lington, at Saratoga.
Volume by volume the work comes forward. The public welcome it,--for
they love the author, and they love the subject. Three volumes,--four
volumes; and there are rumors that the old gentleman is failing. But
whoever finds admission to that delightful home of Sunnyside meets the
old smile, the old cheer. Seventy years have shaken the frame, but have
not shaken the heartiness of the man. The jest leaps from his eye before
his lip can clothe it, as it did twenty years before. There is a
friendly pat for his little terrier, and a friendly word for his
gardener, as in the old days.

The fifth volume is in progress; but there is a cough that distresses
him sorely. He pushes on, however, through his task. The step is growing
feebler and the cough more annoying. It is the year 1859, and the
seventy-seventh of his age, when, upon a certain November evening, with
one little sharp cry of pain, he falls upon his chamber-floor--dead.

* * * * *

There are men whose works we admire, but for whose lives we care
nothing. Mr. Irving was not one of them. There is such a manly
heartiness in him that we crave close contact: we cannot know him too
well. Surely, this sympathy of readers, spontaneous, inevitable, will
keep his name always green. There may come greater purists,--though they
must con the language well; writers of more dramatic power we have now,
possibly a quainter humor,--but one more tender, that puts us in such
immediate sympathy with the author, hardly in our day, or in any day,
shall we see again.

It is plain enough that Mr. Irving depended largely on his
friendships,--that, unconsciously, his courage for meeting and
conquering whatever of difficulty lay in his path was fed very much by
the encouraging words of those he loved and respected. His were no
brawny shoulders to push their way, no matter what points were galled by
contact,--no self-asserting, irresistible press of purpose, which is
careless of opinion. Throughout, we see in his kindly nature a longing
for sympathy: if from those intellectually strong, so much the better;
if from dear friends, better yet; if from casual acquaintances, still it
is good and serviceable to him, and helps him to keep his poise.

He is a man, too, who clearly shuns controversy, who does not like to
take blows or to give blows, and whose intellectual life and development
find shape and color from this dread of the combative. Not