. Backgrounds of literature. ousness of stream and landscape the hum andstir are resolved into all-embracing silence, andthe quietness of Sleepy Hollow bK)ods overwooded shores, distant hills, and flowing water. The acquaintance with the Hudson madewhen Irving was a boy was renewed and deep-ened when he finally returned from Europe in1832, after an absence of seventeen years. NewYork had grown into what seemed to him a vastcity; a few years later he described it in a letterto a friend as a great crowded metropolis . .full of life, bustle, noise, show, and splendor,.. .one of the most racketing
. Backgrounds of literature. ousness of stream and landscape the hum andstir are resolved into all-embracing silence, andthe quietness of Sleepy Hollow bK)ods overwooded shores, distant hills, and flowing water. The acquaintance with the Hudson madewhen Irving was a boy was renewed and deep-ened when he finally returned from Europe in1832, after an absence of seventeen years. NewYork had grown into what seemed to him a vastcity; a few years later he described it in a letterto a friend as a great crowded metropolis . .full of life, bustle, noise, show, and splendor,.. .one of the most racketing cities in the wonders what he would think of the roar-ing vortex of life which the slow little town ofthe forties, when this description was written,has become in these times of rebuilding on ascale which would have appalled the magiciansof The Arabian Nights. Sunnyside was already old when he made ita retreat from the tumult of the city and beganthe process of enlargement which has adapted 126 3 ) n ft) 3. WASHINGTON IRVING COUNTRY the ancient house to modern needs without sacri-ficing its old-time charm. My own place hasnever been so beautiful as at present, he wroteyears later. I have made more openings bypruning and cutting down trees, so that fromthe piazza I have several charming views of theTappan Zee and the hills beyond, all set, as itwere, in verdant frames; and I am never tiredof sitting there in my old Voltaire chair, of along summer morning, with a book in my hand,sometimes reading, sometimes musing, andsometimes dozing, and mixing up all in a plea-sant dream. A beautiful picture, surely, ofthe old age of a man of letters who continuedthe tradition of the ripeness of spirit, the medi-tative temper, geniality, and humor, which hasnever lapsed among the English-speakingpeoples. In those years when the Albany stages weremaking their last trips and the mild thunder ofthe first railroad trains began to wake the echoesof the Highlands and disturb the slu
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectauthors, bookyear1903
