Wolfert's Roost, and MiscellaniesIrving, Washington
General
Wolfert's Roost, and Miscellanies
Irving, Washington
American essays; Short stories, American
Does any one want further particulars of the fortunes of this eventful
little pile? Let him go to the fountain-head, and drink deep of historic
truth. Reader! the stout Jacob Van Tassel still lives, a venerable,
gray-headed patriarch of the revolution, now in his ninety-fifth year!
He sits by his fireside, in the ancient city of the Manhattoes, and
passes the long winter evenings, surrounded by his children, and
grand-children, and great-grand-children, all listening to his tales of
the border wars, and the heroic days of the Roost. His great goose-gun,
too, is still in existence, having been preserved for many years in a
hollow tree, and passed from hand to hand among the Dutch burghers, as a
precious relique of the revolution. It is now actually in possession of
a contemporary of the stout Jacob, one almost his equal in years, who
treasures it up at his house in the Bowerie of New-Amsterdam, hard by
the ancient rural retreat of the chivalric Peter Stuyvesant. I am not
without hopes of one day seeing this formidable piece of ordinance
restored to its proper station in the arsenal of the Roost. Before
closing this historic document, I cannot but advert to certain notions
and traditions concerning the venerable pile in question. Old-time
edifices are apt to gather odd fancies and superstitions about them, as
they do moss and weather-stains; and this is in a neighborhood a little
given to old-fashioned notions, and who look upon the Roost as somewhat
of a fated mansion. A lonely, rambling, down-hill lane leads to it,
overhung with trees, with a wild brook dashing along, and crossing
and re-crossing it. This lane I found some of the good people of the
neighborhood shy of treading at night; why, I could not for a long time
ascertain; until I learned that one or two of the rovers of the Tappan
Sea, shot by the stout Jacob during the war, had been buried hereabout,
in unconsecrated ground.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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