e wrote to Brevoort, upon the report that
the latter was likely to remain a bachelor: "We are all selfish beings.
Fortune by her tardy favors and capricious freaks seems to discourage
all my matrimonial resolves, and if I am doomed to live an old bachelor,
I am anxious to have good company. I cannot bear that all my old
companions should launch away into the married state, and leave me alone
to tread this desolate and sterile shore." And, in view of a possible
life of scant fortune, he exclaims: "Thank Heaven, I was brought up in
simple and inexpensive habits, and I have satisfied myself that, if need
be, I can resume them without repining or inconvenience. Though I am
willing, therefore, that Fortune should shower her blessings upon me,
and think I can enjoy them as well as most men, yet I shall not make
myself unhappy if she chooses to be scanty, and shall take the position
allotted me with a cheerful and contented mind."

When Irving passed the winter of 1823 in the charming society of the
Fosters at Dresden, the success of the "Sketch-Book" and "Bracebridge
Hall" had given him assurance of his ability to live comfortably by the
use of his pen.

To resume. The preliminary announcement of the History was a humorous
and skillful piece of advertising. Notices appeared in the newspapers
of the disappearance from his lodging of "a small, elderly gentleman,
dressed in an old black coat and cocked hat, by the name of
Knickerbocker." Paragraphs from week to week, purporting to be the
result of inquiry, elicited the facts that such an old gentleman
had been seen traveling north in the Albany stage; that his name was
Diedrich Knickerbocker; that he went away owing his landlord; and that
he left behind a very curious kind of a written book, which would be
sold to pay his bills if he did not return. So skillfully was this
managed that one of the city officials was on the point of offering a
reward for the discovery of the missing Diedrich. This little man in
knee breeches and cocked hat was the germ of the whole "Knickerbocker
legend," a fantastic creation, which in a manner took the place of
history, and stamped upon the commercial metropolis of the New World the
indelible Knickerbocker name and character; and even now in the city
it is an undefined patent of nobility to trace descent from "an old
Knickerbocker family."

The volume, which was first printed in Philadelphia, was put forth as a
grave history of the manners and