[Illustration: THE JACOB MOTT HOUSE WHERE KATRINA VAN TASSEL WAS MARRIED. NOW OCCUPIED BY THE NEW WASHINGTON IRVING HIGH SCHOOL. FROM A DRAWING BY EDGAR MAHEW BACON.] Irving’s familiarity with the Hudson River and its historical associations had already borne fruit in the _Sketch-Book_ in two original and characteristic legends. Like his illustrious contemporary, Sir Walter Scott, Irving was a born lover of traditions of all sorts; a man with a genius for getting the poetry and romance out of the past. In _The History of New York_, impersonated in Diedrich Knickerbocker, he created a legend; in _Rip Van Winkle_ and _The Legend of Sleepy Hollow_ he gave lasting fame to two stories full of the Dutch spirit. Sleepy Hollow lies to the north and east of Tarrytown, within easy walking distance. It is still secluded and quiet and the stir of modern times has not broken in upon its ancient seclusion. [Illustration: OLD SLEEPY HOLLOW MILL.] “A small brook glides through it, with just murmur enough to lull one to repose; 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.... 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, the 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 dream.” Since the days when these words were written the air of Sleepy Hollow has not escaped the general stirring of a more hurried age; but on summer afternoons the meditative visitor still finds the valley a place of silence and peace. The master of the spell which has brought so many pilgrims to Tarrytown sleeps in the ancient graveyard; the home which he loved with a love deepened by years of exile, still stands, somewhat enlarged, but not despoiled of its secluded and ivy-clad loveliness. Great estates have been formed about Tarrytown and stately homes line the shores of the river, but the place has kept something of its old simplicity and repose. It has never lacked the presence of those to whom its traditions of refined social habit and generous intellectual life have been sacred; and its distinction is still to be found in an atmosphere which is in no sense dependent on its later and larger prosperity. [Illustration] NEW YORK CITY THE COSMOPOLITAN CITY BY JOSEPH B. GILDER