he horses were jaded and worn, the
roads were rough with boulders and stumps of trees, or furrowed
with ruts and quagmires. The journey was usually begun at 3
o'clock in the morning, and after 18 hours of jogging over the
rough roads the weary traveler was put down at a country inn
whose bed and board were such as to win little praise. Long
before daybreak the next morning a blast from the driver's horn
summoned him to the renewal of his journey. If the coach stuck
fast in a mire, as it often did, the passengers must alight and
help lift it out."

[Illustration: Old Mill at Tarrytown Built in 1686

The Manor House, the Old Church and the Mill were erected by
Frederick Philipse, the lord of several thousand acres, in what is
now Westchester County. The mill, much dilapidated, still exists.]

Many of the stirring incidents of Fenimore Cooper's novel, _The Spy_,
occurred in this neighborhood, and the town is particularly described in
_The Sketch Book_ of Washington Irving who was for many years the warden
of the old church and is buried in the old Sleepy Hollow burying ground.

With Cooper and Washington Irving (1783-1859) American literature
first began to exist for the world outside our own boundaries.
The _Knickerbocker History of New York_, in which the Dutch
founders were satirized, was practically the first American book
to win appreciation abroad. This and later books "created the
legend of the Hudson, and Irving alone has linked his memory
locally with his country so that it hangs over the landscape and
blends with it forever."

Harvey Birch, the hero of _The Spy_, is a portrait from the life
of a revolutionary patriot who appears in the book as a peddler
with a keen eye to trade as well as to the movements of the
enemy. One of the best known incidents in the book is that in
which Harvey, by a clever stratagem, assists Capt. Wharton to
escape. James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) was born at Burlington,
N.J., but was reared in the wild country around Otsego Lake, in
central N.Y., on the yet unsettled estates of his father. It was
here he learned the backwoods lore, which in combination with his
romantic genius, made him one of the most popular of authors.

Among the literary residents of Tarrytown have been Mrs. E. D. E. N.
Southworth, well known to a previous generation for her romantic no