104 WINTER SKETCHES. 



Fanny trotted as quietly over the new bridge 

 as if none of these wonderful events had tran- 

 spired a century ago. 



A few rods beyond is the old church — not 

 whitewashed now, but showing the gray color 

 of the rock of which it is built. There are 

 signs of some outward renovation, which do 

 not detract materially from the appearance of 

 age, and the little pepper-box belfry still con- 

 tains the original bell, imported, with many of 

 the inside fixtures, from Holland. On a tablet 

 above the door we read, "■ Erected by Frederick 

 Phillips and Catharine Van Cortlandt, his wife, 

 1699." It stands as an outpost on the southern 

 wall of a great city of the dead, where its 

 founders with successive generations of their 

 tenants repose, and where later generations lie 

 side by side with them, people who came to 

 possess themselves of their land when living, 

 against their will and protest, but who share it 

 with them now in peace. The little bell called 

 the first settlers together to worship God in the 

 ritual and language of their mother church. 

 Afterward the old Dutch liturgy was abandoned 

 for more modern doctrines expressed in English. 

 At last, for all practical purposes, there is no 

 more service of any kind, excepting during 



