The variety of vivid greens, the finely cultivated fields and gardens, the neat, cool air of the cit's boxes peeping through straight rows of tall poplars, and the elegance of some gentlemen's seats, commanding a view of the majestic Hudson, and the high, dark shores of New Jersey, altogether form a scene so lovely, so touching, and to me so new, that I was in constant rapture." In 1804 came the historic quarrel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton.

Since this chapter is the story of Richmond Hill and not the life of Aaron Burr, I shall not concern myself with the whys or the wherefores of that disastrous affair.
Histories must perforce deal with the political aims, successes and failures of men; must cover a big canvas and sing a large and impersonal song.

But just here we have only to think of these old-time phantoms of ours as they affect or are affected by the old-time regions in which for the nonce we are interested.

To Richmond Hill--with its white columns and shadow-flinging portico, its gardens and its oak trees and its silver pond--it was of small import that the master just missed being President of the United States, that he did become Vice-president, and President of the Senate, and that he was probably as able a jurist as ever distinguished the Bar of New York; also that he made almost as many enemies as he did friends.

But it was decidedly the concern of the sweet and imposing old house on Richmond Hill that it was from its arms, so to speak, that he went out in a cold, white rage to the duel with his chief enemy; that he returned, broken and heartsick, doubly defeated in that he had chanced to be the victor, to the protection of Richmond Hill.
I cannot help believing that the household gods of a man take a very special interest and a very personal part in what fortunes befall him.
More than any deities of old, they live with and in him; they at once go forth with him to battle, and welcome him home.