er
with the multitude; and I talked hand-bill fashion with the demagogues;
and I shook hands with the mob, whom my heart abhorreth. 'T is true, for
the first two days I maintained my coolness and indifference. The first
day I merely hunted for whim, character, and absurdity, according to my
usual custom; the second day being rainy, I sat in the bar-room at the
Seventh Ward, and read a volume of 'Galatea,' which I found on a shelf;
but before I had got through a hundred pages, I had three or four good
Feds sprawling round me on the floor, and another with his eyes half
shut, leaning on my shoulder in the most affectionate manner, and
spelling a page of the book as if it had been an electioneering
hand-bill. But the third day--ah! then came the tug of war. My
patriotism then blazed forth, and I determined to save my country!

"Oh, my friend, I have been in such holes and corners; such filthy
nooks and filthy corners; sweep offices and oyster cellars! I have sworn
brother to a leash of drawers, and can drink with any tinker in his own
language during my life,--faugh! I shall not be able to bear the smell
of small beer and tobacco for a month to come.... Truly this saving
one's country is a nauseous piece of business, and if patriotism is such
a dirty virtue,--prythee, no more of it."

He unsuccessfully solicited some civil appointment at Albany, a very
modest solicitation, which was never renewed, and which did not last
long, for he was no sooner there than he was "disgusted by the
servility and duplicity and rascality witnessed among the swarm of scrub
politicians." There was a promising young artist at that time in Albany,
and Irving wishes he were a man of wealth, to give him a helping hand;
a few acts of munificence of this kind by rich nabobs, he breaks out,
"would be more pleasing in the sight of Heaven, and more to the glory
and advantage of their country, than building a dozen shingle church
steeples, or buying a thousand venal votes at an election." This was in
the "good old times!"

Although a Federalist, and, as he described himself, "an admirer of
General Hamilton, and a partisan with him in politics," he accepted
a retainer from Burr's friends in 1807, and attended his trial in
Richmond, but more in the capacity of an observer of the scene than a
lawyer. He did not share the prevalent opinion of Burr's treason, and
regarded him as a man so fallen as to be shorn of the power to injure
the country, one for wh