house of Astor is gone now, but within the limits of this park
still stands the home of Gracie, the merchant, where Irving was a
constant visitor, and where, in the rooms given over to stranger
hands, still linger memories of Paulding and Halleck, Bancroft and
Drake, and a host of others.

[Illustration: The House of Astor where Irving wrote "Astoria"]

It was while working on _Astoria_ that Irving began the building of
Wolfert's Roost, the Van Tassel house of the _Legend of Sleepy
Hollow_, on that delightful spot on the Hudson which in the first
days of Irving's residence there was called Dearman. In after time the
name was changed to Irvington, in his honor, and Wolfert's Roost, in
honor of the glorious country, became Sunnyside. It is Sunnyside to
this day, altered by additions made in the intervening years, but
still the house of Irving; and the ivy clinging to its walls has
sprung from a root taken from the ruins of Scott's "fair Melrose" and
planted where it now grows by the friendly hand of Jane Renwick.

[Illustration: Where Irving lived--17th St. and Irving Place]

On the corner of Seventeenth Street and Irving Place (a thoroughfare
to which his memory gave a name), late in life, Irving lived betimes.
Here was once the home of John T. Irving, a nephew of the author. It
is a sturdy house still, and looks as youthful as its neighbors that
were built many a day after it. Then it stood quite alone in a stretch
of country. From the windows of the large room on the ground floor,
Irving could see the waters of the East River. In this room he wrote
portions of _Oliver Goldsmith_, parts, too, of the _Life of Mahomet_,
and arranged the notes of what was to be his last book--the _Life of
Washington_.

But his real home was Sunnyside, and there, in the year 1859, when he
was seventy-six years old, he died.

Chapter VI

With Paulding, Drake, and Halleck

In the summer of 1797, a tall, well-built lad with a face showing just
a suggestion of melancholy, landed from the weekly market sloop and
walked along the streets of New York for the first time. He was a
country boy, well versed in trees and brooks and used to pathless
hills and rough country roads, and his first impression of New York
was that the dwellers there were great lumpkins. He could not imagine
why they pointed at him and nodded at him and laughed as he walked in
the middle of the street, quite disregarding the paved walk. He
stopped, from time