point in the latter region he
wrote of his party as "depending upon game, such as deer, elk, bear, for
food, encamping on the borders of brooks, and sleeping in the open air
under trees, with outposts stationed to guard us against any surprise by
the Indians." The beautiful scenery and exciting events that marked this
trip now part of the volume of _Crayon Miscellany_.

Having been a wanderer for a good many years, Irving now began to wish
for a home. Accordingly he bought a little estate near Tarrytown on the
Hudson River, and had the cottage on this land made over into "a little
nookery somewhat in the Dutch style, quaint, but unpretending." In the
first years spent in this pleasant home he contributed articles to the
_Knickerbocker Magazine_, later collected and published under the title
of _Wolfert's Roost_, and wrote _Abbotsford_ and _Newstead Abbey_, now
part of the volume of _Crayon Miscellany_.

So smoothly did the home life at Sunnyside flow along that Irving was
none too well pleased to separate himself from it in 1842 when appointed
minister of the United States to Spain. Nevertheless, he looked upon
this event as the "crowning hour" of his life.

During the thirteen years that remained to him after returning to
Sunnyside in 1846, he produced the _Life of Mahomet and his Successors_,
a _Life of Goldsmith_, an author whom he especially admired and
appreciated, and a biography of his celebrated namesake, which, though
entitled a _Life of Washington_, is nothing less than a history of the
Revolution. In the very year this last great work was completed, Irving
died, surrounded by the household to whom he had become so much endeared
(November 28, 1859).

In his writings Washington Irving has shown himself so gentle and
unpretentious and so large-hearted, that his words concerning Oliver
Goldsmith seem to apply with equal fitness to himself: "There are few
writers for whom the reader feels such personal kindness." These same
qualities were revealed also day by day in the smallest incidents of his
life. Perhaps they were never more simply illustrated than on the
occasion when he was traveling in a railway car behind a woman with two
small children and a baby who was being constantly disturbed by the
older children's efforts to climb to a seat by the window. Having taken
in the situation, Irving began lifting first one and then the other of
the little ones into his lap, allowing each just three minutes at the
wi