returned to the field, screwed down the corners of his mouth and shook his head upon which there was a general shaking of the head throughout the assemblage.

It was determined, however, to take the opinion of old Peter Vanderdonk, who was seen slowly advancing up the road. He was a descendant of the historian of that name, who wrote one of the earliest accounts of that province. Peter was the most ancient inhabitant of the village, and well versed in all the wonderful events and traditions of the neighborhood. He recollected Rip at once, and corroborated his story in the most satisfactory manner. He assured the company that it was a fact, handed down from his ancestor the historian, that the Kaatskill Mountains had always been haunted by strange beings; that it was affirmed that the great Hendrick Hudson, the first discoverer of the river and country, kept a kind of vigil there every twenty years with his crew of the Half Moon; that his father had once seen them in their old Dutch dresses playing at ninepins in a hollow of the mountain; and that he himself had heard, one summer afternoon, the sound of their balls, like distant peals of thunder.

To make a long story short, the company broke up, and returned to the more important concerns of the election. Rip's daughter took him home to live with her; she had a snug, well furnished house, and a stout, cheery farmer for a husband, whom Rip recollected for one of the urchins that used to climb upon his back. As to Rip's son and heir, who was the ditto of himself, seen leaning against the tree, he

was employed to work on the farm, but evinced an hereditary disposition to attend to anything else but his own business.

Rip now resumed his old walks and habits; he soon found many of his former cronies, though all rather the worse for the wear and tear of time, and preferred making friends among the rising generation, with whom he soon grew into great favor.

Having nothing to do at home, and being at that happy age when a man can be idle with impunity, he took his place once more on the bench at the inn door, and was reverenced as one of the patriarchs of the village and a chronicler of the old times "before the war."

It was some time before he could get into the regular track of gossip, or could be made to comprehend the strange events that had taken place during his torpor - how there had been a revolutionary war; that the country had thrown off the yoke of old England; and that instead of being a subject of his Majesty George the Third, he was now a free citizen of the United States. Rip, in fact, was no politician: the changes of state and empire made but little impression upon him.

He used to tell his story to every stranger that arrived at Mr. Doolittle's hotel. He was observed, at first, to vary on some points every time he told it which was, doubtless, owing to his having so recently awakened. It was at last settled down precisely to the tale I have related, and not a man, woman or child in the neighborhood but knew it by heart.

Some always pretended to doubt the reality of it, and insisted that Rip had been out of his head, and that this was one point on which he always remained flighty. The old Dutch inhabitants, however, almost universally gave it full credit. Even to this day, they never hear a thunder storm of a summer afternoon about the Kaatskill but they say that Hendrick Hudson and his crew are at their game of ninepins.

From "The Sketch Book."

WASHINGTON IRVING (Abridged)

Washington Irving! Why, gentlemen, I don't go upstairs to bed two nights out of the seven without taking Washington Irving under my arm.

CHARLES DICKENS

Every reader has his first book. I mean to say, one book among all others, which in early youth first fascinates his imagination and at once excites and satisfies the desires of his mind. To me this first book was "The Sketch Book" of Washington Irving. I was a schoolboy when it was published and read each succeeding number with ever increasing wonder and delight, spell-bound by its pleasant humor, its melancholy tenderness, its atmosphere of reverie, nay even by its gray-brown covers, the shaded letters of the titles and the fair clear type, which seemed an outward symbol of the style.

How many delightful books the same author has given us, written before and since-volumes of history and fiction most of which illustrate his native land, and some of which illumine it and make the Hudson, I will not say as classic but as romantic as the Rhine! Yet still the charm of "The Sketch Book" remains unbroken; the old fascination still lingers about it; and whenever I open its pages I open also that mysterious door which leads back into the haunted chambers of youth.

HENRY W. LONGFELLOW

But remember, as we try,

Lighter every test goes by;

Wading in, the stream grows deep
Toward the center's downward sweep,
Backward turn, each step ashore
Shallower is than that before.

Ah, the precious years we waste
Leveling what we raised in haste;
Doing what must be undone,

Ere content or love be won!

First across the gulf we cast

Kite-borne threads, till lines are passed,

And habit builds the bridge at last.

JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY

SKATING IN HOLLAND

SKATING in Holland is not only a pleas

ant pastime, but it is the ordinary way of getting about. In times of hard frost, the canals are transformed into streets where skating takes the place of the riding or driving in other cities.

The housewives skate to market, the laborers to their work, the shopkeepers to their business. Entire families skate from the country to the city with bags and baskets on their shoulders, or drive in sledges. Skating is as easy and natural with them as walking, and they skim along with such rapidity that they are almost invisible.

In former years wagers were frequently made among the best Dutch skaters as to which of them could keep up with the railway train that ran along the edge of the canal; and often the skater not only kept up with the train but even outstripped it.

But the rapidity of their skating is not the only remarkable thing about it; another feature very much to be admired is the security with which they traverse long distances. People sometimes skate from The Hague to Amsterdam and back in the same day; university students who leave Utrecht in the morning, dine at Amsterdam and get back to college before night. Many of the farmers skate from one city to another at night. Sometimes walking along the canal you see a human figure pass and disappear