The book was read with amazement, admiration, or interest, as the case might be. Some said it appeared too light and amusing for real history; others claimed that it held stories of wisdom that only the wise could understand; others still complained that the author was no doubt making fun of their respectable ancestors, and had written the book merely to hold them up to ridicule. Only a few saw that it was the brightest, cleverest piece of humor that had yet appeared in America, and that its writer had probably a career of fame before him. The author was Washington Irving, then a young man in his twenty-seventh year, and already known as the writer of some clever newspaper letters, and of a series of humorous essays published in a semimonthly periodical called _Salmagundi_. Irving was born in New York on the 3d of April, 1783, and was named after George Washington. New York was then a small town, beyond the limits of which were orchards, farms, country-houses, and the high-road leading to Albany, along which the stage-coach passed at regular times. There were no railroads, and Irving was fourteen years old before the first steamboat puffed its way up the Hudson River frightening the country people into the belief that it was an evil monster come to devour them. All travelling was done by means of sailing vessels, stage-coaches, or private conveyances; all letters were carried by the stage-coach, and every one cost the sender or receiver twenty-five cents for postage. The telegraph was undreamed of, and if any one had hinted the possibility of talking to some one else a thousand miles away over a telephone-wire, he would have been considered a lunatic or, possibly, a witch. In fact, New York was a quiet, unpretentious little town whose inhabitants were still divided into English or Dutch families, according to their descent, and in whose households were found the customs of England and Holland in full force. Irving's father was a Scotch Presbyterian, who considered life a discipline, who thought all amusement a waste of precious time, and who made the children devote one out of the two half-weekly holidays to the study of the Catechism. [Illustration: IRVING AS A STAR.]