Quarterly Bulletin the New York Evening Post calling attention to the disappearance of "a small, elderly gentleman, dressed in an old black coat and cocked hat, by the name of Knickerbocker." A week later another paragraph appeared, purporting to come from a correspondent who said that he had seen the old gentleman resting himself by the side of the road a little above King's Bridge. As this information did not clear up the matter, the landlord of the Independent Columbia Hotel, Mulberry Street, where Knickerbocker had lived, sent a letter to the Post stating that "a very curious kind of written book" had been found, which he intended to dispose of to adjust the bill for board and lodging. Could any advertising agency these days do better? Very little expenditure, but when the "curious kind of written book" was published the whole town was anxiously waiting for it and went into ecstasies. The dedication of the Knickerbocker History to The New- York Historical Society, "as a humble and unworthy testimony of the profound veneration and exalted esteem of the Society's sincere well-wisher and devoted servant, Diedrich Knickerbocker," led many to take seriously as "a sober matter-of-fact history of our Dutch progenitors" what was intended rather as "covert humor," and although Irving declared that he had taken the old Dutch.names at random, many a descendent of those original colonists was particularly incensed at "this irreverent handling of their Dutch ancestors." A member of our Society, Washington Irving presented us with one of the first copies off the press and proposed that we erect a wooden statue of Knickerbocker in Bowling Green Park. Just how deep our Society was in all this may be guessed by noting our desire to preserve the anonymity of the author, for in the 1813-1814 Catalogue of the Society's holdings, no listing appears under "Irving," but the famous History of New York is listed seriously enough under "Knickerbocker, Diedrich." Anyway, Irving said many years later that "it was a confounded impudent thing in such a youngster as I was, to be