The Parks and Cemeteries 299 



man drinking the health of the ladies of the mansion. The 

 march is resumed; and from the joyous remarks of the soldiers, 

 the heads learn that no more will they see the British red coat 

 or the Highland plaid, or hear the guttural accents of the 

 German — for peace has come. 



For two years they rested; then their wondering eyes 

 opened to see the first lumbering coach go by on its way to 

 Albany. A score of years later, they fell asleep; for men 

 had changed the way of the ancient road and came no more in 

 front of the old mansion. Again they heard the martial 

 sounds of war as men marched by for the defence of New York 

 from 1812 to 1815; but this time their eyes are spared the 

 sight of carnage — that is on the sea. 



Once more the long "piping times of peace." The old 

 mansion has new owners; the great city needed a pleasure 

 ground for its people; and the heads gaze upon crowds and 

 crowds of people gathered here each week to listen to the 

 strains of music wafted through the shady trees. Their 

 eyes had seen the heavy, lumbering, swaying coaches of by- 

 gone days; no wonder their mouths spread wider when they 

 gazed upon the light, silent steeds of the wheelmen who come 

 in thousands, or upon four-in-hand coaches with their tooting 

 horns and exquisite drivers, many of whose ancestors they 

 had seen in cocked hats, knee-breeches, and silver buckles. 

 Now their mouths are frozen wide; they have no more mind 

 for wonder; for they have seen the rushing, crushing, noisy, 

 rattling automobile with its load of passengers more masked 

 and disguised than were the highwaymen of Hampstead 

 Heath. 



A fairer sight now meets their eyes, a sight with which, it 

 is said, they were once familiar — a veritable Dutch garden, 

 which the park gardener laid out during 1902 and 1903 below 



