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Updated: April 30, 2025
If the Dutchman had conquered Boston, it would have been a misfortune to this land, and to the world. It would have been like Diedrich Knickerbocker wrestling with an electric battery. But when the Yankee conquered New York, his union with the Dutch formed those sterling elements which have made the Republic what it is.
Alongside of the modern brick, or occasionally stone mansion of four stories, that style of architecture, dear yet to the heart of a genuine Knickerbocker of which Holland boasts, if not the invention, at least the perfectioning, reared its pointed gable, and rose like Jacob's ladder with parapeted roof into the sky.
Anybody but a genius or one of fortune's darlings may expect that New York, which has a deep and natural distrust of strangers, will require that the newcomer earn his bread in blood-sweat until he has established a reputation for producing the goods. Dear old simple-hearted Father Knickerbocker has been gold-bricked so often that a breezy, friendly manner puts him immediately on his guard.
Until a few years ago this was a section of Clubland with the Reform, and the Knickerbocker, the latter at the Thirty-second Street corner, and the New York, just above the Thirty-fourth Street crossing.
"Just now in New York," said Virginia in her low, full tones, "they have finished dining on Broadway. All the lights are, oh, so bright! and women in the most gorgeous spring gowns and men in evening dress are pouring out of the Astor, the Waldorf, the Knickerbocker, every place, and stepping into red and green taxi-cabs, or strolling leisurely to see the latest play.
Irving instinctively divined and admirably illustrated in his "Knickerbocker" the humorous element which lies in this nearness of view, this clear, prosaic daylight of modernness, and this poverty of stage properties, which makes the actors and the deeds they were concerned in seem ludicrously small when contrasted with the semi-mythic grandeur in which we have clothed them, as we look backward from the crowned result, and fancy a cause as majestic as our conception of the effect.
Most of its contents had figured years before in the "Knickerbocker Magazine." It is one of the best of his miscellaneous collections, and should be better known to the modern reader of Irving. Thereafter, his work was over, except for the "Life of Washington," which was to appear in parts during the next three years.
Meantime, as it is impossible to return to Central Europe, I expect to open either a fruit store or a peanut stand very shortly in this great metropolis. I imagine that many of my former colleagues will soon be doing the same! II. Father Knickerbocker: A Fantasy
Soon I caught sight of the slim, youthful figure, in its rather fantastic evening dress, the becoming dinner-jacket, the Eton collar, the loosely tied bow at the throat, and the full, black knickerbocker trousers, like those worn in the days of Henri Quatre.
His native city, that city in which he so much delighted, had decreed all manner of costly honors to his memory. I found his effigy imprinted upon new-year cakes, and devoured with eager relish by holiday urchins; a great oyster-house bore the name of "Knickerbocker Hall;" and I narrowly escaped the pleasure of being run over by a Knickerbocker omnibus!
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