Chapter 53
MANAHACHTANIENKS.
We should like to tell so many of our readers as have survived the pronunciation of the above word that the Indians first called the site on which New York was built Manahachtanienks. The translation of it is, "The place where they all got drunk." Most uncomplimentary title; We are glad that it has been changed; for though New York has several thousand unlicensed grogshops, we consider the name inappropriate, although, if intemperance continues to increase as rapidly for the next hundred years as during the last twenty years, the time will come when New York may appropriately take its old Indian nomenclature.
Old-time New York is being rapidly forgotten, and it may be well to revive some historical facts. At an expense of three thousand dollars a year men with guide-book in hand go through the pyramids of Egypt and the picture-galleries of Rome and the ruins of Pompeii, when they have never seen the strange and historical scenes at home.
We advise the people who live in Brooklyn, Jersey City and up-town New York to go on an exploration.
Go to No. 1 Broadway and remember that George Washington and Lord Cornwallis once lived there.
Go to the United States Treasury, on Wall Street, and remember that in front of it used to stand a pillory and a whipping-post.
In a building that stood where the United States Treasury stands, General Washington was installed as President. In the open balcony he stood with silver buckles and powdered hair, in dress of dark silk velvet. (People in those days dressed more than we moderns. Think of James Buchanan or General Grant inaugurated with hair and shoes fixed up like that!)
Go to the corner of Pearl and Broad streets, and remember that was the scene of Washington's farewell to the officers with whom he had been so long associated.
Go to Canal street, and remember it was so called because it once was literally a canal.
The electric telegraph was born in the steeple of the old Dutch Church, now the New York post-office--that is, Benjamin Franklin made there his first experiments in electricity. When the other denominations charge the Dutch Church with being slow, they do not know that the world got its lightning out of one of its church steeples.
Washington Irving was born in William street, halfway between John and Fulton. "Knickerbocker" was considered very saucy; but if any man ever had a right to say mirthful things about New York, it was Washington Irving, who was born there. At the corner of Varick and Charlton streets was a house in which Washington, John Adams and Aaron Burr resided.
George Whitefield preached at the corner of Beekman and Nassau streets.
But why particularize, when there is not a block or a house on the great thoroughfare which has not been the scene of a tragedy, a fortune ruined, a reputation sacrificed, an agony suffered or a soul lost?