Excerpt from Edith Lyle: A Novel

And so one April day Colonel Schuyler came up to our little town with a whole army of workmen, who began at once their task of tearing down and rebuilding the old house, which had belonged to the Schuylers so long, and which latterly had been unoccupied and gradually going to decay. The housek which was very large, stood upon an eminence overlooking the town of Hampstead and the river below, and from this fact the place was known as Schuyler Hill, though for years and years not a Schuyler had lived there or manifested the slightest interest in it. There was a time, however, within my mother's memory, when all through the summer months high festival had been held at the Old place by the Schuylers, whose graves were now in a little inclosure at the summit of the hill, where the tall evergreens were growing, and where the weather-stained head stones were, with their quaint devices and eu10gies of people dead long before I was born. Sometimes on a bright summer afternoon I used to climb over the low railing into this yard, to gather the roses and sweet-brier which grew there in such pro fusion, and, seated on the grass, I would muse upon the dead folk who slept below, and wish so much for a return of the days of which my mother had told me, when the great house was full of high-born people, who made the neighborhood so gay, and whose revellings were sometimes prolonged far into the night.

At last, however, there was a prospect of those days coming back again, and the whole town was alive with wonder and curiosity when it was known that not only was the old house to give way to a new and elegant modern structure, but that the family was really coming there to live a good portion of the year. Hampstead, which had slept so long, was alive now.

Property went up, and the people began to talk of a bank, and a new hotel, and sent a petition that the express trains from Albany should stop there, instead of thundering by on the wings of the wind with a snort and a scream, which I thought was tantalizing and impertinent in the extreme. Great, too, was the excitement and interest with regard to the new house, which, under swift and efficient workmen, grew so rapidly that, early in June, the framework of the tower could be seen above the tree-tops, and was watched eagerly by the curious villagers.

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