In the background is a large flower-garden, enclosed with a hedge and some every handsome trees.

Venerable oaks and broken ground covered with wild shrubs surround me, giving a natural beauty to the spot which is truly enchanting.

A lovely variety of birds serenade me morning and evening, rejoicing in their liberty and security." The historian, Mary L.Booth, commenting on the above, says: "This rural picture of a point near where Charlton now crosses Varick Street naturally strikes the prosaic mind familiar with the locality at the present day as a trick of the imagination.

But truth is stranger, and not infrequently more interesting, than fiction." And now go back to the beginning.
A very large section of this part of the island was held under the grant of the Colonial Government, by the Episcopal Church of the city of New York--later to be known more succinctly as Trinity Church Parish.

St.John's,--not built at that time, of course--is part of the same property.