There were six at his funeral. Seven, if you count the man asleep in the chair. Eight, if you count the writer of this account, who followed at a distance and said nothing. It was June 1809. Hot, sluggish. The road out of Harlem ran quiet, except for the clattering wheels and the low talk of the procession: a couple of Black men, six drunken Irishmen in a carriage, a Quaker on horseback, and a coffin headed for West Chester. No procession in New York ever looked more like a mistake........
