says: "The Hudson is in a manner my first and last love, and after
all my wanderings and seeming infidelities, I return to it with
a heartfelt preference over all the rivers of the world." As at
Stratford-on-Avon every flower is redolent of Shakespeare, and at
Melrose every stone speaks of Walter Scott, so here on every breeze
floats the spirit of Washington Irving. A short walk of half a mile
north from the station brings us to his much-loved

="Sunnyside."= Irving aptly describes it in one of his stories as
"made up of gable-ends, and full of angles and corners as an old
cocked hat. It is said, in fact, to have been modeled after the hat of
Peter the Headstrong, as the Escurial of Spain was fashioned after the
gridiron of the blessed St. Lawrence." Wolfert's Roost, as it was once
styled (Roost signifying Rest), took its name from Wolfert Acker, a
former owner. It consisted originally of ten acres when purchased by
Irving in 1835, but eight acres were afterwards added. With great
humor Irving put above the porch entrance "George Harvey, Boum'r,"
Boumeister being an old Dutch word for architect. A storm-worn
weather-cock, "which once battled with the wind on the top of the
Stadt House of New Amsterdam in the time of Peter Stuyvesant, erects
his crest on the gable, and a gilded horse in full gallop, once the
weather-cock of the great Van der Heyden palace of Albany, glitters in
the sunshine, veering with every breeze, on the peaked turret over the
portal."

* * *

Irving chose his residence in the valley, not amid
the mountains; by the fields and meadows of the broad
Tappan Zee, rather than the Highlands; in a congenial