les away over a
telephone-wire, he would have been considered a lunatic or, possibly, a
witch. In fact, New York was a quiet, unpretentious little town whose
inhabitants were still divided into English or Dutch families, according
to their descent, and in whose households were found the customs of
England and Holland in full force. Irving's father was a Scotch
Presbyterian, who considered life a discipline, who thought all
amusement a waste of precious time, and who made the children devote one
out of the two half-weekly holidays to the study of the Catechism.

[Illustration: IRVING AS A STAR.]

Forbidden to attend the theatre, Irving would risk his neck nightly by
climbing out of his window to visit the play for an hour or so, and then
rush home in terror lest his absence had been noted and his future fun
imperilled, and many a night when sent early to bed he would steal away
across the adjacent roofs to send a handful of stones clattering down
the wide old-fashioned chimney of some innocent neighbor, who would
start from his dreams to imagine robbers, spooks, or other unpleasant
visitors in his bed-chamber. He was not particularly brilliant in his
studies, but he distinguished himself as an actor in the tragedies which
the boys gave in the school-room; at ten years of age he was the star of
the company, who did not even lose respect for him when once, being
called suddenly upon the stage through a mistake, he appeared with his
month full of honey-cake, which he was obliged to swallow painfully,
while the audience roared at the situation. Afterward when he rushed
around the stage flourishing a wooden sabre he was not a tragedian to be
trifled with. His favorite books were _Robinson Crusoe_, the _Arabian
Nights_, _Gulliver's Travels_, and all stories of adventure and travel.
The world beyond the sea always seemed a fairy-land to him; a little
print of London Bridge and another of Kensington Gardens that hung in
his bedroom stirred his heart wistfully; and he fairly envied the
odd-looking old gentlemen and ladies who appeared to be loitering around
the arches of St. John's Gate, as shown in a cut on the cover of an old
magazine. Later on his imagination was also kindled by short excursions
to the then wild regions of the Hudson and Mohawk valleys. Years
afterward we find the remembrance of these days gracing with loving
touch the pages of some of his choicest work.

[Illustration: IN THE SCOTCH HILLS WITH SCOTT.]

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