It has, however, an illustrious christening,
and according to various historians several godfathers. One says
it was named after St. Anthony the Great, the first institutor of
monastic life, born A. D. 251, at Coma, in Heraclea, a town in Upper
Egypt. Irving's humorous account is, however, quite as probable that
it was _derived_ from the nose of Antony Van Corlear, the illustrious
trumpeter of Peter Stuyvesant. "Now thus it happened that bright and
early in the morning the good Antony, having washed his burly visage,
was leaning over the quarter-railing of the galley, contemplating it
in the glassy waves below. Just at this moment the illustrious
sun, breaking in all his splendor from behind a high bluff of the
Highlands, did dart one of his most potent beams full upon the
refulgent _nose_ of the sounder of brass, the reflection of which
shot straightway down hissing hot into the water, and killed a mighty
sturgeon that was sporting beside the vessel. When this astonishing
miracle was made known to the Governor, and he tasted of the unknown
fish, he marveled exceedingly; and, as a monument thereof, he gave the
name of Anthony's Nose to a stout promontory in the neighborhood,
and it has continued to be called Anthony's Nose ever since.
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