r to satisfy the artistic feeling.
There were few pictures and no galleries; there was no music, except the
amateur torture of strings which led the country dance, or the martial
inflammation of fife and drum, or the sentimental dawdling here and
there over the ancient harpsichord, with the songs of love, and the
broad or pathetic staves and choruses of the convivial table; and there
was no literary atmosphere.

After three months of indolent enjoyment in the winter and spring of
1811, Irving is complaining to Brevoort in June of the enervation of his
social life: "I do want most deplorably to apply my mind to something
that will arouse and animate it; for at present it is very indolent and
relaxed, and I find it very difficult to shake off the lethargy that
enthralls it. This makes me restless and dissatisfied with myself, and I
am convinced I shall not feel comfortable and contented until my mind is
fully employed. Pleasure is but a transient stimulus, and leaves the
mind more enfeebled than before. Give me rugged toils, fierce
disputation, wrangling controversy, harassing research,--give me
anything that calls forth the energies of the mind; but for Heaven's
sake shield me from those calms, those tranquil slumberings, those
enervating triflings, those siren blandishments, that I have for some
time indulged in, which lull the mind into complete inaction, which
benumb its powers, and cost it such painful and humiliating struggles to
regain its activity and independence!"

Irving at this time of life seemed always waiting by the pool for some
angel to come and trouble the waters. To his correspondent, who was in
the wilds of Michilimackinac, he continues to lament his morbid
inability. The business in which his thriving brothers were engaged was
the importation and sale of hardware and cutlery, and that spring his
services were required at the "store." "By all the martyrs of Grub
Street [he exclaims], I'd sooner live in a garret, and starve into the
bargain, than follow so sordid, dusty, and soul-killing a way of life,
though certain it would make me as rich as old Croesus, or John Jacob
Astor himself!" The sparkle of society was no more agreeable to him than
the rattle of cutlery. "I have scarcely [he writes] seen anything of the
----s since your departure; business and an amazing want of inclination
have kept me from their threshold. Jim, that sly poacher, however,
prowls about there, and vitrifies his heart by the f