My thoughts go back to thee, oh lovely lake,
Lake of the Sky Top! as thy beauties break
Upon the traveller of thy mountain road,
While sunset gilds thee, vision never fairer glowed!
Alfred B. Street.
Prominent among many pleasant residences above Poughkeepsie are: Mrs. F. J. Allen's of New York, Mrs.[page 130] John F. Winslow's, Mrs. Thomas Newbold's, J. Roosevelt's and Archie Rogers'. The large red buildings above the Poughkeepsie water works are the Hudson River State Hospital. Passing Crum Elbow Point on the left and the Sisters of the White Cross Orphan Asylum, we see
Hyde Park, 80 miles from New York, on the east bank, named some say, in honor of Lady Ann Hyde; according to others, after Sir Edward Hyde, one of the early British Governors of the colony. The first prominent place above Hyde Park, is Frederick W. Vanderbilt's, with Corinthian columns; and above this "Placentia," once the home of James K. Paulding.
Immediately opposite "Placentia," at West Park on the west bank, is the home of John Burroughs, our sweetest essayist, the nineteenth century's "White of Selborne." Judge Barnard of Poughkeepsie, once said to the author of this handbook, "The best writer America has produced after Hawthorne is John Burroughs; I wish I could see him." It so happened that there had been an important "bank" suit a day or two previous in Poughkeepsie which was tried before the judge in which Mr. Burroughs had appeared as an important witness. The judge was reminded of this fact when he remarked with a few emphatic words, the absence of which seems to materially weaken the sentence: "Was that Burroughs? Well, well, I wish I had known it."