families according to their descent, and in whose households were
found the customs of England and Holland in full force. In Irving's
family, however, there was doubtless greater severity practised in
daily life than in the neighboring households. The father was a
Scotch Presbyterian who considered life a discipline, who thought all
amusement a waste of precious time, and who made the children devote
one out of the two half weekly holidays to the study of the catechism.
They were also obliged to attend church three times every Sunday,
and to spend any spare moments left in reading some religious book,
a discipline which had such an effect upon Irving that, to avoid
becoming a Presbyterian, he went secretly to Trinity Church and was
confirmed. Naturally Irving's love of fun was sedulously hid from such
a father, and, as fun he must have, he sought amusement outside his
own home. Forbidden to attend the theatre, he would risk his neck
nightly by climbing out of his window to visit the play for an hour or
so, and then rush home in terror lest his absence had been discovered
and his future fun imperilled. Many a night when sent early to bed he
would steal away across the adjacent roofs to send a handful of stones
clattering down the wide, old-fashioned chimney of some innocent
neighbor, who would start from his dreams to imagine robbers, spooks,
or other unpleasant visitors in his bed-chamber; and often when Irving
was supposed to be fast asleep he was far away in the midst of a group
of truant boys concocting some scheme of mischief which was meant
to startle the neighborhood and bring no end of fun to the daring
perpetrators.

Irving went to school kept by an old Revolutionary soldier, with whom
he was a great favorite and who always called him _General_. He
was not particularly brilliant in his studies, but he distinguished
himself as an actor in the tragedies which the boys gave at times in
the school-room; at ten years of age he was the star of the company,
which did not even lose respect for him when once, being called
suddenly upon the stage through a mistake, he appeared with his mouth
full of honey-cake, which he was obliged to swallow painfully while
the audience roared at the situation. Afterward, when he rushed around
the stage flourishing a wooden sabre, he was not a tragedian to be
trifled with. The glory of it even paid him for the cruelty of having
to run away to see a real play.

It was a favorite amusem