6 LITERATURE ON STATEN ISLAND. 



west. Still following the line from the west to south it was upon the 

 extreme southwest point of the Island that Dr. Franklin and John 

 Adams and Rutledge met Lord Howe at the Billopp house and satis- 

 fied him that the spirit of America was unconquerable. In the hazy 

 southwest in the hottest of June days the distant cannon of Monmouth 

 echoed among these wooded heights and at last by the silent Island 

 with its few people clustering on the shore, across the lower bay and 

 beyond Sandy Hook where now the yachts sail and the long proces- 

 sion of ocean steamers passes, swept the fleet that bore away forever 

 British authority from the American colonies. While we turn toward 

 the north the few years pass and we hear the measured beat of oars 

 from the decorated barge upon the Kill van Kull that bears President 

 Washington to the city, and we catch the echo of the joyous bells 

 and the thundering cannon that far away over the bay announce his 

 taking of the oath which opens the great story of Constitutional gov- 

 ernment in America. 



Moreover our neighborhood is the scene of the first enduring work 

 of imagination in American literature. The deeply concave shore of 

 New Jersey that stretches from behind Constable's Hook toward the 

 Hudson is "Washington Irving's drowsy land of Communipaw where 

 Oliffe Van Kortland, the dreamer, having roused his brave boys with 

 a sonorous blast upon his conch shell, set forth upon that perilous voy- 

 age to Hell gate than which the fabled voyage of the Argonauts for 

 the Golden Fleece or the philosophic seekers for the lost Atlantis, is 

 not more spirit-stirring and memorable. The muse of history herself 

 cannot disentangle the sober verity of the annals of New Amsterdam 

 from the mesh of grotesque banter which the blithe fancy of the 

 humorist has woven around it. Wouter Van Twiller may have 

 shown other signs of wisdom than prolonged and solemn smoking! 

 but nobody will believe it. The echoes of the Hudson Highlands 

 may be honest echoes, but the imaginative ear will hear in them only 

 a trumpet blast from Anthony's nose. The Hardenbroecks may be 

 the most repectable of solid families, but who can disprove the 

 veracious allegation that the family name was derived from tough, 

 tin, or ten breeches. 



But, alas ! all this establishes literature around and about Staten 

 Island rather than upon it. It points out the literary opportunity 

 and maintains the literary possibility of the happy Island but it does 



