All this while the English speech was gaining over the Dutch. Children of Dutch parents, despite the teaching of the nursery, would acquire and use the English idiom. Finally some of the members of the Dutch Church ventured to suggest the propriety of having service now and then in the English tongue. The staid burghers were shocked. But, the question once raised, the younger generation grew bolder, and the elder began to listen. Domine Romeyn, a graduate of Princeton College, a fluent master of both languages, and eminent for his varied learning and as the founder of Union College, was pastor of the Church from 1784 to 1804. He so far yielded to the new demand as to preach in English upon occasions of which he was careful to give previous notice. It was not until 1794 that the leading members of the Church represented to its consistory the necessity of increasing the services in English,[20] “to the end that the church be not scattered.” Ten years later, at the close of Domine Romeyn’s long ministry, the Dutch language ceased to be heard from the pulpit of the church. But there are still surviving a few—very few—inhabitants to whom the Dutch is their mother tongue. One of them informs the writer that when he visited Holland he conversed with ease with the people, but that he sometimes used words not familiar to them and afterwards learned that these words were of Indian origin. [Illustration: “THE BROOK THAT BOUNDS THRO’ UNION’S GROUNDS.” UNION COLLEGE.] As Schenectady is two hundred feet above tide-water at Albany, it early became the headquarters of the western trade, goods being carried to and from the West upon canoes, bateaux, and the “Schenectady Durham boats.” The trade developed into large proportions, and during the hundred years closing with the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825, many traders made fortunes which were considered large in those days. Upon the completion of the canal the commercial prosperity of the city declined. The decline seemed to be confirmed by the era of railroads, notwithstanding the “Mohawk and Hudson” was the first railroad built in the State, its first passenger train arriving in Schenectady from Albany, September 12, 1831, and on the second railroad, the “Saratoga and Schenectady,” the first train left Schenectady for Saratoga, July 12, 1832. [Illustration: ELIPHALET NOTT, PRESIDENT OF UNION COLLEGE FOR SIXTY YEARS.]