^^Sajl^-aiiirawssgSs^ffiiS? SIEW YORK FROM LONG ISLAND, 1716-I718 s of Boston) Engraved by I. Harris of London . Colt copy Other copies owned by The New-York Historical Society and Robert Goelet By the early nineteenth century, the prevailing preoccupation with business clearly set the tone of the community, to judge from contemporary accounts. A visitor of 1807 remarked that every "thought, word, look, and action of the multitude seemed to be absorbed by commerce."6 "All is business in New York," wrote another commentator, fifty years later. "In the morning hours, when the business population . . . pours out into the main artery, in Broadway, and descends hurriedly 'down town,' nothing could stop it or divert the torrent. Even if Sebastopol had been in their way, those men would have run over it at one rush."7 On the eve of the Civil War, New Yorkers gave outsiders the impression that they lived only "to make money and spend 0 John Lambert, Travels through Canada, and the United States of North America, in the Years 1806, 1807 & 1808 (2 vols.; London: 1814), II, 64. 7 Adam G. deGurowski, America and Europe (New York: 1857), 371-72. 403