live in a garret, and starve into the
bargain, than follow so sordid, dusty, and soul-killing a way of life,
though certain it would make me as rich as old Croesus, or John Jacob
Astor himself!" The sparkle of society was no more agreeable to him than
the rattle of cutlery. "I have scarcely [he writes] seen anything
of the ------s since your departure; business and an amazing want of
inclination have kept me from their threshold. Jim, that sly poacher,
however, prowls about there, and vitrifies his heart by the furnace of
their charms. I accompanied him there on Sunday evening last, and found
the Lads and Miss Knox with them. S----was in great spirits, and played
the sparkler with such great success as to silence the whole of us
excepting Jim, who was the agreeable rattle of the evening. God defend
me from such vivacity as hers, in future,--such smart speeches without
meaning, such bubble and squeak nonsense! I 'd as lieve stand by a
frying-pan for an hour and listen to the cooking of apple fritters.
After two hours' dead silence and suffering on my part I made out to
drag him off, and did not stop running until I was a mile from the
house." Irving gives his correspondent graphic pictures of the
social warfare in which he was engaged, the "host of rascally little
tea-parties" in which he was entangled; and some of his portraits of the
"divinities," the "blossoms," and the beauties of that day would make
the subjects of them flutter with surprise in the churchyards where they
lie. The writer was sated with the "tedious commonplace of fashionable
society," and languishing to return to his books and his pen.

In March, 18122, in the shadow of the war and the depression of
business, Irving was getting out a new edition of the "Knickerbocker,"
which Inskeep was to publish, agreeing to pay $1200 at six months for an
edition of fifteen hundred. The modern publisher had not then arisen
and acquired a proprietary right in the brains of the country, and the
author made his bargains like an independent being who owned himself.

Irving's letters of this period are full of the gossip of the town and
the matrimonial fate of his acquaintances. The fascinating Mary Fairlie
is at length married to Cooper, the tragedian, with the opposition
of her parents, after a dismal courtship and a cloudy prospect of
happiness. Goodhue is engaged to Miss Clarkson, the sister to the pretty
one. The engagement suddenly took place as they walked from