Together these two elderly Knickerbockers were unweary in their efforts to interpret high life to their circle. Their family pride was more expansive than their brother Jonathan's. He talked chiefly of his Aunt Jane, the milk-weed lady, of his renowned father, and of that dim shade of a Knickerbocker who was the friend of Lord Cornbury. Miss Georgina had climbed higher into her hereditary tree. She prated of a great-uncle who married a niece of Lord Campbell--a cousin underscored in her records as Laird of Barula--the grand Makemies, the high-stepping Gabies, and the learned Gobies. And, as for Aunt Jane, why, she was dowered with a larger chest of silver than any Jersey woman of her day. Those records of her paduasoys and alamodes would have sickened a Custis; and her love-affairs!--the wench herself might have been astounded at hearing that she once refused a patroon of Rensselaerswyck and a president of the College of New Jersey. Quietly Miss Julie would sit and listen to her sister, but, once away from her, she would assume what she believed to be the Almack manner, call imagination to her aid, and discourse to her long-suffering acquaintance. Aunt Jane's chest of plate became a veritable crown furgeon laden with tasters, posset cups, punch-bowls, muffineers, and salvers of priceless and unique patterns. Her gowns would have done credit to a Drury Lane queen. The patroon of Rensselaerswyck drank a flask of camphor to forget his Jane. Scores of suitors died of lacerated hearts for her dear sake, and the president of the College of New Jersey vowed he could not hear the word love spoken in his presence, not even in his young gentlemen's conjugations. It was the arrival, from the vulgarian camp of Trenton, of one Mrs. Snograss that first brought interference with the sway of these gentle ladies. That year, in which Richard Sheridan first played the organ in St. Paul's and Mrs. Snograss elected to reside in York, proved, indeed, an eventful one for the community. The genteel portion of Gotham society, like the family of the Vicar of Wakefield, was wont to lead a peaceful life. Most of its adventures befell it by its own fireside, or consisted of migrations from the blue bed to the brown. Or there was the yearly glimpse of the Branch, or Schooley's Mountain, and on rare occasions venturesome parents took their offspring to Hobuck for a fortnight--especially if they were marriageable daughters. The Misses Knickerbocker had visited the latter place in its transition period. There Georgina purchased her Davenport tea-service for a song, and was fond of telling of the fact. And Julie treasured a sweeter memory of the green Elysium--a dried-up flower of memory, but once a rose, nevertheless, carefully guarded from the world, hidden indeed from herself most of the time.