ny, who spoke nothing but
Dutch.

Two years later his brother Peter became proprietor and editor of the
New York "Morning Chronicle," for which Irving presently wrote a
series of satirical letters signed "Jonathan Oldstyle." In these
letters, his earliest work of any significance, he touches the
Addisonian string upon which his critics have harped so insistently
ever since. They are decidedly clever for a boy of nineteen, but not
cleverer than the best college work of to-day, and perhaps more
consciously imitative. The fact that they were greatly praised and
gained some vogue through copying in other journals, is rather an
indication of the unfruitfulness of the period than of their merit.
One of their greatest admirers was Charles Brockden Browne, the only
American before Irving to make a profession of writing.

In 1804 the young amateur came of age. He was still threatened with
consumption, and his family determined to send him abroad. Nobody felt
very sanguine about his returning. As he was helped on board, the
captain eyed him dubiously and said in an undertone, "There's a chap
who will go overboard before we get across." If it had been in him to
die just then, the captain gave him plenty of time; it was six weeks
later when they landed at Bordeaux. But though the voyage had been not
over-comfortable, it did him much good. Before the end of it he was
scrambling about the vessel, and describes himself as "quite expert at
climbing to the masthead, and going out on the maintopsail yard."
Irving's body was never to be altogether tractable, but we shall hear
nothing further of the consumptive tendency.

His early letters from abroad are full of life and spirits. He jaunted
about through France and Italy, picked up acquaintances everywhere,
and was evidently much more interested in the people he met than in
the "doing" of buildings or galleries. Evidently he was growing
stronger all the time. In the company of a little Pennsylvania doctor,
whom he had picked up in a diligence, he played several boyish pranks
in France; he kicked out an insolent porter at Montpellier, and fell
foul of a police spy at Avignon. In the main, however, he was inclined
to take things as they came. "There is nothing I dread more," he wrote
from Marseilles, "than to be taken for one of the Smellfungi of this
world. I therefore endeavor to be pleased with everything about me,
and with the masters, mistresses, and servants of the inns,
particula