Imagine for yourself the astonishment, and then the amusement—­in some cases even the anger—­of those who read, to find a most ludicrous description of the old Dutch settlers of New York, the ancestors of the most aristocratic families of the metropolis of America.  The people that laughed got the best of it, however, and the book was considered one of the popular successes of the day.  The real author of this book was, of course, Washington Irving.  When forty years later the book was to be included in his collected works he wrote an “Apology,” in which he says, “When I find, after a lapse of nearly forty years, this haphazard production of my youth still cherished among them (the New Yorkers); when I find its very name become a ‘household word,’ and used to give the home stamp to everything recommended for popular acceptance, such as Knickerbocker societies, Knickerbocker insurance companies, Knickerbocker steamboats, Knickerbocker omnibuses, Knickerbocker bread, and Knickerbocker ice,—­and when I find New Yorkers of Dutch descent priding themselves upon being ‘genuine Knickerbockers,’ I please myself with the persuasion that I have struck the right chord.”

CHAPTER VII

A COMIC HISTORY OF NEW YORK

“Knickerbocker’s History of New York” was undertaken by Irving and his brother Peter as a parody on a book that had lately appeared, entitled “A Picture of New York.”  The two young men, one of whom had already proved himself something of an author, were so full of humor and the spirit of mischief that they must amuse themselves and their friends, and they thought this a good way of doing it.  There was to be an introduction giving the history of New York from the foundation of the world, and the main body of the book was to consist of “notices of the customs, manners, and institutions of the city; written in a serio-comic vein, and treating local errors, follies, and abuses with good-humored satire.”

The introduction was not more than fairly begun when Peter Irving started for Europe, leaving the completion of the work to the younger brother.  Washington decided to change the plan, and merely give a humorous history of the Dutch settlement of New York.

Let us take a peep into this amusing history.  First, here is the portrait of “that worthy and irrecoverable discoverer (as he has justly been called), Master Henry Hudson,” who “set sail from Holland in a stout vessel called the Half-Moon, being employed by the Dutch East India Company to seek a northwest passage to China.”

“Henry (or as the Dutch historians call him, Hendrick) Hudson was a seafaring man of renown, who had learned to smoke tobacco under Sir Walter Raleigh, and is said to have been the first to introduce it into Holland, which gained him much popularity in that country, and caused him to find great favor in the eyes of their High Mightinesses, the Lords States General, and also of the honorable East India Company.  He was a short, square, brawny old gentleman, with a double chin, a mastiff mouth, and a broad copper nose, which was supposed in those days to have acquired its fiery hue from the constant neighborhood of his tobacco pipe.