There were also Wattses and Morrises and Crugers and Waltons
and Van Rensselaers, Van Cortlandts and Kennedys and Barclays and
Nicolls and Alexanders, and numerous others that endured for
generations in New York. The diverse origin of these names, English,
Scotch, Dutch and Huguenot French, showed even at such an early date
the cosmopolitan nature of New York that it was destined to maintain.
Robert was intensely interested. Charteris' fund of information was
wonderful, and he flavored it with a salt of his own. He not only knew
the people, but he knew all about them, their personal idiosyncrasies,
their rivalries and jealousies. Robert soon gathered that New York was
not only a seething city commercially, but socially as well. Family
was of extreme importance, and the great landed proprietors who had
received extensive grants along the Hudson in the earlier days from
the Dutch Government, still had and exercised feudal rights, and were
as full of pride and haughtiness as ducal families in Europe. Class
distinctions were preserved to the utmost possible extent, and, while
the original basis of the town had been Dutch, the fashion was now
distinctly English.
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