Irving, following a passing fashion of the time, sought to mystify the
reader, are here omitted. They are hindrances now rather than helps.]

BY WASHINGTON IRVING (1783-1859)


[_Setting_. The Hudson River and the Kaatskill Mountains were first
brought into literature through this story, Irving being the first
American master of local color and local tradition. Since 1870 the
American short story, following the example of Irving, has been the
leading agency by which the South, the West, and New England have made
known and thus perpetuated their local scenery, legends, customs, and
dialect. Irving, however, seemed afraid of dialect. There were, it is
true, many legends about the Hudson before Irving was born, but they had
found no expression in literature. Mrs. Josiah Quincy, who made a voyage
up the Hudson in 1786, wrote: "Our captain had a legend for every scene,
either supernatural or traditional or of actual occurrence during the
war, and not a mountain reared its head unconnected with some marvellous
story." Irving, therefore, did not have to manufacture local traditions;
he only gave them wider currency and fitted them more artistically into
their natural settings.

Irving chose for his setting the twenty years that embrace the
Revolutionary War because the numerous social and political changes that
took place then enabled him to bring Rip back after his sleep into a
"world not realized." You will appreciate much better the art of this
time-setting if you will try your hand on a somewhat similar story and
place it between 1820 and 1840, when railroads, telegraph lines, and
transatlantic steamers made a new world out of the old; or, if your
story takes place in the South, you might make your background include