rly when I perceive they have 'all the dispositions in the
world' to serve me; as Sterne says, 'It is enough for Heaven, and
ought to be enough for me.'"

At that day the European traveler was not hedged in from adventure. On
the way from Genoa to Messina Irving's vessel was boarded by a
piratical picaroon. The consequences were not dreadful, but the _mise
en scene_ was all that could have been desired. The pirates had
"fierce black eyes scowling under enormous bushy eyebrows.... They
seemed to regard us with the most malignant looks, and I thought I
could perceive a sinister smile upon their countenances, as if
triumphing over us, who had fallen so easily into their hands."
Nothing could have been more satisfactory. At Termini he had a
romantic adventure with a masked Turk. At Genoa he was captivated by
the beauty of a young Italian lady. Instead of trying to make her
acquaintance, as he might easily have done, he contented himself with
stealing a handkerchief which she had dropped. Some time later it was
stolen from him. Thereupon he wrote an account of the affair to a
friend whom he had left in Genoa. The lady heard of it, as ladies
will, and sent him a lock of her hair, with a friendly hint that she
might be better admired at closer quarters. By a natural paradox of
boyish sentiment he did not return to Genoa, but had the hair put into
a locket, which he wore for years. It was later unearthed by a friend
from a pair of breeches borrowed from Irving, and made the subject of
some badinage between them.

Both his brothers and his biographer have made the aimlessness of this
first European experience an occasion for something like reproach. His
plans were of the vaguest. Such as they were, he was willing to
sacrifice any of them for the sake of congenial companionship. After a
few weeks he left Rome hurriedly because he could not bear to be
parted from a friend who was going to Paris. He was anxious, he told
his brothers quaintly, to study various arts and sciences there. In
Paris he kept a journal for about three weeks; it records attendance
upon a single lecture in botany and seventeen theatrical performances.
Naturally his brothers could only see that he was an amiable, idle
young fellow, who had drifted into a dilettante attitude toward life,
and showed little promise of usefulness. But idling as well as
industry has to be judged by its fruits. He was in a real sense seeing
life, as he personally needed to see it,