COLUMBIA LIBRARIES OFFSITE AVERY C INE ARTS RESTRICTED 111 AR01 400711 ?Ex IGtbrts SEYMOUR DURST "t ' 'Tort nivuw ^4m/tir its sides, working his toilsome way through thickets of birch, sassafras, and witch hazel, and sometimes tripped up or cnlranglcd 92 by the wild grapevines that twisted their coils or tendrils from tree to tree, and spread a kind of network in his path. y At length lie reached to where the ravine had opened through the cliffs to the amphi- theatre; but no traces of such opening re- mained. The rocks presented a high im- penetrable wall over which the torrent came tumbling in a sheet of feathery foam, and fell into a broad deep basin, black from the shad- ows of the surrounding forest. Here, then, poor Rip was brought to a stand. He again called and whistled after his dog; he was only answered by the cawing of a flock of idle crows, sporting high in air about a dry tree that overhung a sunny precipice; and who, secure in their elevation, seemed to look down and scoff at the poor man's perplexities. What was to be done? the morning was pass- ing away, and Rip felt famished for want of his breakfast. lie grieved to give up his dog and gun; he dreaded to meet his wife; but il would not do to starve among the mountains. lie shook his head, shouldered the rusty fire- lock, and, with a heart full of trouble and anxiety, turned his steps homeward. As he approached the village he met a num- ber of people, but none whom he knew, which somewhat surprised him, for he thought him- 93 self acquainted with every one in the country round. Their dress, too, was of a different fashion from that to which he was accustomed. They all stared at him with equal marks of surprise, and whenever they cast their eyes upon him, invariably stroked their chins. The constant recurrence of this gesture in- duced Rip, involuntarily, to do the same, when to his astonishment, he found his beard had grown a foot long! He had now entered the skirts of the village. A troop of strange children ran at his heels, hooting after him, and pointing at his gray beard. The dogs, too, not one of which he recognized for an old acquaintance, barked at him as he passed. The very village was altered; it was larger and more populous. There were rows of houses which he had never seen before, and those which had been his familiar haunts had disappeared. Strange names were over the doors — strange faces at the windows — every- thing was strange. His mind now misgave him; he began to doubt whether both he and the world around him were not bewitched. Surely this was his native village, which he had left but the day before. There stood the Kaatskill mountains — there ran the silver Hudson at a distance — there was every hill 94 and dale precisely as it had always been — Rip was sorely perplexed — "That flagon last night," thought he, "has addled my poor head sadly!" It was with some difficulty that he found the way to his own house, which he approach- ed with silent awe, expecting every moment to hear the shrill voice of Dame Van Winkle. He found the house gone to decay — the roof fallen in, the windows shattered, and the doors off the hinges. A half-starved dog that looked like Wolf was skulking about. Rip called him by name, but the cur snarled, showed his teeth, and passed on. This was an unkind cut indeed — "My very dog," sighed poor Rip, "has forgotten me!" He entered the house, which, to tell the truth, Dame Van Winkle had always kept in neat order. It was empty, forlorn, and ap- parently abandoned. This desolateness over- came all his connubial fears — he called loudly for his wife and children — the lonely chambers rang for a moment with his voice, and then all again was silence. He now hurried forth, and hastened to his old resort, the village inn — but it too was gone. A large rickety wooden building stood in its place, with great gaping windows, some of them broken and mended with old hats and petticoats, and over the door was painted, 95 "the Union Hotel, by Jonathan Doolittle." Instead of the great tree that used to shelter the quiet little Dutch inn of yore, there now was reared a tall naked pole, with something on the top that looked like a red night-cap, and from it was fluttering a flag, on which was a singular assemblage of stars and stripes — all this was strange and incomprehensible. He recognized on the sign, however, the ruby face of King George, under which he had smoked so many a peaceful pipe; but even this was singularly metamorphosed. The red coat was changed for one of blue and buff, a sword was held in the hand instead of a scep- tre, the head was decorated with a cocked hat, and underneath was painted in large charac- ters, GENERAL WASHINGTON. There was, as usual, a crowd of folk about the door, but none that Rip recollected. The very character of the people seemed changed. There was a busy, bustling, disputatious tone about it, instead of the accustomed phlegm and drowsy tranquillity. He looked in vain for the sage Nicholas Vedder, with his broad face, double chin, and fair long pipe, uttering clouds of tobacco smoke instead of idle speech- es; or Van Brummel, the schoolmaster, doling forth the contents of an ancient newspaper. In place of these, a lean, bilious-looking fel- 96 low, with his pockets full of handbills, was haranguing vehemently about rights of citi- zens — elections — members of congress — lib- erty — Bunker's Hill — heroes of seventy-six — and other words, which were a perfect Baby- lonish jargon to the bewildered Van Winkle. The appearance of Rip, with his long griz- zled beard, his rusty fowling-piece, his uncouth dress, and an army of women and children at his heels, soon attracted the attention of the tavern politicians. They crowded round him eying him from head to foot with great curi- osity. The orator bustled up to him, and drawing him partly aside, inquired "on which side he voted?" Rip stared in vacant stu- pidity. Another short but busy little fellow pulled him by the arm, and, rising on tiptoe, inquired in his ear, "Whether he was Federal or Democrat ?" Rip was equally at a loss to comprehend the question; when a knowing, self-important old gentleman, in sharp cocked hat, made his way through the crowd, putting them to the right and left with his elbows as he passed and planting himself before Van Winkle, with one arm a-kimbo, the other rest- ing on his cane, his keen eyes and sharp hat penetrating, as it were, into his very soul, demanded in an austere tone, "what brought him to the election with a gun on his shoulder 97 and a mob at his heels, and whether he meant to breed a riot in the village?" — "Alas! gen- tlemen," cried Rip, somewhat dismayed, "I am a poor quiet man, a native of the place, and a loyal subject of the king, God bless him!" Here a general shout burst from the by- standers — "A tory! a tory! a spy! a refugee! hustle him! away with him!" It was with great difficulty that the self-important man in the cocked hat restored order; and, having as- sumed a tenfold austerity of brow, demanded again of the unknown culprit, what he came there for, and whom he was seeking? The poor man humbly assured him that he meant no harm, but merely came there in search of some of his neighbors, who used to keep about the tavern. "Well — who are they? — name them." Rip bethought himself a moment, and in- quired, "Where's Nicholas Vedder?" There was a silence for a little while, when an old man replied, in a thin piping voice, "Nicholas Vedder! why, he is dead and gone these eighteen years! There was a wooden tombstone in the churchyard that used to tell all about him, but that's rotten and gone too." "Where's Brom Dutcher?" "Oh, he went off to the army in the begin- ning of the war; some say he was killed at the storming of Stony Point — others say he was drowned in a squall at the foot of Antony's Nose. I don't know — he never came back again." "Where's Van Bummel, the schoolmaster?" "He went off to the war too, was a great militia general, and is now in congress." Rip's heart died away at hearing of these sad changes in his home and friends, and find- ing himself thus alone in the world. Every answer puzzled him too, by treating of such enormous lapses of time, and of matters which he could not understand war — congress — Stony Point; — he had no courage to ask after any more friends, but cried out in despair, "Does nobody here know Rip Van Winkle?" "Oh, Rip Van Winkle!" exclaimed two or three, "Oh, to be sure! that's Rip Van Winkle yonder, leaning against the tree." Rip looked, and beheld a precise counter- part of himself, as he we.it up the mountain apparently as lazy, and certainly as ragged. The poor fellow was now completely con- founded. He doubted his own identity, and whether he was himself or another man. In the midst of his bewilderment, the man in the cocked hat demanded who he was, arid what was his name? "God knows," exclaimed he, at his wits' 99 end; "I'm not myself — I'm somebody else — that's me yonder — no — that's somebody else got into my shoes — I was myself last night, but I fell asleep on the mountain, and they've changed my gun, and everything's changed, and I can't tell what's my name, or who I am!" The bystanders began now to look at each other, nod, wink significantly, and tap their fingers against their foreheads. There was a whisper, also, about securing the gun, and keeping the old fellow from doing mischief, at the very suggestion of which the self-impor- tant man in the cocked hat retired with some precipitation. At this critical moment a fresh comely woman pressed through the throng to get a peek at the gray-bearded man. She had a chubby child in her arms, which, frightened at his looks, began to cry. "Hush, Rip," cried she, "hush, you little fool; the old man won't hurt you." The name of the child, the air of the mother, the tone of her voice, all awakened a train of recollections in his mind. " What is your name, my good woman ?' asked he. "Judith Gardenier." "And your father's name?" "Ah, poor man, Rip Van Winkle was his name, but it's twenty years since he went away from home with his gun, and never has 100 been heard of since — his dog came home with- out him; but whether he shot himself, or was carried away by the Indians, nobody can tell. I was then but a little girl." Rip had but one question more to ask; but he put it with a faltering voice: "Where's your mother?" "Oh, she too had died but a short time since; she broke a blood-vessel in a fit of passion at a New England peddler." There was a drop of comfort, at least, in this intelligence. The honest man could contain himself no longer. He caught his daughter and her child in his arms. "I am your father!" cried he — " Young Rip Van Winkle once — old Rip Van Winkle now! — Does nobody know poor Rip Van Winkle?" All stood amazed, until an old woman, totter- ing out from among the crowd, put her hand to her brow, and peering under it in his face for a moment, exclaimed, "Sure enough! it is Rip Van Winkle — it is himself! Welcome home again, old neighbor — Why, where have you been these twenty long years?" Rip's story was soon told, for the whole twenty years had been to him but as one night. The neighbors stared when they heard it; some were seen to wink at each other, and put their tongues in their cheeks: and the 101 self-important man in the cocked hat, who, when the alarm was over, had returned to the field, screwed down the corners of his mouth, and shook his head — upon which there was a gen- eral shaking of the head throughout the assem- blage. It was determined, however, to take the opinion of old Peter Vanderdonk, who was seen slowly advancing up the road. He was a descendant of the historian of that name, who wrote one of the earliest accounts of the province. Peter was the most ancient in- habitant of the village, and well versed in all the wonderful events and traditions of the neighborhood. He recollected Rip at once, and corroborated his story in the most satis- factory manner. He assured the company that it was a fact, handed down from his an- cestor the historian, that the Kaatskill moun- tains had always been haunted by strange be- ings. That it was affirmed that the great Hendrick Hudson, the first discoverer of the river and country, kept a kind of vigil there every twenty years, with his crew of the Half- moon; being permitted in this way to revisit the scenes of his enterprise, and keep a guard- ian eye upon the river, and the great city called by his name. That his father had once seen them in their old Dutch dresses 102 playing at nine-pins in a hollow of the moun- tains; and that he himself had heard, one sum- mer afternoon, the sound of their balls, like distant peals of thunder. To make a long story short, the company broke up, and returned to the more important concerns of the election. Rip's daughter took him home to live with her; she had a snug, well-furnished house, and a stout cheery farmer for a husband, whom Rip recollected for one of the urchins that used to climb upon his back. As to Rip's son and heir, who was the ditto of himself, seen leaning against the tree, he was employed to work on the farm; but evinced an hereditary disposition to attend to any thing else but his business. Rip now resumed his old walks and habits; he soon found many of his former cronies, though all rather the worse for wear and tear of time; and preferred making friends among the rising generation, with whom he soon grew into great favor. Having nothing to do at home, and being arrived at that happy age when a man can be idle with impunity, he took his place once more on the bench at the inn door, and was reverenced as one of the patriarchs of the vil- lage, and a chronicle of the old times * 'before the war." It was some time before he could 103 get into the regular track of gossip or could be made to comprehend the strange events that had taken place during his torpor. How that there had been a revolutionary war — that the coun- try had thrown off the yoke of old England — and that, instead of being a subject of his Majesty George the Third, he was now a free citizen of the United States. Rip, in fact, was no politician ; the changes of states and empires made but little impression on him; but there was one species of despotism under which he had long groaned, and that was — petticoat government. Happily that was at an end; he had got his neck out of the yoke of matrimony, and could go in and out when- ever he pleased, without dreading the tyranny of Dame Van Winkle. Whenever her name was mentioned, however, he shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, and cast up his eyes; which might pass either for an expression of resignation to his fate, or joy at his deliverance. He used to tell his story to every stranger that arrived at Mr. Doolittle's hotel. He was observed, at first, to vary on some points every time he told it, which was, doubtless, owing to his having so recently awaked. It at last settled down precisely to the tale I have re- lated, and not a man, woman, or child in the neighborhood, but knew it by heart. Some 104 always pretended to doubt the reality of it, and insisted that Rip had been out of his head, and that this was one point on which he al- ways remained flighty. The old Dutch in- habitants, however, almost universally gave it full credit. Even to this day they never hear a thunderstorm of a summer afternoon about the Kaatskill, but they say Hendrick Hudson and his crew are at their game of nine-pins in the neighborhood, when life hangs heavy on their hands, that they might have a quieting draught out of Rip Van Winkle's flagon. The story of Rip Van Winkle may seem in- credible to many, but nevertheless I give it my full belief, for I know the vicinity of our old Dutch settlements to have been very sub- ject to marvelous events and appearances. Indeed, I have heard many stranger stories than this, in the villages along the Hudson; all of which were too well authenticated to admit of a doubt. I have even talked with Rip Van Winkle myself, who, when last I saw him, was a venerable old man, and so per- fectly rational and consistent on every other point, that I think no conscientious person could refuse to take this into the bargain; nay, I have seen a certificate on the subject taken before a country justice and signed 105 with a cross, in the justice's own handwriting. The story, therefore, is beyond the possibility of doubt. The Kaatsberg, or Catskill mountains, have always been a region full of fable. The In- dians considered them the abode of spirits, who influenced the weather, spreading sun- shine or clouds over the landscape, and send- ing good or bad hunting seasons. They were ruled by an old squaw spirit, said to be their mother. She dwelt on the highest peak of the Catskill, and had charge of the doors of day and night to open and shut them at the proper hour. She hung up the new moons in the skies, and cut up the old ones into stars. In times of drought, if properly propitiated, she would spin light summer clouds out of cobwebs and morning dew, and send them off from the crest of the mountain, flake after flake, like flakes of carded cotton, to float in the air; until, dissolved by the heat of the sun, they would fall in gentle showers, caus- ing the grass to spring, the fruits to ripen, and the corn to grow an inch an hour. If dis- pleased, however, she would brew up clouds black as ink, sitting in the midst of them like a bottle-bellied spider in the midst of its web; and when these clouds broke, woe betide the valleys! 106 In old times, say the Indian traditions, there was a kind of Manitou or Spirit, who kept about the wildest 'recesses of the Cats- kill mountains, and took a mischievous pleas- ure in wreaking all kinds of evils and vexa- tions upon the red men. Sometimes he would assume the form of a bear, a panther, or a deer, lead the bewildered hunter a weary chase through tangled forests and among ragged rocks; and then spring off with a loud ho! ho! leaving him aghast on the brink of a beetling precipice or raging torrent. The favorite abode of this Manitou is still shown. It is a great rock or cliff on the lone- liest part of the mountains, and from the flow- ering vines which clamber about it, and the wild flowers which abound in its neighborhood is known by the name of the Garden Rock. Near the foot of it is a small lake, the haunt of the solitary bittern, with water-snakes basking in the sun on the leaves of the pond- lilies which lie on the surface. This place was held in great awe by the Indians, insomuch that the boldest hunter would not pursue his game within its precincts. Once upon a time, however, a hunter who had lost his way, pen- etrated to the garden rock, where he beheld a number of gourds placed in the crotches of trees. One of these he seized and made off with 107 it; but in the hurry of his retreat he let it fall among the rocks, when a great stream gushed forth, which washed him away and swept him down precipices, where he was dashed to pieces, and the stream made its way to the Hudson, and continues to flow to the present day; being the identical stream known by the name of the Kaaters-kill. 108 Sunnyside The Home of Many Memories As our "Washington Irving" sails the bright waters of Tappan Zee he speaks familiarly of his dear Sunnyside as "The Roost" — the "Wolfert Roost" of old Baltus Van Tassel and his fair daughter Katrina. Where Icha- bod Crane lingered that eventful night after all the guests were gone which preceded his dramatic ride with the "Headless Horseman" referred to more fully in his "Legend of Sleepy Hollow." Irving aptly described Sunnyside as "made up of gable-ends, and full of angles and cor- ners as an old cocked hat. It is said, in fact, to have been modeled after the hat of Peter the Headstrong, as the Escurial of Spain was fashioned after the gridiron of the blessed St. Lawrence." Wolfert's Roost (Roost sig- nifying Rest) took its name from Wolfert 109 Acker, a former owner. It consisted original- ly of ten acres when purchased by Irving in 1855, but several acres were afterwards added. With great humor Irving put above the porch entrance "George Harvey, Boum'r," Bou- meister being an old Dutch word for architect. A storm- worn weathercock, "which once bat- tled with the wind on the top of the Stadt House of New Amsterdam in the time of Peter Stuyvesant, erects his crest on the gable, and a gilded horse in full gallop, once the weather- cock of the great Van der Heyden palace of Albany, glitters in the sunshine, veering with every breeze, on the peaked turret over the portal." About fifty years ago a cutting of Walter Scott's favorite ivy at Melrose Abbey was transported across the Atlantic, and trained over the porch of "Sunnyside," by the hand of Mrs. Renwick, daughter of Rev. Andrew Jeffrey of Lochmaben, known in girlhood as the "Bonnie Jessie" of Annandale, or the "Blue-eyed Lassie" of Robert Burns: — a grace- ful tribute, from the shrine of Waverly to the nest of Knickerbocker: A token of friendship immortal With Washington Irving returns! — Scott's ivy entwined o'er its portal By the Blue-eyed Lassie of Burns. 110 Scott's cordial greeting at Abbotsford, and his persistence in getting Murray to reconsid- er the publication of the "Sketch Book," which he had previously declined, were never forgotten by Irving. It was during a critical period of his literary career, and the kindness of the Great Magician, in directing early at- tention to his genius, is still cherished by every reader of the " Sketch Book" from Man- hattan to San Francisco. The hearty grasp of the minstrel at the gateway of Abbotsford was in reality a warm handshake to a wider brotherhood beyond the sea. While he was building "Sunnyside" a letter came from Daniel Webster, then Sec- retary of State, appointing him minister to Spain. It was unexpected and unsolicited, and Webster remarked that day to a friend: "Washington Irving today will be the most surprised man in America." Irving had al- ready shown diplomatic ability in London in promoting the settlement of the "Northwest- ern Boundary," and his appointment was re- ceived with universal favor. Then as now Sunnyside was already a Mecca for travel- ers and, among many well known to fame, was a young man, afterwards Napoleon the Third. Referring to his visit, Irving wrote in 1853: "Napoleon and Eugenie, Emperor and 111 Empress! The one I have had as a guest at my cottage, the other I have held as a pet child upon my knee in Granada. The last I saw of Eugenie Monti jo, she was one of the reign- ing belles of Madrid; now, she is upon the throne, launched from a returnless shore, upon a dangerous sea, infamous for its tremendous shipwrecks. Am I to live to see the catas- trophe of her career, and the end of this sud- denly conjured up empire, which seems to be of such stuff as dreams are made of! I con- fess my personal acquaintance with the in- dividuals in this historical romance gives me uncommon interest in it but I consider it stamped with danger and instability, and as liable to extravagant vicissitudes as one of Dumas' novels." A wonderful prophecy completely fulfilled in the short space of sev- enteen years. Tappan Zee, at this point, is a little more than two miles wide and over the beautiful expanse Irving has thrown a wondrous charm. There is, in fact, "magic in the web" of all his works. A few modern critics, lacking appre- ciation alike for humor and genius, may re- gard his essays as a thing of the past, but as long as the Mahicanituk, the ever-flowing Hudson, pours its waters to the sea, as long as Rip Van Winkle sleeps in the blue Catskills 112 or the "Headless Horseman" rides at midnight along the Old Post Road en route for Teller's Point, so long will the writings of Washington Irving be remembered and cherished. We somehow feel the reality of every legend he has given us. The spring bubbling up near his cottage was brought over, as he gravely tells us, in a churn from Holland by one of the old time settlers, and we are half inclined to believe it ; and no one ever thinks of doubting that the "Flying Dutchman," Mynheer Van Dam, has been rowing for two hundred years and never made a port. It is in fact still said by the old inhabitants, that often in the soft twilight of summer evenings, when the sea is like glass and the opposite hills throw their shadows across it, that the low vigorous pull of oars is heard but no boat is seen. 113 The Dreamland of the Pocantico and Sleepy Hollow The old time Dreamland of Washington Irving has been consecrated since 1859 as his resting place where worshippers come with reverend footsteps to read on the plain slab this simple inscription: "Washington Irving, born April 3, 1783. Died November 28, 1859," and recall Longfellow's beautiful lines : "Here lies the gentle humorist, who died In the bright Indian Summer of his fame, A simple stone, with but a date and name, Marks his secluded resting-place beside The river that he loved and glorified. Here in the autumn of his days he came, But the dry leaves of life were all aflame With tints that brightened and were multiplied. How sweet a life was his, how sweet a death; Living to wing with mirth the weary hours, Or with romantic tales the heart to cheer; Dying to leave a memory like the breath Of Summers full of sunshine and of showers, A grief and gladness in the atmosphere." 114 Sleepy Hollow Church, like Sunnyside, is hidden away from the steamer tourist by summer foliage. Just before reaching King- ston Point lighthouse, a view, looking north- east up the little bay to the right, will sometimes give the outline of the building. Beyond this a tall granite shaft, erected by the Delevan family, is generally quite distinctly seen, and this is near the grave of Irving. A light- house, built in 1883, marks the point where the Pocantico or Sleepy Hollow Creek joins the Hudson: Pocantico 's hushed waters glide Through Sleepy Hollow's haunted ground, And whisper to the listening tide The name carved o'er one lowly mound. 115 Washington Irving at Home and Abroad His writings, journeys, associations and his life, by Wallace Bruce The memory of Washington Irving rests like a ray of sunshine upon the pages of our early history. Born in 1783, at the close of the great struggle for Independence, his life of seventy-six years marks a period of growth and material progress, the pages of which we have just been turning, and it is peculiarly fitting to consider at this time in the morning of our Twentieth Century the life and ser- vices of our sweetest writer — the best rep- resentative of our early culture. It is my purpose to consider his writings, his associations, and his life, and I take up his works in the order in which they were written, as in this way we trace the natural develop- ment of the writer and the man. 117 "Knickerbocker," his earliest work, writ- ten at the age of twenty-six, bears the same relation to his later works as "Pickwick," the first heir of Dickens' invention, to his novels that follow. And there is another point of similarity in the fact that "Knickerbocker" and "Pickwick" both outgrew the original design of the authors : neither Irving nor Dick- ens, when he took pen in hand, had any idea of the character of the work he was to produce. The philosophic and benevolent Pickwick was barely rescued from being the head of a Nimrod Hunting Club, with a character cut to fit a series of drawings that had been pur- chased from the wife of a needy artist by a second-class publishing house in London; and the idea of "Knickerbocker" at first was sim- ply to parody a small hand-book which had recently appeared, entitled "A Picture of New York." Following this plan, a humor- ous description of the early governors of New Amsterdam was intended merely as a preface to the customs and institutions of the city but like Buckle's "History of Civilization," the preface became the body of the book, and all idea of a parody was early and happily abandoned. The rise and fall of the Dutch domination presented a subject of poetic unity. In the character of the pseudo- 118 historian we have the representative of a race whose customs were fast passing away, and the serio-comic nature of the work is intensi- fied, and as it were italicized, at the very out- set by notices in the New York Evening Post and other journals calling attention to the mysterious disappearance of Diedrich Knick- erbocker. Never was any volume more happily in- troduced. Before we turn a single page of the book we have an idea of the veritable writer. We see him the representative of a noble Dutch family — first cousin of the renowned Con- gressman of Schaghticoke. We become in- terested in the mystery that surrounds him; in fact, the great charm of the book is in the semi-reality, or assumed personality, of Deid- rich Knickerbocker. The portrait of Don Quixote, so familiar to every one, starting out from La Mancha to redress the wrongs of the world, is not more clearly drawn and has no more reality in our minds than the historian of New Amsterdam, with his silver shoe- buckles and cocked hat, trudging along the old post-road from village to village. But there is this difference in the mind of the read- er: in the great satire of Cervantes there is an element of sadness. We see a crazed old gentleman going out in quest of adventures 119 exciting our pity, almost excusing the para- dox of Lord Byron, "The saddest of all tales, and more sad because it makes us laugh;" but here there is only a mild sort of insanity about the old gentleman with his books and papers, wandering off on long excursions that touches our humor without exciting our sym- pathy. We see as it were only a touch of the same malady which belongs to all writers "seeking after immortality;" and, by the way, the books of humor we have here associated — "Pickwick," "Don Quixote," and "Knicker- bocker" — belong to the same family, can be profitably studied together, and ought to stand upon the same shelf in our libraries. The philosopher Hume said "a turn for humor was worth to him ten thousand a year," and perhaps if this remark had been fully ex- plained to the early members of the New York Historical Society — to whom, by the way, the volume was first dedicated — the fol- lowing paragraph might have been omitted from our Colonial History: "It is the misfor- tune of this State," the writer says, speaking of New York, "that its early founders have been held up to the ridicule of the world by one of its most gifted sons, who has exhausted the resources of his wit and satire in exposing imaginary traits in their characters, while the 120 most polished efforts of his graver style have been reserved to adorn the Corinthian columns of the more aristocratic institutions of foreign countries. Founders of ancient dynasties have sometimes been deified by their successors. New York is perhaps the only commonwealth whose founders have been covered with ridi- cule from the same quarter." Some of the old Holland families are also reported to have taken the work in high dudgeon as a rash in- vasion of the domain of history; and I believe one of the gentle sex in Albany, who perhaps had no brother or lover to fight a duel, pro- posed herself with her own hands to horse- whip the offensive writer for his bold attempt, forsooth, at spelling and printing for the first time some of the old family names. From today's standpoint these things seem ludicrous and uncalled for in reference to a work abounding in kindly humor, everywhere accepted as the finest blending of the classic and the comic in our literature; and were it not that these early enemies soon became his warmest friends, I would certainly pass it over in silence; but the transition was so sudden and sincere that it is one of the pleasantest features in his history, and Irving himself when preparing his revised edition, refers to the matter with evident satisfaction in a pref- 121 atory article facetiously styled "The Author's Apology. " "When I find, after a lapse of forty years, this haphazard production of my youth still cherished among the descendants of the Dutch worthies; when I find its very name become a household word, and used to give the home-stamp to everything recom- mended for popular acceptance, such as Knickerbocker societies, Knickerbocker in- surance companies, Knickerbocker steam- boats, Knickerbocker omnibuses, Knicker- bocker's bread, and Knickerbocker ice; and when I find New Yorkers of Dutch descent priding themselves upon being genuine Knick- erbockers — I please myself with the persuasion that I have struck the right chord; that my dealings with the good old Dutch times, and the customs and usages derived from them, are in harmony with the feelings and humors of my townsmen; that I have opened a vein of pleasant associations and quaint character- istics peculiar to my native place, and which its inhabitants will not willingly suffer to pass away; and that, though other histories of New York may appear of higher claim to learned acceptance, and may take their appropriate and dignified rank in the family library, Knick- erbocker's history will still be received with good-humored intelligence, and be thumbed 122 and chuckled over by the family fireside " It was indeed wide from the sober aim of history, but no volume ever gave such rose- tint colors to the early annals of any country, and New York, instead of being covered with ridicule, is today the only State of this Union whose early history is associated with the gold- en age of poetry, with "an antiquity extend- ing back into the regions of doubt and fable," and it is safe to say that the streams of Scot- land are no more indebted to the genius of Robert Burns and Walter Scott than the Hudson and the Catskills to the pen of Washington Irving. So much for the introduction, the first re- ception, and the success of "Knickerbocker;" but I cannot refrain, in passng, from giving a few illustrations from this most picturesque of histories. Perhaps the sketch of the first governor of New Amsterdam is one of the happiest in its outline and general filling: "The renowned Wouter Van Twiller was descended from a long line of Dutch burgo- masters, who had comported themselves with such singular wisdom and propriety that they were never either heard or talked of, which, next to being universally applauded, should be the ambition of all magistrates. He was a man shut up within himself, like an oyster; but then it was allowed he seldom said a foolish 123 thing. So invincible was his gravity that he was never known either to laugh or to smile through the whole course of a long and pros- perous life. Nay, if a joke were uttered in his presence that set light-minded hearers in a roar, it was observed to throw him into a state of perplexity. He was exactly five feet six inches in height, and six feet five inches circumference. His face, that infallible index of the mind, presented a vast expanse unf urrow- ed by any of those lines or angles which dis- figure the human countenance with what is termed expression, He daily took his four stated meals, appropriating exactly an hour to each. He smoked and doubted eight hours, and slept the remaining twelve of the four-and-twenty. Such was the renowned Wouter Van Twiller governor of the golden age of the province." ' 'Honest days," as the historian proceeds, "when every woman wore pockets, aye, and that, too, of a goodly size, fashioned with patchwork into many curious devices and ostentatiously worn on the outside. These, in fact, were conven- ient receptacles where all good housewives carefully stored away such things as they wished to have at hand, by which means they often came to be incredibly crammed; and I remember there was a story current when I 124 was a boy that the lady of Wouter Van Twil- ler once had occasion to empty her right pock- et in search of a wooden ladle, when the con- tents filled a couple of corn baskets, and the utensil was discovered lying among some rub- bish in one corner, but we must not give too much faith to all these stories, the anecdotes of remote periods being very subject to ex- aggeration." I pass over the tea parties and parlor gath- erings, the dress and manners, his chapters of philosophy and those "happy days of prime- val simplicity when there were neither public commotions nor private quarrels, neither par- ties nor sects nor schisms, neither persecu- tions nor trials nor punishments; when every man attended to what little business he was lucky enough to have, or neglected it, if he pleased, without asking the opinion of his neighbor; when nobody meddled with con- cerns above his comprehension, nor neglected to correct his own conduct in his zeal to pull to pieces the characters of others." I pass over the days of William the Testy, who first in- troduced the art of fighting by proclamation the inroads of the Yankees with their witch- craft — their inventions, their schoolmasters, and wandering propensities — who "required only an inch to gain an ell, or a halter to gain 125 a horse; who from the time they first gained a foothold on Plymouth Rock began to mi- grate, progressing and progressing from place to place, making a little here and a little there, and controverting the old proverb that a roll- ing stone gathers no moss. Hence they have facetiously received the nickname of the Pil- grims, — that is to say, a people who are al- ways seeking a better country than their own." We see Antony Van Corlear, the celebrated trumpeter, on his diplomatic mission up the Hudson — a chapter too dramatic for these degenerate days. We see the noble army of Peter Stuyvesant passing in review before us, and come with sorrow to the brief line in which the chivalric hero is gathered to his fathers — "Well, den, hardkoppig Peter ben gone at last." In his first volume we would naturally look for his peculiar characteristics as a writer, and we find a rich vein of humor and invention; but here and there are gentle touches and the promise of other qualities to which Walter Scott refers in a letter to Henry Brevoort: "I have never read anything so closely re- sembling the style of Dean Swift as the 'An- nals of Diedrich Knickerbocker.' I have been employed these few evenings in reading them aloud to Mrs. Scott and two ladies who are our guests, and our sides have been absolutely 126 sore with laughing. I think, too, there are passages which indicate that the author pos- sesses powers of a different kind, and has some touches which remind me much of Sterne. I beg you will have the kindness to let me know when Mr. Irving takes pen in hand again; for assuredly I shall expect a very great treat, which I may chance never to hear of but through your kindness." The prophecy of Scott waited ten years for its fulfilment, but it came at last in the most charming collection of essays in our language — the "Sketch Book" — which I divide into es- says of character and sentiment, English pic- tures and American legends. As representa- tives of the first I take "The Broken Heart," "The Wife," "The Widow and Her Son." "The Broken Heart," perhaps the greatest favorite of his character sketches and the best transcript of his own early experience, seems to me a gem in our literature. In the short space of six pages he portrays the finer quali- ties of woman's nature, and illustrates it with the touching story of Curran's daughter, whose heart was buried in the coffin of Robert Emmet. This essay was suggested by a friend who had seen the heroine at a masquerade and heard the plaintive song which melted every one to tears : 127 "She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps. She sings the wild songs of her dear native plains, Every note which he loved awaking. Ah! little they think who delight in her strains How the heart of the minstrel is breaking." In the whole range of English literature I know of no pen except Irving's which could have written an essay like this in plain and simple prose. We find the same tender senti- ment in "Highland Mary" and "Annabel Lee;" but poetry is the natural language of passion and sorrow. Irving had often been likened to Addison, but in this particular they have noth- ing in common. Edward Everett has well said: "One chord in the human heart, the pathetic, for whose sweet music Addison had no ear, Irving touched with the hand of a mas- ter. He learned that skill in the school of early disappointment." And in the following passage we seem to hear its sad but sweet vibra- tion still responding through ten years of sor- row to the memory of her whose hopes were entwined with his: "There are some strokes of calamity which scathe and scorch the soul, which penetrate to the vital seat of happiness and blast it, never again to put forth bud and blossom; and let those tell her agony who have had the portals of the tomb suddenly closed 128 between them and the being they most loved on earth; who have sat at its threshold as one shut out in a cold and lonely world whence all that was most lovely and loving had departed." It is said when Lord Byron was dying at Mis- silonghi that he requested his attendant to read to him "The Broken Heart." While he was reading one of the most touching portions the poet's eyes moistened and he said, "Irving nev- er wrote that story without weeping, nor can I hear it without tears;" and he added, "I have not wept much in this world, for trouble never brings tears to my eyes, but I always have tears for 'The Broken Heart.' " Soon after its publication in England, Irving met Mrs. Siddons. After his introduction the queen of tragedy looked at him for a moment and then, in her clear, deep-toned voice, she slowly enunciated, "You have made me weep." As Pierre Irving remarks in his "Life and Let- ters," "Nothing could have been finer than such a compliment from such a source, but the * ac- cost' was so abrupt and the manner so peculiar that our modest writer was completely discon- certed." Some time afterward, after the ap- pearance of his "Bracebridge Hall," they again met, and singularly enough she addressed him in the self-same fashion — "You've made me weep again." "Ah!" replied Irving, "but you 129 taught me first to weep," as he called up his first visit to London, fifteen years before the " Sketch-Book" was written and the then won- derful power of this actress without a rival. Kindred to this essay which we have just con- sidered, and well suited as a companion-sketch, I select "The Wife," a true picture of woman's power in adversity. As the story goes, his friend Leslie had married a beautiful and ac- complished girl, and, having an ample fortune it was his ambition that her life should be a fairy-tale; but one day, having embarked in speculation, his riches took to themselves wings and he found himself reduced almost to penury. For a time he keeps his situation to himself, but every look reveals his sorrow. When at last he tells his story and we see her rising from a state of childish dependence, becoming the support and comfort of her husband in his mis- fortune, and follow them from a mansion to a cottage, we feel that the last state of that man is better than the first. In the knowledge and possession of such a heart he had truer riches than diamonds can symbolize, and to the credit of our better nature the words of Irving are true: "There is in every true woman's heart a spark of heavenly fire which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity, but which kindles up and beams and blazes in the dark hour of 130 adversity. No man knows what the wife of his bosom is; no man knows what a ministering angei she is, until he has gone with her through the fiery trials of this world." What a beauti- ful simile is this: "As the vine which has long twined its graceful foliage about the oak, and been lifted by it into sunshine, will, when the hardy plant is rifted by the thunderbolt, cling round it with its caressing tendrils and bind up its shattered boughs, so is it beautifully ordered by Providence that woman, who is the mere de- pendent and ornament of man in his happier hours, should be his stay and solace when smit- ten by sudden calamity, winding herself into the rugged recesses of his nature, tenderly sup- porting the drooping head and binding up the broken heart." Outside of the drama of Shakespeare and the pages of Walter Scott, I know of no pictures of graceful womanhood so complete as those found in Irving's Sketch Book. It is said that the original of which this character is a copy, was the wife of the poet Morris; and perhaps the following incident gave rise to the suggestion which shows how little truth popular rumor needs for a sustaining diet. While minister at Spain he received a letter from his brother say- ing that General Morris requested permission to publish his story of "The Wife" in a periodi- 131 cal of which he was proprietor, and Irving facetiously responded, "Give my regards to General Morris, and tell him he is quite wel- come to my wife, — which is more than most of his friends could say." (Perhaps Rip Van Winkle would have been willing to have thrown in his.) The other sketch to which we call attention in our division of character and sentiment — "The Widow and her Son" — is one of the most pathetic in the "Sketch Book," and follows naturally the two we have just considered. It seems to round out and complete Irving's idea of womanhood as seen in a maiden's life, a wife's devotion, and a mother's love. What depths of feeling in passages like this: "Oh! there is an enduring tenderness in the love of a mother to her son that transcends all other af- fections of the heart. It is neither to be chilled by selfishness, nor daunted by danger, nor weakened by worthlessness, nor stifled by in- gratitude. She will sacrifice every comfort to his convenience; she will surrender every pleas- ure to his enjoyment; she will glory in his fame and exult in his prosperity; and, if misfortune overtake him, he will be the dearer to her from misfortune; and, if disgrace settle upon his name, she will still love and cherish him in spite of his disgrace; and, if all the world 132 beside cast him off, she will be all the world to him." There are few passages in prose or poetry more touching than the description of the mother's effort to put on something like mourn- ing for her only son — a black ribbon or so, a faded black handkerchief — showing the strug- gle between pious affection and utter poverty. All through these essays we seem to see a gentle spirit clouded by some great sorrow, yet cheerful in spite of misfortune. What a change has come over him since "Knickerbocker"! Lord Bacon says, "It is more pleasing to have a lively work upon a sad and solemn ground than to have a dark and melancholy work upon a lightsome ground." This may be true in pic- tures, but not in character; for the principal element in that happy compound — a genuine man or woman — is cheerfulness, and disposi- tion naturally gloomy and foreboding is rarely ever so thoroughly irradiated, even by the light of heaven, that we are not chilled by con- tact. Misanthropy never improves by years: it is a heart-thermometer ever below freezing- point even in the sunlight of prosperity. But there are natures so bright and lightsome that no clouds of misfortune can hide their cheering radiance; mellowed by sorrow, and tempered by adversity, they shine forth in gentle gleams, 133 full of genial and tender expression; and I think this distinction is one your own reading will justify: that we find in these essays a bright spirit sobered by sorrow, but look in vain for a line of misanthropy. There is another element in Irving's composi- tion no less marked than his humor and pathos — a reverence for antiquity which forms a marked feature in the essays that we designate as English pictures. In his "Rural Life" and "Christmas Sketches" we see his love for the old English writers, and recognize the fact that Chaucer and Spenser were among his favorite authors. These early poets were to him something more than "wells of English undefiled." They are rather like the lakes of the Adirondacks, separated from each other and from us by events which loom up like mountains in the world's history, clear and cool in far-off solitudes, reflecting in their bright mirrors the serenity of earth and the broad expanse of heaven, responding to the gentle glow of summer sunsets, holding quiet communion with the evening stars, and awak- ing to rosy life at the first touch of morning. The old English ballads have all the sparkles the energy, and rhythm of our mountain streams, but Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Bunyon are the fountains from which flows 134 the river — ay, the Hudson — of our language. Irving's mind was early turned to these sources of our literature, and we find the result of this study a pure and classic style. What a beautiful acknowledgment is this: "The pas- toral writers of other countries appear as if they had paid nature an occasional visit and become acquainted with her general charms, but the British poets have lived and revelled with her; they have wooed her in her most secret haunts; they have watched her minut- est caprices; a spray could not tremble in the breeze, a leaf could not rustle to the ground, a diamond drop could not patter in the stream, a fragance could not exhale from the humble vio- let, nor a daisy unfold its crimson tints to the morning, but it has been noticed by these im- passioned and delicate observers and wrought up into some beautiful morality." With this deep love for the old masters of English literature, we are not surprised that Westminster Abbey, with its Poet's Corner, should be the subject of one of his earliest es- says; and the principal feature of this essay, and that which makes it the enduring one of all that have been written on this venerable pile, is the native quality of reverence and sin- cerity. And it is indeed pleasant in days, when flippant writing is often received for wit 135 and misspelled slang accepted for originality to turn to these essays in which we see the nobil- ity of a royal heart, and feel that "Truth and Good and Beauty — the offspring of God — are not subject to the changes which beset the in- vention of men." I make no quotation from this familiar essay. It possesses too much unity to detach a paragraph or a sentence. I can only say I read it over and over with the name interest today as years ago in the deep shadow of that melancholy aisle at the tomb of the unfortunate Mary Queen of Scots. There is one other place in England where I rook my pocket edition of the "Sketch Book," — to Stratf ord-on-Avon ; for, more than any other man, Irving is associated with the home and burial-place of the world's greatest poet. Writers without number, and many well known to fame, have given their impressions of Strat- ford, but Irving's description supersedes them all. It seems as if the quiet and pensive char- acter of the man fits into the rural scenery of England — ay! as if the hills and woodlands of Warwickshire, recognizing a kindred spirit to their gentle Shakespeare, after the laspe of three centuries, had associated in enduring framework and sweet companionship the liv- ing presence of our gentlest writer. What a wonderful blending of the old and the new! 136 Two hundred and fifty years of progress, of struggle and invention! A new nation rising into being, with its material trinity — the steam-engine, the printing-press, and the tele- graph. The single newspaper of Queen Eliza- beth unfolding in every town and city its crowded columns of daily and hourly records from every quarter of the globe. Ariel and Puck, at last thoroughly materialized, and dressed in comely muslin, whisper to each other across a continent, and beyond the Ber- mudas, to the far-off islands of the sea. It seems, indeed, a new world, separated from the old by greater spaces than waste of waters or the lapse of years; but in this companionship of Shakespeare and Irving we see the enduring qualities of the human heart. In the deep sympathy of Irving's nature for the olden time we feel that he has added another charm to Stratford — that we, as a nation, have a better claim to the great poet. We muse at his grave. We wander along the gently-flowing Avon, we rest beneath the great oaks of Sir Thomas Lucy, We pick flowers in the garden of Ann Hatha- way 's cottage; it seems as if Irving in some way belongs here too, and we are not at all certain if the Bacon theory is established but that Irving will come in for his share of the dramas, as author of the "Midsummer Night's 137 Dream" or the "Merry Wives of Windsor." To pass from the very centre of "Merrie England," with its hallowed associations and rich inheritance of centuries, to the mountains and valleys of our own country, would be a sudden transition if the space were not bridged over and the distance dissipated in one of the closing paragraphs of this essay: "I had been walking all day in a complete delusion. I had surveyed the landscape through the prism of poetry, which had tinged every object with the hues of the rainbow. I had been sur- rounded with fancied beings, with mere airy nothings conjured up by poetic power, yet which to me had all the charm of reality; and I could but reflect on the singular gift of the poet, to be able thus to spread the magic of his mind over the very face of nature, to give to things and places a charm and character not their own, and to turn this working day world into a perfect fairy-land." In this passage we find the best description of Irving's own creative faculty. This wizard influence which the traveller experiences at Stratford is equally felt along the banks of the Hudson. The whole landscape, from the Palisades to the Catskills, is seen today through the prism of poetry — the magic of his mind spread over the loveliest vale of the fairest 138 stream that flows, and this working-day world converted into a perfect fairy-land. It is said that "walls must get the weather- stain before they grow the ivy;" that legends like ghosts flourish best in an uncertain twi- light, or "Where auld ruined castles gray Nod to the moon." We expect to find legends flourishing in the gloaming mountains of old Scotland. We have easy faith for the Knights of the Round Table, the Tales of Robin Hood and the brave outlaws of Sherwood Forest. We see the frozen my- thology of Scandinavia every day melting into poetry, like the fabled words of Plato or the thawed-out music of Baron Munchausen's flute. We read the story of Undine and Hilde- brand, the "Arabian Nights," the prowess of the Cid, and the warm troubadour chivalry of southern Europe; but what have we to do with legends and poetry in the broad sunlight of the nineteenth century? These have no place when facts and history pre-empt the soil. Yes! but this adds to the wonder and charm of Irving's creative power! the romance of Europe was to be had for the gleaning. In America it had to be created; and the wonder is that this which sprang up in a night is more real than the legends which have grown and 139 blossomed for a thousand years . He touched the mountains and the valleys with the wand of his fancy, and they were peopled with beings more substantial than fairies, more real than history. In his "Rip Van Winkle" and "Legend of Sleepy Hollow," which I take as illustrations of his American legends, we at once see that he is one of the few writers who appreciate the fact that comedy is quite as natural as tragedy. At every step in the story we see the impossible ; but after all we feel that it is none the less real. Bryant's poem, "The Kaaterskill Falls," is at once full of unity, possibility, and beauty; but it is a dream compared with the "Legend of Rip Van Winkle." At the time it was written we understand that Irving had never visited the Catskill Mountains; in the legend itself we see traces of a German superstition; but there is this feature in all his stories: wherever he located them they seem at once to take root and flourish. This story is too well known, to need delineation. The old Dutch village, with its philosophers and sages; the shiftless but good-natured Van Winkle ; the strange ad- venture on the mountain; the return — it all passes before our mind like a series of pictures : and we come to the closing scene, which the play- writer would have done well to follow; for there is more dramatic unity in the story 140 than in the drama. "Does nobody here know Rip Van Winkle?" "Oh! Rip Van Winkle," exclaimed two or three. "Oh! to be sure; there's Rip Van Winkle yonder, leaning against a tree." Rip looked, and beheld a precise counterpart of himself as he went up the moun- tain, apparently as lazy and certainly as ragged. The poor fellow was now completely confound- ed. He doubted his own identity, and whether he was himself — or another man. In the midst of his bewilderment it was again de- manded what was his name. "God knows!" exclaimed he, at his wits' end. "I'm not myself. I'm some one else. That's me yon- der — no, that's somebody else got into my shoes. I was myself last night, but I fell asleep on the mountains, and they've changed my gun, and everything's changed, and I'm changed, and I cannot tell what's my name or who I am." At this critical moment a fresh comely woman pressed through the throng to get a peep at the gray-bearded man. She had a chubby child in her arms which, frightened at his looks, began to cry. "Hush, Rip," cried she, "the old man won't hurt you." The name of the child, the air of the mother, the tone of the voice, all awakened a train of recollections in his mind. "What is your name my good woman?" asked he. "Judith Gar- 141 denier." "And your father's name?" "Oh, poor man! Rip Van Winkle was his name. It's twenty years since he went away from home with his gun, and has never been heard of since. His dog came home without him; but whether he shot himself or was carried away by the Indians nobody can tell. I was then but a little girl." Rip had but one ques- tion more to ask, but he put it with a faltering voice. "Where's your mother?" "Oh! she, too, died but a short time since. She broke a blood-vessel in a fit of passion at a New Eng- land pedler." There was a drop of comfort, at least, in this intelligence. The honest man could control himself no longer. He caught his daughter and child in his arms. "I am your father!" cried he. "Young Rip Van Winkle once, old Rip Van Winkle now. Does nobody here know poor Rip Van Winkle?" This touch of humor, even in the most in- tense part of the drama, is entirely consistent and does not disturb in the least its charming reality. The same element is still more marked in the "Legend of Sleepy Hollow." and per- haps even in greater degree illustrates the reality of Irving's legends — their power of taking root and flourishing even in the midst of history. On the old post-road, half way between Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow, a monument 142 marks the spot where Major Andre was cap- tured, erected in 1853 by the county of West- chester to the memory of the brave men who ould not be tempted by British gold. But this marble shaft with its beautiful inscription lack the magnetic influence and the heartfelt interest of the plain headstone in the burial- yard of Sleepy Hollow; for in the universal heart of mankind the poet's corner is dearer than the hero's tomb, although, as here, the hero springs from the common people, and his monument commemorates the highest and the rarest courage — the heroism of honesty! Nay, more; the United States Government, in remembrance of Paulding's courage, gave him a large tract of land in Ohio, and from this revenue one of his sons built one of the finest villas on the Hudson; but the traveller today along our river, even the most loyal American, who spells his country's name with a good- sized capital letter and rightly considers it the first in the alphabet of nations, turns with a deeper reverence and a truer love to a little cottage near at hand, with its quaint turrets and gables looking out on the tranquil waters of Tappan Zee, the quiet home of Diedrich Knickerbocker — the Dutch Herodotus — the writer of the gentle heart. Everything that Irving has written about 143 Tarry town seems to partake of the drowsy, dreamy influence that pervades the very at- mosphere. The "Legend of Sleepy Hollow" seems as native to the soil as the bright, honest- faced flowers of their snug-sheltered gardens. As Darwin or Huxley would say, Irving's stories fit themselves to the environments. They belong to the age and the time which they represent. What a natural picture, one we all have seen, is this of old Baltus Van Tassel dozing his life away in solid comfort, his bustling dame completely occupied with her housekeeping and her poultry, letting her rosy- cheeked daughter Katrina do just as she pleas- ed, adding a sage and sensible observation fully appreciated by each generation, and which may some day be endorsed by colleges and institu- tions of learning, that "ducks and geese are foolish things and must be looked after, but girls can take care of themselves." We are in- troduced to Ichabod Crane, the Yankee school- master of the neighborhood, and Brom Bones, his dangerous rival for the hand and fortune of Katrina. They meet at a quilt ing-party at the house of Mynheer Van Tassel, where we are entertained with ghostly stories of the olden time, including a marvelous adventure of Brom Bones with the well-known goblin-rider, the Headless Hessian of Sleepy Hollow. 144 Ichabod lingers after the company disperses, — the custom, I believe, of old-time lovers; but something must have gone wrong in the interview, for "he sallies forth with an air quite desolate and chopfallen, and now at the very witching time of night he mounts his steed for his homeward journey. Unluckily, his route was the very road over which the headless horseman was wont to ride. The night grew darker and darker. The stars seemed to sink deeper in the sky. He had nevzr felt so lonely and miserable. He passed the fearful tree where Major Andre was captured, but in the dark shadow of the grove, on the margin of the brook, he beheld something huge, misshapen, black, and towering. The hair of the affright- ed pedagogue rose upon his head with terror. To turn and fly was now too late, for with a scramble and a bound the shadowy object put itself into motion and stood at once in the mid- dle of the road. Ichabod bethought himself of the galloping Hessian, and quickened his steed with the hopes of leaving him behind. The stranger, however, quickened his horse to an equal pace. Ichabod pulled up and fell into a walk. The strange horseman did the same. His heart began to sink within him. He en- deavored to sing a psalm-tune, but his parched tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. There 145 was something in the silence of his strange com- panion at once mysterious and appalling. It was soon fearfully accounted for. On mount- ing a rising ground, which brought the figure of his fellow-traveller in relief against the sky, gigantic in height and muffled in a cloak, Icha- bod was horror-struck on perceiving that he was headless, but his horror was still more in- creased on observing that the head, which should have rested on his shoulders, was car- ried before him on the pommel of the saddle." His terror rose to desperation, and, like Caius Cassius in Macaulay's poem of the "Battle of Lake Regillus," he rode "for death and life;" but the spectre started full jump with him. "Away, then, they dashed through thick and thin, stones flying and sparks flashing at every bound. Ichabod's flimsy garments fluttered in the air as he stretched his long, lank body away over his horse's head in the eagerness of his flight. 'If I can but reach the bridge,' thought Ichabod, 'I'm safe.' Just then he heard the black steed panting and blowing close behind him. He even fancied that he felt his hot breath. Another convulsive kick, and his steed sprang upon the bridge. He thundered over the resounding planks. He gained the opposite side. Then he saw the goblin rising in his stirrups, and in the very act of launching 146 his head at him. He endeavored to dodge the horrible missile, but too late. It encountered his cranium with a tremendous crash. He was tumbled headlong into the dust, and the black steed and the goblin-rider passed by like a whirlwind. The next day a saddle was found trampled in the dirt; the tracks of horses deep- ly dented in the road, evidently at furious speed, were traced to the bridge, beyond which, on the bank of a broad part of the brook, where the water ran deep and black, was found the hat of the unfortunate Ichabod, and close be- side it a shattered pumpkin." Throughout the entire race we are reminded of the midnight ride of Tarn o'Shanter when pursued by witches, and his strange adventure at the Bridge of Doon. In fact, the old Dutch church is not a bad representation of old Allo- way Kirk, and there is still greater resemblance in the fact that the reality of the poem and the reality of the story are not in the least affected by the humorous catastrophe. The legends of "Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle" were introduced in the "Sketch Book" as having been found among the papers of the late Diedrich Knickerbocker. In touch- es of humor and gentleness of spirit they are entirely consistent with the old gentleman's character. The wit and humor are always 147 kindly, and these qualities find happy illustra- tion in the fact that Mr. Jesse Merwin, the original of Ichabod Crane, whom Irving met at the house of Judge Van Ness, was always proud of the delineation, and returned the com- pliment in the sincerest way. Think of it! Truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Ichabod Crane survives the pumpkin catastrophe, woos and weds some other Katrina, and names a son after Washington Irving. After Irving's death a letter was found among his papers — written by our Yankee schoolmaster, endorsed in Irv- ing's own handwriting — "From Jesse Merwin the original of Ichabod Crane." I have dwelt at length on the " Sketch Book," for in these essays the writer seems to have un- packed every quality of his style. We find Bracebridge Hall outlined in his "Christmas Sketches," the spirit of the Alhambra in "West- minster Abbey," and Knickerbocker in his "American Legends." It is, moreover, one of the few books that never grow old. It belongs to the people, and is one of the best known of American books. A fine critic and scholar, George Sumner, said that the "Sketch Book" was more widely read in its original tongue than any in our language except the "Vicar of Wakefield," and Long- fellow, in an address before the Massachusetts 148 Historical Society, pays it a beautiful tribute in the following poetic paragraph: "Every reader has his first book, one among all others which first fascinates his imagination and excites and satisfies the desires of his mind To me this was the ' Sketch Book' of Washing- ton Irving. How many delightful works he has given us, written before and since! volumes of history and fiction which illustrate his native land, and some of which illuminate it and make the Hudson as romantic as the Rhine. Yet still the charm of the 'Sketch-Book' remains unbroken, the old fascination still lingers about tt, and whenever I open its pages, I open also ihat mysterious door which leads back into the haunted chambers of youth." "Bracebridge Hall," his next volume, written at the suggestion of Thomas Moore, gives us a fine picture of old-fashioned English life. The book begins where most stories end — with a wedding gathering; but when we are fairly introduced to the Hall and its hospitable pro- prietor, we are in no hurry for the wedding to take place. In the society of Lady Lilly-craft the old General, the tender-hearted Phoebe Wilkins, old Simon and Christy, we are con- tent to float on together for months, if need be, through a social dream of five hundred pages. I know of no gathering where the reader more 149 thoroughly feels that he is an invited guest. The story has none of the characteristics of a novel. It possesses neither plot nor dramatic quality. The essays are strung together like beads on a slender thread, and the value is in the beads and not the string. We may forget the fair Julia and her brave Captain, but the sketch of the "Stout Gentleman" and "St. Mark's Eve" once read are never forgotten. We may forget the day after we read it whether the wedding took place in the morning or in the afternoon, whether the bride had eyes blue or hazel, or like most of lovers, had none at all; but the character of the old Squire, with his dogs, his whims and kindly heart, who "taught his boys to ride, and shoot, and speak the truth," taken an enduring hold on the memory, when we close the volume we feel that Lowell in his "Fable for the Critics" has given us in a dozen lines a genuine crayon sketch: "But allow me to speak what I honestly feel; To a true poet-heart add the fun of Dick Steele; Throw in all of Addison minus the chill, With the whole of that partnership, stock, and good -will Mix well, and while stirring hum o'er as a spell The fine old English gentleman: simmer it well. Sweeten just to your own private liking; then strain, That only the finest and clearest remain. Let it stand out of doors till a soul it receives 150 From the warm lazy sun loitering down through green leaves — And you'll have a choice nature not wholly deserving, A name either English or Yankee — just Irving." Next to "Bracebridge Hall," in order of pub- lication, we have the "Tales of a Traveller," to my mind the most unanchored of Irving's writ- ings, and therefore lacking for the most part the great charm and unity of his other essays, viz., local associations and attachments. But, if any of his friends, on either side of the Atlantic, were disposed to be critical, their cen- sure was of short duration; for his next work the "Life and Voyages of Columbus," was a new departure in the right direction. This event — the greatest in the annals of mankind, the most daring and romantic in the doman of truth, the sublime energy and perseverance of a man struggling with fate — was a happy subject for his pen, and it was so carefully written, so graceful in style, and so accurate in research, that Lord Jeffrey remarks in the Edinburgh Re- view: "It will supersede every other work on the subject and never itself be superseded." Compliments were now literally showered upon him on every hand. The Royal Society of Literature voted the new historian one of their fifty-guinea gold medals, and, with just pride, Irving writes to this brother, "What 151 makes this the more gratifying is that the other medal is voted to Hallam, author of the ' Mid- dle Ages.' " There is an incident connected with this medal worthy of notice. Some years after his return to America, it was stolen from his brother's safe during a fire, but returned the same night by the thief, who slyly opened the door of his brother's residence and threw it into the hall. This medal melted down into a mass of shapeless gold, the work of an hour, would have been worth two hundred and fifty dollars. Even the robber had respect for the guinea- stamp when it bore the inscription of Washing- ton Irving. "The Chronicles of Granada," his next vol- ume, not only opens up, as the writer says, a tract of history which had been overrun with the weeds of fable, but also forms a natural in- troduction or threshold over which we pass from the "History of Columbus" to the "Tales of the Alhambra," aptly styled by Prescott "the beautiful Spanish Sketch Book." His "Crayon Miscellany," published on his return from Europe, contains the "Tour on the Prairies" and the well-known essays, "Abbotts- ford" and "Newstead Abbey." Then follow the Spanish Legends, "Astoria" and the "Ad- ventures of Captain Bonneville." The "Life 152 of Goldsmith" comes next in order — a labor of sympathy and love. The " Life of Mahomet" shows his passion for Oriental history. "Wol- fert Roost," published at the age of seventy- two, is full of the old-time humor of "Sleepy Hollow," and brings us to the crowning labor — the fitting capital of the column — his "Life of Washington." Wonderful as these volumes are, which even in this brief review seem to rise up before us like a new vision of the "Arabian Nights," in our literature they are only part and parcel of the poetry of his own experience. His pic- turesque and varied essays are the natural pro- duct of a varied and wandering life, and to feel the full beauty of his works we must read them in the light of his early and later history. When seventeen years of age he made his first voyage up the Hudson, "in the good old times," as he expresses it, "before steamboats and railroads had driven all poetry and ro- mance out of travel." Three years later we see him in the northern wilderness of New York en route for Ogdensburg and Montreal — a tedious journey in those days of corduroy roads and unbridged rivers. After his return, we find him at Ballston and Saratoga Springs, given up by his friends to die of consumption. The following year we see him in southern Europe, 153 in quest of health at Marseilles, Genoa, and Sicily; at Rome, in company with Washington Allston, half persuaded by the enthusiasm of genius to try his own hand as an artist; at Paris, spending six months with profit and pleasure, judging from his brief journal and correspondence; then, through Belgium and Holland, to London, the great city of modern civilization — yes, for centuries the university of the poet and writer, compared with which New York, with its strange mixture of eighty thousand inhabitants, must have seemed a par- ish school. After two years' absence he returns with health restored, resumes his studies, and in his twenty-fourth year is admitted attorney-at-law. But the following year we find him pursuing the main business of his life — viz., literature and travel. The first number of Salmagundi appears early in January. In March, his let- ters bear date Philadelphia; in May, Freder- icksburgh; in June, Richmond, drawn thither by the magnetism and trial of Aaron Burr. The following season he makes two trips to Montreal, and spends a number of weeks at the residence of Judge Van Ness, now known as Lindenwald, home of the late Martin Van Buren. We next see him at Baltimore and Washington — cities far removed from New 154 York in those primitive times when our travel- ler "spent three days on the road and one night in a log-house." In 1813 we find him editor of the Analectic Magazine in Philadelphia. In 1814, during our second war with Great Britain we see him secretary of Governor Tompkins, with the rank of colonel, bearing despatches through the western wilderness to Sackett's Harbor on Lake Ontario. At the close of the war we see him in his brother's counting-house in Liverpool. The following season he makes a pilgrimage through the Welsh Mountains, the central part of England, and the Highlands of Scotland. The next season we find him harassed with business, until the failure and bankruptcy of the firm swept away his broth- er's fortune and his own; and at the age of thirty-five Irving went up to London to com- mence life anew. It seems as if the success of every man is in part the transcript of the same story that Gen- ius has less need of opportunity than adversity. "That he that creeps from cradle on to grave, Unskilled save in the velvet course of fortune, Hath missed the discipline of noble hearts." In this fifteen years of wandering by land and sea, this general study of human nature in every phase of life, we find a good capital and rich experience for the coming essayist. Add 155 this to a fine classical education and a still finer course of reading from the English authors of the Elizabethan and Augustan periods, under the guidance of his brothers, all of whom had a taste for literature, and we have one side of the equation of Washington Irving's life. The question now is, What is he equal to, what can he do? The study and discipline of every young man find expression in the plain alge- braic symbols x x y — unknown quantities in the unworked problem of life. Mere education may be furnished by teacher, parent, or guar- dian, or it may be acquired by the patience and perseverance of a youth like Elihu Burritt, who learns eighty languages at the forge, but the re- sult rests alone in the will and manhood of the individual; and it was this which supported Irving when he wandered almost penniless through the streets of London, and in the dark- est hour of adversity, when urged by his broth- ers and his old friend, Commodore Decatur, to come home and accept the first clerkship of the navy at a salary of $2400 a year, led him to re- ply, "I am determined not to return until I have sent some writings before me that shall make me return to the smiles rather than skulk back to the pity of my friends." It was this faith in himself which published the first volume of the "Sketch Book" at his 156 own expense when declined by the London publishers, — the reception of which in Britain, France, and Germany silently answered the standing sneer of the English critic, " Who reads an American book?" The following season, happy in his success, we find him in Paris writing" Bracebridge Hall," and launching his brother Peter in a steam- boat enterprise with a rashness worthy of Colo- nel Sellers in the "Gilded Age" of Mark Twain. We next see him at Ley den, Amsterdam, Frankfort, and Heidelburg, visiting the castles and ruins along the Rhine; then to Strasburg and through the Black Forest to the upper waters of the Danube. On his way to Munich and Vienna, he visits the battlefield of Blen- heim; then through Moravia and Bohemia to Dresden, where he remains six months tossed about, as he expresses it, on the stream of so- ciety; then through the Hartz Mountains, to Paris, where he remains one year and writes the "Tales of a Traveller." On his return from London he makes an excursion through Orleans and the centre of France to Madrid, where, in the midst of books and manuscripts, he works fourteen hours a day for ten months on the "History of Columbus." We next see him on his way through La Mancha and the desolate mountains of the 157 Morenas, well known today through the illus- trations of Dore, and rounds out the year in Spain with an Oriental dream of ten weeks in the palace of the Alhambra. Diedrich Knick- erbocker in the romantic land of Cervantes, with a sovereignty as absolute as Sancho Pan- za's firmly established on the throne of Boab- dil! But an appointment from President Jackson breaks the enchantment, and he repairs to London as Secretary of the American Legation. We see him at Oxford University receiving a de- gree of LL.D., almost overwhelmed by the ac- clamations of the students and cries of Ichabod Crane, Rip Van Winkle, Diedrich Knicker- bocker, and Geoffrey Crayon. We find him at Newstead Abbey, occupying Lord Byron's room by way of inspiration, breathing in as it were the very oxygen of poetry among the sur- viving oaks of Sherwood Forest. We see him travelling with Martin Van Buren, on a Christ- mas holiday, through England; and after seventeen years of absence he returns to his native country, the acknowledged pioneer of American literature, and, like him whose name he honored, "first in the hearts of his country- men." At the solicitation of his friends, he receives a public banquet in his native city, presided 158 over by Chancellor Kent, pronounced by Charles King, President of Columbia College, — the most successful dinner ever given in the United States. During the summer he visits the Catskill Mountains, and the White Mountains, a sec- tion abounding with stories that never reach the dignity of a legend. We see him on his "Tour of the Prairies" through Ohio to the banks of the Mississippi and the Missouri. In 1855 he purchases ten acres of land two miles south of Tarrytown, and the Wolfert Roost of old Jacob Van Tassel is transformed into the Sunnyside of Washington Irving. It seems strange that the old family device, "Flourishing in sun and shade," should be hap- pily abbreviated here in Sunnyside, and the three holly leaves given as a coat of arms to his warlike ancestor, William de Irwin, by Robert Bruce on the field of Bannockburn, should, after the lapse of five hundred years, find poetic association in the ivy that twines about the porch of his cottage, brought from the home of the minstrel, who has woven the stern history of Scotland with the flowers of poesy — fromAb- bottsford, the land of his fathers, transplanted by Mrs. Ren wick, the "Blued-eyed Lassie" of Robert Burns; and stranger still that this wan- derer of the family should associate this device 159 with a real family shield or shelter, the only device of our broad land — the American home — and gather under his own roof his brother and sister. Busy and happy in the development of his plans, he declines the office of mayor of the city of New York, and also the post of Secre- tary of the Navy in the Cabinet of Martin Van Buren. Two years later, urged by his friends and a personal letter of Daniel Webster, he ac- cepts the appointment of minister to Spain. He spends fours year at Madrid in the midst of revolution and insurrection; is summoned to London to assist in the settlement of the Or- egon claims; returns to Sunnyside, builds a new tower to the cottage, and recommences the "Life of Washington. " He is now seventy years of age, but we find him on his old familiar trips to Baltimore and in the library of Wash- ington, looking up material for his history; for it was characteristic of the man, even to the close of his life, whatever he did to do it ac- curately and well. He spends a portion of the following summer at Saratoga and Niagara, and his trip through the lakes calls up his first visit to the St. Law- rence and the memories of his early life. A letter written at this time to a niece in Paris shows the wonderful changes of fifty years, 160 presenting a contrast almost as effective and dra- matic as the long absence of his sleeping hero. It seemed necessary and fitting for the travel- ler through many lands to come back again to this point of his early wandering in order to complete the cycle of his life. "One of the most interesting circumstances of my tour," he writes, "was the sojourn of a day at Odgens- burg. I had not been there since I visited it in 1803, when I was but twenty years of age. All the country then was a wilderness. We floated down the Black River in a scow; we toiled through forests in wagons drawn by oxen; we slept in hunters' cabins, and were once four-and-twenty hours without food. Well, here I was again after a lapse of fifty years. I found a populous city occupying both banks of the Oswegatchie, connected by bridges. It was the Ogdensburg of which a village plot had been planned at the time of our visits. I sought the old French fort where we had been quartered: not a trace of it was left. I sat under a tree on the site and looked round upon what I had known as a wilderness, now teeming with life, crowded with habitations. I walked to the point where I used to launch forth in a canoe with the daughters of Mr. Ogden and Mr. Hoffman. It was now a bus- tling landing-place for steamers. There were 161 still some rocks where I used to sit of an even- ing and accompany with my flute one of the ladies who sang. I sat for a long time sum- moning recollections of by-gone days and of the happy beings by whom I was then sur- rounded. All had passed away! All were dead and gone! Of that young and joyous party I was the sole survivor. They had all lived quietly at home, out of the reach of mis- echance, yet had gone down to their graves, while I, who had been wandering about the world, exposed to all hazards by sea and land, was yet alive. I have often, in my shifting about the world, come upon the traces of former exis- tence, but I do not think anything has made a stronger impression upon me than this my second visit to the banks of the Oswegatchie." To come back again after the lapse of a cen- tury to the memory and traces of his early life seems indeed like the fulfilment of Tennyson's dream in the "Sleeping Beauty," and we won- der if the retrospect from this lone standpoint of three score years and ten fulfilled the dreams of the youth of twenty. Perhaps so! for it was the good fortune of Irving to realize his visions, and in this particular he stands alone in the field of letters. Unlike the most of us, his "castles in Spain" were of genuine marble, and he lived to walk beneath their turrets and 162 to know the richness of his inheritance. On one of his last visits to London he was domiciled with a friend in a cloister of Westminster Ab- bey, and in one of his midnight reveries he writes to his sister: "How strange it seems to me that I should thus be nestled quietly in the very heart of the old pile that used to be the scene of my half-romantic, half-meditative haunts. It is like my sojourn in the halls of the Alhambra. Am I always to have my dreams turned into realities?" Singularly enough, even Sunnyside itself is fore-shadowed in his "Legend of Sleepy Hol- low," written in his thirty-sixth year, and the reader of the "Sketch Book" will remember his reference, near the beginning of the essay, to a little valley near Tarrytown, one of the quiet- est places in the whole world; and he says, "If ever I should wish for a retreat whither I might steal from the world and its distractions and dream quietly away the remnant of a troubled life, I know of none more promising than this little valley." Twenty-three years afterward he writes to his brother from Spain: "I hope some day or other to sleep my last sleep in this favorite resort of my boyhood;" and when the long procession wound its way from Sunnyside through quiet Irvingtou and Tarrytown among scenes which had found new 1G3 charm in Irving's life, across the old bridge draped with mourning, past the Dutch church with its hallowed memories of two hundred years, to the peaceful valley of Sleepy Hollow, it seemed not so much a mourning procession as a poetic pilgrimage — as if his dreams were realized in his last sleep ; as if there were a kin- dred sympathy in the words "dust to dust," and that the land he had filled with his legends was only receiving him to his own. It was one of those warm November days which seem to belong to the Hudson Valley, as mild and gen- tle as the spring-time, and the broad river, every point of which is punctuated with ex- clamations of beauty, lay tranquil as the heart of the gentle writer, as if it, too, missed a friend and companion ; for "They do not err Who say that when a poet dies Mute Nature mourns her worshiper And celebrates his obsequies." 164