recorded...."

Thomas Janvier declares that she was accused of murder, but all other
authorities say that poor Rose's "wickedness" had consisted of
lighting a fire under the staircase of her master's house, with, or
so it was asserted, "a malicious intent." One sees that it was quite
easy to get hanged in those days,--especially if you happened to be a
negro! The great elm tree, on a branch of which Rose was hanged, stood
intact in the Square until 1890. I am glad it is gone at last!

Old Manhattan was as strictly run as disciplinary measures and rules
could contrive and guarantee. The old blue laws were stringently
enforced, and the penalty for infringement was usually a sharp one. In
the unpublished record of the city clerk we find, next to the item
that records Elbert Harring's application for a land-grant, a note to
the effect that a "Publick Whipper" had been appointed on the same
day, at five pounds quarterly.

Public notices of that time, printed in the current press, remind the
reader of some of these aforementioned rules and regulations. We read
that "Tapsters are forbid to sell to the Indians," and that
"unseasonable night tippling" is also tabooed; likewise drinking after
nine in the evening when curfew rings, or "on a Sunday before three
o'clock, when divine service shall be over."

I wonder whether little old "Washington Hall" was built too late to
come under these regulations? It was a roadhouse of some repute in
1820, and a famous meeting place for celebrities in the sporting
world. It was, too, a tavern and coffee house for travellers (its
punch was famous!) and the stagecoaches stopped there to change