this might be, the gift of color-loving is in itself a
rich endowment to any mind. There are few purer and higher sources of
enjoyment in this life than this love of color, and it is a possession
which ought to be cultivated in every child.

But the art scheme was soon abandoned, and he went on to London, where
he began his literary work. His name of Washington attracted
considerable attention there, and he was frequently asked if he was a
relative of General Washington. A few years later, after he had written
the "Sketch Book," two women were overheard in conversation near the
bust of Washington in a large gallery. "Mother, who was Washington?"
"Why, my dear, don't you know?" was the reply, "he wrote the 'Sketch
Book.'"

Soon after the book was published Irving was one night in the room with
Mrs. Siddons, the Queen of Tragedy. She carried her tragic airs even
into private life, it is said, and when Irving was presented to her, he,
being young and modest, was somewhat taken aback on being greeted with
the single sentence, given in her grandest stage voice and with the most
lofty stateliness, "You have made me weep." He could find no words to
reply, and shrank away in silence. A very short time after he met with
her again, and, although he sought to avoid her, she recognized him and
repeated in tones as tragic as at first, "You have made me weep;" which
salutation had the effect of discomfiting Irving for the second time.

He returned to New York in 1806, and was much sought after in society
from that time on. It was a very convivial company, that of old New York
in the early part of the century, and Irving entered into its pleasures
with the rest of his friends. Late suppers and good wine sometimes
rendered these young men rather hilarious, and one evening, going home,
Harry Ogden, Irving's chum, fell through a grating into a vault beneath.
He told Irving next day that the solitude was rather dismal at first,
but in a little while, after the party broke up, several other guests
came along and fell in one by one, and then they all had a pleasant
night of it, "who would have thought," said Irving to Governor Kemble,
in alluding, at the age of sixty-six, to these scenes of high jollity,
"that we should ever have lived to be two such respectable old
gentlemen!"

It was during these years that he made the acquaintance and learned to
love so deeply Matilda Hoffman, a beautiful young girl, daughter of one
of his older frie