heart.  And these two undertakings compelled him to be diligent with his pen to the end of his life.  The spot he chose for his “Roost” was a little farm on the bank of the river at Tarrytown, close to his old Sleepy Hollow haunt, one of the loveliest, if not the most picturesque, situations on the Hudson.  At first he intended nothing more than a summer retreat, inexpensive and simply furnished.  But his experience was that of all who buy, and renovate, and build.  The farm had on it a small stone Dutch cottage, built about a century before, and inhabited by one of the Van Tassels.  This was enlarged, still preserving the quaint Dutch characteristics; it acquired a tower and a whimsical weathercock, the delight of the owner ("it was brought from Holland by Gill Davis, the King of Coney Island, who says he got it from a windmill which they were demolishing at the gate of Rotterdam, which windmill has been mentioned in ‘Knickerbocker’"), and became one of the most snug and picturesque residences on the river.  When the slip of Melrose ivy, which was brought over from Scotland by Mrs. Renwick and given to the author, had grown and well overrun it, the house, in the midst of sheltering groves and secluded walks, was as pretty a retreat as a poet could desire.  But the little nook proved to have an insatiable capacity for swallowing up money, as the necessities of the author’s establishment increased:  there was always something to be done to the grounds; some alterations in the house; a green-house, a stable, a gardener’s cottage, to be built,—­and to the very end the outlay continued.  The cottage necessitated economy in other personal expenses, and incessant employment of his pen.  But Sunnyside, as the place was named, became the dearest spot on earth to him; it was his residence, from which he tore himself with reluctance, and to which he returned with eager longing; and here, surrounded by relatives whom he loved, he passed nearly all the remainder of his years, in as happy conditions, I think, as a bachelor ever enjoyed.  His intellectual activity was unremitting, he had no lack of friends, there was only now and then a discordant note in the general estimation of his literary work, and he was the object of the most tender care from his nieces.  Already, he writes, in October, 1838, “my little cottage is well stocked.  I have Ebenezer’s five girls, and himself also, whenever he can be spared from town; sister Catherine and her daughter; Mr. Davis occasionally, with casual visits from all the rest of our family connection.  The cottage, therefore, is never lonely.”  I like to dwell in thought upon this happy home, a real haven of rest after many wanderings; a seclusion broken only now and then by enforced absence, like that in Madrid as minister, but enlivened by many welcome guests.  Perhaps the most notorious of these was a young Frenchman, a “somewhat quiet guest,” who, after several months’ imprisonment on board a French man-of-war, was set on shore at Norfolk, and spent a couple of months in New York and its vicinity, in 1837.  This visit was vividly recalled to Irving in a letter to his sister, Mrs. Storrow, who was in Paris in 1853, and had just been presented at court:—­