canals and aqueducts, were ever present to his mind: he could not visit Spuytenduyvel without thinking of his dear Bronx; the very flow from the spout of his tea-pot advised him of hydraulics and lock navigation.
I knew Colles well for a long period, and I, in my way, pro re nata, administered to him an occasional dose. On the old principle that misery loves company, I illustrated to him, from occurrences around him, that genius and poverty were often associates, as in the case of Oliver Evans, and told him what Bard had long ago told me, that the accomplished architect of the spire of our venerable church of St. Paul, died penniless, and in a hospital—but what has now-a-days become a creed in some brains, that like cures like, had no alterntive influence in the present instance. Like other lovers of mathematics, he was fond of music, and versed in hymnology: he revelled with Toplady, and shed tears with Newton. When oppressed with inward sorrows he read Euler and Maclaurin, and occasionally, when without a meal, he summoned his ideality in calculating the safest means to sustain a bank currency. Like some political economists of the present day, he favored the notion that that bank was safest which has no capital. Colles cherished the doctrine of signs, which he derived, I believe, from Culpepper. He was wont to say that a disastrous star presided at his birth, and that if he had been brought up a hatter, the people would have come into the world without heads.
From this inadequate sketch it is sufficiently apparent that Colles pursued knowledge under the most stubborn difficulties; that through life he struggled with adverse forces, and rarely experienced the enjoyments of existence. His death took place in the fall of 1821, at the advanced age of eighty-four years. John Pintard and myself had the honor to be his only followers to the grave. The Rev. Dr. Creighton (that worthy divine who recently declined a bishopric) officiated on the mournful occasion. He lies in the Episcopal burial-ground in Hudson street, but no mark designates the spot. Thus much of Colles, and thus much was assuredly due to the memory of the man whose investigations more than three quarters of a century ago promoted the great internal policy which signalizes New-York, and finally ended
