This worthy but ill-starred man had led a weary and worried life, throughout the stormy reign of the chivalric Peter, being one of those unlucky wights with whom the world is ever at variance, and who are kept in a continual fume and fret, by the wickedness of mankind. At the time of the subjugation of the province by the English, he retired hither in high dudgeon; with the bitter determination to bury himself from the world, and live here in peace and quietness for the remainder of his days. In token of this fixed resolution, he inscribed over his door the favorite Dutch motto, “Lust in Rust,” (pleasure in repose.) The mansion was thence called “Wolfert’s Rust”—Wolfert’s Rest; but in process of time, the name was vitiated into Wolfert’s Roost, probably from its quaint cock-loft look, or from its having a weather-cock perched on every gable. This name it continued to bear, long after the unlucky Wolfert was driven forth once more upon a wrangling world, by the tongue of a termagant wife; for it passed into a proverb through the neighborhood, and has been handed down by tradition, that the cock of the Roost was the most hen-pecked bird in the country....FROM THE BOOKS.

Contains five pieces that might be called short stories: "Mountjoy," a first-person story that originally was to have been developed into a novel entitled "Rosalie"; "The Widow's Ordeal," a story of judicial combat gleaned from the annals of Spain; "The Grand Prior of Minorca," heard from a Knight of Malta who "loved to let his imagination carry him away"; "Guests from Gibbet Island," a legend of Communipaw found among the Knickerbocker papers at Wolfert's Roost; and "The Adalantado of the Seven Cities: A Legend of St. Brandan." Also of interest are two fanciful pieces which lack sufficient plot development to be called short stories: "Don Juan: A Spectral Research," about an amorous Spanish cavalier's encounter with his own funeral, and "Legend of the Engulphed Convent," about a convent miraculously swallowed up in the earth just as ravaging Moors broke down its gate -- Gale Lit Center.