n being by me would relieve me
from the frightful gloom of my own thoughts.

'Months elapsed before my mind would resume any tone, but the
despondency I had suffered for a long time in the course of this
attachment, and the anguish that attended its final catastrophe,
seemed to give a turn to my whole character, and threw some clouds
into my disposition, which have ever since hung about it. When I
became more calm and collected, I applied myself, by way of
occupation, to the finishing of my work. I brought it to a close as
well as I could, and published it; but the time and circumstances
in which it was produced rendered me always unable to look upon it
with satisfaction. Still, it took with the public, and gave me
celebrity, as an original work was something remarkable and
uncommon in America. I was noticed, caressed, and for a time
elevated by the popularity I had gained. Wherever I went, I was
overwhelmed with attentions. I was full of youth and animation, far
different from the being I now am, and I was quite flushed with
this early taste of public favor. Still, however, the career of
gayety and notoriety soon palled upon me. I seemed to drift about
without aim or object, at the mercy of every breeze; my heart
wanted anchorage. I was naturally susceptible, and tried to form
other attachments, but my heart would not hold on. It would
continually revert to what it had lost; and whenever there was a
pause in the hurry of novelty and excitement, I would sink into
dismal dejection. For years I could not talk on the subject of this
hopeless regret; I could not even mention her name; but her image
was continually before me, and I dreamed of her incessantly.'

The fragment of which the above is an extract, is doubly interesting as
not only clearing up a mystery which the world has long desired to
penetrate, but also as giving Irving's experience in his own words. It
proves how deeply he felt the pangs of a rooted sorrow, and how
impossible it was, amid all the attractions of society, for him to
escape the power of one who had bidden to all earthly societies an
everlasting farewell. That his regrets over his early bereavement did
not arise from overwrought dreams of excellence in the departed, is
evident from the character she bore with others; and this is illustrated
by the following extract fro