Silent was the sonorous harmony of the big spinning wheel, silent the village song, and silent the fiddle of Master Timothy Canty, who passed his livelong time in playing tuneful measures and catching bugs and butterflies.

It may not be out of place to let the careful Duyckinck supply the grain of salt with which he warns us that Paulding should be enjoyed: In almost all the writings of Paulding there is occasionally infused a dash of his peculiar vein of humorous satire and keen sarcastic irony. . . . It is sometimes somewhat difficult to decide when he is jesting and when he is in earnest. This is on

& In the Land of Irvine: 243

the whole a great disadvantage in an age when irony is seldom resorted to.

With this timely caution ])Osted in the path of Hterature, we must be dull indeed if we do not suspect that perhaps the voice of the Rev. Mathias did not reach altogether across the river, -- let us say half-way over -- or that the wrestling for gin-slings was overestimated. But must we give up Tim Canty bodily? That would be almost as hard as to admit that Ichabod Crane had no actual prototype. Around his garret were disposed a number of unframed pictures, painted on glass, as in the olden time, representing the four seasons, the old King of Prussia, and Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, . . . the beautiful Constantia Phillips, and divers others. . . . The whole village poured into the garret to gaze at these cltcfs d\vitvrcs, and it is my confirmed opinion . that neither the gallery of Florence, Dresden, nor the Louvre was ever visited bv so many real amateurs.