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.