These were not equaled
by Addison, and they have not been surpassed by any English writers of the
nineteenth century. Both stories take their rise from the "Knickerbocker
Legend," and they are thoroughly American in coloring and flavor, even if
they did happen to be written in England. No story in our literature is
better known than that of Rip Van Winkle watching Hendrick Hudson and his
ghostly crew playing ninepins in the Catskill Mountains and quaffing the
magic liquor which caused him to sleep for twenty years.
[Illustration: ICHABOD CRANE]
For nearly one hundred years Ichabod Crane's courtship of Katrina Van
Tassel, in _The Legend of Sleepy Hollow_, has continued to amuse its
readers. The Indian summer haze is still resting on Sleepy Hollow, our
American Utopia, where we can hear the quail whistling, see the brook
bubbling along among alders and dwarf willows, over which amber clouds
float forever in the sky; where the fragrant buckwheat fields breathe the
odor of the beehive; where the slapjacks are "well buttered and garnished
with honey or treacle, by the delicate little dimpled hand of Katrina Van
Tassel," where a greeting awaits us from the sucking pigs already roasted
and stuffed with pudding; where the very tea tables of the Dutch housewives
welcome us with loads of crisp crumbling crullers, honey cakes, and "the
whole family of cakes," surrounded by pies, preserves, roast chicken, bowls
of cream, all invested with a halo from the spout of the motherly Dutch
teapot.
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