60 Washington Irving.
are those living who have often heard him describe his early visits here, and the excursions which he made into the surrounding country. One of his favorite pastimes, as he has himself told us, was to wander away with his gun or rod into the quiet recesses of Sleepy Hollow, following the Pocantico where it " winds its wizard stream, sometimes silently and darkly through solemn woodlands, sometimes sparkling between grassy borders, in fresh green meadows ; sometimes stealing along rugged heights, under the balancing sprays of beach and chest-
nut trees." Again he would take a boat and paddle or float leisurely along down the river, sometimes stopping to make a brief predatory excursion into some tempting orchard on the bank, but finally, almost invariably landing in the little cove which then indented the shore
just below Wolfert's Roost. Irving's purchase of the Roost, many years afterwards, is one of the rare instances of the realization of the dreams of youth, for it was during these boyhood rambles that the desire to own this beautiful spot as his home first occurred to him.
The old house which Irving described as the home of Baltas Van Tassel, where lived the blooming, rosy-cheeked Katrina, is still standing on the street which leads out of the village towards Sleepy Hollow.
A little farther up this same street we find the monument erected to commemorate the capture of Major Andre. A bronze statue of Paulding, of heroic size, surmounts the granite shaft. The pose of the figure is graceful, and represents the leader of Andrews captors as
standing in an expectant attitude, looking up the road along which on that fateful morning the brave but unfortunate young officer approached the place of his capture. He stopped beneath the shade of an old tulip-tree to allow his horse to drink from the little brook
which runs down the ravine towards the Hudson. His captors stepped from their place of concealment a few feet away, and his doom was sealed by the discovery of the papers which showed him to be a spy acting in conjunction with the traitor Arnold. The old tulip-tree beneath which he was arrested was destroyed by lightning
