New York - The Novel

right from the start. Always supported him, whatever he wanted to do, joined in his interests and enthusiasms. Once, when someone had asked him when he’d first been sure he wanted to marry Hetty, to their great surprise they’d received the answer: “It was the Croton Aqueduct that did it.” But it had been perfectly true.
    If the old water supply of New York had been inadequate for decades, the city’s eventual solution was magnificent. Forty miles to the north the River Croton, which ran into the Hudson, was dammed to make a huge reservoir. From there, water was carried south in a covered canal until it crossed by bridge over the Harlem River onto the north end of Manhattan. Passing over two more high aqueducts on the way, it flowed down through conduits into a thirty-five-acre receiving reservoir, which extended between Eighty-sixth and Seventy-ninth Streets on the city plan. Another five miles of conduits and pipes brought water from the receiver to Murray Hill, where the distributing reservoir, a splendid building just below Forty-second Street, and which looked like a fortress, held twenty million gallons.
    The whole thing was a masterpiece of engineering, and it hadn’t surprised Hetty in the least that, just before its completion in 1842, while they were still courting, Frank had said that he wanted to inspect every inch of it. What astonished him, and everyone else, was that she cheerfully announced: “I’m coming too.”
    And so she had. They’d taken the family carriage up Manhattan, right across Westchester County to the Croton dam, where an engineer had been delighted to show them the sluices and the start of the canals. They’d driven down, looked into the gatehouses at the Harlem River and walked across the bridge. They’d inspected the aqueducts, the reservoirs, the pipes. The whole expedition had taken four days, and many miles of walking.
    And finally, right in front of that fortress-like reservoir at Forty-second Street, Frank Master had turned to this remarkable young woman, gonedown on one knee and asked her to marry him—which, all in all, Hetty reckoned was worth the walk.
    Now, therefore, with the maps spread out on the table, Frank Master and his wife spent a happy half-hour looking at the towns and territories up the new Hudson railroad that seemed most promising for future development. And they were still busily engaged in this manner when a maid announced that Miss Keller and the Irish girl had arrived.
    “I want to see this Irish girl, Hetty,” said Master, “because we need to be very careful.”
    “Most of the servants in this city are Irish, Frank,” his wife pointed out.
    “I know. But there’s Irish, and Irish. There are plenty of respectable ones. The people to avoid are the Irish from Five Points—half of them are so weak that they’re prone to disease.”
    “Someone’s got to help them, Frank.”
    “Yes, but we’ve young children to consider. And the ones that aren’t sick are criminals. Gangs of them. Look what happened at Astor Place the other day.”
    That had been an awful business—a riot of Irish from the Bowery, set off by the appearance of an aristocratic English actor, at the new Astor Opera House, no less. One could understand the Irish blaming England for the horrors of the Famine, but with revolutionary elements causing disruptions all over Europe that year, the New York authorities weren’t taking any chances. The militia had been called in, and they’d fired on the crowd. A hundred and fifty wounded, and more than twenty dead.
    “I don’t want any Irish from the Bowery,” Master said firmly.
    “Gretchen says she’s very quiet and respectable.”
    “She may be. But I want to know about her family—are they respectable people too? And there’s another thing to watch out for.”
    “What’s that, dear?”
    “Tammany Hall.” It was as obvious to Frank as it had been to his ancestors that the better sort, the solid men of property, should rule the city. The men that Tammany Hall elected in the city wards were just the kind to beware of. “I don’t want any of those people insinuating themselves into this house,” he declared.
    “I’ll be careful, Frank,” said Hetty.
    “I want to know about her family,” Frank repeated. “No Five Points, no Bowery, no drinking or gambling, and no Tammany Hall.”

    When they came from Irving Place into Gramercy Park and Mary saw the size of the house, she took a deep breath. They went to