Along the Hudson with Washington Irving

Washington Irving

Now proceeds to give us his account of
“Hendrick Hudson’s Discovery of Our
River.” After refreshing his memory
with a hasty glance at the
early pages of Old Knickerbocker’s
History of
New York

In the ever-memorable year of our Lord, 1609, on a Saturday morning, the five-and-twentieth day of March, old style, did that “worthy and irrecoverable discoverer (as he has justly been called), Master Hudson,” set sail from Holland in a stout vessel called the “Half-Moon,” being employed by the Dutch East India Company, to seek a northwest passage to China.

Henry (or, as the Dutch historians call him, Hendrick) Hudson was a seafaring man of renown, who had learned to smoke tobacco 14under Sir Walter Raleigh, and is said to have been the first to introduce it into Holland, which gained him much popularity in that country, and caused him to find great favor in the eyes of their High Mightinesses, the Lords States General, and also of the honorable West India Company. He was a short, square, brawny old gentleman, with a double chin, a mastiff mouth, and a broad copper nose, which was supposed in those days to have acquired its fiery hue from the constant neighborhood of his tobacco pipe.

He wore a true Andrea Ferrara, tucked in a leathern belt, and a commodore’s cocked hat on one side of his head. He was remarkable for always jerking up his breeches when he gave out his orders, and his voice sounded not unlike the brattling of a tin trumpet,—owing to the number of hard northwesters which he had swallowed in the course of his seafaring.

Such was Hendrick Hudson, of whom we have heard so much, and know so little; and I have been thus particular in his description for the benefit of modern painters and statuaries, that they may represent him as he was,—and not, according to their common custom with modern heroes, make him look like Caesar, or Marcus Aurelius, or the Apollo of Belvidere.

Robert Juet was an old comrade and early schoolmate of the great Hudson, with whom he had often played truant and sailed chip boats in a neighboring pond, when they were little boys: from whence it is said that the commodore first derived his bias towards a seafaring life.

To this universal genius are we indebted for many particulars concerning this voyage; of which he wrote a history, at the request of the commodore, who had an unconquerable aversion to writing himself, from having received so many floggings about it when at school. To supply the deficiencies of master Juet’s journal, which is written with true log-book brevity, I have availed myself of divers family traditions, handed down from my great-great-grandfather, who accompanied the expedition in the capacity of cabin-boy. From all that I can learn, few incidents worthy of remark happened in the voyage.

Suffice it to say, the voyage was prosperous and tranquil; the crew, being a patient people, much given to slumber and vacuity, and but little troubled with the disease of thinking,—a malady of the mind, which is the sure breeder of discontent, every man was allowed to sleep quietly at his post unless the wind blew. True, it is, some slight disaffection was shown 16on two or three occasions, at certain unreasonable conduct of Commodore Hudson. Thus, for instance, he forbore to shorten sail when the wind was light, and the weather serene, which was considered among the most experienced Dutch seamen as certain weather-breeders, or prognostics that the weather would change for the worse. He likewise prohibited the seamen from wearing more than five jackets and six pair of breeches, under pretense of rendering them more alert; and no man was permitted to go aloft and hand in sails with a pipe in his mouth, as is the invariable Dutch custom at the present day. All these grievances, though they might ruffle for a moment the constitutional tranquillity of the honest Dutch tars, made but transient impression;—they ate hugely and slept immeasurably; and being under the especial guidance of Providence, the ship was safely conducted to the coast of America; where, after sundry unimportant touchings and standings off and on, she at length, on the fourth day of September, entered that majestic bay which at this day expands its ample bosom before the city of New York, and which had never before been visited by any European.

True it is—and I am not ignorant of the fact—that in a certain apocryphal book of 17voyages, compiled by one Hakluyt, is to be found a letter written to Francis the First, by one Giovanna, or John Verazzani, on which some writers are inclined to found a belief that this delightful bay had been visited nearly a century previous to the voyage of the enterprising Hudson. Now this (albeit it has met with the countenance of certain very judicious and learned men) I hold in utter disbelief, and that for various good and substantial reasons: First, Because on strict examination it will be found that the description given by this Verazzani applies about as well to the bay of New York as it does to my night-cap. Secondly, because that this John Verazzani, for whom I already begin to feel a most bitter enmity, is a native of Florence; and everybody knows the crafty wiles of these losel Florentines, by which they filched away the laurels from the brows of the immortal Colon (vulgarly called Columbus), and bestowed them on their officious townsman, Amerigo Vespucci; and I make no doubt they are equally ready to rob the illustrious Hudson of the credit of discovering this beautiful island, adorned by the city of New York, and placing it beside their usurped discovery of South America. And thirdly, I award my decision in favor of the pretensions of 18Hendrick Hudson, inasmuch as his expedition sailed from Holland, being truly and absolutely a Dutch enterprise;—and though all the proofs in the world were introduced on the other side, I would set them at naught, as undeserving my attention. If these three reasons be not sufficient to satisfy every burgher of this ancient city, all I can say is, they are degenerate descendants from their venerable Dutch ancestors, and totally unworthy the trouble of convincing. Thus, therefore, the title of Hendrick Hudson to his renowned discovery is fully vindicated.

It has been traditionary in our family, that when the great navigator was first blessed with a view of this enchanting island, he was observed, for the first and only time in his life, to exhibit strong symptoms of astonishment and admiration. He is said to have turned to Master Juet, and uttered these remarkable words, while he pointed towards this paradise of the new world,—“See! there!”—and, thereupon, as was always his way when he was uncommonly pleased, he did puff out such clouds of dense tobacco smoke, that in one minute the vessel was out of sight of land, and master Juet was fain to wait until the winds dispersed this impenetrable fog.

It was indeed,—as my great-grandfather 19used to say,—though in truth I never heard him, for he died, as might be expected before I was born—“It was indeed a spot on which the eye might have revelled forever, in ever new and never-ending beauties.” The island of Mannahata spread wide before them, like some sweet vision of fancy, or some fair creation of industrious magic. Its hills of smiling green swelled gently one above another, crowned with lofty trees of luxuriant growth; some pointing their tapering foliage towards the clouds, which were gloriously transparent; and others loaded with verdant burden of clambering vines, bowing their branches to the earth, that was covered with flowers. On the gentle declivities of the hills were scattered in gay profusion, the dogwood, the sumach, and the wild brier, whose scarlet berries and white blossoms glowed brightly among the deep green of the surrounding foliage; and here and there a curling column of smoke, rising from the little glens that opened along the shore, seemed to promise the weary voyagers a welcome at the hands of their fellow-creatures. As they stood gazing with entranced attention on the scene before them, a red man, crowned with feathers, issued from one of these glens, and after contemplating in wonder the gallant ship, as she 20sat like a stately swan swimming on a silver lake, sounded the war-whoop, and bounded into the woods like a wild deer, to the utter astonishment of the phlegmatic Dutchmen, who had never heard such a noise, or witnessed such a caper in their whole lives.

Of the transactions of our adventurers with the savages, and how the latter smoked copper pipes and ate dried currants; how they brought great store of tobacco and oysters; how they shot one of the ship’s crew, and how he was buried, I shall say nothing; being that I consider them unimportant to my history. After tarrying a few days in the bay, in order to refresh themselves after their seafaring, our voyagers weighed anchor, to explore a mighty river which emptied into the bay. This river, it is said, was known among the savages by the name of the Shatemuch, though we are assured in an excellent little history published in 1674, by John Josselyn, Gent, that it was called the Mohegan, and master Richard Bloome, who wrote some time afterwards, asserts the same,—so that I very much incline in favor of the opinion of these two honest gentlemen. This river is likewise laid down in Ogilby’s map as Manhattan—Noordt Montaigne and Mauritius river. Be this as it may, up this river did the 21adventurous Hendrick proceed, little doubting but it would turn out to be the much looked-for passage to China!

The journal goes on to make mention of divers interviews between the crew and the natives in the voyage up the river; but as they would be impertinent to my history, I shall pass them over in silence, except the following dry joke, played off by the old commodore and his school-fellow, Robert Juet, which does such vast credit to their experimental philosophy, that I cannot refrain from inserting it. “Our master and his mate determined to try some of the chiefe men of the country, whether they had any treacherie in them. So they tooke them downe into the cabin, and gave them so much wine and aqua vitae, that they were all merrie; and one of them had his wife with him which sate so modestly, as any of our countrey women would do in a strange place. In the end, one of them was drunke, which had been aborde of our ship all the time that he had been there, and that was strange to them, for they could not tell how to take it.”

He then proceeded on his voyage with great self-complacency. After sailing, however, above an hundred miles up the river, he found the watery world around him began to grow 22more shallow and confined, the current more rapid, and perfectly fresh,—phenomena not uncommon in the ascent of rivers, but which puzzled the honest Dutchmen prodigiously. A consultation was therefore called, and having deliberated full six hours, they were brought to a determination by the ship’s running aground,—whereupon they unanimously concluded, that there was but little chance of getting to China in this direction. A boat, however, was despatched to explore higher up the river, which, on its return, confirmed the opinion; upon this the ship was warped off and put about, with great difficulty, being, like most of her sex, exceedingly hard to govern; and the adventurous Hudson, according to the account of my great-great-grandfather, returned down the river—with a prodigious flea in his ear?

Being satisfied that there was little likelihood of getting to China, unless, like the blind man, he returned from whence he set out, and took a fresh start, he forthwith recrossed the sea to Holland, where he was received with great welcome by the honorable East India Company, who were very much rejoiced to see him come back safe—with their ship; and at a large and respectable meeting of the first merchants and burgomasters of 23Amsterdam, it was unanimously determined that as a munificent reward for the eminent services he had performed, and the important discovery he had made, the great river Mohegan shall be called after his name—and it continues to be called Hudson river unto this very day.

Letters-patent were granted by government to an association of merchants, called the West India Company, for the exclusive trade on Hudson river, on which they erected a trading-house, called Fort Aurania, or Orange, from whence did spring the great city of Albany.

It was some three or four years after the return of the immortal Hendrick, that a crew of honest, Low-Dutch colonists set sail from the city of Amsterdam for the shores of America. The “Goede Vrouw” made out to accomplish her voyage in a very few months, and came to anchor at the mouth of the Hudson a little to the east of Gibbet Island.

Here, lifting up their eyes, they beheld, on what is at present called the Jersey shore, a small Indian village, pleasantly embowered in a grove of spreading elms, and the natives all collected on the beach, gazing in stupid admiration at the “Goede Vrouw.” A boat was immediately dispatched to enter into a treaty 24with them, and approaching the shore, hailed them through a trumpet, in the most friendly terms; but so horribly confounded were these poor savages at the tremendous and uncouth sound of the Low-Dutch language, that they one and all took to their heels, and scampered over the Bergen hills; nor did they stop until they had buried themselves, head and ears, in the marshes on the other side, where they all miserably perished to a man;—and their bones, being collected and decently covered by the Tammany Society of that day, formed that singular mound called Rattlesnake Hill, which rises out of the center of the salt marshes a little to the east of the Newark Causeway.

Animated by this unlooked-for victory, our valiant heroes sprang ashore in triumph, took possession of the soil as conquerors, in the name of their High Mightinesses the Lords States General; and, marching fearlessly forward, carried the village of Communipaw by storm, notwithstanding that it was vigorously defended by some half score of old squaws and papooses. On looking about them they were so transported with the excellencies of the place, that they had very little doubt the blessed St. Nicholas had guided them thither, as the very spot whereon to settle their colony. The softness of the soil was wonderfully 25adapted to the driving of piles; the swamps and marshes around them afforded ample opportunities for the constructing of dykes and dams; the shallowness of the shore was peculiarly favorable to the building of docks;—in a word, this spot abounded with all the requisites for the foundation of a great Dutch city. On making a faithful report, therefore, to the crew of the “Goede Vrouw,” they one and all determined that this was the destined end of their voyage. Accordingly they descended from the “Goede Vrouw,” men, women, and children, in goodly groups, as did the animals of yore from the ark, and formed themselves into a thriving settlement, which they called by the Indian name Communipaw.

As all the world is doubtless acquainted with Communipaw, it may seem somewhat superfluous to treat of it in the present work; but my readers will please to recollect, notwithstanding it is my chief desire to satisfy the present age, yet I write likewise for posterity, and have to consult the understanding and curiosity of some half a score of centuries yet to come, by which time, perhaps, were it not for this invaluable history, the great Communipaw, like Babylon, Carthage, Ninevah and other great cities, might be perfectly extinct,—sunk and forgotten in its own mud,—its 26inhabitants turned into oysters, and even its situation a fertile subject of learned controversy and hard-headed investigation among indefatigable historians. Let me then piously rescue from oblivion the humble relics of a place, which was the egg from whence was hatched the mighty city of New York!

Communipaw is at present but a small village, pleasantly situated, among rural scenery, on that beauteous part of the Jersey shore which was known in ancient legends by the name of Pavonia, and commands a grand prospect of the superb bay of New York. It is within but half an hour’s sail of the latter place, provided you have a fair wind, and may be distinctly seen from the city. Nay, it is a well-known fact, which I can testify from my own experience, that on a clear, still summer evening, you may hear, from the Battery of New York, the obstreperous peals of broad mouthed laughter of the Dutch negroes at Communipaw, who, like most other negroes are famous for their risible powers.

Communipaw, in short, is one of the numerous little villages in the vicinity of this most beautiful of cities, which are so many strongholds and fastnesses, whither the primitive manners of our Dutch forefathers have retreated, and where they are cherished with devout and 27scrupulous strictness. The language likewise continues unadulterated by barbarous innovations; and so critically correct is the village schoolmaster in his dialect, that his reading of a Low-Dutch psalm has much the same effect on the nerves as the filing of a hand saw.

The crew of the “Goede Vrouw” being soon reinforced by fresh importations from Holland, the settlement went jollily on, increasing in magnitude and prosperity. The Indians were much given to long talks, and the Dutch to long silence;—in this particular, therefore, they accommodated each other completely. The chiefs would make long speeches about the big bull, the Wabash, and the Great Spirit, to which the others would listen very attentively, smoke their pipes, and grunt yah, myhn-her,—whereat the poor savages were wondrously delighted. They instructed the new settlers in the best art of curing and smoking tobacco, while the latter, in return, made them drunk with true Hollands—and then taught them the art of making bargains.

As to the honest burghers of Communipaw, likewise men and sound philosophers, they never look beyond their pipes, nor trouble their heads about any affairs out of their immediate neighborhood; so that they live in a profound and enviable ignorance of all the 28troubles, anxieties, and revolutions of this distracted planet. I am even told that many among them do verily believe that Holland, of which they have heard so much from tradition, is situated somewhere on Long Island,—that Spiking-devil and the Narrows are the two ends of the world,—that the country is still under the dominion of their High Mightinesses,—and that the city of New York still goes by the name of Nieuw Amsterdam. They meet every Saturday afternoon at the only tavern in the place, which bears as a sign a square-headed likeness of the Prince of Orange, where they smoke a silent pipe, by way of promoting social conviviality, and invariably drink a mug of cider to the success of Admiral Van Tromp, who they imagine is still sweeping the British channel, with a broom at his mast-head.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

In the bosom of one of those spacious coves which indent the eastern shore of the Hudson, at that broad expansion of the river denominated by the ancient Dutch navigators the Tappan Zee, and where they always prudently shortened sail, and implored the protection of St. Nicholas when they crossed, there lies a small market-town or rural port, which by some is called Greensburgh, but which is more generally and properly known by the name of Tarry Town. This name was given, we are told, in former days, by the good housewives of the adjacent country, from the inveterate propensity of their husbands to linger about the village tavern on market days. Be that as it may, I do not vouch for the fact, but merely advert to it, for the sake of being precise and authentic. Not far from this village, perhaps about two miles, there is a little valley, or rather lap of land, among high hills, which is one of the quietest places in the whole world. A small brook glides through it, with just murmur enough to lull one to 45repose; and the occasional whistle of a quail, or tapping of a woodpecker, is almost the only sound that ever breaks in upon the uniform tranquillity.

I recollect that, when a stripling, my first exploit in squirrel-shooting was in a grove of tall walnut-trees that shades one side of the valley. I had wandered into it at noon time, when all nature is peculiarly quiet, and was startled by the roar of my own gun, as it broke the Sabbath stillness around, and was prolonged and reverberated by the angry echoes. 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.

From the listless repose of the place, and the peculiar character of its inhabitants, who are descendants from the original Dutch settlers, this sequestered glen has long been known by the name of Sleepy Hollow, and its rustic lads are called the Sleepy Hollow Boys throughout all the neighboring country. A drowsy, dreamy influence seems to hang over the land and to pervade the very atmosphere. Some say that the place was bewitched by a high German doctor, during the early days of the settlement; others, that an old Indian chief, 46the prophet or wizard of his tribe, held his pow-wows there before the country was discovered by Master Hendrick Hudson. Certain it is, the place still continues under the sway of some witching power, that holds a spell over the minds of the good people, causing them to walk in a continual reverie. They are given to all kinds of marvellous beliefs; are subject to trances and visions; and frequently see strange sights, and hear music and voices in the air. The whole neighborhood abounds with local tales, haunted spots, and twilight superstitions; stars shoot and meteors glare oftener across the valley than in any other part of the country, and the nightmare, with her whole nine fold, seems to make it the favorite scene of her gambols.

The dominant spirit, however, that haunts this enchanted region, and seems to be commander-in-chief of all the powers of the air, is the apparition of a figure on horseback without a head. It is said by some to be the ghost of a Hessian trooper, whose head had been carried away by a cannon-ball, in some nameless battle during the Revolutionary war; and who is ever and anon seen by the country folk, hurrying along the gloom of night, as if on wings of the wind. His haunts are not confined to the valley, but extend at times to 47the adjacent roads, and especially to the vicinity of a church at no great distance. Indeed, certain of the most authentic historians of those parts, who have been careful in collecting and collating the floating facts concerning this spectre, allege that the body of the trooper, having been buried in the church-yard, the ghost rides forth to the scene of battle in nightly quest of his head; and that the rushing speed with which he sometimes passes along the Hollow, like a midnight blast, is owing to his being belated, and in a hurry to get back to the churchyard before daybreak.

Such is the general purport of this legendary superstition, which has furnished material for many a wild story in that region of shadows; and the specter is known, at all the country firesides, by the name of the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow.

It is remarkable that the visionary propensity I have mentioned is not confined to the native inhabitants of the valley, but is unconsciously imbibed by every one who resides there for a time. However wide-awake they may have been before they entered that sleepy region, they are sure, in a little time, to inhale the witching influence of the air, and begin to grow imaginative—to dream dreams, and see apparitions.

I mention this peaceful spot with all possible laud; for it is in such little retired Dutch valleys, found here and there embosomed in the great State of New York, that population, manners and customs, remain fixed; while the great torrent of migration and improvement which is making such incessant changes in other parts of this restless country, sweeps by them unobserved. They are like those little nooks of still water which border a rapid stream; where we may see the straw and bubble riding quietly at anchor, or slowly revolving in their mimic harbor, undisturbed by the rush of the passing current. Though many years have elapsed since I trod the drowsy shades of Sleepy Hollow, yet I question whether I should not still find the same trees and the same families vegetating in its sheltered bosom.

In this by-place of nature, there abode, in a remote period of American history, that is to say, some thirty years since, a worthy wight of the name of Ichabod Crane; who sojourned, or, as he expressed it, “tarried,” in Sleepy Hollow, for the purpose of instructing the children of the vicinity.

That all this might not be too onerous on the purses of his rustic patrons, who are apt to consider the cost of schooling a grievous burden, and schoolmasters as mere drones, he 49had various ways of rendering himself both useful and agreeable. He assisted the farmers occasionally in the lighter labors of their farms; helped to make hay, mended the fences; took the horses to water; drove the cows from pasture; and cut wood for the winter fire. He laid aside, too, all the dominant dignity and absolute sway with which he lorded it in his little empire, the school, and became wonderfully gentle and ingratiating. He found favor in the eyes of the mothers, by petting the children, particularly the youngest; and like the lion bold, which whilom so magnanimously the lamb did hold, he would sit with a child on one knee, and rock a cradle with his foot for whole hours together.

In addition to his other vocations, he was the singing-master of the neighborhood, and picked up many bright shillings by instructing the young folks in psalmody. It was a matter of no little vanity to him, on Sunday to take his station in front of the church gallery, with a band of chosen singers where, in his own mind, he completely carried away the psalm from the parson. Certain it is, his voice resounded far above all the rest of the congregation; and there are peculiar quavers still to be heard in that church, and which may even be heard half a mile off, quite to the 50opposite side of the mill-pond, on a still Sunday morning, which are said to be legitimately descended from the nose of Ichabod Crane. Thus, by divers little makeshifts in that ingenious way which is commonly denominated “by hook and by crook” the worthy pedagogue got on tolerably enough, and was thought by all who understood nothing of the labor of head work to have a wonderfully easy life of it.

The school master is generally a man of some importance in the female circle of a rural neighborhood; being considered a kind of idle gentlemanlike personage, of vastly superior taste and accomplishments to the rough country swains, and, indeed, inferior in learning only to the parson. His appearance, therefore, is apt to occasion some little stir at the tea-table of a farmhouse, and the addition of a supernumerary dish of cakes or sweetmeats, or, peradventure, the parade of a silver tea-pot. Our man of letters, therefore, was peculiarly happy in the smiles of all country damsels. How he would figure among them in the churchyard, between services on Sundays! gathering grapes for them from the wild vines that overrun the surrounding trees; reciting for their amusement all the epitaphs on the tombstones; or sauntering, with a whole bevy of them, along the banks of the adjacent 51mill-pond; while the more bashful country pumpkins hung sheepishly back, envying his superior elegance and address.

From his half itinerant life, also, he was a kind of traveling gazette, carrying the whole budget of local gossip from house to house; so that his appearance was always greeted with satisfaction. He was, moreover, esteemed by the women as a man of great erudition, for he had read several books quite through, and was a perfect master of Cotton Mather’s history of New England Witchcraft, in which, by the way, he most firmly and potently believed.

He was, in fact, an odd mixture of small shrewdness and simple credulity. His appetite for the marvelous, and his powers of digesting it, were equally extraordinary; and both had been increased by his residence in this spellbound region. No tale was too gross or monstrous for his capacious swallow. It was often his delight, after his school was dismissed in the afternoon, to stretch himself on the rich bed of clover, bordering the little brook that whimpered by his school-house, and there con over old Mather’s direful tales, until the gathering dusk of the evening made the printed page a mere mist before his eyes. Then, as he wended his way, by swamp and stream 52and awful woodland, to the farmhouse where he happened to be quartered, every sound of nature, at that witching hour, fluttered his excited imagination: the moan of the whippoorwill from the hillside; the boding cry of the tree-toad, that harbinger of storm; the dreary hooting of the screech owl, or the sudden rustling in the thicket of birds frightened from their roost.

Another of his sources of fearful pleasure was, to pass long winter evenings with the old Dutch wives, as they sat spinning by the fire, with a row of apples roasting and sputtering along the hearth, and listen to their marvelous tales of ghosts and goblins, and haunted fields, and haunted brooks, and haunted bridges, and haunted houses, and particularly of the headless horseman, or galloping Hessian of the Hollow, as they sometimes called him. He would delight them equally by his anecdotes of witchcraft, and of the direful moans and portentous sights and sound in the air, which prevailed in the earlier times of Connecticut; and would frighten them woefully with speculations upon comets and shooting stars; and with the alarming fact that the world did absolutely turn round, and that they were half the time topsy-turvy!

What fearful shapes and shadows beset his 53path amidst the dim and ghastly glare of a snowy night!—With what wistful look did he eye every trembling ray of light streaming across the waste fields from some distant window!—How often was he appalled by some shrub covered with snow, which, like a sheeted spectre, beset his very path!—How often did he shrink with curdling awe at the sound of his own steps on the frosty crust beneath his feet; and dread to look over his shoulder, lest he should behold some uncouth being tramping close behind him!—and how often was he thrown into complete dismay by some rushing blast, howling among the trees, in the idea that it was the Galloping Hessian on one of his nightly scourings!

All these, however, were mere terrors of the night, phantoms of the mind that walk in darkness; and though he had seen many spectres in his time, and been more than once beset by Satan in divers shapes, in his lonely perambulations, yet daylight put an end to all these evils; and he would have passed a pleasant life of it, in despite of the devil and all his works, if his path had not been crossed by a being that causes more perplexity to mortal man than ghosts, goblins, and the whole race of witches put together, and that was—a woman.

Among the musical disciples who assembled, 54one evening in each week, to receive his instructions in psalmody, was Katrina Van Tassel the daughter and only child of a substantial Dutch farmer. She was a blooming lass of fresh eighteen; plump as a partridge; ripe and melting and rosy cheeked as one of her father’s peaches, and universally famed, not merely for her beauty, but her vast expectations. She was withal a little of a coquette, as might be perceived even in her dress, which was a mixture of ancient and modern fashions, as most suited to set off her charms. She wore the ornaments of pure yellow gold, which her great-great-grandmother had brought over from Saardam; the tempting stomacher of the olden time; and withal a provoking short petticoat, to display the prettiest foot and ankle in the country round.

Ichabod Crane had a soft and foolish heart towards the sex; and it is not to be wondered at, that so tempting a morsel soon found favor in his eyes; more especially after he had visited her in her paternal mansion. Old Baltus Van Tassel was a perfect picture of a thriving, contented, liberal-hearted farmer. He seldom, it is true, sent either his eyes or his thoughts beyond the boundaries of his own farm; but within those everything was snug, happy, and well-conditioned. He was satisfied with his 55wealth, but not proud of it; and piqued himself upon the hearty abundance, rather than the style in which he lived. His stronghold was situated on the banks of the Hudson, in one of those green, sheltered, fertile nooks, in which the Dutch farmers are so fond of nestling. A great elm tree spread its broad branches over it; at the foot of which bubbled up a spring of the softest and sweetest water, in a little well, formed of a barrel; and then stole sparkling away through the grass, to a neighboring brook, that bubbled along among alders and dwarf willows. Hard by the farmhouse was a vast barn, that might have served for a church; every window and crevice of which seemed bursting forth with the treasures of the farm; the flail was busily resounding within it from morning to night; swallows and martins skimmed twittering about the eaves; and rows of pigeons, some with one eye turned up, as if watching the weather, some with their heads under their wings, or buried in their bosoms, and others swelling, and cooing, and bowing about their dames, were enjoying the sunshine on the roof. Sleek unwieldy porkers were grunting in the repose and abundance of their pens; whence sallied forth, now and then, troops of sucking pigs, as if to snuff the air. A stately squadron of snowy geese were 56riding in an adjoining pond, convoying whole fleets of ducks; regiments of turkeys were gobbling through the farmyard, and guinea fowls fretting about it, like ill-tempered housewives, with their peevish discontented cry. Before the barn door strutted the gallant cock, that pattern of a husband, a warrior, and a fine gentleman, clapping his burnished wings, and crowing in the pride and gladness of his heart—sometimes tearing up the earth with his feet, and then, generously calling his ever-hungry family of wives and children to enjoy the rich morsel which he had discovered.

When he entered the house the conquest of his heart was complete. It was one of those spacious farmhouses, with high-ridged, but lowly-sloping roofs, built in the style handed down from the first Dutch settlers; the low projecting eaves forming a piazza along the front, capable of being closed up in bad weather. Under this were hung flails, harness, various utensils of husbandry, and nets for fishing in the neighboring river. Benches were built along the sides for summer use; and a great spinning-wheel at one end, and a churn at the other, showed the various uses to which this important porch might be devoted. From this piazza the wondering Ichabod entered the hall, which formed the center of the 57mansion and the place of usual residence. Here, rows of resplendent pewter, ranged on a long dresser, dazzled his eyes. In one corner stood a huge bag of wool ready to be spun; in another a quantity of linsey-woolsey just from the loom; ears of Indian corn, and strings of dried apples and peaches, hung in gay festoon along the walls, mingled with the gaud of red peppers; and a door left ajar gave him a peep into the best parlor, where the claw-footed chairs, and dark mahogany tables, shone like mirrors; and irons, with their accompanying shovel and tongs, glistened from their covert of asparagus tops; mock-oranges and conch-shells decorated the mantel-piece; strings of various colored birds’ eggs were suspended above it: a great ostrich egg was hung from the centre of the room, and a corner cupboard, knowingly left open, displayed immense treasures of old silver and well-mended china.

From the moment Ichabod laid his eyes upon these regions of delight, the peace of his mind was at an end, and his only study was how to gain the affections of the peerless daughter of Van Tassel. In this enterprise, however, he had more real difficulties than generally fell to the lot of a knight-errant of yore, who seldom had anything but giants, enchanters, fiery dragons, and such like 58easily-conquered adversaries, to contend with; and had to make his way merely through gates of iron and brass, and walls of adamant to the castle keep, where the lady of his heart was confined; all which he achieved as easily as a man would carve his way to the centre of a Christmas pie; and then the lady gave him her hand as a matter of course. Ichabod, on the contrary, had to win his way to the heart of a country coquette, beset with a labyrinth of whims and caprices, which were forever presenting new difficulties and impediments; and he had to encounter a host of fearful adversaries of real flesh and blood, the numerous rustic admirers, who beset every portal to her heart keeping a watchful and angry eye upon each other, but ready to fly out in the common cause against any new competitor.

Among these the most formidable was a burly, roaring, roystering blade, of the name of Abraham, or, according to the Dutch abbreviation, Brom Van Brunt, the hero of the country round, which rang with his feats of strength and hardihood. He was broad-shouldered and double-jointed, with short curling black hair, and a bluff, but not unpleasant countenance, having a mingled air of fun and arrogance. From his Herculean frame and great powers of limb, he had 59received the nickname of Brom Bones, by which he was universally known. He was famed for great knowledge and skill in horsemanship being as dexterous on horseback as a Tartar. He was foremost at all races and cock-fights; and, with the ascendency which bodily strength acquires in rustic life, was the umpire in all disputes, setting his hat on one side, and giving his decisions with an air and tone admitting of no gainsay or appeal. He was always ready for either a fight or a frolic; but had more mischief than ill-will in his composition; and, with all his overbearing roughness, there was a strong dash of waggish good humor at bottom. He had three or four boon companions, who regarded him as their model, and at the head of whom he scoured the country, attending every scene of feud or merriment for miles round. In cold weather he was distinguished by a fur cap, surmounted with a flaunting fox’s tail; and when the folks at a country gathering descried this well-known crest at a distance, whisking about among a squad of hard riders, they always stood by for a squall. Sometimes his crew would be heard dashing along past the farmhouses at midnight, with whoop and halloo, like a troop of Don Cossacks; and the old dames, startled out of their sleep, would listen 60for a moment till the hurry-scurry had clattered by, and then exclaim, “Ay, there goes Brom Bones and his gang!” The neighbors looked upon him with a mixture of awe, admiration, and good will; and when any madcap prank, or rustic brawl, occurred in the vicinity, always shook their heads and warranted Brom Bones was at the bottom of it.

This rantipole hero had for some time singled out the blooming Katrina for the object of his uncouth gallantries, and though his amorous toyings were something like the gentle caresses and endearments of a bear, yet it was whispered that she did not altogether discourage his hopes. Certain it is, his advances were signals for rival candidates to retire, who felt no inclination to cross a lion in his amours; insomuch, that when his horse was seen tied to Van Tassel’s paling, on a Sunday night, a sure sign that his master was courting, or, as it is termed, “sparking,” within, all other suitors passed by in despair, and carried the war into other quarters.

Such was the formidable rival with whom Ichabod Crane had to contend, and, considering all things, a stouter man than he would have shrunk from the competition, and a wiser man would have despaired.

To have taken the field openly against his 61rival would have been madness; for he was not a man to be thwarted in his armours any more than that stormy lover, Achilles. Ichabod, therefore, made his advances in a quiet and gently-insinuating manner. Under cover of his character of singing-master, he made frequent visits at the farmhouse; not that he had anything to apprehend from the meddlesome interference of parents, which is so often a stumbling-block in the path of lovers. Balt Van Tassell was an easy indulgent soul; he loved his daughter better even than his pipe, and, like a reasonable man and an excellent father, let her have her way in everything. His notable little wife, too, had enough to do to attend to her housekeeping and manage her poultry; for, as she sagely observed, ducks and geese are foolish things, and must be looked after, but girls can take care of themselves. Thus, while the busy dame bustled about the house, or plied her spinning-wheel at one end of the piazza, honest Balt would sit smoking his evening pipe at the other, watching the achievements of a little wooden warrior, who, armed with a sword in each hand, was most valiantly fighting the wind on the pinnacle of the barn. In the meantime, Ichabod would carry on his suit with the daughter by the side of the spring 62under the great elm, or sauntering along in the twilight, that hour so favorable to the lover’s eloquence.

He who wins a thousand common hearts is therefore entitled to some renown; but he who keeps undisputed sway over the heart of a coquette, is indeed a hero. Certain it is, this was not the case with the redoubtable Brom Bones; and from the moment Ichabod Crane made his advances, the interests of the former evidently declined; his horse was no longer seen tied at the palings on Sunday nights, and a deadly feud gradually arose between him and the preceptor of Sleepy Hollow.

He was gaunt and shagged, with a ewe neck and a head like a hammer; his rusty mane and tail were tangled and knotted with burrs; one eye had lost its pupil, and was glaring and spectral; but the other had the gleam of genuine devil in it. Still he must have had fire and mettle in his day, if we may judge from the name he bore of Gunpowder. He had, in fact, been a favorite steed of his master’s the choleric Van Ripper, who was a furious rider, and had infused, very probably, some of his own spirit into the animal; for, old and brokendown as he looked, there was more of the lurking devil in him than in any young filly in the country.

Ichabod was a suitable figure for such a steed. He rode with short stirrups, which brought his knees nearly up to the pommel of the saddle; his sharp elbows stuck out like grasshoppers’; he carried his whip perpendicularly in his hand, like a sceptre, and, as his horse jogged on, the motion of his arm was not unlike the flapping of a pair of wings. A small wool hat rested on the top of his nose, for so his scanty strip of forehead might be called; and the skirts of his black coat fluttered out almost to the horse’s tail. Such was the appearance of Ichabod and his steed, as he shambled out of the gate of Hans Van Ripper, and it was altogether such an apparition as is seldom to be met with in broad daylight.

It was, as I have said, a fine autumnal day, the sky was clear and serene, and nature wore that rich and golden livery which we always associate with the idea of abundance. The forests had put on their sober brown and yellow, while some trees of the tenderer kind had been nipped by the frost into brilliant dyes of orange, purple and scarlet. Streaming files of wild ducks began to make their appearance high in the air; the bark of the squirrel might be heard from the groves of beech and hickory nuts, and the pensive whistle of the quail 64at intervals from the neighboring stubble-field. The small birds were taking their farewell banquets. In the fulness of their revelry, they fluttered, chirping and frolicking, from bush to bush, and tree to tree, capricious from the very profusion and variety around them.

As Ichabod jogged slowly on his way, his eye, ever open to every symptom of culinary abundance, ranged with delight over the treasures of jolly autumn. On all sides he beheld vast store of apples; some hanging in oppressive opulence on the trees; some gathered into baskets and barrels for the market; others heaped up in rich piles for the cider-press. Farther on he beheld great fields of Indian corn, with its golden ears peeping from their leafy coverts, and holding out the promise of cakes and hasty pudding; and the yellow pumpkins lying beneath them, turning up their fair round bellies to the sun, and giving ample prospects of the most luxurious of pies; and anon he passed the fragrant buckwheat fields, breathing the odor of the beehive, and as he beheld them, soft anticipations stole over his mind of dainty slapjacks, well buttered, and garnished with honey or treacle, by the delicate dimpled hand of Katrina Van Tassel.

Thus, feeding his mind with many sweet thoughts and “sugared suppositions,” he journeyed 65along the sides of a range of hills which look out upon some of the goodliest scenes of the mighty Hudson. The sun gradually wheeled his broad disk down into the west. The wide bosom of the Tappan Zee lay motionless and glassy, excepting that here and there a gentle undulation waved and prolonged the blue shadow of the distant mountain. A few amber clouds floated in the sky, without a breath of air to move them. The horizon was of a fine golden tint, changing gradually into a pure apple green, and from that into the deep blue of the mid-heaven. A slanting ray lingered on the woody crests of the precipices that overhung some parts of the river, giving greater depth to the dark-gray and purple of their rocky sides. A sloop was loitering in the distance, dropping slowly down with the tide, her sail hanging uselessly against the mast; and as the reflection of the sky gleamed along the still water, it seemed as if the vessel was suspended in the air.

It was toward evening that Ichabod arrived at the castle of the Heer Van Tassel, which he found thronged with the pride and flower of the adjacent country. Old farmers, a spare leathern-faced race, in homespun coats and breeches, blue stockings, huge shoes, and magnificent pewter buckles. Their brisk 66withered little dames, in close crimped caps, long-waisted short-gowns, homespun petticoats, with scissors and pincushion, and gay calico pockets hanging on the outside. Buxom lassies, almost as antiquated as their mothers, excepting where a straw hat, a fine ribbon, or perhaps a white frock, gave symptoms of city innovation. The sons, in short square-skirted coats with rows of stupendous brass buttons, and their hair generally queued in the fashion of the times, especially if they could procure an eel-skin for the purpose, it being esteemed, through the country, as a potent nourisher and strengthener of the hair.

Brom Bones, however, was the hero of the scene, having come to the gathering on his favorite steed Daredevil, a creature, like himself, full of mettle and mischief, and which no one but himself could manage. He was, in fact, noted for preferring vicious animals, given to all kinds of tricks, which kept the rider in constant risk of his neck, for he held a tractable well-broken horse as unworthy of a lad of spirit.

Fain would I pause to dwell upon the world of charms that burst upon the enraptured gaze of my hero, as he entered the state parlor of Van Tassel’s mansion. Not those of the bevy of buxom lassies, with their luxurious display 67of red and white; but the ample charms of a genuine Dutch country tea-table, in the sumptuous time of autumn. Such heaped-up platters of cakes of various and almost indescribable kinds, known only to experienced Dutch housewives! There was the doughty doughnut, the tenderer oly koek, and the crisp and crumbling cruller; sweet cakes and short cakes, ginger cakes and honey cakes, and the whole family of cakes. And then there were apple pies and peach pies and pumpkin pies; besides slices of ham and smoked beef; and moreover delectable dishes of preserved plums, and peaches, and pears, and quinces; not to mention broiled shad and roasted chickens, together with bowls of milk and cream, all mingled higgledy-piggledy, pretty much as I have enumerated them, with the motherly tea-pot sending up its clouds of vapor from the midst—Heaven bless the mark! I want breath and time to discuss this banquet as it deserves, and am too eager to get on with my story. Happily, Ichabod Crane was not in so great a hurry as his historian, but did ample justice to every dainty.

He was a kind and thankful creature, whose heart dilated in proportion as his skin was filled with good cheer; and whose spirits rose 68with eating as some men’s do with drink. He could not help, too, rolling his large eyes round him as he ate, and chuckling with the possibility that he might one day be lord of all this scene of almost unimaginable luxury and splendor. Then, he thought, how soon he’d turn his back upon the old school-house; snap his fingers in the face of Hans Van Ripper, and every other niggardly patron, and kick any itinerant pedagogue out of doors that should dare to call him comrade!

Old Baltus Van Tassel moved about among his guests with a face dilated with content and good humor, round and jolly as the harvest moon. His hospitable attentions were brief, but expressive, being confined to a shake of the hand, a slap on the shoulder, a loud laugh and a pressing invitation to “fall to, and help themselves.”

And now the sound of the music from the common room, or hall, summoned to the dance. The musician was an old grayheaded negro, who had been the itinerant orchestra of the neighborhood for more than half a century. His instrument was as old and battered as himself. The greater part of the time he scraped on two or three strings, accompanying every movement of the bow with a motion of the head; bowing almost to the ground, 69and stamping with his foot whenever a fresh couple were to start.

Ichabod prided himself upon his dancing as much as upon his vocal powers. Not a limp, not a fibre about him was idle; and to have seen his loosely hung frame in full motion, and clattering about the room, you would have thought Saint Vitus himself, that blessed patron of the dance, was figuring before you in person. He was the admiration of all the negroes; who, having gathered, of all ages and sizes, from the farm and the neighborhood, stood forming a pyramid of shining black faces at every door and window, gazing with delight at the scene, rolling their white eyeballs, and showing grinning rows of ivory from ear to ear. How could the flogger of urchins be otherwise than animated and joyous? The lady of his heart was his partner in the dance, and smiling graciously in reply to all his amorous oglings; while Brom Bones, sorely smitten with love and jealousy, sat brooding by himself in one corner.

When the dance was at an end, Ichabod was attracted to a knot of the sager folks, who, with old Van Tassel, sat smoking at one end of the piazza, gossiping over former times, and drawing out long stories about the war.

This neighborhood, at the time of which I 70am speaking, was one of those highly-favored places which abound with chronicle and great men. The British and American line had run near it during the war; it had, therefore, been the scene of marauding, and infested with refugees, cowboys, and all kinds of border chivalry. Just sufficient time had elapsed to enable each story-teller to dress up his tale with a little becoming fiction, and in the indistinctness of his recollections, to make himself the hero of every exploit.

There was the story of Doffue Martling, a large blue-bearded Dutchman, who had nearly taken a British frigate with an old iron nine-pounder from a mud breastwork, only that his gun burst at the sixth discharge. And there was an old gentleman who shall be nameless, being too rich a mynheer to be lightly mentioned, who, in the battle of Whiteplains, being an excellent master of defence, parried a musket ball with a small sword, insomuch that he absolutely felt it whiz round the blade, and glance off at the hilt: in proof of which, he was ready at any time to show the sword, with the hilt a little bent. There were several more that had been equally great in the field, not one of whom but was persuaded that he had a considerable hand in bringing the war to a happy termination.

But all these were nothing to the tales of ghosts and apparitions that succeeded. The neighborhood is rich in legendary treasures of the kind. Local tales and superstitions thrive best in these sheltered long-settled retreats; but are trampled under foot by the shifting throng that forms the population of most of our country places. Besides, there is no encouragement for ghosts in most of our villages, for they have scarcely had time to finish their first nap, and turn themselves in their graves, before their surviving friends have travelled away from the neighborhood; so that when they turn out at night to walk their rounds, they have no acquaintance left to call upon. This is perhaps the reason why we so seldom hear of ghosts except in our long-established Dutch communities.

The immediate cause, however, of the prevalence of supernatural stories in these parts was doubtless owing to the vicinity of Sleepy Hollow. There was a contagion in the very air that blew from that haunted region; breathed forth an atmosphere of dreams and fancies infecting all the land. Several of the Sleepy Hollow people were present at Van Tassel’s, and, as usual, were doling out their wild and wonderful legends. Many dismal tales were told about funeral trains, and mourning 72cries and wailings heard and seen about the great tree where the unfortunate Major Andre was taken, and which stood in the neighborhood. Some mention was made also of the woman in white, that haunted the dark glen at Raven Rock, and was often heard to shriek on winter nights before a storm, having perished there in the snow. The chief part of the stories, however, turned upon the favorite specter of Sleepy Hollow, the headless horseman, who had been heard several times of late, patroling the country; and, it was said, tethered his horse nightly among the graves in the church-yard.

The sequestered situation of this church seems always to have made it a favorite haunt of troubled spirits. It stands on a knoll, surrounded by locust-trees and lofty elms, from among which its decent whitewashed walls shine modestly forth, like Christian purity beaming through the shades of retirement. A gentle slope descends from it to a silver sheet of water, bordered by high trees, between which, peeps may be caught at the blue hills of the Hudson. To look upon its grass-grown yard, where the sunbeams seem to sleep so quietly, one would think that there at least the dead might rest in peace. On one side of the church extends a wide woody dell, 73along which raves a large brook among broken rocks and trunks of fallen trees. Over a deep black part of the stream, not far from the church, was formerly thrown a wooden bridge; the road that led to it, and the bridge itself, were thickly shaded by overhanging trees, which cast a gloom about it, even in the daytime; but occasioned a fearful darkness at night. This was one of the favorite haunts of the headless horseman; and the place where he was most frequently encountered. The tale was told of old Brouwer, a most heretical disbeliever in ghosts, how he met the horseman returning from his foray into Sleepy Hollow, and was obliged to get up behind him; how they galloped over bush and brake, over hill and swamp, until they reached the bridge; when the horseman suddenly turned into a skeleton, threw old Brouwer into the brook, and sprang away over the tree-tops with a clap of thunder.

This story was immediately matched by thrice marvelous adventure of Brom Bones, who made light of the galloping Hessian as an arrant jockey. He affirmed that, on returning one night from the neighboring village of Sing Sing, he had been overtaken by this midnight trooper; that he had offered to race with him for a bowl of punch, and should 74have won it too, for Daredevil beat the goblin horse all hollow, but just as they came to the church bridge, the Hessian bolted, and vanished in a flash of fire.

All these tales, told in that drowsy undertone with which men talk in the dark, the countenances of the listeners only now and then receiving a casual gleam from the glare of a pipe, sank deep in the mind of Ichabod. He repaid them in kind with large extracts from his invaluable author, Cotton Mather, and added many marvelous events that had taken place in his native State of Connecticut, and fearful sights which he had seen in his nightly walks about Sleepy Hollow.

The revel now gradually broke up. The old farmers gathered together their families in their wagons, and were heard for some time rattling along the hollow roads, and over the distant hills. Some of the damsels mounted on pillions behind their favorite swains, and their light-hearted laughter, mingling with the clatter of hoofs, echoed along the silent woodlands, sounding fainter and fainter until they gradually died away—and the late scene of noise and frolic was all silent and deserted. Ichabod only lingered behind, according to the custom of country lovers, to have a tete-a-tete with the heiress, fully 75convinced that he was now on the high road to success.

Without looking to the right or left to notice the scene of rural wealth, on which he had so often gloated, he went straight to the stable, and with several hearty cuffs and kicks, roused his steed most uncourteously from the comfortable quarters in which he was soundly sleeping, dreaming of mountains of corn and oats, and whole valleys of timothy and clover.

It was the very witching time of night that Ichabod, heavy-hearted and crest-fallen, pursued his travel homewards, along the sides of the lofty hills which rise above Tarrytown, and which he had traversed so cheerily in the afternoon. The hour was as dismal as himself. Far below him, the Tappan Zee spread its dusky and indistinct waste of waters, with here and there the tall mast of a sloop, riding quietly at anchor under the land. In the dead hush of midnight, he could even hear the barking of the watchdog from the opposite shore of the Hudson; but it was so vague and faint as only to give an idea of his distance from this faithful companion of man. Now and then, too, the long-drawn crowing of a cock, accidentally awakened, would sound far, far off, from some farmhouse away among the hills—but it was like a dreaming sound in 76his ear. No signs of life occurred near him, but occasionally the melancholy chirp of a cricket, or perhaps the guttural twang of a bull-frog, from a neighboring marsh, as if sleeping uncomfortably, and turning suddenly in his bed.

All the stories of ghosts and goblins that he had heard in the afternoon, now came crowding upon his recollection. The night grew darker and darker; the stars seemed to sink deeper in the sky, and driving clouds occasionally hid them from his sight. He had never felt so lonely and dismal. He was, moreover, approaching the very place where many of the scenes of the ghost stories had been laid. In the centre of the road stood an enormous tulip tree, which towered like a giant above all the other trees of the neighborhood, and formed a kind of landmark. Its limbs were gnarled, and fantastic, large enough to form trunks for ordinary trees, twisting down almost to the earth, and rising again into the air. It was connected with the tragical story of the unfortunate Andre, who had been taken prisoner hard by; and was universally known by the name of Major Andre’s tree. The common people regarded it with mixture of respect and superstition, partly out of sympathy for the fate of its ill-starred namesake, 77and partly from the tales of strange sights and doleful lamentations told concerning it.

As Ichabod approached this fearful tree, he began to whistle: he thought his whistle was answered—it was but a blast sweeping sharply through the dry branches. As he approached a little nearer, he thought he saw something white, hanging in the midst of the tree—he paused and ceased whistling; but on looking more narrowly, perceived that it was a place where the tree had been scathed by lightning, and the white wood laid bare. Suddenly he heard a groan—his teeth chattered and his knees smote against the saddle: it was but the rubbing of one huge bough upon another, as they were swayed about by the breeze. He passed the tree in safety, but new perils lay before him.

The denouement and catastrophe are fully described on a following page (147) where Brom Bones threw the fatal pumpkin that eventful night.

Rip Van Winkle

Washington Irving now delights us with
his story of Rip Van Winkle

The following tale was found among the papers of the late Diedrich Knickerbocker, an old gentleman of New York, who was very curious in the Dutch history of the province, and the manners of the descendants from its primitive settlers. His historical researches, however, did not lie so much among books as among men; for the former are lamentably scanty on his favorite topics; whereas he found the old burgers, and still more their wives, rich in that legendary lore, so invaluable to true history. Whenever, therefore, he happened upon a genuine Dutch family, snugly shut up in its low-roofed farmhouse, under a spreading sycamore, he looked upon it as a little clasped volume of black letter, and studied it with the zeal of a bookworm.

The result of all these researches was a history of the province during the reign of 79the Dutch governors, which he published some years since. There have been various opinions as to the literary character of his work, and, to tell the truth, it is not a whit better than it should be. Its chief merit is its scrupulous accuracy, which indeed was a little questioned on its first appearance, but has since been completely established; and it is now admitted into all historical collections, as a book of unquestionable authority.

Whoever has made a voyage up the Hudson must remember the Kaatskill mountains. They are a dismembered branch of the great Appalachian family, and are seen away to the west of the river, swelling up to a noble height, and lording it over the surrounding country. Every change of season, every change of weather, indeed, every hour of the day, produces some change in the magical hues and shapes of these mountains, and they are regarded by all the good wives, far and near, as perfect barometers. When the weather is fair and settled, they are clothed in blue and purple, and print their bold outlines on the clear evening sky; but, sometimes, when the rest of the landscape is cloudless, they will gather a hood of gray vapors about their summits, which, in the last rays of the setting sun, will glow and light up like a crown of glory.

At the foot of these fairy mountains, the voyager may have descried the light smoke curling up from a village, whose shingle-roofs gleam among the trees, just where the blue tints of the upland melt away into the fresh green of the nearer landscape. It is a little village of great antiquity, having been founded by some of the Dutch colonists, in the early times of the province, just about the beginning of the government of the good Peter Stuyvesant (may he rest in peace!), and there were some of the houses of the original settlers standing within a few years, built of small yellow bricks brought from Holland, having latticed windows and gable fronts, surmounted with weathercocks.

In the same village, and in one of these very houses (which, to tell the precise truth was sadly time worn and weatherbeaten), there lived many years since, while the country was yet a province of Great Britain, a simple, good-natured fellow of the name of Rip Van Winkle. He was a descendant of the Van Winkles who figured so gallantly in the chivalrous days of Peter Stuyvesant, and accompanied him to the siege of Fort Christina. I have observed that he was a simple good-natured man; he was, moreover, a kind neighbor, and an obedient hen-pecked husband. 81Indeed, to the latter circumstance might be owing that meekness of spirit which gained him such universal popularity; for those men are most apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad, who are under the discipline of shrews at home. Their tempers, doubtless, are rendered pliant and malleable in the fiery furnace of domestic tribulation; and a curtain lecture is worth all the sermons in the world for teaching the virtues of patience and long-suffering. A termagant wife may, therefore, in some respects, be considered a tolerable blessing; and if so, Rip Van Winkle was thrice blessed.

Certain it is, that he was a great favorite among all the good wives of the village, who as usual, with the amiable sex, took his part in all family squabbles; and never failed, whenever they talked those matters over in their evening gossipings, to lay all the blame on Dame Van Winkle. The children of the village, too, would shout with joy whenever he approached. He assisted at their sports, made their playthings, taught them to fly kites and shoot marbles, and told them long stories of ghosts, witches, and Indians. Whenever he went dodging about the village, he was surrounded by a troop of them, hanging on his skirts, clambering on his back, and 82playing a thousand tricks on him with impunity; and not a dog would bark at him throughout the neighborhood.

The great error in Rip’s composition was an insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable labor. It could not be from the want of assiduity or perseverance; for he would sit on a wet rock, with rod as long and heavy as a Tartar’s lance, and fish all day without a murmur, even though he should not be encouraged by a single nibble. He would carry a fowling-piece on his shoulder for hours together, trudging through woods and swamps and up hill and down dale, to shoot a few squirrels or wild pigeons. He would never refuse to assist a neighbor even in the roughest toil, and was a foremost man at all country frolics for husking Indian corn, or building stone fences; the women of the village, too, used to employ him to run their errands, and to do such little odd jobs as their less obliging husbands would not do for them. In a word Rip was ready to attend to anybody’s business but his own; but as to doing family duty, and keeping his farm in order, he found it impossible.

In fact, he declared it was of no use to work on his farm; it was the most pestilent little piece of ground in the whole country; everything 83about it went wrong, and would go wrong, in spite of him. His fences were continually falling to pieces; his cow would either go astray or get among the cabbages; weeds were sure to grow quicker in his fields than anywhere else; the rain always made a point of setting in just as he had some outdoor work to do; so that though his patrimonial estate had dwindled away under his management, acre by acre, until there was little more left than a mere patch of Indian corn and potatoes, yet it was the worst conditioned farm in the neighborhood.

Rip Van Winkle, however, was one of those happy mortals, of foolish, well-oiled dispositions, who take the world easy, eat white bread or brown, whichever can be got with least thought or trouble, and would rather starve on a penny than work for a pound. If left to himself, he would have whistled life away in perfect contentment; but his wife kept continually dinning in his ears about his idleness, his carelessness, and the ruin he was bringing on his family. Morning, noon and night, her tongue was incessantly going, and everything he said or did was sure to produce a torrent of household eloquence. Rip had but one way of replying to all lectures of the kind, and that, by frequent use, had grown 84into a habit. He shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, cast up his eyes, but said nothing. This, however, always provoked a fresh volley from his wife; so that he was fain to draw off his forces, and take to the outside of the house—the only side which, in truth, belongs to a henpecked husband.

Rip’s sole domestic adherent was his dog, Wolf, who was as much henpecked as his master; for Dame Van Winkle regarded them as companions in idleness, and even looked upon Wolf with an evil eye, as the cause of his master’s going so often astray. True it is, in all points of spirit befitting an honorable dog, he was as courageous an animal as ever scoured the woods—but what courage can withstand the ever during and all-besetting terrors of a woman’s tongue? The moment Wolf entered the house his crest fell, his tail dropped to the ground, or curled between his legs, he sneaked about with a gallows air, casting many a sidelong glance at Dame Van Winkle, and at the least flourish of a broomstick or ladle, he would fly to the door with yelping precipitation.

Times grew worse and worse with Rip Van Winkle as years of matrimony rolled on; a tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows 85keener with constant use. For a long while he used to console himself, when driven from home, by frequenting a kind of perpetual club of the sages, philosophers, and other idle personages of the village; which held its sessions on a bench before a small inn, designated by a rubicund portrait of His Majesty George the Third. Here they used to sit in the shade through a long lazy summer’s day, talking listlessly over village gossip, or telling endless sleepy stories about nothing.

From even this stronghold the unlucky Rip was at length routed by his termagant wife, who would suddenly break in upon the tranquillity of the assemblage and call the members all to naught; nor was that august personage, Nicholas Vedder himself, sacred from the daring tongue of this terrible virago, who charged him outright with encouraging her husband in habits of idleness.

Poor Rip was at last reduced almost to despair; and his only alternative, to escape from the labor of the farm and clamor of his wife, was to take gun in hand and stroll away into the woods. Here he would sometimes seat himself at the foot of a tree, and share the contents of his wallet with Wolf, with whom he sympathized as a fellow-sufferer in persecution. “Poor Wolf,” he would say, “thy 86mistress leads thee a dog’s life of it; but never mind, my lad, whilst I live thou shalt never want a friend to stand by thee!” Wolf would wag his tail, look wistfully in his master’s face, and if dogs can feel pity I verily believe he reciprocated the sentiment with all his heart.

In a long ramble of the kind on a fine autumnal day, Rip had unconsciously scrambled to one of the highest parts of the Kaatskill mountains. He was after his favorite sport of squirrel shooting, and the still solitudes had echoed and re-echoed with the reports of his gun. Panting and fatigued, he threw himself, late in the afternoon, on a green knoll, covered with mountain herbage, that crowned the brow of a precipice. From an opening between the trees he could overlook all the lower country for many a mile of rich woodland. He saw at a distance the lordly Hudson, far, far below him, moving on its silent but majestic course, with the reflection of a purple cloud, or the sail of a lagging bark, here and there sleeping on its glassy bosom, and at last losing itself in the blue Highlands.

On the other side he looked down into a deep mountain glen, wild, lonely, and shagged, the bottom filled with fragments from the impending cliffs, and scarcely lighted by the reflected rays of the setting sun. For some 87time Rip lay musing on this scene; evening was gradually advancing; the mountains began to throw their long blue shadows over the valleys; he saw that it would be dark long before he could reach the village, and he heaved a heavy sign when he thought of encountering the terrors of Dame Van Winkle.

As he was about to descend, he heard a voice from a distance, hallooing, “Rip Van Winkle! Rip Van Winkle!” He looked round, but could see nothing but a crow winging its solitary flight across the mountain. He thought his fancy must have deceived him, and turned again to descend, when he heard the same cry ring through the still evening air: “Rip Van Winkle! Rip Van Winkle!”—at the same time Wolf bristled up his back, and giving a low growl, skulked to his master’s side, looking fearfully down into the glen. Rip now felt a vague apprehension stealing over him; he looked anxiously in the same direction, and perceived a strange figure slowly toiling up the rocks, and bending under the weight of something he carried on his back. He was surprised to see any human being in this lonely and unfrequented place, but supposing it to be some of the neighborhood in need of his assistance, he hastened down to yield it.

On nearer approach he was still more surprised at the singularity of the stranger’s appearance. He was a short, square-built old fellow, with thick bushy hair, and a grizzled beard. His dress was of the antique Dutch fashion—a cloth jerkin strapped round the waist—several pair of breeches, the outer one of ample volume, decorated with rows of buttons down the sides, and bunches at the knees. He bore on his shoulder a stout keg, that seemed full of liquor, and made signs for Rip to approach and assist him with the load. Though rather shy and distrustful of this new acquaintance, Rip complied with his usual alacrity; and mutually relieving one another, they clambered up a narrow gully, apparently the dry bed of a mountain torrent. As they ascended, Rip every now and then heard long rolling peals, like distant thunder, that seemed to issue out of a deep ravine, or rather cleft, between lofty rocks, toward which their rugged path conducted. He paused for an instant, but supposing it to be the muttering of one of those transient thunder-showers which often take place in mountain heights, he proceeded. Passing through the ravine, they came to a hollow, like a small amphitheatre, surrounded by perpendicular precipices, over the brinks of which impending 89trees shot their branches, so that you only caught glimpses of the azure sky and the bright evening cloud. During the whole time Rip and his companion had labored on in silence; for though the former marvelled greatly what could be the object of carrying a keg of liquor up this wild mountain, yet there was something strange and incomprehensible about the unknown, that inspired awe and checked familiarity.

On entering the amphitheatre, new objects of wonder presented themselves. On a level spot in the centre was a company of odd-looking personages playing at nine-pins. They were dressed in a quaint outlandish fashion; some wore short doublets, others jerkins, with long knives in their belts, and most of them had enormous breeches, of similar style with that of the guide’s. Their visages, too, were peculiar: one had a large beard, broad face, and small piggish eyes: the face of another seemed to consist entirely of nose, and was surmounted by a white sugarloaf hat set off with a little red cock’s tail. They all had beards, of various shapes and colors. There was one who seemed to be the commander. He was a stout old gentleman, with a weather-beaten countenance; he wore a laced doublet, broad belt and hanger, high-crowned hat 90and feather, red stockings, and high-heeled shoes, with roses in them. The whole group reminded Rip of the figures in an old Flemish painting, in the parlor of Dominie Van Shaick, the village parson, and which had been brought over from Holland at the time of the settlement.

What seemed particularly odd to Rip was, that though these folks were evidently amusing themselves, yet they maintained the gravest faces, the most mysterious silence, and were, withal, the most melancholy party of pleasure he had ever witnessed. Nothing interrupted the stillness of the scene but the noise of the balls, which, whenever they were rolled, echoed along the mountains like rumbling peals of thunder.

As Rip and his companion approached them they suddenly desisted from their play, and stared at him with such fixed statue-like gaze, and such a strange, uncouth, lack-lustre countenances, that his heart turned within him, and his knees smote together. His companion now emptied the contents of the keg into large flagons, and made signs to him to wait upon the company. He obeyed with fear and trembling; they quaffed the liquor in profound silence, and then returned to their game.

By degrees Rip’s awe and apprehension subsided. He even ventured, when no eye was fixed upon him, to taste the beverage, which he found had much of the flavor of excellent Hollands. He was naturally a thirsty soul, and was soon tempted to repeat the draught. One taste provoked another; and he reiterated his visits to the flagon so often that at length his senses were overpowered, his eyes swam in his head, his head gradually declined, and he fell into a deep sleep.

On waking, he found himself on the green knoll when he had first seen the old man of the glen. He rubbed his eyes—it was a bright sunny morning. The birds were hopping and twittering among the bushes, and the eagle was wheeling aloft, and breasting the pure mountain breeze. “Surely,” thought Rip, “I have not slept here all night.” He recalled the occurrences before he fell asleep. The strange man with a keg of liquor—the mountain ravine—the wild retreat among the rocks—the woe-begone party at nine-pins—the flagon—“Oh! that flagon! that wicked flagon!” thought Rip—“what excuse shall I make to Dame Van Winkle!”

He looked round for his gun, but in place of the clean well-oiled fowling-piece, he found an old firelock lying by him, the barrel 92encrusted with rust, the lock falling off, and the stock worm-eaten. He now suspected that the grave roysters of the mountain had put a trick upon him, and, having dosed him with liquor, had robbed him of his gun. Wolf, too, had disappeared, but he might have strayed away after a squirrel or partridge. He whistled after him and shouted his name, but all in vain; the echoes repeated his whistle and shout, but no dog was to be seen.

He determined to revisit the scene of the last evening’s gambol, and if he met with any of the party, to demand his dog and gun. As he rose to walk, he found himself stiff in the joints, and wanting in his usual activity. “These mountain beds do not agree with me,” thought Rip, “and if this frolic should lay me up with a fit of the rheumatism, I shall have a blessed time with Dame Van Winkle.” With some difficulty he got down into the glen: he found the gully up which he and his companion had ascended the preceding evening; but to his astonishment a mountain stream was now foaming down it, leaping from rock to rock, and filling the glen with babbling murmurs. He, however, made shift to scramble up its sides, working his toilsome way through thickets of birch, sassafras, and witch hazel, and sometimes tripped up or entangled 93by the wild grapevines that twisted their coils or tendrils from tree to tree, and spread a kind of network in his path.

At length he reached to where the ravine had opened through the cliffs to the amphitheatre; but no traces of such opening remained. The rocks presented a high impenetrable wall over which the torrent came tumbling in a sheet of feathery foam, and fell into a broad deep basin, black from the shadows 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 passing away, and Rip felt famished for want of his breakfast. He grieved to give up his dog and gun; he dreaded to meet his wife; but it would not do to starve among the mountains. He shook his head, shouldered the rusty firelock, and, with a heart full of trouble and anxiety, turned his steps homeward.

As he approached the village he met a number of people, but none whom he knew, which somewhat surprised him, for he thought himself 94acquainted 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 induced 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—everything 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 95and 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 approached 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 apparently abandoned. This desolateness overcame 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, 96“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 sceptre, the head was decorated with a cocked hat, and underneath was painted in large characters, 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 speeches; or Van Brummel, the schoolmaster, doling forth the contents of an ancient newspaper. In place of these, a lean, bilious-looking fellow, 97with his pockets full of handbills, was haranguing vehemently about rights of citizens—elections—members of congress—liberty—Bunker’s Hill—heroes of seventy-six—and other words, which were a perfect Babylonish jargon to the bewildered Van Winkle.

The appearance of Rip, with his long grizzled 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 curiosity. The orator bustled up to him, and drawing him partly aside, inquired “on which side he voted?” Rip stared in vacant stupidity. 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 resting 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, 98and a mob at his heels, and whether he meant to breed a riot in the village?”—“Alas! gentlemen,” 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 bystanders—“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 assumed 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 inquired, “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 beginning of the war; some say he was killed at the 99storming 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 finding 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 counterpart of himself, as he went up the mountain apparently as lazy, and certainly as ragged. The poor fellow was now completely confounded. 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, and what was his name?

“God knows,” exclaimed he, at his wits’ 100end; “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-important 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 101been 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 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, tottering 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 102self-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 general shaking of the head throughout the assemblage.

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 inhabitant 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 satisfactory manner. He assured the company that it was a fact, handed down from his ancestor the historian, that the Kaatskill mountains had always been haunted by strange beings. 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 guardian eye upon the river, and the great city called by his name. That his father had once seen them in their old Dutch dresses 103playing at nine-pins in a hollow of the mountains; and that he himself had heard, one summer 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 village, and a chronicle of the old times “before the war.” It was some time before he could 104get 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 country 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 whenever 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 related, and not a man, woman, or child in the neighborhood, but knew it by heart. Some 105always 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 always remained flighty. The old Dutch inhabitants, 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 incredible to many, but nevertheless I give it my full belief, for I know the vicinity of our old Dutch settlements to have been very subject 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 perfectly 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 106with 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 Indians considered them the abode of spirits, who influenced the weather, spreading sunshine or clouds over the landscape, and sending 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, causing the grass to spring, the fruits to ripen, and the corn to grow an inch an hour. If displeased, 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!

107

In old times, say the Indian traditions, there was a kind of Manitou or Spirit, who kept about the wildest recesses of the Catskill mountains, and took a mischievous pleasure in wreaking all kinds of evils and vexations 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 loneliest part of the mountains, and from the flowering 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, penetrated 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 108it; 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.

117

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 services of our sweetest writer—the best representative 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 development of the writer and the man.

118

“Knickerbocker,” his earliest work, written 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 Dickens, 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 purchased from the wife of a needy artist by a second-class publishing house in London; and the idea of “Knickerbocker” at first was simply to parody a small hand-book which had recently appeared, entitled “A Picture of New York.” Following this plan, a humorous 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-historian 119we have the representative of a race whose customs were fast passing away, and the serio-comic nature of the work is intensified, and as it were italicized, at the very outset by notices in the New York Evening Post and other journals calling attention to the mysterious disappearance of Diedrich Knickerbocker.

Never was any volume more happily introduced. 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 Congressman of Schaghticoke. We become interested in the mystery that surrounds him; in fact, the great charm of the book is in the semi-reality, or assumed personality, of Deidrich 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 reader: in the great satire of Cervantes there is an element of sadness. We see a crazed old gentleman going out in quest of adventures 120exciting our pity, almost excusing the paradox 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 sympathy. 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 “Knickerbocker”—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 explained to the early members of the New York Historical Society—to whom, by the way, the volume was first dedicated—the following paragraph might have been omitted from our Colonial History: “It is the misfortune 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 121most 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 ridicule from the same quarter.” Some of the old Holland families are also reported to have taken the work in high dudgeon as a rash invasion 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, proposed 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 prefatory 122article 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 recommended for popular acceptance, such as Knickerbocker societies, Knickerbocker insurance companies, Knickerbocker steamboats, Knickerbocker omnibuses, Knickerbocker’s bread, and Knickerbocker ice; and when I find New Yorkers of Dutch descent priding themselves upon being genuine Knickerbockers—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 characteristics 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, Knickerbocker’s history will still be received with good-humored intelligence, and be thumbed 123and 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 golden age of poetry, with “an antiquity extending back into the regions of doubt and fable,” and it is safe to say that the streams of Scotland 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 reception, and the success of “Knickerbocker;” but I cannot refrain, in passing, 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 burgomasters, 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 124thing. So invincible was his gravity that he was never known either to laugh or to smile through the whole course of a long and prosperous 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 unfurrowed by any of those lines or angles which disfigure 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 convenient 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 125was a boy that the lady of Wouter Van Twiller once had occasion to empty her right pocket in search of a wooden ladle, when the contents filled a couple of corn baskets, and the utensil was discovered lying among some rubbish in one corner, but we must not give too much faith to all these stories, the anecdotes of remote periods being very subject to exaggeration.”

I pass over the tea parties and parlor gatherings, the dress and manners, his chapters of philosophy and those “happy days of primeval simplicity when there were neither public commotions nor private quarrels, neither parties nor sects nor schisms, neither persecutions 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 concerns 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 introduced the art of fighting by proclamation the inroads of the Yankees with their witchcraft—their inventions, their schoolmasters, and wandering propensities—who “required only an inch to gain an ell, or a halter to gain 126a horse; who from the time they first gained a foothold on Plymouth Rock began to migrate, progressing and progressing from place to place, making a little here and a little there, and controverting the old proverb that a rolling stone gathers no moss. Hence they have facetiously received the nickname of the Pilgrims,—that is to say, a people who are always 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 resembling the style of Dean Swift as the ‘Annals 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 127sore with laughing. I think, too, there are passages which indicate that the author possesses 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 essays of character and sentiment, English pictures and American legends. As representatives 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 qualities 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:

128

“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 sentiment 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 nothing 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 master. He learned that skill in the school of early disappointment.” And in the following passage we seem to hear its sad but sweet vibration still responding through ten years of sorrow 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 129between 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 Missilonghi 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 never 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 Letters,” “Nothing could have been finer than such a compliment from such a source, but the ‘accost’ was so abrupt and the manner so peculiar that our modest writer was completely disconcerted.” Some time afterward, after the appearance 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 130taught me first to weep,” as he called up his first visit to London, fifteen years before the “Sketch-Book” was written and the then wonderful power of this actress without a rival.

Kindred to this essay which we have just considered, 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 accomplished 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 misfortune, 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 131adversity. No man knows what the wife of his bosom is; no man knows what a ministering angel she is, until he has gone with her through the fiery trials of this world.” What a beautiful 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 dependent and ornament of man in his happier hours, should be his stay and solace when smitten by sudden calamity, winding herself into the rugged recesses of his nature, tenderly supporting 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 saying that General Morris requested permission to publish his story of “The Wife” in a periodical 132of which he was proprietor, and Irving facetiously responded, “Give my regards to General Morris, and tell him he is quite welcome 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 affections of the heart. It is neither to be chilled by selfishness, nor daunted by danger, nor weakened by worthlessness, nor stifled by ingratitude. She will sacrifice every comfort to his convenience; she will surrender every pleasure 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 133beside 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 mourning for her only son—a black ribbon or so, a faded black handkerchief—showing the struggle 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 pictures, but not in character; for the principal element in that happy compound—a genuine man or woman—is cheerfulness, and disposition naturally gloomy and foreboding is rarely ever so thoroughly irradiated, even by the light of heaven, that we are not chilled by contact. 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, 134full 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 composition 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 awaking 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 135the 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 pastoral 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 minutest 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 fragrance could not exhale from the humble violet, nor a daisy unfold its crimson tints to the morning, but it has been noticed by these impassioned 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 essays; 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 sincerity. And it is indeed pleasant in days, when flippant writing is often received for wit 136and misspelled slang accepted for originality to turn to these essays in which we see the nobility 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 invention 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 same 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 took my pocket edition of the “Sketch Book,”—to Stratford-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 Stratford, but Irving’s description supersedes them all. It seems as if the quiet and pensive character 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 lapse of three centuries, had associated in enduring framework and sweet companionship the living presence of our gentlest writer. What a wonderful blending of the old and the new! 137Two 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 telegraph. The single newspaper of Queen Elizabeth 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 Bermudas, 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 Hathaway’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 138Dream” 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 surrounded 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 139stream 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 twilight, 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 mythology 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 Hildebrand, 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 140blossomed 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 adventure 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 141than 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 mountain, apparently as lazy and certainly as ragged. The poor fellow was now completely confounded. He doubted his own identity, and whether he was himself—or another man. In the midst of his bewilderment it was again demanded what was his name. “God knows!” exclaimed he, at his wits’ end. “I’m not myself. I’m some one 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 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 Gardenier.” 142“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 question 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 England 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 intense 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 perhaps 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 143marks the spot where Major Andre was captured, erected in 1853 by the county of Westchester to the memory of the brave men who could 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 144Tarrytown seems to partake of the drowsy, dreamy influence that pervades the very atmosphere. 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 pleased, adding a sage and sensible observation fully appreciated by each generation and which may some day be endorsed by colleges and institutions of learning, that “ducks and geese are foolish things and must be looked after, but girls can take care of themselves.” We are introduced to Ichabod Crane, the Yankee schoolmaster of the neighborhood, and Brom Bones, his dangerous rival for the hand and fortune of Katrina. They meet at a quilting-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.

145

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 never 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 affrighted 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 middle 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 endeavored to sing a psalm-tune, but his parched tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. There 146was something in the silence of his strange companion at once mysterious and appalling. It was soon fearfully accounted for. On mounting a rising ground, which brought the figure of his fellow-traveller in relief against the sky, gigantic in height and muffled in a cloak, Ichabod was horror-struck on perceiving that he was headless, but his horror was still more increased on observing that the head, which should have rested on his shoulders, was carried 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 147his 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 deeply 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 beside 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 Alloway 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 touches of humor and gentleness of spirit they are entirely consistent with the old gentleman’s character. The wit and humor are always 148kindly, and these qualities find happy illustration 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 compliment 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 Irving’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 unpacked every quality of his style. We find Bracebridge Hall outlined in his “Christmas Sketches,” the spirit of the Alhambra in “Westminster 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 Longfellow, in an address before the Massachusetts 149Historical 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 Washington 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 it, and whenever I open its pages, I open also that 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 proprietor, 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 content 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 150thoroughly 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

151

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 publication, we have the “Tales of a Traveller,” to my mind the most unanchored of Irving’s writings, 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 censure 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 domain 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 Review: “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 152makes this the more gratifying is that the other medal is voted to Hallam, author of the ‘Middle 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 Washington Irving.

“The Chronicles of Granada,” his next volume, 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 introduction 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, “Abbottsford” and “Newstead Abbey.” Then follow the Spanish Legends, “Astoria” and the “Adventures of Captain Bonneville.” The “Life 153of Goldsmith” comes next in order—a labor of sympathy and love. The “Life of Mahomet” shows his passion for Oriental history. “Wolfert 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 picturesque and varied essays are the natural product 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 romance 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, 154in 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 parish 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 letters bear date Philadelphia; in May, Fredericksburgh; 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 155York in those primitive times when our traveller “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 brother’s fortune and his own; and at the age of thirty-five Irving went up to London to commence life anew.

It seems as if the success of every man is in part the transcript of the same story that Genius 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 156this 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 algebraic symbols x × y—unknown quantities in the unworked problem of life. Mere education may be furnished by teacher, parent, or guardian, 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 result 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 darkest hour of adversity, when urged by his brothers 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 reply, “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 157own 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 steamboat enterprise with a rashness worthy of Colonel Sellers in the “Gilded Age” of Mark Twain. We next see him at Leyden, 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 Blenheim; then through Moravia and Bohemia to Dresden, where he remains six months tossed about, as he expresses it, on the stream of society; 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 158Morenas, well known today through the illustrations of Doré, and rounds out the year in Spain with an Oriental dream of ten weeks in the palace of the Alhambra. Diedrich Knickerbocker in the romantic land of Cervantes, with a sovereignty as absolute as Sancho Panza’s firmly established on the throne of Boabdil!

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 degree of LL.D., almost overwhelmed by the acclamations of the students and cries of Ichabod Crane, Rip Van Winkle, Diedrich Knickerbocker, 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 surviving oaks of Sherwood Forest. We see him travelling with Martin Van Buren, on a Christmas 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 countrymen.”

At the solicitation of his friends, he receives a public banquet in his native city, presided 159over 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 section 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 happily 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—from Abbottsford, the land of his fathers, transplanted by Mrs. Renwick, the “Blued-eyed Lassie” of Robert Burns; and stranger still that this wanderer of the family should associate this device 160with 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 Secretary 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 accepts the appointment of minister to Spain. He spends four years at Madrid in the midst of revolution and insurrection; is summoned to London to assist in the settlement of the Oregon 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 Washington, 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 accurately 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. Lawrence 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, 161presenting a contrast almost as effective and dramatic as the long absence of his sleeping hero. It seemed necessary and fitting for the traveller 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 Ogdensburg. 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 bustling landing-place for steamers. There were 162still some rocks where I used to sit of an evening and accompany with my flute one of the ladies who sang. I sat for a long time summoning recollections of by-gone days and of the happy beings by whom I was then surrounded. 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 mischance, 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 existence, 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 century to the memory and traces of his early life seems indeed like the fulfilment of Tennyson’s dream in the “Sleeping Beauty,” and we wonder 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 163to 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 Abbey, 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 Hollow,” 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 quietest 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 Irvington and Tarrytown among scenes which had found new 164charm 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 kindred 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 gentle as the spring-time, and the broad river, every point of which is punctuated with exclamations 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.”

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Along the Hudson with Washington Irving

ALONG
THE HUDSON
WITH
WASHINGTON
IRVING

A World-wide Welcome