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The Legend of Sleepy Hollow: Irving

The old country wives, however, maintain to this day that Ichabod was spirited away by the headless horseman. And many gruesome tales of the pedagogue's fate are still told round the wintry firesides of Sleepy Hollow. COOPER HARDLY had Washington Irving begun the career with his "Knickerbocker History" and "The Sketch-Book" which made him the first American man of letters to achieve an international reputation when he was joined in that pleasant eminence by James Fenimore Cooper.

Irving wrote on the traditional lines of English literature. Cooper found something new. He presented the recent but romantic past of his own country on land and sea, and he introduced to the world the figure of the noble red man, with the glamour of mystery which the unknown always adds to romance. He is much more read to-day than Irving; his hold in foreign lands is particularly strong, probably due to the fact that his style could only be improved by translation. The thrill that comes from a wholesome story of adventure has a lure for all humanity, as have brave deeds of derring-do. The thirteen-year-old Yale freshman (who never got his degree) is known to thousands who have never heard of his great president, Timothy Dwight. "The Spy," "The Pilot," "The Last of the Mohicans," "The Two Admirals," "The Pioneers," "The Prairie," "The Red Rover," "The Pathfinder," are some of his books most familiar, but every one has his own particular taste in adventure. Bon voyage to the young in heart who have yet to meet James Fenimore Cooper.