In a letter written from Birmingham, England, March 15,
1816, to his dear friend Henry Brevoort, who was permitted more than
perhaps any other person to see his secret heart, he alludes, with
gratification, to the report of the engagement of James Paulding, and
then says:--

"It is what we must all come to at last. I see you are hankering
after it, and I confess I have done so for a long time past. We
are, however, past that period [Irving was thirty-two] when a man
marries suddenly and inconsiderately. We may be longer making a
choice, and consulting the convenience and concurrence of easy
circumstances, but we shall both come to it sooner or later. I
therefore recommend you to marry without delay. You have sufficient
means, connected with your knowledge and habits of business, to
support a genteel establishment, and I am certain that as soon as
you are married you will experience a change in your ideas. All
those vagabond, roving propensities will cease. They are the
offspring of idleness of mind and a want of something to fix the
feelings. You are like a bark without an anchor, that drifts about
at the mercy of every vagrant breeze or trifling eddy. Get a wife,
and she'll anchor you. But don't marry a fool because she has a
pretty face, and don't seek after a great belle. Get such a girl as
Mary ----, or get her if you can; though I am afraid she has still
an unlucky kindness for poor ----, which will stand in the way of
her fortunes. I wish to God they were rich, and married, and
happy!"

The business reverses which befell the Irving brothers, and which drove
Washington to the toil of the pen, and cast upon him heavy family
responsibilities, defeated his plans of domestic happiness in marriage.
It was in this same year, 1816, when the fortunes of the firm were daily
becoming more dismal, that he wrote to Brevoort, upon the report that
the latter was likely to remain a bachelor: "We are all selfish beings.
Fortune by her tardy favors and capricious freaks seems to discourage
all my matrimonial resolves, and if I am doomed to live an old bachelor,
I am anxious to have good company. I cannot bear that all my old
companions should launch away into the married state, and leave me alone
to tread this desolate and sterile shore." And, in view of a possible
life of scant fortune, he exclaims: "Thank Heaven, I was brought up