40                       THE   OLD  JHERCHAjXTS
 

CHAPTER IV.

The most interesting class of merchants for these chap¬
ters, are those that connect the small port, and the
mammoth city — the New York after the war, with its
12,000 popiilaion, and forty years later, wdien it was
the greatest city of this continent, and had fairly com¬
menced to be the greatest city in the world.

The personal history of the merchants of such a pe¬
riod has a charm at the present time, eighty years later.
There are aged men in this city, yet alive, who were
boys here in those days, 1780. Many who remember
quite distinctly events of ten or twenty years later, and
who on holidays were permitted to make country excui-
sions from this city. A favorite one was to cross the
fields, jumping brooks and little streams, from where
Chamber street touches the Park north, north-west to
a country tavern, about where Spring street market, on
the North River, now is.

It would be a fine thing to know the exact nature of
the kind of business of the different merchants in those
days. Before me are two bills for hollow ware, £10,
October 8, 1771, and receipted by Edward & William
Laight. William signed that in his small, lady-like
handwriting. Another is dated April 28, 1772, and
signed by the coarser handwriting of Edward.