"Sunnyside, Nov. 1851."

I had been personally presented to Mr. Irving for the first time, only a
year before, under the introduction of my good friend, Mr. Clark (the
veteran Editor of the old Knickerbocker in its palmy days). Thereafter I
had met him from time to time, and had paid a charming visit to his
delightful home of Sunnyside. But it was after the date of the
publication of this book and during the summer of 1852, that I saw Mr.
Irving more familiarly, and came to appreciate more fully that charming
_bonhomie_ and geniality in his character which we all recognize so
constantly in his writings. And if I set down here a few recollections
of that pleasant intercourse, they will, I am sure, more than make good
the place of the old letter of Dedication, and will serve to keep alive
the association I wish to cherish between my little book and the name of
the distinguished author who so kindly showed me his favor.

For the first time, after many years, Mr. Irving made a stay of a few
weeks at Saratoga, in the summer of 1852. By good fortune, I chanced to
occupy a room upon the same corridor of the hotel, within a few doors of
his, and shared very many of his early morning walks to the "Spring."
What at once struck me very forcibly in the course of these walks, was
the rare alertness and minuteness of his observation: not a fair young
face could dash past us in its drapery of muslin, but the eye of the old
gentleman drank in all its freshness and beauty with the keen appetite
and the grateful admiration of a boy; not a dowager brushed past us
bedizened with finery, but he fastened the apparition in my memory with
some piquant remark,--as the pin of an entomologist fastens a gaudy fly.
No rheumatic old hero-invalid, battered in long wars with the
doctors,--no droll marplot of a boy, could appear within range, but I
could see in the changeful expression of my companion the admeasurement
and quiet adjustment of the appeal which either made upon his sympathy
or his humor. A flower, a tree, a burst of music, a country market-man
hoisted upon his wagon of cabbages,--all these by turns caught and
engaged his attention, however little they might interrupt the flow of
his talk.

I ventured to ask on one occasion, if he had depended solely upon his
memory for the thousand little descriptions of natural objects which
occur in his books.

"Not wholly," he replied; and went on to tell me it had been his way, in
the earl