 Hello, from the National Archives public programs and education team. My name is Missy McNat and I'm an education specialist in Washington, D.C. And welcome to the National Archives Comes Alive Young Learners Program. You can find information about our future programs on the National Archives website, archives.gov under attend an event, and on the National Archives Facebook page. Today we meet Washington Irving, portrayed by Neil Hartley, actor with the American Historic Theater. Mr. Hartley is also an educator and a director. Washington Irving is considered by many to be the father of American literature. Works produced by, which were produced by earlier Americans in the first years of nationhood, were really modeled on English classics. But Washington Irving with his sketchbook of Jeffrey Crayon, including the short stories Rip Van Winkle and the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, have pure American themes, American settings, and American characters. But Washington Irving also wrote essays, histories, and biographies, including the biography of his namesake, George Washington. And in 1842, Washington Irving was appointed as Ambassador to Spain by President John Tyler. So the National Archives has in its holdings numerous records related to Washington Irving, often associated with his federal service. And on this next slide, we see two of those records. One is a portrait of Washington Irving, and the other is his home, Sunnyside, in Terry Town, New York. And Sunnyside is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and was also designated a National Historic Landmark in 1962. So on the next slide, we have the featured activity for today's program from docsteach.org. And we will share this slide again at the end of the program. At the end of Washington Irving's presentation, we will have a question and answer session with him. So please write your questions into the YouTube chat box, and we have a National Archives staff member who is monitoring it. And let us know where you're watching from today. This program was brought to you by the National Archives Public Programs and Education Team, the National Archives and the National Archives Foundation. And now it is my great pleasure to introduce to you Washington Irving, who created some of the most beloved and memorable characters in American literature. Well, good day, and thank you so much for that lovely and kind introduction. Yes, my name is Washington Irving, and I am an author. I really like to think about myself more as a storyteller. I love a good story, and so many people I spend time with do too. So a little bit about me. It was mentioned before that I wrote a couple of well-known stories. You may have heard of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle, but I have written many, many other things in my life, I'm happy to say. I've also had a couple of other professions, but they really didn't bring me the reward I was looking for the way writing did. So I was born in New York City, Manhattan, 1783, the youngest of 11 children. Now unfortunately, two of my siblings passed away in infancy, but we had a very happy family as we grew up. My father, William, ran a very successful hardware business. My mother, Sarah, was a wonderful and loving parent who really taught her children to read, which you might take for granted nowadays. When I was a child, not many people had the opportunity to learn to read. Because my father's hardware business was successful. When my mother was someone who was an avid reader and insisted, really wanted her children to read, I learned to read and write at a young age. I remember reading Sin Bad the Sailor, Robinson Crusoe, a book called The World Displayed about travel, and I did travel a great deal in my life, always loved to travel. When I was young, I had a frail constitution, and it was thought at that time if a child has poor health, they need to go outside. They need to breathe in fresh air. So I was sent out quite a bit. Actually, as a young boy, I was sent up, I had a trip up north of Manhattan along the Hudson River, not far from where North Territown is located, where the Sleepy Hollow area is. I also grew to fall in love with the Catskill Mountains of New York, and many, many of my writings are really informed by the sights, the smells, the sounds that I knew as a young man. So, I actually started writing as quite a young man. In fact, I wrote a series of columns when I was a teenager for one of my brothers, Peter. He was the editor of Manhattan newspaper. We wrote about social affairs, and I wrote under the name Jonathan Oldstyle. Yes, I loved writing under unusual names. It's always great fun for me. But my family thought that writing would not be an avid profession for me as a child. They thought that law would be a good thing for me to do. Well, I'm not sure I completely agree, but I did, in fact, study law. I passed the New York State Bar exam in 1806, just barely. I began to work as an attorney myself. I worked with a couple of different attorneys. I ended up with a man named Judge Josiah Hoffman. The greatest thing about that was his daughter Matilda. Matilda Hoffman and I fell in love. We became engaged to be married. Unfortunately, Matilda passed away at age 17, which would happen to children at that time, I must say. And I must tell you, you might think I had a sad life. I didn't. Even though Matilda was the great love of my life, I enjoyed a very, very happy life. I did not have children, but I did have the joy of many dear friends and many family members too. So I wrote a number of things during that time. I actually wrote a small group of stories with one of my brothers. But one of the things that I felt really needed to bring me to a change and was something that would capture my listeners. So we grew up in Manhattan. The founders of Manhattan were Dutch. Some of these founders my family was not too keen on. So in 1809, I wrote a book called A History of New York, written under the pen name Dietrich Nickerbocker. It was my fun name that I could set a poke fun at some of those Dutch people who were running Manhattan at the time. In fact, the story was quite well received. Many of the people, the characters in that story, were actually thinly veiled versions of people that I knew personally and some of them were not too happy to find themselves in print and be made fun of. But the book was quite successful. I became a head of a group of authors of the time called the Nickerbocker group. And the term Nickerbocker has been used for quite some time afterwards. But my financial success did not happen. I wanted to earn a bit more money as an author, but at that time I could not. So I actually joined the family hardware business. In 1811, excuse me, I moved to Washington. I became a lobbyist with a couple of my brothers. It was all right. I ended up going in 1815 to Liverpool. I became a representative of the family hardware business in England. But I didn't enjoy it. What I really enjoy is writing. I really don't like working. I know that's a funny thing for me to say. I would much rather just tell stories. And luckily I found that people seemed to enjoy my stories. In England, and then I started to travel throughout Europe. I went to Austria. I went to Germany. I wrote stories as I went. And I thought to myself, actually the encouragement of a friend of mine, put them together and maybe let's see if we can publish them. 1819 and 1820, the sketchbook of Jeffrey Crayon Gentlemen was published. My works were put out for the general public and people loved them. This was the collection short stories that contained the legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle, among many others. And my success was guaranteed, well, almost. I found that after that time, people started to take me seriously as an author. And I actually began to earn my living from my pen, which was great. So as I say, I traveled throughout Europe. I wrote a sequel to the sketchbook called Brace Bridge Hall, which was somewhat successful. I wrote another sequence of books called The Tales of a Traveler. And I ended up finally, after all of my travels, ending up in Madrid, Spain. 1826, I had been away for quite some time. I was invited to join the American Legation, sort of like a delegation in Spain at that time, which I did. I spent quite some time. Spain is beautiful. I lived primarily in Madrid while I was there. And I wrote two books about Christopher Columbus, who I'm sure you've heard of. I wrote a book called Alhambra, based on Moorish legends of the time, and they were wonderful. Well, I was growing tired of being away from home, as you might imagine, 17 years since I had last set foot in New York. I came home in 1832. Well, my, I received such a warm reception. People knew me. People knew me on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. People acclaimed me as a very accomplished author. It was quite wonderful. So you may know me by now. My two passions in life are writing and travel. I love to travel. Before I settled down permanently in New York, I decided to travel through the southwestern part of this area of ours. The southwestern was part of this land was new, it was exciting. I wrote books as I went into fact. A tour of the prairies was known for quite some time as the source of information about the people and places of that area. I returned back to my roots and Hudson River in the late 1830s. I bought a home, sunny side New York, beautiful, lovely home there. I settled down and I was planning on simply maybe moving into retirement, spending my life writing. Well, in the 1840s, the president contacted me, said, Mr. Irving, we'd like you to consider becoming the United States Ambassador to Spain. Whether I had worked a little bit with the American legation in Spain, I had some experience, but I certainly never thought of myself as a political figure. But I thought a challenge is here. I like it. I decided to accept the president's offer. I became the ambassador to Spain for four years. Well, it was a wonderful time. Again, being back in Spain, living there, being able to help influence things of the time. I grew tired, however, of being away from home. I came back to sunny side in the mid-1840s. I settled down, began to continue to write, and I must tell you, I'm proud of a number of things in my life. But one of the things that I was most proud of, I became the president of the Astor Public Library. If you've been to Manhattan, it's on Fifth Avenue, there are two large lions out in front. I was actually the president of that library for a number of years. And I did write a five-volume biography of George Washington. So, a little question for you. My name is Washington Irving. I was born in New York City in 1783. Who do you think I was named after? Yes, of course, George Washington. So, a story for you. My mother was in the streets of New York. There was a parade celebrating the great man's life and his help of this country. My mother thought to herself, I'm so honored by what this man's done for the country. I'm going to name one of my children after him. And so she did. Her last child, I was named Washington Irving. And also, my mother tells me that the general, the president, came over to her and actually gave me his blessings while I was in the carriage. Now, I'm not completely sure if that's true. Did my mother make that up? But I must say, I have really loved George Washington. And this volume, these series of volumes, the piece of literature for which I hope I will be remembering forever. Now, as you know, I grew up at a time when writing was new. It was new as a thought. People didn't think of this as something you could make a living at. I wanted to make my living being a writer. Well, at that time, there were no protections for authors at all. There would be people who would steal and take your ideas. Now, I must admit, I have borrowed ideas from many, many different places. But I wanted to have a living where I could maybe earn money from my writing as people would buy it. And at that time, there was no protection for authors. So I worked tirelessly for what were known as copyright laws. One reason I spent time in England is because actually in England, there was a protection there. They actually, their publishing firms offered guidance, assistance, stronger laws that helped protect us. And I'm very proud of the fact that we started to establish some of those laws here in the United States. Now, what I'd really like to do this morning is to share with you one of my stories. I have many that I really enjoyed. And I'd like to go back to the sketchbook, the sketchbook which may have been early in my career, one of my greatest successes. I was greatly influenced by the Catskill Mountains of New York. I love them. If you have an opportunity to ever go to New York State up along the Hudson Seavikette, the hills, the valleys, even the smells of the land are wonderful. So at any rate, I should stop talking about myself and actually read one of my favorite stories, Rip Van Winkle, which came out in the sketchbook. Here it goes. Whoever has made a voyage up the Hudson must remember the Catskill Mountains. They are a dismembered branch of the Great Appalachian family. They are seen away to the west of the river, swelling up to a noble height and lording it over the surrounding country. At the foot of these fairy mountains, the voyager may have described the light smoke curling up from a village whose shingle roofs gleam among the trees, just where the blue tints of the upland melt away into the fresh green of the nearer landscape. In that same village, in one of these fairy houses, which, to tell the precise truth, was sadly time-worn and weather-beaten, there lived many years since, while the country was a province of great written, a simple, good-natured fellow of the name of Rip Van Winkle. So they say a simple, good-natured man he was, moreover, a kind neighbor and an obedient, hen-pecked husband. Indeed, to the latter circumstance might be owing that meekness of spirit, which gained him his such universal popularity. The great error in Rip's composition was an insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable labor. Rip was ready to attend anybody else's business but his own. But as to doing family business and keeping his farm in order, he found it impossible. If left to himself, he would have whistled life away in perfect contentment. But his wife kept continually dinning in his ears about his idleness, his carelessness, the ruin which he was bringing to the family. Morning, noon, and night, her tongue was incessantly going. She did everything that everything he did and said was sure to produce a torrent of household eloquence. Times grew worse and worse for Rip as years of matrimony rolled on. Poor Rip was at last reduced almost to despair. And his only alternative to escape from the labor of the farm and the clamor of his wife was to take his gun in hand and stroll away into the woods. In a long ramble of the kind of fine, autumnal day, Rip had unconsciously scrambled to one of the highest parts of the Catskill Mountains. He was after his favorite sport of squirrel shooting and the still solitudes that echoed and re-echoed with reports of his gun. Panting and fatigued, he threw himself late in the afternoon on a green knoll covered with mountain herbage that crowned the brow of a precipice. From the opening between the trees, he could overlook all the lower country for many a mile of rich woodland. He saw at a distance the lordly Hudson far, far below him, moving on its silent but majestic course with the reflection of a purple cloud or the sale of a lagging bark, here and there sleeping on his glassy bosom. And at last losing itself in the blue highlands. But for some time, Rip laid musing on this scene. Evening was gradually advancing. As he was about to descend, he heard a voice from the distance, hallowing, Rip Van Winkle, Rip Van Winkle, he looked round, but he could see nothing but a crow winging its solitary flight across the mountain. He thought his fancy must have deceived him. He turned again to descend when he heard the same cry rings of the still evening air. Rip Van Winkle, Rip Van Winkle. Rip now felt a vague apprehension stealing over him. He looked anxiously in the same direction and perceived a strange figure toiling up the rocks and bending under the weight of something he carried on his back. He was surprised to see any human being this lonely and unfrequent in place, but supposing it to be someone of the neighborhood in need of assistance, he hastened down to yield it. On nearer approach, he was still more surprised at the singularity of the stranger's appearance. He was a short, square-built old fellow with thick bushy hair and a grizzled beard. His dress was of the antique Dutch fashion, a cloth jerkin strapped around the waist, several pairs of breeches, the outer one of an ample volume, decorated with rows of buttons down the sides and the bunches at his knees. He wore, bore on his shoulder, a stout keg that seemed full of liquor and made signs for Rip to approach and assist him with the load. Though rather shy, distrustful of his new acquaintance, Rip complied with his usual alacrity and mutually relieving one another, they clambered up a narrow gully, apparently the dry bed of a river torrent. As they ascended, Rip, every now and then, heard long, rolling peels like distant thunder that seemed to issue out of a deep ravine or rather a cliff between lofty rocks toward which the rugged path conducted. During the whole time, Rip and his companion, they labored on in silence. For though the former marvel greatly at what could be an object of carrying a keg of liquor up this wild mountain, yet there was something strange and incomprehensible about the unknown that inspired awe and check familiarity. On entering the amphitheater, new and wonderful objects presented themselves. On a level spot in the center was a company of odd-looking personages playing at nine pins. They were dressed in quaint outlandish fashion. Some wore short doublets, others jerkins with long knives in their belts. Most of them had enormous breeches, a similar style with that of their guides. Their visages, too, were peculiar. One had a large head, a broad face, one small, pigish eyes. The face of another seemed to consist entirely of the nose. Was surmounted by a white sugarloaf hat set off with a little red cocktail. They all had beards of various shapes and colors. There was one who seemed to be the commander. He was a stout old gentleman with a weather-beaten countenance. He wore a lace doublet, broad belt and hanger, high crowned hat and feather, red stockings and high-heeled shoes with roses in them. What seemed particularly odd to rip was that though these folks were evidently amusing themselves, they maintained the gravest face, the most mysterious silence, and were with all the most melancholy party of pleasure he had ever witnessed. Nothing interrupted the stillness of the scene but the noise of the balls, which wherever they rolled echoed among the mountains like the rumbling peals of thunder. As Rip and his companion approached them, they suddenly desisted from their play, stared at him with such fixed, statue-like gaze and such strange uncouth lackluster countenances that his heart turned within him and his knees smoked together. His companion now emptied the contents of the keg with large flagons and made signs to him to wait upon the company. He obeyed with fear and trembling. They quaffed the liquor and profound silence and then returned to their game. By degrees, Rip's awe and apprehension subsided. He even ventured when no eye was fixed upon him to taste the beverage. Well, he was naturally a thirsty soul and was soon tempted to repeat it. One taste provoked another. He reiterated his visitus to the flag and so often that at length his senses were overpowered. His eyes swam in his head and gradually he declined and fell into a deep sleep. Well, upon awaking, he found himself on the green knoll once he had first seen the old man of the glen. He rubbed his eyes. Oh, it was a bright sunny morning. Birds hopping, twittering among the bushes. Eagle was wheeling aloft resting the pure mountain breeze. Oh, surely, thought Rip, I have not slept here all night. He recalled the occurrences that before he fell asleep. The strange man with a keg of liquor, the mountain ravine, the wild retreat among the rocks, the woe be gone party at nine pins and the flagging. Oh, that flagging, that wicked flagging, thought Rip. What excuse shall I make to dame Van Winkle? He looked around for his gun. But in place of the clean well-oiled fouling piece, he found an old fire lock lying behind by him, the barrel encrusted with rust. The lock falling off the stock worm-eaten. He now suspected that the grave roisterers of the mountain had put a trick upon him. Having dosed him with liquor had robbed him of his gun. He determined to revisit the scene of the last evening's gamble and if he met any of the party to demand his gun. As he rose to walk, I found himself stiff in the joints, wanting in his usual activity. Oh, these mountain beds do not agree with me, thought Rip. If this frolic should lay me up in a fit of rheumatism, I shall have a blessed time with dame Van Winkle. That was some difficulty. He got down into the glen. He found the gully up which he and his companion had ascended the previous evening. But to his astonishment, a mountain stream was now foaming in it, leaping from rock to rock, filling the glen with babbling murmurs. At length, he reached to where the ravine had opened through the cliffs to the amphitheater. But no traces of such opening remained. The rocks presented a high impenetrable wall over which the torrent came tumbling in a sheet of feathery foam, fell down into a broad deep basin, black from the shadows of the surrounding forest. Well, here, then, poor Rip was brought to a stand. What was to be done? The morning was passing away. Rip felt famished for one of his breakfast. He grieved to give up his gun. He dreaded to meet his wife, but it would not do to starve among the mountains. He shook his head, shoulder the rusty fire lock, and with a heart full of trouble and anxiety, turned his steps homeward. As he approached the village, he met a number of people, but none whom he knew, which somewhat surprised him. For he had thought himself acquainted with everyone in the country round. Their dress, too, was of a different fashion, from that to which he was accustomed. They all stared at him with equal marks of surprise, and whenever they cast their eyes upon him, invariably stroked their chins. The constant recurrence of this gesture induced Rip involuntarily to do the same, which to his astonishment, he found his beard had grown a foot long. He had now entered the skirts of the village, found that it was altered. It was larger, more populous. There were rows of houses which he had never seen before, and those which he had been familiar with, they disappeared. Strange names that are over the doors, strange faces at the windows. Everything was strange. His mind now misgave him. He began to doubt whether both he and the world around him were not bewitched. Surely this was his native village, which he had left the day before. Well, there stood the Cascale Mountains. There ran the silver huts in a distance. There was every hill and dale precisely as it had always been. Rip was sorely perplexed. That flag, and last night he thought, has addled my poor head sadly. It was with some difficulty that he found his way to his house, which he approached with a silent awe, expecting every moment to hear the shrill voice of Dame Van Winkle. He found the house gone to decay. The roof had fallen in, the window shuddered. The doors off the hinges. He entered the house, which to tell the truth, Dame Van Winkle had always kept in neat order. It was empty. Forlorn apparently abandoned. This desolate-ness had come all over, all of his cannubial fears. He called out loudly for his wife and children. The lonely chambers rang for the moment with his voice, and then again there was silence. He now hurried forth. He hastened to the old resort, the village in. But it too was gone. A large rickety wooden building stood in its place. There was as usual a crowd of folk about the door, but none that rip recollected. They crowded around him, eyeing him from head to foot with great curiosity. One self-important man bustled up to him and drawing him partly aside inquired, on which side he voted. Rip stared at him with vacant stupidity. Another short but busy man pulled him up by the arm, rising up on tiptoe inquired in his ear, whether he was a federal or a Democrat. Alas, gentlemen, cried Rip, somewhat dismayed. I am a poor, quiet man, a native of the place and a loyal subject to the king. God bless him. Well, here a general shout burst from the bystanders. A Tory, a Tory, a spy, a refuge, hustle him away with him. It was with great self-difficulty that the self-important man restored order. Having assumed a 10-volt austerity of brow, demanded again of the unknown culprit what he was there for, whom he was seeking. The poor man humbly assured him that he meant no harm. He was merely came here in search of some of his neighbors who used to keep time with him about the tavern. He was soon informed that all of the people he mentioned were dead and gone. Well, he asked, does nobody here know Rip Van Winkle? The bystanders began to look at each other, nod, wink significantly, and tapped their fingers against their foreheads. There was a whisper also about securing the gun, keeping the old fellow from doing mischief. At this critical moment, a fresh, comely woman pressed through the throng to get a peep at the gray-haired man. She had a chubby child with her in her arms, which frightened at his looks, began to cry. Hush, Rip, she cried. Hush, you little fool, the old man won't hurt you. The name of the child, the air of the mother, the tone of her voice, all awakened a train of recollection in his mind. What is your name, my good woman? He asked, Judith Gardner. And your father's name? Ah, poor man. Rip Van Winkle was his name, but it's been 20 years since he went away from home with his gun, and never has been heard of since. Whether he shot himself, whether he was carried away with the Indians, nobody can tell. I was then, but a little girl. The honest man could not contain himself. He caught his daughter and his child in his arms. I am your father, cried he. Young Rip Van Winkle once, now Rip Van Winkle, now old. Does nobody know poor Rip Van Winkle? All stood amazed until an old woman tottering out from among the crowd, put her hand to a brow, peering under it in his face for a moment, exclaimed, sure enough, it is Rip Van Winkle. It is himself. Welcome home again, old neighbor. Why, where have you been these 20 long years? Rip's story was soon told. The whole 20 long years had been put to him as one night. The neighbors stared when they heard it. Some were seen to wink at each other and put their tongues in their cheeks. The self-important man, who when the alarm was over had returned to the field, screwed down the corners of his mouth, shook his head, and upon which there was a great shaking of the head throughout the assemblage. It was determined, however, to take the opinion of old Peter Vanderdink, who was well versed in all the wonderful events and traditions of the neighborhood. He recollected Rip at once, corroborated his story in the most satisfactory manner. He assured the company that it was a fact, handed down from his ancestor, the historian, that the Catskill Mountains had always been haunted by strange beings. It was then affirmed that the great Hendrick Hudson, the first discoverer of the river and country, kept a kind of vigil there. Every 20 years with his crew and Half Moon being permitted this way to revisit the scenes of an enterprise, keep a guardian eye upon the river and the great city called by his name. That his father had once been seen in their old Dutch dresses, playing nine pin in the Hall of the Mountain, and that he himself had heard one summer evening the sound of balls like distant peels of thunder. The Catskills. Catskill Mountains have always been a region of fable. And so with that, I would like to stop, give you all a moment. Hopefully you enjoyed hearing that wonderful story. And if you see if there's anything you might like to ask me about my life and career, maybe some of you might like to share some stories. You personally have had your time, perhaps in the Catskill Mountains, but thank you for listening. And now we'll see, are there any questions for me at all or observations? Well, I'm back and yeah. So who was your strongest influence as an author? I had mentioned earlier that the earlier authors were influenced by the English classics. So where did your, who was a particular author or someone? Well, I did read a great deals, wonderful question. I read a great deal as a child. I've read many other authors. There were some wonderful authors, contemporaries of mine. I would say that probably my greatest influence was a Scottish gentleman. You may have heard of him. He wrote a wonderful book called Ivanhoe. I was in England at the time, feeling quite down upon myself. My writing career has not been successful, was not taken off. The family business was not doing well. I didn't really like being working for the family hardware business. Sir Walter Scott spoke to me, he said, Washington, you need to keep writing. You need to keep doing your job. Put things together. It was actually his influence that allowed me to gather a number of stories I'd written well in Europe and put them together in the sketchbook. So I would say my greatest influence is probably Sir Walter Scott. Oh, that's interesting because he's English and yet you create these American, very American stories. Well, kind of going back to the Rip Van Winkle story and you had said that early on some of your stories had, people that you knew showed up in the stories. Now, is that true with Rip Van Winkle? Is he a character based on anyone you ever knew or completely from your imagination? In case there are any of my former friends and neighbors who perhaps are watching to this, I need to be careful, but yes. I think that some of as an author, one of the greatest things you have are the people and experiences around you. So actually I drew on a number of people that I knew. Personally, many of the names in my stories, including the leaden of Sleepy Owl of Rip Van Winkle are actually based on actual folks that I knew. I'm not gonna tell you about specific people, but trust me, they shared the traits which will show up in the stories quite commonly. So yes, I did draw on folks. Most people I would say if they recognized themselves, they'd get a laugh out of it. Some were a bit annoyed, but for the most part I think they got joy and humor. And I think I actually appreciated being sort of the influence of well-known characters. Recognize, they live forever. So I just wanna take, stop for a second. We do have folks from Scotland, from Edinburgh, and I think it might be my grandchildren. So I'm just gonna say a special hello to Ashlyn Stewart and Betsy Clare if they're watching. Anyway, go back to question. So did you go to college? You talked about your mother in teaching you. So this is something that my parents would be a bit embarrassed about. They had a number of children. My parents were well-educated and they wanted their children to be educated too. At that time, there were a couple of new schools. One was Columbia in Manhattan. My brothers attended Columbia and my parents assumed that as the youngest, I would attend Columbia also. I did not. I never did well in a regular educational situation at all. Now, I highly recommend, any of you listening, education is wonderful. But I found that I could learn, I had a much better way of learning by reading, by teaching myself. Believe it or not, I actually never finished any kind of law program. I read myself, I taught myself and actually passed the New York bar exam with my own experience. But no, I did not attend any professional college university institution at all. Perhaps my own embarrassment, but I seem to have done all right in life even without that. Well, and that kind of ends up because you're moving in that direction anyway. The question that we ask of all there are guests and what advice do you have for our youth today? What does Washington Irving have to say to them? So my general advice, and I'll talk with young people today, my nieces and nephews will often chat with me about this. I think you need to follow and pursue your heart where it takes you. So as I say, you know that my family was a strong sort of a reason why I went into law. And I have no regrets at all. It was very, a great value to me, but my true passion is writing and literature. And I'm so very grateful that I had people that supported that passion. And I would say, this may sound a bit cliche, but to follow your dreams, truly follow what you really enjoy in life. And the rest of things, money, finance, whatever you might want in your life will come, will follow you. But that truly is advice I've given to many people. I've had the great pleasure of speaking to a number of well-known people here in the United States in my time, politicians, other authors, well-known personages. And I always tell them, I meet people who sometimes live with a regret. They haven't done what they wanted to do with their lives. I have no regret. I've done what I love. And I encourage you to do that too. Well, that's wonderful. That's a fantastic piece of advice. That's really great. So, well, we have loved having you with us today. And I love the story, you know, Rip Van Winkle is such a favorite, I think of everyone. So thank you so very much for joining us and enjoy the rest of your day. And we hope to see perhaps at your home in Sunnyside in Territown, which is, yeah. Please stop by and visit anytime. We'd love to have you. And thanks again so much for being here today. This was really a joy. Well, thank you. Okay. So as promised, I said we would bring up the DocsTeach activity one last time to share with you. And it is, you know, we're actually looking at some American authors that Washington Irving influenced. And some of the records we have in DocsTeach about these authors and their homes, which are part of the National Register of Historic Places. And that's a wealth of information. And then finally, we invite you to join us for our final program, well, no, our program in November. And that is when we meet Frederick Douglas. And that's Monday, November 15th at 11 a.m. And that is also just to let you know, we will have the Emancipation Proclamation on display at the National Archives later on that week. So thank you for joining us. And we hope to see you in November and have a wonderful day.