Mr. Bunner was over sixty years old when he went to live in Oswego, but he soon became identified with the interests of the place and added much by his activities to its local renown. In an undated letter to my father, he thus expatiates upon his situation in his adopted home, and paints its advantages in no uncertain colors:—
I am here unquestionably an exile but I will never dispond at my fate nor whimper because my own folly, want of tact or the very malice of the times have placed me in Patmos when I desire a more splendid theatre. I can here be useful to my family—to my district. I can live cheaply, increase my fortune, be upon a par with the best of my neighbors, which I prefer to the feasts of your ostentatious mayor or the more real luxury of Phil Brasher's Table. Our population is small, our society contracted, but we are growing rapidly in numbers; and the society we have is in my opinion and to my taste fully equal to anything in your home. We possess men of intelligence without pretention, active men as Jacob Barker without his roguery—men whom nature intended to flourish at St. James, but whose fate fortune in some fit of prolifick humor fixed and nailed to this Sinope. We have however to mitigate the cold spring breezes of the lake a fall unrivalled in mildness and in beauty even in Italy, the land of poetry and passion. We have a whole lake in front, whose clear blue waters are without a parallel in Europe. We have a beautiful river brawling at our feet, the banks of which gently slope and when our village is filled I will venture to say that in point of beauty, health and variety of prospect it has nil simile aut secundum.
Our house was the rendezvous of many of the learned and literary men of the day, who would sit for hours in the library discussing congenial topics. Among others I well recall the celebrated jurist, Ogden Hoffman. He had an exceptionally melodious voice, and I have often heard him called "the silver-tongued orator." It has been asserted that in criminal cases a jury was rarely known to withstand his appeal. He married for his second wife Virginia E. Southard, a daughter of Judge Samuel L. Southard of New Jersey, who throughout Monroe's two administrations was Secretary of War. In the "Wealthy Citizens of New York," edited in 1845 by Moses Y. Beach, an early owner in part of The New York Sun, the Hoffman family is thus described: "Few families, for so few a number of persons as compose it, have cut 'a larger swath' or 'bigger figure' in the way of posts and preferment. Talent, and also public service rendered, martial gallantry, poetry, judicial acumen, oratory, all have their lustre mingled with this name." I regard this statement as just and truthful.
Still another valued associate of my father was Hugh Maxwell, a prominent member of the New York bar. In his earlier life he was District Attorney and later Collector of the Port of New York. The Maxwells owned a pleasant summer residence at Nyack-on-the-Hudson, where we as children made occasional visits. Many years later one of my daughters formed an intimate friendship with Hugh Maxwell's granddaughter, Virginia De Lancey Kearny, subsequently Mrs. Ridgely Hunt, which terminated only with the latter's death in 1897.
From my earliest childhood Gulian C. Verplanck was a frequent guest at our house. He and my father formed an intimacy in early manhood which lasted throughout life. Mr. Verplanck was graduated from Columbia College in 1801, the youngest Bachelor of Arts who, up to that time, had received a diploma from that institution of learning. Both he and my father found in politics an all-absorbing topic of conversation, especially as both of them took an active part in state affairs. I have many letters, one of them written as early as 1822, from Mr. Verplanck to my father bearing upon political matters in New York. For four terms he represented his district in Congress, while later he served in the State Senate and for many years was Vice Chancellor of the University of the State of New York. He was an ardent Episcopalian and a vestryman in old Trinity Parish. He was a brilliant conversationalist, and his tastes, like my father's, were decidedly literary. In connection with William Cullen Bryant and Robert C. Sands, he edited The Talisman, an annual which continued through the year 1827. Mr. Verplanck lived to an old age and survived my father for a long time, but he did not forget his old friend. Almost a score of years after my father's death, on the 4th of July, 1867, Mr. Verplanck delivered a scholarly oration before the Tammany Society of New York, in which he paid the following glowing tribute to his memory:
In those days James Campbell, for many years the Surrogate of this city, was a powerful leader at Tammany Hall, and from character and mind alone, without any effort or any act of popularity. He was not college-bred, but he was the son of a learned father, old Malcolm Campbell, who had been trained at Aberdeen, the great school of Scotch Latinity. James Campbell was, like his father, a good classical scholar, and he was a sound lawyer. He was not only an assiduous, a kind, sound and just magistrate, but one of unquestioned ability. In his days of Surrogateship, the days of universal reporting, either in the multitudinous volumes in white law bindings on the shelves of lawyers, or in the crowded columns of the daily papers, had not quite arrived though they were just at hand. Had he lived and held office a few years later, I do not doubt that he would have ranked with the great luminaries of legal science. As it is, I fear that James Campbell's reputation must share the fate of the reputations of many able and eminent men in all professions who can not
Look to Time's award,
Feeble tradition is their memory's guard.
The most prominent newspaper in New York in my early days was the Courier and Enquirer, edited by General James Watson Webb, a man of distinguished ability. He began his literary career by editing the Morning Courier, but as this was not a very successful venture he purchased the New York Enquirer from Mordecai Manasseh Noah, and in 1829 merged the two papers. Several leading journalists began their active careers in his office, among others James Gordon Bennett, subsequently editor of The New York Herald, Henry J. Raymond, the founder of The New York Times, and Charles King, father of Madam Kate King Waddington and Mrs. Eugene Schuyler, who at one time edited The American and subsequently became the honored president of Columbia College. James Reed Spaulding, a New Englander by birth, was also connected with the Courier and Enquirer for about ten years. In 1860 he became a member of the staff of the New York World, which, by the way, was originally intended to be a semi-religious sheet. During President Lincoln's administration General Webb sold the Courier and Enquirer to the World, and the two papers were consolidated. William Seward Webb of New York was a son of this General Webb, and the latter's daughter, Mrs. Catharine Louisa Benton, the widow of Colonel James G. Benton of the army, lived until recently in Washington, and is one of the pleasant reminders left me of the old days of my New York life.