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Page 48
"Enraged to see his military stores laid waste, the stout Risingh,
collecting all his forces, aimed a mighty blow full at the hero's
crest. In vain did his fierce little cocked hat oppose its course.
The biting steel clove through the stubborn ram beaver, and would
have cracked the crown of any one not endowed with supernatural
hardness of head; but the brittle weapon shivered in pieces on the
skull of Hardkoppig Piet, shedding a thousand sparks, like beams of
glory, round his grizzly visage.
"The good Peter reeled with the blow, and turning up his eyes
beheld a thousand suns, besides moons and stars, dancing about the
firmament; at length, missing his footing, by reason of his wooden
leg, down he came on his seat of honor with a crash which shook the
surrounding hills, and might have wrecked his frame, had he not
been received into a cushion softer than velvet, which Providence,
or Minerva, or St. Nicholas, or some cow, had benevolently prepared
for his reception.
"The furious Risingh, in despite of the maxim, cherished by all
true knights, that 'fair play is a jewel,' hastened to take
advantage of the hero's fall; but, as he stooped to give a fatal
blow, Peter Stuyvesant dealt him a thwack over the sconce with his
wooden leg, which set a chime of bells ringing triple bob-majors in
his cerebellum. The bewildered Swede staggered with the blow, and
the wary Peter seizing a pocket-pistol, which lay hard by,
discharged it full at the head of the reeling Risingh. Let not my
reader mistake; it was not a murderous weapon loaded with powder
and ball, but a little sturdy stone pottle charged to the muzzle
with a double dram of true Dutch courage, which the knowing Antony
Van Corlear carried about him by way of replenishing his valor, and
which had dropped from his wallet during his furious encounter with
the drummer. The hideous weapon sang through the air, and true to
its course as was the fragment of a rock discharged at Hector by
bully Ajax, encountered the head of the gigantic Swede with
matchless violence.
"This heaven-directed blow decided the battle. The ponderous
pericranium of General Jan Risingh sank upon his breast; his knees
tottered under him; a deathlike torpor seized upon his frame, and
he tumbled to the earth with such violence that old Pluto started
with affright, lest he should have broken through the roof of his
infernal palace.
"His fall was the signal of defeat and victory: the Swedes gave
way, the Dutch pressed forward; the former took to their heels, the
latter hotly pursued. Some entered with them, pell-mell, through
the sally-port; others stormed the bastion, and others scrambled
over the curtain. Thus in a little while the fortress of Fort
Christina, which, like another Troy, had stood a siege of full ten
hours, was carried by assault, without the loss of a single man on
either side. Victory, in the likeness of a gigantic ox-fly, sat
perched upon the cocked hat of the gallant Stuyvesant; and it was
declared by all the writers whom he hired to write the history of
his expedition that on this memorable day he gained a sufficient
quantity of glory to immortalize a dozen of the greatest heroes in
Christendom!"
In the "Sketch-Book," Irving set a kind of fashion in narrative essays,
in brief stories of mingled humor and pathos, which was followed for
half a century. He himself worked the same vein in "Bracebridge Hall,"
and "Tales of a Traveller." And there is no doubt that some of the most
fascinating of the minor sketches of Charles Dickens, such as the story
of the Bagman's Uncle, are lineal descendants of, if they were not
suggested by, Irving's "Adventure of My Uncle," and the "Bold Dragoon."
The taste for the leisurely description and reminiscent essay of the
"Sketch-Book" does not characterize the readers of this generation, and
we have discovered that the pathos of its elaborated scenes is somewhat
"literary." The sketches of "Little Britain," and "Westminster Abbey,"
and, indeed, that of "Stratford-on-Avon," will for a long time retain
their place in selections of "good reading;" but the "Sketch-Book" is
only floated, as an original work, by two papers, the "Rip Van Winkle"
and the "Legend of Sleepy Hollow;" that is to say by the use of the
Dutch material, and the elaboration of the "Knickerbocker Legend," which
was the great achievement of Irving's life. This was broadened and
deepened and illustrated by the several stories of the "Money Diggers,"
of "Wolfert Webber" and "Kidd the Pirate," in "The Tales of a
Traveller," and by "Dolph Heyliger" in "Bracebridge Hall." Irving was
never more successful than in painting the Dutch manners and habits of
the early time, and he returned again and again to the task until he not
only made the shores of the Hudson and the islands of New York harbor
and the East River classic ground, but until his conception of Dutch
life in the New World had assumed historical solidity and become a
tradition of the highest poetic value. If in the multiplicity of books
and the change of taste the bulk of Irving's works shall go out of
print, a volume made up of his Knickerbocker history and the legends
relating to the region of New York and the Hudson would survive as long
as anything that has been produced in this country.
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