indulged in other unprofitable improvements incident to a gentleman cultivator. A pretty country retreat is like a pretty wife-one is always throwing away money in decorating it. Fortunately, I have but one of those two drains to the purse, and so do not repine. I see you are again throwing out lures to tempt me back to Baltimore, and sending me messages from M- D- and dear little "Lu;" and I have a letter from Mr. Andrew Kennedy, inviting me to come to Cassilis and the Shenandoah, when I am tired of the Hudson. Ah, me! I am but mortal man, and but too easily tempted; and I begin to think you have been giving me love powders among you—I feel such a hankering toward the South. But be firm, my heart! I have four blessed nieces at home hanging about my neck, and several others visiting me, and holding me by the skirts. How can I tear myself from them? Domestic affection forbids it! CHAPTER XIX. EXTRACT FROM LETTER TO MRS. KENNEDY.-NO DESIRE TO TRAVEL WITH HE following letter was addressed to Mrs. Kennedy, just as her husband was about to start on a Southern tour with Mr. Fillmore, the late President, which was to have taken place the previous spring, but was prevented by the death of Mrs. Fillmore. Mr. Kennedy had intimated a wish that Mr. Irving should accompany them; "but I have no inclination," he writes, "to travel with political notorieties, to be smothered by the clouds of party dust whirled up by their chariot wheels, and beset by the speech-makers and little great men and bores of every community who might consider Mr. Fillmore a candidate for another presidential term." "Douce Davie," mentioned in the letter, was the name of a horse his correspondent used to ride, and which he had often mounted at Ellicott's Mills. MY DEAR MRS. KENNEDY : SUNNYSIDE, February 21, 1854. I met Mr. Meredith in town on Saturday last, and he told me that Kennedy had been unwell. If it is that affection of the head of which he complained last year, tell him I have found, in my own case, great relief from homœopathy, to which I had recourse almost accidentally, for I am rather slow at adopting new theories. I can now apply myself to literary occupation day after day for several hours at a time, without any recurrence of the symptoms that troubled me. In fact, my head seems to be as hard as ever it was-though perhaps somewhat heavier. You tell me Kennedy is about to set off with Mr. Fillmore on his Southern tour, and would like to have me for a companion. Heaven preserve me from any tour of the kind! To have to cope at every turn with the host of bores of all kinds that beset the paths of political notorieties! To have to listen to the speeches that would be made, at dinners and other occasions, to Mr. Fillmore and himself; and to the speeches that Mr. Fillmore and he would make in return! Has he not found out, by this time, how very borable I am? Has he not seen me skulk from bar-rooms, and other gathering-places, where he was making political capital among the million? Has he forgotten how, last summer, a crew of blatant firemen, whose brass trumpets gave him so much delight, absolutely drove me into the wilderness? No, no. I am ready at any time to clatter off on Douce Davie into the woods, with the gentle Horseshoe, or to scale the Alleghanies with him (barring watering-places); but as to a political tour, I would as lief go campaigning with Hudibras or Don Quixote. You ask me how I have passed my time this winter. Very much at home-dropping into town occasionally to pass a few hours at the Astor Library, but returning home in the evening. I have been but once or twice at the opera, and to none of Julien's concerts. Still my time has passed pleasantly in constant occupation; though I begin to think that I often toil to very little purpose, excepting to keep off ennui, and give a zest to relaxation. The letter which follows, was written on his seventyfirst birthday, to the wife of a nephew rather delicate in health, and a great favorite, who had been for some time housed at Sunnyside, and was now "roughing it about the world." It was in reply to a letter from Montgomery, Ala., in which she gave an account of her pilgrim ages: MY DEAR JULIA : [To Mrs. Sanders Irving.] SUNNYSIDE, April 3, 1854. Sarah has engaged that I shall write a postscript to her letter; but I am in a sad state of incompetency to do it. My faculties seem benumbed, probably from the long spell of dismal, wintry weather we have enjoyed for the last fortnight. It is quite tantalizing to read your account of your roses and rhododendrons, and the budding and blossoming of spring in the "sweet south country" through which you have been pilgrimaging. I should have liked to be with you in your voyage up the Tennessee. I begin to long for a wild, unhackneyed river, unimproved by cultivation, and unburdened by commerce. To-day is my seventy-first birthday, and opens with a serene, sunny, beautiful morning. I have wished a thousand times, my dear Julia, since your departure, that you were with me, making your home under my roof, as you do in my heart; and I never wished it more strongly than at this moment. I feel very much this long separation, and grieve that it is likely to be so much prolonged, and that you are moving to farther and farther distances from me. I wish S could have some employment near at hand, so that you could take up your abode with me entirely. In a letter to Mrs. Irving, then on a visit with me to North Carolina, dated April 6th, after giving some ac count of his dissipations during a week's sojourn in town, he writes: Another of my dissipations was an evening at the dancing-school, where I was very much pleased and amused. I met your friend Mrs. Mthere, whom I found very agreeable, and who made me acquainted with her bright little daughter. The scene brought my old dancing-school days back again, and I felt very much like cutting a pigeon-wing, and showing the young folks how we all footed it in days of yore, about the time that David danced before the ark. The next morning, where should I breakfast but at Judge Duer's! It was to meet Mr. Lawrence, the English portrait-painter, who has come out with letters from Thackeray, and I don't know who all, and is painting all the head people (some of whom have no heads) in town. It was a very agreeable breakfast party, three or four gentlemen besides Mr. Lawrence and myself; but what made it especially agreeable, was the presence of two of the Miss My dear H, I was delighted with them-so bright, so easy, so ladylike, so intelligent! H- has one of the finest, most spiritual faces I have seen for a long time. Why, in heaven's name, have I not seen more of these women? We have very few like them in New York. However, I see you are beginning to laugh, so I will say no more on the subject. In April, he receives a note from a neighbor, informing him that the Postmaster-General "acceded to the wishes of all the inhabitants of Dearman, save himself, to have the name of Dearman changed to Irvington." Dearman was the original name of the village and railroad station a few hundred yards south of Sunnyside. It was known thereafter as Irvington. May 30th, he is "on a two days' visit at the old bachelor nest of his friend Mr. Gouverneur Kemble, in the |