_Two windmills topped their wooden wall, On stadthuys gazing down, On fort, and cabbage-plots, and all The quaintly gabled town; These flapped their wings and shifted backs, As ancient scrolls determine, To scare the savage Hackensacks, Paumanks, and other vermin_. _At night the loyal settlers lay Betwixt their feather-beds; In hose and breeches walked by day, And smoked, and wagged their heads. No changeful fashions came from France, The vrouwleins to bewilder; No broad-brimmed burgher spent for pants His every other guilder._ _In petticoats of linsey red, And jackets neatly kept, The vrouws their knitting-needles sped And deftly spun and swept. Few modern-school flirtations there Set wheels of scandal trundling, But youths and maidens did their share Of staid, old-fashioned bundling._ EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN. TWO: WHERE PATROONS AND KNICKERBOCKERS FLOURISHED [Illustration: MORRIS-JUMEL HOUSE, NEW YORK CITY. _Photo by Frank Cousins Art Company_ See page 87] XVII THE MORRIS-JUMEL MANSION, NEW YORK CITY WHERE WASHINGTON ESCAPED FROM THE BRITISH BY A FIFTEEN MINUTE MARGIN "A Pleasant situated Farm, on the Road leading to King's Bridge, in the Township of Harlem, on York-Island, containing about 100 acres, near 30 acres of which is Wood-land, a fine piece of Meadow Ground, and more easily be made: and commands the finest Prospect in the whole Country: the Land runs from River to River: there is Fishing, Oystering, and Claming at either end...." When, in 1765, Roger Morris, whose city house was at the corner of Whitehall and Stone streets, saw this advertisement in the New York _Mercury_, he hungered for the country. So he bought the offered land, and by the summer of 1766 he had completed the sturdy Georgian house that, after a century and a half, looks down on the city that has grown to it and beyond it. In an advertisement published in 1792, in the New York _Daily Advertiser_, a pleasing description of the mansion of Roger Morris was given: "On the premises is a large dwelling-house, built in modern style and taste and elegance. It has ... a large hall through the centre; a spacious dining room on the right.... On the left is a handsome parlor and a large back room.... On the second floor are seven bedchambers ... On the upper floor are five lodging rooms ... and at the top of the house is affixed an electric conducter. Underneath the building are a large, commodious kitchen and laundry and wine cellar, storeroom, kitchen pantry, sleeping apartments for servants, and a most complete dairy room...."