Westchester

“ She seemed to flirt and coquet with the very landscape.
She glanced with amazement at the wildness around her, [Pg 16] the maples and wild rhododendrons, and all the Westchester paradise of leaves and flowers crowding in the little-used highway, brushing the fetlocks of the horses, falling back like sickled wheat from the scythe of the wheels, and bending down from above to flail the carriage top with fragrant leaf-laden wands. ”

“ In my own hilly, rocky, often boggy, Westchester—probably within six of being the oldest Agricultural County in the Union—I am confident that ten thousand acres might to-morrow be given back to forest with profit to the owners and advantage to all its inhabitants. It is a fruit-growing, milk-producing, truck-farming county, closely adjoining the greatest city of the New World; hence, one wherein land can be cultivated as profitably as almost anywhere else—yet I am satisfied that half its surface may be more advantageously devoted to timber than to grass or tillage. ”

“ The theme warmed into life in the Close at Westchester lacked vitality in the Highlands. Mountain and moor made it seem anæmic. Archibald looked out of the window, which was open, and inhaled the fresh, pungent air. Not a house was to be seen, not even a shepherd's hut; the moors spread a purple carpet on which no human creature walked; the mountains, vast, rugged, solitary, encompassed the moors. Yet in the heart of this lonely wilderness men had swarmed together in conflict. ”

“ And the thick ears of the Hun twitched and he paused, squatting belly-deep in blood, to listen.
Barres walked homeward. Somewhere along in the 40’s he turned eastward into one of those cross-streets originally built up of brownstone dwelling houses, and now in process of transformation into that architectural and commercial miscellany which marks the transition stage of the metropolis anywhere from Westchester to the sea. ”

“ The word Younker, in the languages of northern Europe, means the nobly born, the gentleman. In Westchester, on the Hudson river, still stands the old manor house of the Phillipse family. The writer remembers in his early days when visiting there, the large rooms and richly ornamented ceilings, with quaint old formal gardens about the house. ”

“ In Westchester, before great strips of woodland and water became Pelham Bay Park, before the Swedes came, and the Irish, and the Italians, and the Germans—in other words, before land boomed—there had always been an amiable and uninjunctionable stability. Families had lived, for well or ill, in the same houses for years and years. So long had the portraits hung in the rich men's houses that if you moved them it was to disclose a brightly-fresh rectangle upon the wall behind. The box in the poor man's yard had been tended by the poor man's great-grand female relatives. ”

“ She shrank against the wall, wide-eyed, breathing rapidly.
"There is no use in our being frightened," he said, scarcely knowing what he uttered. "This is Fifty-eighth Street, New York, 1903." He shook his shoulders, squaring them, and forced a smile. "Don't be frightened; there's an explanation for all this. You are not asleep in Westchester; you are here in your own house. You mustn't tremble so. ”

“ It was near the close of the year 1780 that a solitary traveller was seen pursuing his way through one of the numerous little valleys of Westchester. ”

“ Eventually the pilot-car, or, rather, its guiding cloud of dust, swept off to the east, turning its back on the Hudson and plunging into the heart of Westchester County, an ocean of hills like green billows, and valleys like their troughs; peaceful castles set on high places, and pleasant villages dispersed in low; the homely roominess of farms, and now and then a huddle of crowded rookeries, where Italian peasants had set up a congenial little slums along some ugly waste. ”

“ We further certify that the said Paulding and Williams are not now resident among us, but that Isaac Van Wart is a respectable freeholder of the town of Mount Pleasant, that we are all well acquainted with him, and we do not hesitate to declare our belief that there is not an individual in the county of Westchester, acquainted with Isaac Van Wart, who would hesitate to describe him as a man of a sober, moral, industrious, and religious life, as a man whose integrity is as unimpeachable as his veracity is undoubted. In {522}these respects no man in the county of Westchester is his superior. ”

“ He suffered a boorish confusion when Chalender said at last, as they returned to the house and the cocktails that Patty had waiting for them on the porch:
“I agree with you, David. The Bronx is not our river. I can honestly oppose its choice. But it’s a pretty country you have here. I love the sea and the Sound and the big Hudson, but there is a peculiar grace about these inland hills of Westchester. ”

“ Westchester, the Catskills, and even the country farther north were full of young business men and professional men fleeing headlong from their jobs in Wall Street, Broadway, and Fifth Avenue, and hiring out to farmers and boarding house keepers under assumed names. One could jump a young man out of almost any likely thicket north of the Bronx; they were as plentiful and as shy as deer in the Catskills; corn field, scrub, marsh, and almost any patch of woods in the State, if carefully beaten up, would have yielded at least one or two flocks of skulking young men. ”

“ Immense pipes are laid across the bed of the Harlem River, and pass through the country to Westchester County, where a whole river is turned from its course and brought to New York. From the reservoir in the city to Westchester County reservoir the distance is thirty-eight miles, and, if necessary, they could easily supply every family in New York with one hundred barrels of water a day!
I am very sorry to learn that Henry has been sick. He ought to go to the country and take exercise, for he is not half so healthy as Ma thinks he is. ”

“ By a law of the State of New York, every person refusing to take an oath of fidelity to the State, was considered as forfeiting his property. The large territory between the American and British lines, extending nearly thirty miles from north to south, and embracing Westchester county, was populous and highly cultivated. This was the famous Neutral Ground. A person living within that space, who took the oath of fidelity, was sure to be plundered by the Cow-boys ”

“ The Westchester County Despair Association was founded by George Creel, who is one of our neighbors. In addition to being its founder he is its perpetual president. This association has a large and steadily growing membership. Any citybred person who moves up here among the rolling hills of our section with intent to get back to Nature, and who, in pursuance of that most laudable aim, encounters the various vicissitudes and the varied misfortunes which, it would seem, invariably do befall the amateur husbandman, is eligible to join the ranks. ”

“ THE STORY OF A PANIC I Two long-faced young men and one old man with a long face sat upon the veranda of the Country Club of Westchester, and looked, now into the depths of pewter mugs containing mint and ice among other things, and now across Pelham Bay to the narrow pass of water between Fort Schuyler and Willets Point. Through this pass the evening fleet of Sound steamers had already torn with freight and passengers for New Haven, Newport, Fall River, and Portland ”

“ The eclat which Burr, yet a beardless boy, had acquired by his adventurous march under Arnold to Canada, through our northeastern wilds, then a trackless desert; his gallant bearing at Quebec and Monalouth; his efficient services in the retreat of our army from Long Island and New-York; and his difficult and delicate command on the lines of Westchester, followed him to private life, gathered around him hosts of admirers and friends among our early patriots, particularly the youthful portion of them, and no doubt essentially aided him in making his successful professional debut. ”

“ The New York side from the Battery to Inwood, the northern end of Manhattan Island, is already "well peopled." Until recently the land about Fort Washington has been held in considerable tracts and the very names of these suburban points suggest altitude and outlook—Highbridgeville, Fordham Heights, Morris Heights, University Heights, Kingsbridge Heights, Mount Hope, &c. The growth of the city all the way to Jerome and Van Cortlandt's Park during the last few years has been marvelous. It has literally stepped over the Harlem to find room in the picturesque county of Westchester. ”

“ Here she resided during the war, marked out as an object of aggression and insult by the royalists, on account of the part taken by her relatives and friends, and her own ardent attachment to the American cause. At intervals of the struggle, when portions of the British army were ranging through Westchester, she was particularly exposed to their injuries. But her high spirit and strong will contributed to her safety, and supported her through many scenes of trial. ”

“ They were rich. But not very rich. Say: thirty thousand dollars a year without work and without worry, a little red brick and white woodwork house on Eleventh Street, a few doors from Fifth Avenue, a place in Westchester County at exactly the correct distance between Suburbia and Yokeldom, four servants, including a French—not an English—butler, an electric landaulette without a nickel clamp to hold paper orchids, and a three thousand dollar automobile that usually lasted into the third season. ”

“ If the city were to be buried in poverty, it would at least have left a monument above its head.
Even RoBards could not resist the fire of this resolve. After all he was an American, and New York was the American metropolis. And, besides, he was a lawyer and he loved an opponent who knew how to fight and had the guts to fight hard.
And so the embattled farmers of Westchester knuckled to the inevitable, and the construction of the aqueduct began in the very hour of the general disaster.
The legislature at Albany had all along been coerced by the members from New York City. ”

“ Attendant modern churches and chapels, and the Town Hall, with spires, act as satellites. To the right hand, rising bulky from the huddled mass of houses, is a grey building which but a little experience of touring in England identifies without need of inquiry as the gaol.
Dorchester, figuring as the “Casterbridge” of that mayor whose surprising history is set forth in that powerful story, bulks large in the whole series of Wessex novels—as how could it fail of doing, seeing that the novelist himself was born at Upper Bockhampton, only three miles away? ”

“ No one can claim to know Wessex until some hours of quiet have been spent within the walls of the ancient capital, and no one can know England until the spirit of the English countryside, the secluded and primary village of the byways with its mothering church, rich with the best of the past, has been studied, known and loved. This is the essential England for which the yeoman of England, whose memorials will be seen in almost every Wessex hamlet, have given their lives. ”

“ Eastward was the harbor with its wave-washed islands, and the blue ocean sparkling in the sunlight. White sails were fading and vanishing on the far distant horizon. Ships were riding at anchor between the town and castle. Southward were dwellings, stores, shops, and the spires of meetinghouses. Beyond the town were the Roxbury, Dorchester, and Milton hills—fields, pastures, orchards, and farmhouses. Westward rose Beacon Hill, its sunny slopes dotted with houses and gardens; farther away, across Charles River, he could see the steeple of Cambridge meetinghouse and the roof of the college. ”

“ Before leaving Pevensey I must say a word of Westham, the village which adjoins it. Westham and Pevensey are practically one, the castle intervening. Westham has a vicar whose interest in his office might well be imitated by some of the other vicars of the county. His noble church, one of the finest in Sussex, with a tower of superb strength and dignity, is kept open, and just within is a table on which are a number of copies of a little penny history of Westham which he has prepared, and for the payment of which he is so eccentric as to trust to the stranger's honesty. ”

“ A new suburb has grown up on the western side between the original town and the railway junction nearly a mile away and the immediate surroundings of the station, as we enter it from the south, are reminiscent of a northern industrial town. Smoke and clangour, and odours not often met with in Wiltshire, are very insistent. Not so many years ago Westbury was in a backwater, if that term may be applied to railways, but now that it is on the new main route to Devon and Cornwall the industrial aspect of the town may increase greatly during the next few years. ”

“ Mrs. Westgate pursued, “that the most charming girl in the world is a Boston superstructure on a New York fond, or perhaps a New York superstructure on a Boston fond. At any rate it’s the mixture,” she declared, continuing to supply her guest with information and to do him the honours of the American world with a zeal that left nothing to be desired.
Lord Lambeth got into a light low pony-cart with Bessie Alden, and she drove him down the long Avenue, whose extent he had measured on foot a couple of hours before, into the ancient town, as it was called in that part of the world, of Newport. ”

“ WAREHAM—BERE REGIS—THE HEATHS The Wessex of which I shall treat in these gossiping pages is that Wessex of romance and of the great dairy-farms, which has been little touched by the influence of railways. Hampshire and Wiltshire—Winchester and Salisbury—have become too closely in touch with London to stand so fully upon the ancient ways as does Dorset, with the greater part of its north-western neighbour, Somerset. ”