Diary of Hiram Harvey Hurlburt Jr - Chapter 19

A part of the Diary of Hiram Harvey Hurlburt Jr

About the first of August 1850, I had been working for the George Virtue Company Newberg, N.Y. delivering numbers of the "The Life of Christ." Where I boarded "Thomas Patton's." found the colored cook a woman that did not look so very old, on my list, I gave her one, ??? she said, Her daughter not so very far away, one block, was looking for her number. I found her. Then a young colored woman came in who addressed the other as mother, she wanted one, then cam in a grown colored girl and wanted her number! her grandma then explained, and said, "Her mother was cook at Thomas Patton's boarding house." Four generations. I wish I had asked the age of the great grandmother.

I had a spare clay and went across the Hudson to Fishkill with a Mr. Green, an artist who had been studying under Vanderlyn at Kingston. Green and myself climbed up the Highlands to "Solomons Barracks". A most wonderful collection of large square or nearly square stone. They would be from four to six foot square, from eight to ??? feet in length, mostly in a horizontal position, one side was so nicely fitted as if they were placed by human skill.

Green gave me a line to Vanderlyn to give him when I went back to Kingston ??? did so. Vanderlyn was copying a couple of portraits, that looked as if centuries had aged them. I hardly spoke as he resumed work. I studied the painting in his studio, some of them very choice, worth the time spent looking. When I was going out quiet as possible, he turned and spoke. "Come in again." I did when tired footing the streets. When I went in I received a smiling nod, and afterwards ??? satisfied by another study, on going out he would say "Come again. You do not disturb me." When I was in Westbrook's law office, I was telling Champlin, How pleasant Vanderlyn was to me, Westbrook spoke up. "That Vanderlyn was the most bristly man on the river!" Vanderlyn face was the nearest Martin Van Buren for looks.

Now if any of my children or grandchildren when reading this cannot see, in following relation, how foolish a young can be, I am mistaken.

In Westbrooks and Kenyon's law office was a clerk Stephen Champlin just referred to above. He wanted I should go across the Hudson to Rhinebeck to see his Uncle by the name of Champlin. He was a farmer, after supper he took me out to show me where he could sell me some building lots, the railroad was being made by the side of his meadow. The Hudson River R.R. was then up to Poughkeepsie. Mr. Champlin says the lots were fifty by one hundred and twenty feet deep. price forty dollars a lot, he would sell me three lots for a hundred dollars. And I could not see a thing in ??? I had nearly the price of the three lots in my pocket. What a foolish thing I couldn't see their value? But look here! When I came from Newberg I found in the Kingston post office a letter from an Odd Fellow in Vermont - I must never divulge his name. That had the contents. ow my "wildly bewitching" Sorelle was corresponding with a man "Stephen Romele" at Danville, Kentucky! This Romele was a student at Middlebury College, had graduated about one year before I left Vermont. Had been to see Sorelle once or twice. Then when he left college, had this opportunity to teach in a family of three or four daughters of a planter in Danville.

That will excuse me some in not seeing value in building lots. I do not think it was 3 years before these same lots were worth six hundred dollars each. Last year (1901) I was told by a man acquainted with locations there, that they were worth more than two thousand dollars each. But that low price that Champlin offered was more than fifty years ago.

My correspondence with Sorelle continued through I discovered a coolness in [her] letters, But I made no complaint. Not a word of what I had heard, finally accidentally I sent a letter and left off the "Miss". When I was brought to a sharp! She expected the next letter would be superscribed "Sorelle Smith E'sye". This closed nearly our correspondence, as I heard Reniele was to return by people at home.

After the Mr. Champlin offer of lots, I think the next week, I was at Kingston Point; where we went to take a ferry for Rhinebeck, a beautiful grove of the whispering white pine. They were small trees three to five inches think six inches from the ground and so thick together you could hardly get between them. Smith had plotted it out for a cemetery, and he would sell that week for five dollars a reasonable sized lot. I could not see anything then. But before I left in the fall they were bringing twenty dollars a lot, another case of financial blindness.

I must confess I was not very ambitious, the future not colored deeply with pleasant shades. I think if I could have been at home at mothers, where I could have put my head in her lap face down, mind you and gave way to my feelings like I did when younger the aching feeling would have eased up sooner.

I do not doubt but what others could sympathize with me, had sometime like experience, but I had to enjoy this alone. Time has something to do with these things.