The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1897-09-14
TAXING GREAT PLACES.
MI. Rockefeller's Sleepy Hollow Es-
tate a Source of Trouble.

Tarrytown, Sept 14-It is a strange
spectacle-the combat of the tax col
lector and the multi-millionaire in
Sleepy Hollow. In the day of Wolfert's
Roost, when the fastness of the beauti-
full hills were thinly peopled by hard
headed, hard-handed, stout-hearted set
of yeomanry, descendants of the pr1n-
tive Nederlander,' men We're not to be
bought nor fought nor bulldozed out of
their acres. What a change has come
over the place that Irving gave to fame
through his amiable, gracious fancy
and charming English All the Van Tas-
sells are dust in the cemetery on the hill
that rises from the edge of the Po>an-
tico; Irving, who celebrated them, has
been sleeping forty years in the state
1y green-hedged enclosure within sight
of their messy monuments; and instead
of many hard a nded Nederlanders the
land between the Pocantico and Tappan-
Zee is occupied by one Standard OIL
''magnate," who disputes with the
towns assessors about his proportion OF
public tribute.
To Mr. Rockefeller the people of SEN
timent owe a considerab BILE debt. 1t is
he who has kept Irving's Sleepy Hollow
a valley of delight, although 1t Is ne,
too, who banished the golden mean eX
toIied by poets, in which no gold was to
be found, and very little silver. If
the TarTytOwn assessors had their way
they would Danish Mr.. Rockefeller now
and parcel out the rolling acres he holds
to two or three hundred commuters. be-
lieving that this increase in population
would benefit the town"-which simply
means that the ugly, cheap little stores
that line the street leading up from the
railroad would perhaps get little more
family patronage. We've got to live,
they complaint; but as in the case of
the man who used the same words
when pleading with Brinsley Sheridan
for money, one really doesn't see the
necessity. Sleepy HollOw'S spellbound
mazes are better preserved by Mr..
Rockefeller than they would be by the
crowd which enterprising land boomers
would bring to it.
Ones first view of the Hollow, where
the haunted mill used to stand, and
where the Pocantico ripples down rug
ged rocks through a dark ravine, is Sc
ductive to any eye, however Indifferent,
or however experienced in landscape.
It is seldom that places made renown-
ed by writer's are disappointing. Per-
haps the very things they said about
them give them an eternal beauty. Ger
tainly the English lakes and Acadia
would have a beauty immensely less if
Wordsworth and Longfe1low had not
discovered them Iongfellow never
saw Acadia; yet not only the charm,
but the loneliness of the land of Evan
geline would no doubt have been lost to
travellers had he not described it when
a friend described it to him. Over
Sleepy Hollow there is on Sunday after
Moons a visible drowsiness. This may
be due to Irving, but the exquisite
values" painters might say, the
unusual pictorial effects that are oc-
ca stoned by the formation of the wood
ed valley, are elements of the scene
which have no bookish or imaginative
help in making their appeal.
Mr.. Rockefeller doesn't own the pref
test part. The prettieSt part now is
that which has not been touched by the
gardener. His mansion may have cost
five or ten millions. The remark one
is sure to offer, however. is that it
doesn't look it. Somebody's taste in
terfered with the success of its archi-
lecture, and if it is true that one of
its rooms cost the owner a full million
of dollars then one of the owners legs
is longer now than it naturally ought to
be,