s christened Washington, show, in
his youth, any glimpse of the eagle's feather.

Born in 1783, in New York City, a delicate child and one whose life was
more than once despaired of, Washington Irving received little formal
schooling, but was allowed to amuse himself as he pleased by wandering
up and down the Hudson and keeping as much as possible in the open air.
It was during these years that he gained that intimate knowledge of the
Hudson River Valley of which he was to make such good use later on. He
still remained delicate, however, and at the age of twenty was sent to
Europe. The air of France and Italy proved to be just what he needed,
and he soon developed into a fairly robust man.

With health regained, he returned, two years later, to America, and got
himself admitted to the bar. Why he should have gone to this trouble is
a mystery, for he never really seriously tried to practise law. Instead,
he was occupying himself with a serio-comic history of New York, which
grew under his pen into as successful an example of true and sustained
humor as our literature possesses. The subject was one exactly suited to
Irving's genius, and he allowed his fancy to have free play about the
picturesque personalities of Wouter Van Twiller, and Wandle Schoonhovon,
and General Van Poffenburgh, in whose very names there is a comic
suggestion. When it appeared, in 1809, it took the town by storm.

Irving, indeed, had created a legend. The history, supposed to have been
written by one Diedrich Knickerbocker, gives to the story of New York
just the touch of fancy and symbolism it needed. For all time, New York
will remain the Knickerbocker City. The book revealed a genuine master
of kindly satire, and established its author's reputation beyond
possibility of question. Perhaps the surest proof of its worth is the
fact that it is read to-day as widely and enjoyed as thoroughly as it
ever was.

It is strange that Irving did not at once adopt letters as a profession;
but instead of that, he entered his brothers' business house, which was
in a decaying condition, and to which he devoted nine harassed and
anxious years, before it finally failed. That failure decided him, and
he cast in his lot finally with the fortunes of literature. He was at
that time thirty-five years of age--an age at which most men are settled
in life, with an established profession, and a complacent readiness to
drift on into middle age.

Rarely has any such choi