Washington Irving, or, Irving Washington

The vicissitudes of my schedule this semester are such that I have very little to do on Fridays. (Indeed, Friday is my Sabbath, of sorts, as that whole church-music career thing precludes worklessness on Sundays.) This is the day, then, when I have time to try and remember what it's like to be a real human being, instead of a grad student: I can prepare myself actual meals, make my bed properly, indulge my peripatetic nature in walks 'round South Bend, &c. I also attempt to do some reading. Today, while my lunch was cooking, I finally began my volume of Washington Irving stories. (Lunch, incidentally, was a success: pierogies and haddock. The pierogies have a funny way of inflating in the oven, and Charity, Paul says, is not puffed-up; ergo, Charity is not a pierogi.)

There's a reason Washington Irving was so immensely popular: he's a fine writer, with an admirable sense of humor.

[Rip Van Winkle] was, moreover, a kind neighbor, and an obedient, hen-pecked husband. Indeed, to the latter circumstance might be owing that meekness of spirit which gained him such universal popularity; for those men are most apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad, who are under the discipline of shrews at home. Their tempers, doubtless, are rendered pliant and malleable in the fiery furnace of domestic tribulation; and a curtain-lecture is worth all the sermons in the world for teaching the virtues of patience and long-suffering. A termagant wife may, therefore, in some respects, be considered a tolerable blessing; and if so, Rip Van Winkle was thrice blessed.

The modern reader, I suppose, is struck by the vocabulary level, especially considering that Irving's education was negligible. (Save for some law training, his formal education was complete by the age of sixteen.) How many college freshmen today can comprehend, let alone write, such prose? Sigh. Well, at least we have television! Take that, literate forebears!