It is
worth while to reprint, for the benefit of whom it may concern, a
paragraph from the authentic history of the venerable Diedrich
Knickerbocker:
"The sage council, as has been mentioned in a preceding chapter, not
being able to determine upon any plan for the building of their
city,--the cows, in a laudable fit of patriotism, took it under their
peculiar charge, and as they went to and from pasture, established paths
through the bushes, on each side of which the good folks built their
houses; which is one cause of the rambling and picturesque turns and
labyrinths, which distinguish certain streets of New York at this very
day."
--When I was a little boy there came to stay with us for a while a young
lady with a singularly white complexion. Now I had often seen the masons
slacking lime, and I thought it was the whitest thing I had ever looked
upon. So I always called this fair visitor of ours Slacked Lime. I
think she is still living in a neighboring State, and I am sure she has
never forgotten the fanciful name I gave her. But within ten or a dozen
years I have seen this very same comparison going the round of the
papers, and credited to a Welsh poet, David Ap Gwyllym, or something like
that, by name.
--I turned a pretty sentence enough in one of my lectures about finding
poppies springing up amidst the corn; as if it had been foreseen by
nature that wherever there should be hunger that asked for food, there
would be pain that needed relief,--and many years afterwards.
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