To right and left were other hospitable mansions, the limits of their
private grounds unmarked by jealous wall or paling. A wide-ranging
spirit of good-nature and confidence appeared to reign; yet, in point of
fact, the inhabitants of these agreeable country houses formed a
distinctly close corporation. The Van Reenan property had been broken up
into building lots on the death of its first owner, old Erasmus Van
Reenan, merchant and financier of New York, nearly seventy years ago.
But the said lots had been acquired by members of his numerous family;
and still Van Reenans, direct and collateral, their children and their
children's children, found relaxation at times in this amiable, American
Capua. But woe to any intruder from the outer world, unless furnished
with irreproachable passport and the very highest of high-class
references, who should venture to set sacrilegious foot on this thrice
sacred ground! For, as Laurence had frequently reflected--not without a
measure of amusement--nothing is so essentially aristocratic as a
democratic country, nothing so socially exclusive as an immature
civilisation.