The Story of a New York House   By: Henry C. Bunner (1855-1896)

THE STORY

OF

A NEW YORK HOUSE

BY

H. C. BUNNER

ILLUSTRATED BY A. B. FROST

NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1887

COPYRIGHT, 1887, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.

Press of J. J. Little & Co. Astor Place, New York.

TO

A. L. B.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

Then out of the door came Jacob Dolph FRONTISPIECE

PAGE

"I thumped him" 14

"It's a monstrous great place for a country house, Mr. Dolph" 18

There was only one idea, and that was flight 28

The light flickered on the top of the church spire 32 ( By F. Hopkinson Smith. )

They hesitated a second, looking at the great arm chair 37

"Stay there, sir you, sir, you, Jacob Dolph!" 41

After awhile he began to take timorous strolls 46

Jacob Dolph the elder ... stood on his hearth rug 51

And then he marched off to bed by himself, suffering no one to go with him 55

In quiet morning hours ... when his daughter sat at his feet 77

"Mons'us gran dinneh, seh!" 79

"All of a sudden, chock forward he went, right on his face" 83

He heard the weak, spasmodic wail of another Dolph 88

"Central American," said the clerk 107

"Looks like his father," was Mr. Daw's comment 109

O'Reagan of Castle Reagan 118

"If it hadn't been for the Dolphs, devil the rattle you'd have had" 120

"I know'd you'd take me in, Mist' Dolph," he panted 132

"Have you got a nigger here?" 133

Abram Van Riper makes a business communication. 141

And so she set his necktie right, and he went 144

Looking on his face, she saw death quietly coming upon him 149

Finial 151

THE STORY

OF A NEW YORK HOUSE.

I.

"I hear," said Mrs. Abram Van Riper, seated at her breakfast table, and watching the morning sunlight dance on the front of the great Burrell house on the opposite side of Pine Street, "that the Dolphs are going to build a prodigious fine house out of town somewhere up near the Rynders's place."

"And I hear," said Abram Van Riper, laying down last night's Evening Post , "that Jacob Dolph is going to give up business. And if he does, it's a disgrace to the town."

It was in the summer of 1807, and Abram Van Riper was getting well over what he considered the meridian line of sixty years. He was hale and hearty; his business was flourishing; his boy was turning out all that should have been expected of one of the Van Riper stock; the refracted sunlight from the walls of the stately house occupied by the Cashier of the Bank of the United States lit with a subdued secondary glimmer the Van Riper silver on the breakfast table the squat teapot and slop bowl, the milk pitcher, that held a quart, and the apostle spoon in the broken loaf sugar on the Delft plate. Abram Van Riper was decorously happy, as a New York merchant should be. In all other respects, he was pleased to think, he was what a New York merchant should be, and the word of the law and the prophets was fulfilled with him and in his house.