Thus it was with Colden. Among the number of governors who succeeded each other in his time, if, by chance, one happened to be a man of ability, he estimated his merit at its just rate; and whatever original measure he might find it necessary to take for the public good, left the common routine of business in the hands of that tried integrity and experience in which he found them; satisfied with the state and popularity of governor, on which the other had not a wish to encroach. Colden, however, enriched his own family, in a manner, on the whole, not objectionable. He procured from the successive governors various grants of land, which, though valuable in quality, were not, from the remoteness of their situation, an object of desire to settlers; and purchased grants from many who had obtained the property of them, among which were different governors and military commanders. He allowed this mine of future wealth to lie quietly ripening to its value, till the lands near it were, in process of time, settled, and it became a desirable object to purchase or hold on lease. ------- CHAP. XXXVIII. Mrs. Schuyler’s arrangements and conduct after the colonel’s death. THE mind of our good aunt, which had never before yielded to calamity, seemed altogether subdued by the painful separation from her husband. Never having left her consort’s bedside, or known the refreshment of a quiet sleep, during his illness, she sunk at first into a kind of torpor, which her friends willingly mistook for the effects of resignation. This was soon succeeded by the most acute sorrow, and a dangerous illness, the consequence of her mental suffering. In spring she slowly recovered, and endeavoured to find consolation in returning to the regulation of her family, and the society of her friends, for both of which she had been for some months disqualified. Her nieces, the Miss Cuylers, were a great comfort to her, from their affectionate attention, and the pleasure she took in seeing them growing up to be all that her maternal affection could wish. In the social grief of Pedrom[15] who gave all his time to her during the early part of her widowhood, she also found consolation; and whenever she was able to receive them, her friends came from all quarters to express their sympathy and their respect. The colonel’s heir and her own eldest nephew made, with one of her nieces, a part of her family; and the necessity of attending to such affairs as formerly lay within the colonel’s province, served further to occupy her mind; yet her thoughts continually recurred to that loss, which she daily felt more and more. She buried the colonel in a spot within a short distance of his own house, in which he had formerly desired to repose, that his remains might not quit a scene so dear to him; and that the place rendered sacred by his ashes, might in future be a common sepulchre to his family; that he might in death, as