The New-York Historical Society meddling in this way with old family names; but I did not dream of offence." Even so, nearly a hundred years after Irving wrote this apology, Mr. Brooks remarks in his book that this "piece of learned spoofing" has offended descendants of the Dutch down to our own day, when Hendrik van Loon "often spoke of Irving with a somewhat disgusted annoyance." Irving made up the name of Diedrich Knickerbocker, the reputed author of the history, and thus put into circulation a word that is plastered all over New York City today. Open the telephone directory, and you can go down the list, from the Knickerbocker Advertising Company to Knickerbocker bedding, braid, book, cigar, cloak, elevator gate, funeral chair, hair cloth, poultry, toy, village and even the Knickerbocker Exterminating Company, which, of course, doesn't exterminate Knickerbockers. Irving laughingly ascribed two meanings to the name, one of which was synonymous with elbow-bender or tosspot. He complained that the word was already appearing on ice carts, which must have been the forerunner of our own Knickerbocker Ice Company. In the preface to his first edition he says, "Nor must I neglect to acknowledge how greatly I have been assisted by that admirable and praiseworthy institution, the New-York Historical Society, to which I here publicly return my sincere acknowledgments." As he made acknowledgment to the Society in this, the earliest of his major works, so also was he indebted to it for materials in the culminating work of his life — his three-volume biography of George Washington, and in between, he spent much time at the Society, expressing himself frequently that nothing gratified him so much as mingling with the members and invited guests at the occasional Society soirees. In his early years Irving was a Federalist, favoring John Quincy Adams as against Andrew Jackson, and opposing the Jeffersonian idea of limiting the terms of a president. From 8