Page:Historic towns of the middle states (IA historictownsofm02powe).pdf/360

 *ciples, sacrificed its Southern trade, and in both times and both sacrifices New York lagged to the rear in action and came to the front in assertion. Independence Hall still looked out on green fields to the west, and Rittenhouse's little observatory—earliest of American star-gazing spots, whose telescope, earliest of our astronomical instruments, is in the American Philosophical Society—still stood in the square where Howe's artillery was to be parked. The jail of "Hugh Wynne" was on the southeast corner of Sixth and Chestnut, on whose site Binney's home was to stand later, the hero of another struggle for freedom. In the northeast corner of Washington Square was the potter's field, last opened a century ago for yellow-fever victims. The house, Dutch built, and hence close to the street edge, in which Jefferson was to write the draft of the Declaration, preserved by the American Philosophical Society, was on Seventh and Market, its commemoration tablet on the wrong lot. A tavern fronted the Hall, and its stables ran opposite to the main door, its flies worrying the Continental Congress on a hot historic afternoon. The sharp rise which still ascends between Callowhill and