There was a charm about the Old Town which depended largely on neighborliness and the narrower interests which thrive in a small and homogeneous community; the charm of ease and of leisure and a certain contentment with life; of the ripeness of temper and of mind which is the fine flowering of an education based on the humanities; of room for work and pleasure large enough for fame, but not too large for the nearer satisfactions of local celebrity. It was the good fortune of the early Knickerbocker writers, by temperament and taste, instinctively to adapt their gifts to their time and Town; and it was the good fortune of the Town to be the birthplace of American literature, and the home of two writers who were first to give that literature a place in the interest of the world.
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced.
This book does not have a Table of Contents, but the “Head-bands” entries in the List of Woodcuts may serve almost as well.