ELAM TILDEN TO HON. ROBERT R. LIVINGSTON "NEW LEBANON, _March 19, 1810_. "DEAR SIR,--I want to get four or five pounds of your best _full-blood_ Merino Wool to manufacture into cloth for a Coat. I applied to you once before for the article for the same purpose, but you informed me that your wool was all previously engaged. I hope, Sir, that you will accommodate me; I can by some means get it forwarded to Hudson, from whence I can get it. I will thank you to drop me an answer by the mail, by which conveyance I will forward you the money, or get it to you by way of my friend, Dr. Younglove, of Hudson, if you accommodate me with the wool. "I am, Sir, Your "humble Servant, "ELAM TILDEN." The most disastrous fire with which the city of New York has ever yet been visited is referred to in the following letter. It reduced to ashes pretty much every structure within the area bounded by Wall and Broad streets and the East River, a tract which then embraced nearly, if not quite all the important commission houses in the city; crippled all our insurance companies, and gave to the territory it covered a blow from which, after a lapse of nearly three-quarters of a century, it has but partially recovered. Like the great fire of London in the seventeenth century, it is still referred to as the _Great Fire_ of 1835. S. J. TILDEN TO ELAM TILDEN "NEW YORK, _December 11, 1833_. Friday, _2.30 P.M._ "MY DEAR FATHER,--The last has been the most calamitous night New York ever saw. The very centre of the commercial part of the city--from Wall Street across William and nearly to Broad, and to Coenties Slip,--all is a mass of smouldering ruins. A concurrence of unfortunate circumstances rendered the fire thus disastrous. The engines had been much disordered, in consequence of the extensive fires on the previous night--the hose, many of them, frozen and unfit for use. The atmosphere was in a state peculiarly calculated to support and extend combustion, the wind blew with great violence, and the weather was so intensely cold as to clog and almost close up with ice the hose. The flames raged through the whole night with uncontrolled violence, impressing every beholder with the utter impotency of human effort to contend with the devouring element. The spectacle was grand and awful beyond conception. I shall not attempt to describe it. All the fires that ever occurred here before were perfectly insignificant in comparison.