Irving's personality won him friends wherever he went. He was genial and
kindly, and his biographer adds that it was never Irving's habit to stroke
the world the wrong way. One of his maxims was, "When I cannot get a dinner
to suit my taste, I endeavor to get a taste to suit my dinner."
[Illustration: SUNNYSIDE, IRVING'S HOME AT TARRYTOWN]
KNICKERBOCKER'S HISTORY OF NEW YORK.--The New York _Evening Post_ for
December 28, 1809, said: "This work was found in the chamber of Mr.
Diedrich Knickerbocker, the old gentleman whose sudden and mysterious
disappearance has been noticed. It is published in order to discharge
certain debts he has left behind." This disguise, however, was too thin to
deceive the public, and the work was soon popularly called Irving's
_Knickerbocker's History of New York_.
Two hundred years before its publication, Hendrick Hudson, an explorer in
the service of Holland, had sailed into New York Bay and discovered
Manhattan Island and the Hudson River for the Dutch. They founded the city
of New Amsterdam and held it until the English captured it in 1664. Irving
wrote the history of this settlement during the Dutch occupation.
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