to New York, to hear Channing. There is always such a crowd and such a bustle on the New York side of East River, that I always feel as if one must there fight for life and limb. Yet it is very seldom that any accident occurs. ”

“ A certain difference, no doubt, existed between the English and the Colonists, yet mainly the style was the same. Among the first settlers upon the bay were those who had fetched with them, and wore, at least occasionally, garments of fashionable cut and appointments. Tight knee-breeches and silver buckles would decorate the bodies of some, who had in other days mixed in the fashionable throng, perhaps luxuriated in the gay city of New York, where the presence of British soldiers always gave life and gaiety. Indeed some of the inhabitants had been commissioned officers in the regular army. ”

“ Long before there was a thought of the city getting beyond the wall that hemmed in a few scattering houses, and when the Indian settlement, which afterwards became Greenwich Village, kept close to the water's edge, a line of low sand hills called the Zandtberg, stretched their curved way from where now Eighth Street crosses Broadway, ending where Varick Street meets Vandam. ”

“ Next Sunday Channing will deliver a lecture in New York, and I, as well as my friends, shall go to hear him. I am well off here in Brooklyn, in this home, with this married pair and their beautiful children! Here too it is quiet and beautiful. I can wander about alone and in silence, take long walks by myself in the neighbourhood. I observe among the trees here, splendid weeping-willows, actually colossal trees. They are still quite green. The grapes ripen in the open air ”

“ The pure Yankee and the Canadian of the first water may trace their ancestors to a common parentage, and have the same name. As Canadians we are not afraid to institute a comparison between ourselves and the natives of New England or New York, or Pennsylvania. Let the comparison refer to any question whatever, either of the body or mind, of society or of government. The external influences which have operated have been elsewhere indicated. The circumstances of the U. E. Loyalists as settlers in a wilderness, were widely different from those of the States after the Independence was secured. ”

“ Brooklyn is as quiet as New York is bewildering and noisy: it is built upon the heights of Long Island; has glorious views over the wide harbour, and quiet broad streets, planted on each side with acanthus trees, a kind of Chinese tree, and I believe of the acacia family, which has a leaf like our ash, only much broader, and which bears long pods. There is also another kind of tree, with a taller stem, which gives shade and a peaceful and rural character to the streets. It is said that the merchants of New York go over to Brooklyn, where they have their house and home, to sleep. ”

“ The bells have not stopped ringing more than five minutes all day and every one is glad to see Canandaigua startled out of its propriety for once. Every yard of red, white and blue ribbon in the stores has been sold, also every candle and every flag. One society worked hard all the afternoon making transparencies and then there were no candles to put in to light them, but they will be ready for the next celebration when peace is proclaimed. ”

“ Pretty much all routes through Brooklyn, as already indicated, lead to Coney Island, the barren strip of white sand, clinging to the southern edge of Long Island, about ten miles from New York, which is the objective point of the populace when in sweltering summer weather they crave a breath of sea air. The antiquarians of the island insist that it was the earliest portion of these adjacent coasts discovered, and tell how Verrazani came along about 1529 and found this sand-strip, and how Hudson, nearly a century later, held conferences with the Indians on the island. ”

“ Live free from anxiety, and happy how and where you will; teach us how we should live and work; our homes and our hearts are open to you.”
Channing's answer to this letter proved the nobility and the earnestness of his heart. He came. And since that time he has lived conformably with the invitation which enabled him to visit prisons, to become one in religious and social festivals and societies, or to lecture on social questions in New York, Boston, and other towns ”

“ John, St. Ledger, Strongle, Sleeper, Shoemaker, Shier, Smeltzer, Shoultace, Shavewise, Tesby, (probably Detlor of our day) , Tettler, Urshelbaugh, Williams, and Young.
A certain number of the Palatines settled at the German Flats, many of whom, being Loyalists, were obliged to leave; and become pioneers in Canada. Likewise, were there many from other parts of the State, and from Pennsylvania.
In the early history of New York State, may be found many names, generally Dutch-like, closely resembling those of the first settlers of Western Canada. ”

“ But I’m glad he was saved. If he hadn’t gone straight back to Montreal he might now be in the place of poor Stephen Cantyre.”
“I see a good deal of Cantyre.”
“So I understand.”
“Who told you?”
“Elsie Coningsby.”
“You seem to have got a good deal of information about me all of a sudden.”
“Because you’ve dropped right into the little circle in which we all know one another with a kind of village-like intimacy. New York is really a congeries of villages.”
“But any one could see that Cantyre would never make a husband for a high-spirited girl like Miss Barry.” ”

“ New York in numbers is a mighty city, and all day and all night it cries its loud, fierce, aspiring cry, a noise of men beating upon barrels, a noise of men beating upon tin, a terrific racket that assails the abject skies. ”

“ For ten days the boats crept along the canal, and at each town bands played, and speeches were made, until on the tenth day the Governor and his party reached New York—the first to make the journey across the State by water. They were taken to Sandy Hook, the Mayor of New York, with many others, attending, and surrounded by all the ships in the bay, with their colors flying and their whistles blowing. And there at Sandy Hook, Governor Clinton poured a keg of water which he had brought from Lake Erie into the waters of the ocean. ”