MINOR PARAGRAPHS. CALLIOPEAN SOCIETY.-The Calliopean Society, which Dr. Anderson says in his interesting Diary he was asked to join, was instituted, as I learn, on the 20th of November, 1788. Its sole objects were the cultivation of friendship and improvement in literature. They met every Tuesday evening and elected quarterly. THERON. CHAIR (Aug. 1889, p. 50).—The word chair here is exactly synonymous with chaise, a carriage, and this is undoubtedly what is meant. This use of the word is so uncommon that I do not remember to have met with it before. On reference, however, to Worcester I find the following extract from Warton: E'en kings might quit their state to share Q. A. BELVEDERE.-This was on the east side of the town somewhere this side of Grand street. It must have been on high ground, for there was a fine view from it. The following is a description, taken from Valentine's Manual for 1864, p. 747. Where that account was copied from does not appear : Belvedere House is situated on the banks of the East River, about a quarter of a mile beyond the pavement of the eastern extremity of the city of New York. It was built in the year 1792, by thirty-three gentlemen, of whom the Belvedere Club is composed. The beauty of the situation induced them to extend their plan beyond their first intentions, which were merely a couple of rooms for the use of their Club; and they erected the present building, as well to answer the purpose of a public hotel and tavern, as for their own accommodation. The ball-room, which includes the whole of the second story of the east front, is an oblong octagon of forty-five feet in length, twenty-four wide, and seventeen high, with a music gallery. This room is occupied by the Club on their Saturday night meetings, during the Summer season; the right to which on that day is the only exclusive privileges which the proprietors retain. The windows of this room open to the floor, and communicate with a balcony twelve feet wide, which surrounds the eastern division of the house, and affords a most delightful promenade. The style in which this room is finished and decorated has been very generally admired. The room on the ground floor is of the same shape and dimensions of the ball-room, and is generally used as a dinner and supper.room for large companies and public entertainments. The west division of the house is composed of two dining parlors, a bar room, two card rooms, and a number of bed-chambers. The west front opens into a small court-yard, flanked on each side with stables, a coach office and other offices. The little grounds into which the east front opens are formed into a bowlinggreen, gravel walks, and some shrubbery, in as handsome a manner as the very limited space would admit of. The want of extensive grounds is, however, much compensated for by the commanding view which the situation gives of the city and adjacent country. The prospect is very varied and extensive; a great part of the city, the Bay of New York, Long Island, the East River as far as Hell Gate, the Island of New York to the northward of the city, and a little of the North River, with its bold and magnificent bank on the Jersey side, altogether compose a scenery which the vicinity of few great cities affords. On the demise of a proprietor, the vacant interest in the estate can only be purchased by a person eligible by a majority of votes as a member of the Club. The present proprietors and members of the Club are Social clubs, on Saturdays, during the Summer months, are, with the citizens of New York, of ancient date. There is perhaps no great city where invidious distinctions are less thought of. However their interests may clash in commercial or speculative pursuits, they meet cordially on 'Change; a good will to each other, and a continual interchange of domestic hospitality, no event has ever interrupted. In addition to the hospitable attentions which every stranger of character receives, these clubs, to which strangers are generally invited, are peculiarly calculated to give them a more general acquaintance than could be expected to result from private introduction. SENEX. BELVEDERE HOUSE.-This house, famous in the closing years of the last century and during many years in the present one, with the grounds on which it was erected and surrounding it, was the property of the Belvedere Club. This property was purchased and the house erected in 1792, by the club, consisting of thirty-three gentlemen of the city. Two of these soon withdrew, or fell by the wayside, inasmuch as the number of proprietors had fallen to thirty-one in 1794. The house was erected on a high hill that sloped to the East River, only a short distance away; there was neither Water street nor South street in those days; and inland towards Grand street, and across the sites of the present Henry and Madison streets and East Broadway. It was east of the celebrated Rutgers mansion, and the cottage of Marinus Willett sometimes made available as a hotel, and farther away from "the pavement of the eastern extremity of the City of New York" than either of them. The precise location of the Belvedere was on what is now the block bounded by Montgomery, Clinton, Cherry and Monroe streets. With the cutting away of the hill by driving streets through it, East Broadway and others, and the erection of numerous dwellings in its vicinity, the Belvedere ceased to be desirable as a pleasure resort; in fact, it had long before ceased to be the fashion. A walk to the Belvedere from the city had come to be only as a memory. The house was removed late in the twenties. A story obtained currency during the last years of its existence, and has come down to this time as a legend, that it had for a long time been the rendezvous of pirates and smugglers, in the cellars and imaginary caverns of which they had stored the spoils and booty of their voyages; that murders and other atrocious crimes had been committed there, and that the place was haunted. Therefore it came that it was avoided by the ignorant and superstitious and by timid folk. The story had no more solid basis than fabrication and the fact of non-use and natural decay of the main and outlying buildings. The careful provision made in 1792 by the club for the course of descent of the property to surviving proprietors was an effectual barrier to its being diverted to criminal uses. The names of the original proprietors of 1792-94, transmitted to us as they have been through almost a century of time, and now well borne by men honorably prominent in the citizenhood of this day, afford additional guarantees that the idle tales touching the later years of the existence of the Belvedere were but " vagrom fancyes." J. M. F. THE STOCK EXCHANGE.-The first mention of the Stock Exchange in any contemporary documents that I have been able to find is the following notice, from Longworth's New York Directory for 1817: The brokers of the New York Exchange Board meet every day at 12 o'clock for the transaction of business. The following is a list of members, viz. : Leonard Bleecker, Benjamin Butler, Ph. Kearny, A. H. Lawrence & Co., Bleecker & Lefferts, F. A. Tracy, T. R. A. H |