Chapter 1
_ CHAPTER I
"I hear," said Mrs. Abram Van Riper, seated at her breakfast-table, and watching the morning sunlight dance on the front of the great Burrell house on the opposite side of Pine Street, "that the Dolphs are going to build a prodigious fine house out of town--somewhere up near the Rynders‘s place."
"And I hear," said Abram Van Riper, laying down last night‘s Evening Post, "that Jacob Dolph is going to give up business. And if he does, it‘s a disgrace to the town."
It was in the summer of 1807, and Abram Van Riper was getting well over what he considered the meridian line of sixty years. He was hale and hearty； his business was flourishing； his boy was turning out all that should have been expected of one of the Van Riper stock； the refracted sunlight from the walls of the stately house occupied by the Cashier of the Bank of the United States lit with a subdued secondary glimmer the Van Riper silver on the breakfast-table--the squat teapot and slop

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