"I sometimes think that I must have been born facing backward, and a fatality has kept me walking in that direction ever since, so wide a space there seems to be to-day between myself and those whose age shows them to be my contemporaries.
"My father, being a man of solid position both in commerce and society, and having a far greater admiration for men of art and letters than would have been tolerated by his wholly commercial Knickerbocker forbears, I, his youngest child and only son, grew up to man's estate among the set of contemporaries that formed his world, men of literary and social parts, whose like I may safely say, for none will contradict, are unknown to the rising generation of New Yorkers; for not only have types changed, but also the circumstances and appreciations under which the development of those types was possible.
"In my nineteenth year events occurred that altered the entire course of my life, for not only did the almost fatal accident and illness that laid me low bar my study of a profession, but it rendered me at the same time, though I did not then realize it, that most unfortunate of beings, the semi-dependent son of parents whose overzeal to preserve a boy's life that is precious, causes them to deprive him of the untrammelled manhood that alone makes the life worth living.
"I always had a bent for research, a passion for following the history of my country and city to its fountain heads. I devoured old books, journals, and the precious documents to which my father had ready access, that passed from the attic treasure chests of the old houses in decline to the keeping of the Historical Society. As a lad I besought every gray head at my father's table to tell me a story, so what more natural, under the circumstances, than that my father should make me free of his library, and say: 'I do not expect or desire you to earn your living; I can provide for you. Here are companions, follow your inclinations, live your own life, and do not be troubled by outside affairs.' At first I was too broken in health and disappointed in ambition to rebel, then inertia became a habit.
"As my health unexpectedly improved and energy moved me to reassert myself and step out, a soft hand was laid on mine—the hand of my mother, invalided at my birth, retired at forty from a world where she had shone by force of beauty and wit—and a gentle voice would say: 'Stay with me, my son, my baby. Oh, bear with me a little longer. If you only knew the comfort it is to feel that you are in the house, to hear your voice. You will pen a history some day that will bring you fame, and you will read it to me here—we two, all alone in my chamber, before the world hears it.' So I stayed on. How mother love often blinds the eyes to its own selfishness.
"That fatal twentieth year, the time of my overthrow, brought me one good gift, your father's friendship. It was a strange chance, that meeting, and it was my love of hearing of past events and the questions concerning them that brought it about. Has your father ever told you of it?
"Likely not, for his life work has been the good physician's, to bring forth and keep alive, and mine the antiquarian's, dreaming and groping among ruins for doubtful treasure of fallen walls.
"My mother came of English, not Knickerbocker stock like my father, though both belong distinctly to New York; and female education being in a somewhat chaotic state between the old regime and new, her parents, desirous of having her receive the genteel polish of courtly manners, music, and dancing, sent her, when about fifteen, to Mrs. Rowson's school, then located at Hollis Street, Boston. The fame of this school had travelled far and wide, for not only had the preceptress in her youth, as Susanna Haswell, been governess to the children of the beautiful Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, one of the most accomplished women of her day, and profited by her fine taste, but her own high morals and literary gifts made her tutorship a much sought privilege.
"While there my mother met the little New England girl who was long afterward to become your grandmother. She had also come to study music, for which she had a talent. My mother related to me, when I was a little lad and used to burrow in her carved oak treasure chest and beg for stories of the articles it contained, many fascinating tales of those two school years, a pretty colour coming to her cheeks as she told of the dances learned together, pas-de-deux and minuet, from old 'Doctor' Shaffer, who was at the time second violin of the Boston Theatre, as well as authority in the correct methods of bowing and courtesying for gentlewomen. Your grandmother married first, and the letter telling of it was stored away with others in the oak chest.
"Some months before the steamboat accident that shattered my nerves, and preceded the long illness, I was browsing at a bookstall, on my way up from college homeward, when I came across a copy of Charlotte Temple—one of the dozen later editions—printed in New York by one R. Hobbs, in 1827, its distinguishing interest lying in a frontispiece depicting Charlotte's flight from Portsmouth.