Jack was quite excited about beginning the Hudson River trip in this way, because he's been so busy discovering Long Island, and it's been so warm, that he kept New York up his sleeve (sleeves are worn large) until later. He hadn't even seen Riverside Drive I'd boasted of so much; but he wouldn't be Jack Winston if he didn't know rather more about it than the average American, including me.
If it were any other Englishman, I couldn't stand his airs of historic erudition about my native land, but Jack is _so_ human and boyish in his joy of "fagging up things," and so broad-mindedly pleased that we beat his wrong-headed ancestors in our Revolution, that I don't grudge him the crumbs he's gathered. Of course, I pretend to have crumbs in my cupboard, too, even when it's really bare as bone. I say, "Oh, yes, now I _remember_!" and intelligent-sounding things like that.
Did you, for instance, ever know that the source of the Hudson--the most important source--is a little lake in Essex County, with an Indian name which translates into "Tear of the Clouds?" I didn't, and I'm not certain people ought to probe rivers' pasts any more than they ought women's. It's their own fault if they find out insignificant beginnings. Fancy saying, "Who _was_ she?" about a beautiful body of water like the Hudson! Jack is naturally glad that Henry Hudson was English, not Dutch, as so many people think from his being spelt Hendrik as a rule. I suppose the Dutch hoped that would be thought, from their tacking on the "k," for they were so jealous of each other, the Hollanders and the Puritans, in the days of the early un-settlers.
[Illustration: SUNNYSIDE "Washington Irving's dear old Dutch house is like a beautiful living body with his memory for its soul"]
Frightfully geologic things seem to have happened and subsided under the Hudson, making it navigable all the way; otherwise New York City wouldn't be the greatest on the American continent. Jack was talking to me about this all along Riverside Drive, not that it would have mattered much, because New Yorkers could have said it was the greatest to Chicago people just the same. I didn't dare make this remark to Jack, however, because he was being thrilled with thoughts of the Revolution and I wanted to encourage him in those. I hoped he wouldn't know about Fort Washington being the place of the fight that caused General Washington to give up Manhattan Island to his--Jack's--horrid ancestors; but he did know, and about the sloops and brigs and other things which we foxy little Americans had sunk there to keep the British ships from getting farther up the river. You can get tremendously excited about this Revolution business when you're on the spot, you see, though you and I have lived so much in England where most people treat it as a "brush" less important than the Boer War. And when you are here, surrounded with all the noisy progress and skyscraping greatness of our country, it is wonderful to think how a few brave men, determined to have their rights, in spite of desperate odds, made this vast difference in the world.