daughter of Herodias. The same method was followed in the writing of
the third of these tales, although the authors then drawn upon were
most of them less well known; and the only quotation of any length was
the one from Irving describing the mysterious deeds of the headless
horseman.

Now it chanced that the 'Dream-Gown of the Japanese Ambassador,'
instead of appearing complete in one number of a magazine, as the two
earlier tales had done, was published in various daily newspapers in
three instalments. In the first of these divisions the returned
traveller fell asleep and saw himself in the crystal ball; in the
second he went through the rest of his borrowed adventures; and in the
third his friend awakened him and unravelled the mystery. When the
second part appeared a clergyman who had read the 'Sketch-Book' (even
though he had never heard of the 'Forty Seven Ronins,' or the
'Shah-Nameh,' or the 'Custom of the Country') took his pen and sat down
and wrote swiftly to a newspaper, declaring that this instalment of my
tale had been "cribbed bodily, and almost _verbatim et literatim_,
in one-third of its entire length, from the familiar 'Legend of Sleepy
Hollow.'" He asked sarcastically if the copyright notice printed at the
head of my story was meant to apply also to the passages plagiarized
from Irving. He declared also that "it is unfortunate for literary
persons of the stamp of the author of 'Vignettes of Manhattan' that
there still exist readers who do not forget what they have read that is
worth remembering. Such readers are not to be imposed on by the most
skilful bunglers (_sic_) who endeavor to pass off as their own the
work of greater men."

The writer of this letter had given his address, Christ Church Rectory,
----, N.J. (I suppress the name of the village for the sake of his
parishioners as I suppress the name of the man for the sake of his
family). Therefore I wrote to him at once, telling him that if he had
read the third and final instalment of my story with the same attention
he had given to the second part he would understand why I was expecting
to receive from him an apology for the letter he had sent to the
newspaper. In time there reached me this inadequate and disingenuous
response, hardly worthy to be called even an apology for an apology:

"In reply to your courteous communication, let me say that had I
seen the close of your short story, I should have grasped the
situation more fu