hing of the gayeties
of cottage life; if she had ever been with us at a picnic, or driven
out in the shandry-dan with the two roans, and James, in his slipshod
hat, for a coachman, or _yotted_ in the Dream, or sang in the
Tarrytown choir, or shopped at Tommy Dean's; but, poor thing! she
would not know how to set about enjoying herself. She would not think
of appearing at church without a whole train of the Miss ----s and the
Miss ----s, and the Miss ----s, as maids of honor, nor drive through
Sleepy Hollow except in a coach and six, with a cloud of dust, and a
troop of horsemen in glittering armor. So I think, Kate, we must be
content with pitying her, and leaving her in ignorance of the
comparative desolateness of her situation."

In 1842, Irving suffered another of those petty persecutions which he
was not thick-skinned enough to endure without suffering, nor
confident enough to ignore. The charges were of the most ordinary
sort, and advanced by men of little weight: he had appropriated
material without giving due credit for it, and he had puffed his own
work. Their only claim upon our notice lies in the fact that Irving
thought it worth while to confute them at length. He was perhaps
especially sensitive to critical attacks at this time. His income from
literary property had nearly ceased. Some of his books were out of
print, and the rest were having comparatively little sale. A wave of
indifference had overtaken his public. "Everything behind me seems to
have turned to chaff and stubble," he wrote. "And if I desire any
further profits from literature, it must be by the further exercise of
my pen." It is characteristic of his modesty that he was disposed to
accept this momentary neglect as final. He planned to revise all his
works, in the hope of finding a renewed market for them later, but
evidently expected little.

A letter to Brevoort from Bordeaux dated November, 1843, accounts for
the first break in his Madrid residence: "I am now on my way back to
my post, after between two and three months' absence. I set out in
pursuit of health, and thought a little traveling and a change of air
would 'make me my own man again'; but I was laid by the heels at Paris
by a recurrence of my malady, and have just escaped out of the
doctor's hands.... This indisposition has been a sad check upon all my
plans. I had hoped, by zealous employment of all the leisure afforded
me at Madrid, to accomplish one or two literary tasks whi