Blue Robin, the Girl Pioneer — Part 196

“But the stone street, Madame?” inquired Madame New Amsterdam, who seemed greatly interested in these little stories of the people and doings of the city whose name she bore.

“Cobbles,” corrected Dame Van Cortland. “You see, it was this way. My husband, the captain, resigned from the militia and went into the brewing business. He built a brewery on Brower Street near the Fort, one of the first lanes made by the settlers. But alas,” sighed Madame ruefully, “when my husband’s brewery wagons made their way over the lane they raised so much dust and dirt that I begged my better half to pave it with stones. He laughed at me, as was his wont, and the dust and dirt grew thicker on the lane. Driven desperate, I now marshaled my servants to the lane, and we laid it with small, round cobblestones. I won my way as well as fame, for the little stone street was the first of its kind in the _dorp_, and was regarded with much curiosity by the burghers.”

Annetje, now spying two more comers, flew to welcome them and the grande dame of Manhattan Isle was forgotten, as an ancient little lady appeared with silver curls peeping from beneath a cap of rare old lace, a rustling silk crossed with a kerchief, and a chatelaine hanging from her girdle. She bowed with quaint grace before the ladies, as Madame Killiaen Van Rensselaer, otherwise known as, “The Lady of the Thimble.”

“Yes,” spoke the little old lady, who by the way was a Bob White, and who had studied her part with due diligence, “I was the first woman to wear a gold thimble. I was seated at my work one day with an ivory thimble, big and cumbersome, on my fingers, the kind ’tis claimed the tailors use. A young friend of mine to whom I had rendered some slight service was at work in his shop just across the lane. He spied my thimble, and, being a goldsmith, then and there vowed that on my birthday I should receive a gift. ’Tis needless to say that this vow was fulfilled, for the young man presented me with a gold thimble on that day, which he had made with the wish that I would wear his finger-hat as a covering to a diligent and beautiful finger.”

A comely Dutch matron with bright eyes and ruddy cheeks was now bowing in sprightly manner before the hostess. By her pose she was immediately recognized as Lillie Bell, who indeed was just the one to personate the fair and bewitching “Lady of Petticoat Lane,” alias Polly Spratt, Polly Prevoorst, and Polly Alexander. The fair Polly was the recognized social leader of New York in the days when coasting down _Flattenbarack Hill_, or skating on the _Collect_ with a party of lads and lassies as merry as herself gained her the name of a hoyden. Always the bonniest, the merriest lass at a wedding or dance, the acknowledged leader of her set, counting her suitors by the score, it was not to be wondered when she became a matron at seventeen. As a widow of twenty-six she assumed control of her husband’s business, building a row of offices in front of her house. She, too, built a stone street, Marketfield Lane, thus inciting her neighbors to do the same. Hence, the brick walks that now came into fashion called _Strookes_.