THE CHAPMANS MOVE INTO THE CITY Chapman had developed Nyack pretty thoroughly, had made money enough to feel independent, and attributed it all to his own virtues.

He had got up no end of quarrels, invented new religions, established a hotel on principles of high moral economy, advocated broad and advanced ideas in everything, and kept the settlement in a state of excitement generally.
Chapman was indeed a great human accident.

There was no confining him to any one thing, either in religion, politics, or finance.

He had a morality of his own, which he said belonged to the world's advanced ideas, and it was not his fault if there were so few persons enlightened enough to understand and appreciate it in its true sense.
Chapman was indeed not one of those men who carry blessings into a community with them, but rather one of those who seem to delight in planting curses wherever they go, and leaving their victims to reap the bitter fruit in poverty and ruin.

Himself a mental deformity, none of his enterprises had been of any real benefit to the community, while his last and most reprehensible one had resulted in emptying the pockets of the old Dutch settlers, and leaving them bits of worthless paper to remember him by.
And yet this man could talk of himself like a very saint.