me out. Among these was Mr. Story,
and I ate a dinner there that it took me a week to digest, having been
obliged to swallow so much hard-favored nonsense from a loud-talking
baronet whose name, thank God, I forget, but who maintained Byron was
not a man of courage, and therefore his poetry was not readable. I was
really afraid he would bring John Story to the same way of thinking.

"I went a few evenings since to see Kenney's new piece, the Alcaid. It
went off lamely, and the Alcaid is rather a bore, and comes near to be
generally thought so. Poor Kenney came to my room next evening, and I
could not believe that one night could have ruined a man so
completely. I swear to you I thought at first it was a flimsy suit of
clothes had left some bedside and walked into my room without waiting
for the owner to get up; or that it was one of those frames on which
clothiers stretch coats at their shop doors; until I perceived a thin
face sticking edgeways out of the collar of the coat like the axe in a
bundle of fasces. He was so thin, and pale, and nervous, and
exhausted--he made a dozen difficulties in getting over a spot in the
carpet, and never would have accomplished it if he had not lifted
himself over by the points in his shirt-collar.

"I saw Rogers just as I was leaving town. I had not time to ask him
any particulars about you, and indeed he is not exactly the man from
whom I would ask news about my friends. I dined tete-a-tete with him
some time ago, and he served up his friends as he served up his fish,
with a squeeze of lemon over each. It was very piquant, but it rather
set my teeth on edge....

"Farewell, my dear Moore. Let me hear from you, if but a line;
particularly if my work pleases you, but don't say a word against it.
I am easily put out of humor with what I do."

Surely no more delicious bit of nonsense was ever written than the
description of poor Kenney. Moore read it to a group of friends in the
presence of the victim--a situation which would have been too
"piquant" for Irving's taste.

Moore had only the desired praise for the "Tales of a Traveler," but
elsewhere it did not fare so well. Irving considered it on the whole
his best work; but though it had a large sale, its reception in
England was not quite what he had hoped for; and in America it was
received by the press with something like hostility. Unfortunately
some busybody in America made it his concern to forward to Irving all
the ill-natur