The Legend of Sleep Hollow & Other Stories, Complete and Unabridged Quotes

“The revenue arising from his school was small, and would have been scarcely sufficient to furnish him with daily bread, for he was a huge feeder, and, though lank, had the dilating powers of an anaconda”
― Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleep Hollow & Other Stories, Complete and Unabridged

“Interestingly, the perception of Irving's learnedness was so strong that he inadvertently introduced a historical myth that became taught as historical fact; a fact that has persisted after his death, to this day. He published a biography of the explorer Christopher Columbus in 1828, in which he stated that Europeans believed the world to be flat, so that Columbus's crew feared falling off the edge of the world during their voyage into the unknown. The truth is that Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, had settled on the idea of the world being spherical in the 4th century BC and medieval European culture was based on Aristotelian thinking. Furthermore, the curvature of the Earth was clearly in evidence to those navigating the oceans in 1492.”
― Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleep Hollow & Other Stories, Complete and Unabridged