Irving made good dramatic use of this tree in his Legend of Sleepy Hollozu, but it is likelv enough he had not seen it when he wrote the story. . . . While I was at school at Tarry town, Mr. Irving was Hving on his little Sabine farm of Wolfert's Roost, which afterward was so widely known as Sunny side. The place, which originally contained ten acres, afterward increased first to fifteen and finally

In the Land of Irving 245 to eighteen acres, lay on the river-bank a few miles below the village, in a neighbourhood vaguely known as " Dearman's." There was no distinct settlement at this point in my time, but in 1854, the place, having secreted enough population to warrant it, was set off from Tarrytown and incorporated as a village, to which, out of compliment to Mr. Irving, the name of Irvington was given. . . . Mr. Irving had never been a man of means, and at the time I speak of his early fame as a writer had almost died away. Had I been at school in any other place than Tarrytown, I suspect I should have heard very little about him. But our schoolmaster had named his school the Irving Institute, and had persuaded Mr. Irving, out of his abounding good nature and hking for young folks, to visit the school occasionally at "commencement" time and give out the prizes. This, of course, made it necessary to keep us acquainted with Irving's writings, and there were some of us who found this no ungrateful task. TJic History of Xcw York and The Sketch Book we knew by heart. Mr. Irving first heard the story of the headless horseman from his brother-in-law, Mr. Van Wart, in Birmingham, at the time of his visit to England in 1819.