Thomas Janvier's description
of the house as he visualises it with his rich imagination is too
charming not to quote in part:
[Illustration: OLD ST. JOHN'S. "Still faces on Varick Street, sombre
and unaltered, a stately link between the present and the past."]
"The house stood about three hundred yards back from the
river, on ground which fell away in a gentle slope towards
the waterside. The main entrance was from the east; and at
the rear--on the level of the drawing-room and a dozen feet
or so above the sloping hillside--was a broad veranda
commanding the view westward to the Jersey Highlands and
southward down the bay to the Staten Island Hills." The
fanciful description goes on to picture Captain Warren
sitting on this veranda, "smoking a comforting pipe after his
mid-day dinner; and taking with it, perhaps, as seafaring
gentlemen very often did in those days, a glass or two of
substantial rum-and-water to keep everything below hatches
well stowed. With what approving eye must he have regarded
the trimly kept lawns and gardens below him; and with what
eyes of affection the _Launceston_, all a-taunto, lying out
in the stream!"
I have called the description of the house "fanciful," but it is
really not that, since the old house fell into Abraham Van Nest's
hands at a later date, and stood there for over a century, with the
poplars, for which it was famous, and the box hedges, in which Susanna
had taken such pride, growing more beautiful through the years.
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