called Kemble's residence at Cold Spring
"Bachelor's Elysium," while to his own he applied the name of "Wolfert's
Roost." In the spring of 1856 in writing to Kemble he said: "I am happy
to learn that your lawn is green. I hope it will long continue so, and
yourself likewise. I shall come up one of these days and have a roll on
it with you"; and Kemble, upon another occasion, in urging Irving to
visit him added as an inducement, "come and we will have a game of
leap-frog." Referring to their last meeting Irving said of Kemble: "That
is my friend of early life--always unchanged, always like a brother, one
of the noblest beings that ever was created. His heart is pure gold."
That was in the summer of 1859, and in the following November Irving
died, at the ripe old age of seventy-six. Constant in life, let us hope
that in death they are not separated, and that in the Silent Land

No morrow's mischief knocks them up.

Let the cynic who spurns the consoling influences of friendship ponder
upon the life-intimacy of these two old men who, throughout the cares
and turmoils of a long and engrossing existence, illustrated so
beautifully the charm of such a benign relationship.

Irving impressed me as having a genial but at the same time a retiring
nature. He was of about the average height and, although quite advanced
in years when I knew him, his hair had not changed color. His manner was
exceeding gentle and, strange to say, with such a remarkable vocabulary
at his command, in society he was exceedingly quiet. In his early life
Irving was engaged to be married to one of his own ethereal kind, but
she passed onward, and among his friends the subject was never broached
as it seemed too sacred to dwell upon. Her name was Matilda Hoffman and
she was a daughter of the celebrated jurist of New York, Judge Josiah
Ogden Hoffman. She died in 1809 in her eighteenth year.

My last meeting with Irving is vividly impressed upon my memory as the
occasion was quite memorable. I was passing the winter in Washington as
the guest of my elder sister, Mrs. Eames, who a few years before had
married Charles Eames, Esq., of the Washington Bar. Irving, who was then
seventy-two years old, was making a brief visit to the Capital and
called to see me. This was in 1855, when William M. Thackeray was on his
second visit to this country and delivering his celebrated lectures upon
"The Four Georges." I had scarcely welcomed Mr. Irving into my sister's