.. I know not whether it is owing to the tenderness of
early association, but this portion of New York appears to
many persons the most delectable. It has a kind of
established repose which is not of frequent occurrence in
other quarters of the long, shrill city; it has a riper,
richer, more honourable look than any of the upper
ramifications of the great longitudinal thoroughfare--the
look of having had something of a social history.--HENRY
JAMES (in "Washington Square").
There is little in our busy, modern, progressive city to suggest
Father Knickerbocker, with his three-cornered hat and knee-breeches,
and his old-world air so homely and so picturesque. Our great streets,
hemmed by stone and marble and glittering plate glass, crowded with
kaleidoscopic cosmopolitan traffic, ceaselessly resonant with
twentieth century activity, do not seem a happy setting for our
old-fashioned and beloved presiding shade. Where could he fall
a-nodding, to dream himself back into the quaint and gallant days of
the past? Where would he smoke his ancient Dutch pipe in peace? One
has a mental picture of Father Knickerbocker shaking his queued head
over so much noise and haste, so many new-fangled, cluttering things
and ways, such a confusion of aims and pursuits on his fine old
island! And he would be a wretched ghost indeed if doomed to haunt
only upper New York.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25