With the exception of occasional visits to his own family in New York, this happy and congenial Hyde Park household was my father's home for the first year of his married life. His expectant profession stimulated and gave shape to Dr. Bard's long cherished idea of a church on his own property, and it was not long before the site was determined on and given, the plan settled, and the work commenced. My father had already purchased, some two miles above Hyde Park, a wooded slope on the river bank, and was there building for himself. He was naturally fond of planning and building, and was not without some skill in architecture, which had already brought him credit through plans for Grace Church, New York, which when quite young he had elaborately prepared and handed in anonymously for competition. We may, therefore, picture him this year as both a busy and a happy man. The same year, 1811, saw both home and church completed; the home first, which received the name of "Inwood," and to which my father and family, consisting of wife, infant daughter, and Miss Sally Bard, who thenceforth was to be a cherished member of his household, removed early in June. In after years, writing for a great niece, Miss Bard thus describes the new home: "In June, 1811, we removed to Inwood, a place chosen in the romantic days of your father and mother, built in the same taste, more for beauty than convenience; the road to the house, from choice, difficult of access, among dark and winding paths, over rocks and stones, and much further round than was necessary." This judgment was probably correct, for two years saw a change to a comfortable cottage about equidistant between the church and the Hyde Park mansion, and not five minutes' walk from either. a coun The church, erected mainly through the liberality of Dr. Bard and Mr. McVickar's father terpart of which can now be seen in old St. Luke's, New York was ready for consecration in the month of October. The young candidate was to be ordained deacon at the same time. Bishop Hobart, who had just passed through the stormy times of his own election and consecration to the episcopate, officiated, and we can easily imagine, if imagination were not rendered unnecessary by the following graphic picture from the pen which has already aided us, how full of happiness must have been the occasion: 66 - My brother has lived," says Miss Bard, writing to her English friends, " to see completed, and more than answer his expectations, the pious work he so arduously undertook and prosecuted, and after the vigor of life passed in a constant course of usefulness and active benevolence, closes his career with the delightful consciousness of having his last his best work, and already seeing and enjoying the blest effects of it. With little more than the assistance of his own family he has built a church, a lovely one that strikes every eye with its taste and beauty. It is near the mansion-house, half a mile from the vil lage, and near a grove of locust-trees. On the 12th of October it was consecrated, and on the following day our beloved friend was ordained to the ministry. Never was there a more affecting and solemn scene; the hubbub of a city consecration can give no idea of it. But the ordination was still more interesting. The Bishop and two clergymen attended, his father, mother, and others of his family, and every one of ours, formed a group that seemed to touch every heart in the church, and the Bishop, on his return, said he had never witnessed so deeply affecting a scene. He preached the sermon, and took occasion to speak with high but modest praise of his knowledge from infancy of John McVickar's character, and touched very handsomely on brother's being the founder, father, and patron of the church. On Sunday, Mr. McVickar preached his first sermon. It would be natural for me to be partial in its praise, but indifferent persons spoke highly of it, and Governor Lewis in particular, who, observing the pallid looks of his father, laboring under a lingering and painful disease, said to Mr. Pendleton, 'But who would not take his complaints to be the father of such a son?'” To this picture of Mr. McVickar's early married life, thus drawn for me by other hands, it is not for the writer to add a word. I may, however, be allowed to close it with a few lines bearing a date some years later, and found among my father's papers: TO ELIZA, 12TH NOVEMBER, 1817. DEAR was the mistress, when with downcast eye, DEARER the bride, when first by right divine DEAREST the wife, when to her bosom prest She soothes each anxious care, and lulls my soul to rest. CHAPTER III. PERIOD OF PASTORAL WORK: 1811-1818. HE religious destitution of the banks of the Hud THE son then, even, as with the West now, compelled the relaxation of the good ecclesiastical rule that the deacon should always be the assistant of the priest. Thus my father, immediately on his ordination, though still a deacon, was elected rector of St. James' Church, Hyde Park, and became responsible at once for full pastoral duty. "This country,” writes Miss Bard, “had no Episcopal Church nearer to the southward than Poughkeepsie, nor to the northward within twenty miles, so that our common people either attended ignorant Methodist meetings or spent their Sundays in idleness. Since Mr. McVickar's entrance into the ministry, now about six months, he has conscientiously devoted himself to the improvement of his own mind and the good of others, visiting the sick, attending the poor, and instructing the ignorant, in which his wife joins him most sincerely, never having enjoyed admiration and gayety as much as she now does joining him in acts of charity and piety." This devotion of the young rector to the improvement of his own mind, might have become a snare |