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.

There can be little doubt that, under the guidance of this lively companion, Washington Irving became familiar with what in the literary jargon of to-day is called local colour, used afterwards so lavishly upon the canvas whereon Ichabod and Katrina and Brom the Devil are painted with a master hand. We may suppose that the seed which was to come to fruition in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow was planted in those youthful days and germinated during the twenty years' interval. The vivid impressions made by new and picturesque surroundings upon the impressionable mind of the lad of fifteen years of age

244 The Hudson River

were destined to affect the life and the fame of an American author in whose work, perhaps, as much as in that of any other, there is evidence of permanency. By his own confession, Irving was but an indifferent sportsman. His nephew teUs us that he explored the recesses of Sleepy Hollow with a gun in 1798, but we know that the best spoils of those expeditions were not to be found in his game-bag. Clarence Cook, writing, in 1887, of his school days at Tarry town, more than half a century ago, gives a pleasing picture not only of the place that still retained enough of simplicity to stamp its image upon his memory " as a sleepy neighbourhood, where dreaming was more the fashion than doing," but of its historic and legendary associations.