The Morris house, now known as the Jumel mansion, was half a generation old at the beginning of the Revolution. Thither, as the bride of Captain Morris, a brother-officer of Washington's in the old French war, went Mary Philipse; whom young Washington was said to have wooed while he tarried in and about New York upon his memorable journey to Boston to solicit in vain, of Governor Shirley, a king's commission. The Revolution found the Morrises on the side opposed to Washington's; for a short time during the operations above New York in 1776 he occupied this house of theirs as headquarters. They lost it through their allegiance to the royal cause, all their American real estate being confiscated by the New York assembly. The mansion became in time the residence of that remarkable woman who, from a barefoot girl in Providence, R.I., had grown up to be the wife of a Frenchman named Jumel; and to be the object of much admiration, and the subject of some scandal. In her widowhood she received under this roof Aaron Burr, after his duel with Hamilton (whose neighbouring country-house still exists, in Convent Avenue), and under this roof she and Burr--both in their old age--were united in marriage. I imagine that some of the ghosts that haunt this mansion, if they might be got in a corner, would yield their interviewers a quaint reminiscence or two. The grounds appertaining to the house have been sadly diminished by the opening of new streets; yet it is still a fine, striking landmark, perched to be seen afar, as from the railroad trains that follow the East bank of the Harlem, or, better, from West 155th Street at and about its junction with St. Nicholas Place and the Speedway. At the time when I left New York for a temporary residence in the Old World, there was talk of moving the house to a less commanding, but still eminent, height that crowns the bluff rising from the Speedway: the owner was compelled, it was said, to avail himself of the increased value of the land whereon it stood. 'Tis some pity if this has been, or has to be, done; but nothing to the pity if the mansion had to be pulled down. Apart from all associations and historical interest, this imposing specimen of our Colonial domestic architecture, so simple and reposeful an edifice amidst a world of flat buildings, and of gew-gaw houses built for sale on the instalment plan to the ubiquitous Mr. and Mrs. Veneering, is a precious relief, nay an untiring delight, to the eye. NOTE 5 (Page 202).