They made our old friend Peter Admiral of the Red Squadron as well as an M.P., and Lady Warren so splendidly brought out her daughters that Charlotte married Willoughby, Earl of Abingdon, and Ann wed Charles Fitzroy, Baron Southampton.  The youngest girl, Susanna, chose a colonel named Skinner,—­and New York, still affectionately inclined toward the Admiral’s daughters, named streets after the husbands of all three!  Our present Christopher Street used to be Skinner Road; Fitzroy Road ran northward, near our Eighth Avenue from Fourteenth Street far uptown; Abingdon Road, which was known colloquially and prettily as “Love Lane,” was far, far out in the country until much later, somewhere near Twenty-first Street.  Abingdon Square alone preserves one of the old family names, and in Abingdon Square I am certain some of those dear ghosts come to walk.

And still I find that I have not told the half of Sir.  Peter’s story!  I have not told of his adventures in the Mohawk country, where he travelled from sheer love of adventure and danger in the first place, and afterward established a fine settlement and plantation; of his placing there his sister’s young son, William Johnson, later to be a great authority on matters pertaining to the Indians, and how he sent him out vast consignments of “rum and axes,” to open negotiations with the Mohawks; how in his letter to his nephew he sounded a note of true Irish blarney, in cautioning him not to find fault with the horses supplied by a certain man, “since he is a relation of my wife’s!” I have not told of his narrow escape from the Indians on one dramatic occasion; nor of his trip to the West Indies as an envoy of peace; nor of his services in Barbadoes which caused the people thereof to present him with a gorgeous silver monteith, or punch-bowl; nor of the mighty dinner party he gave at which the Rev. Mr. Moody said the historic grace:  “Good Lord, we have so much to be thankful for that time would be infinitely too short to do it in.  We must, therefore, leave it for eternity.  Amen.”  I have said nothing of Sir.  Peter’s attack of small-pox, which left his good-looking face badly marked, if we can believe the likeness modelled by Roubilliac; nor—­but it would take volumes to tell the full and eventful story of this brave and gallant-hearted man, who died when he was only forty-eight, in the year 1752.  It seems incredible that so much could have been crowded into so short a life.  In death he was honoured quite as he deserved, for his tomb in the Abbey is a gorgeous and impressive one, and such men as the great French sculptor, and Dr. Johnson himself, had a hand in making it memorable in proportion to his greatness.

In looking over our hero’s career we are struck by the absence of shadows.  One would say that so unrelieved a record of success, of honour, glory, love and wealth, so much pure sunshine, so complete a lack of all trouble or defeat, must make a picture flat and characterless, insipid in its light, bright colours, insignificant in its deeper values.  But it is not so.  Peter Warren, the spoiled child of fortune, was something more than a child of fortune, since he won his good things of life always at the risk of that life which he enriched; and surely, no obstinately fortuitous twist of circumstances could ever really spoil him.