, around the next corner where, on a house wall, is a tablet
reciting the departed glories of Golden Hill, then on a few steps
until you reach, close by Broadway, a dreary arcade. Walk through the
arcade and you will find it heavy with the sounds of workmen and
machines. The arcade was a covered way leading to the playhouse, and
is all that remains of the theatre.

[Illustration: St. George's Chapel

Beekman St.]

Two minutes' walk away in Ann Street was Mrs. Ann Kilmaster's school,
where Irving studied. Ann Street is only three blocks long and far
from an inviting spot at any point, but here, in the last block of its
length, it dwindles to half the width it had in starting.

A score of steps from the school, at the northwest corner of Ann
Street and William, Irving lived with his mother after his father's
death. The house is no longer there, but there is one just like it
five houses farther along William Street, that stood there in Irving's
time.

In the Ann Street house, when he was a law clerk, he did his first
writing, the sketches signed "Jonathan Oldstyle," and published in the
_Morning Chronicle_, which was conducted by his brother Peter. From
this house, while still a lad, he loved to wander down the streets
that stretched over the eastern slope of Golden Hill, and spent hours
on the piers watching the ships loading and unloading, dreaming of the
foreign ports where they had touched, hoping that he might one day see
the shores of those far-away lands. For even in his boyhood the
longing for travel was strong upon him.

He was still a law clerk, and still living in this Ann Street house,
when he sat in an upper room with his brother William and James K.
Paulding, and they planned a magazine of their own. They went to see
David Longworth, the printer, in his shop beside the Park
Theatre,--"Dusky Davie" they called him, after a song that was popular
at the time,--and after many conferences and much secret doing the
three stripling writers started the sparkling _Salmagundi_ on its way,
with the avowed purpose "to instruct the young, reform the old,
correct the town, and castigate the age." Paulding was the "Launcelot
Langstaff" of the publication, and William Irving was "Pindar
Cockloft" the poet.

To the west of Golden Hill, Cortlandt Street extends to the river. In
a house on that street close by Broadway, the three writers of
_Salmagundi_ spent much time at the home of the Fairlie sisters.
There lived M