days. But I remember there were canvases of Correggio and Rembrandt and Sir Joshua Reynolds. She was, indeed, a woman of fine taste, who had brought her best to America; for no one had a doubt, in the time of which I am writing, that the settlement of the Compagnie de New York would grow into a great colony, with towns and cities and fine roadways, and the full complement of high living. She had built the Hermitage,—that was the name of the mansion,—fine and splendid as it was, for a mere temporary shelter pending the arrival of those better days.
She had a curious fad, this hermit baroness of the big woods. She loved nature and was a naturalist of no poor attainments. Wasps and hornets were the special study of this remarkable woman. There were at least a score of their nests on her front portico—big and little, and some of them oddly shaped. She hunted them in wood and field. When she found a nest she had it moved carefully after nightfall, under a bit of netting, and fastened somewhere about the gables. Around the Hermitage there were many withered boughs and briers holding cones
