oath, it would be quite sufficient; and he objects, when he is at the public table, to the conduct of his neighbor who carelessly took up “Simeon’s” fork and used it as a toothpick.  All this, no doubt, passed for wit in the beginning of the century.  Punning, broad satire, exaggerated compliment, verse which has love for its theme and the “sweet bird of Venus” for its object, an affectation of gallantry and of ennui, with anecdotes of distinguished visitors, out of which the screaming fun has quite evaporated, make up the staple of these faded mementos of an ancient watering-place.  Yet how much superior is our comedy of to-day?  The beauty and the charms of the women of two generations ago exist only in tradition; perhaps we should give to the wit of that time equal admiration if none of it had been preserved.

Irving, notwithstanding the success of “Salmagundi,” did not immediately devote himself to literature, nor seem to regard his achievements in it as anything more than aids to social distinction.  He was then, as always, greatly influenced by his surroundings.  These were unfavorable to literary pursuits.  Politics was the attractive field for preferment and distinction; and it is more than probable that, even after the success of the Knickerbocker history, he would have drifted through life; half lawyer and half placeman, if the associations and stimulus of an old civilization, in his second European residence, had not fired his ambition.  Like most young lawyers with little law and less clients, he began to dabble in local politics.  The experiment was not much to his taste, and the association and work demanded, at that time, of a ward politician soon disgusted him.  “We have toiled through the purgatory of an election,” he writes to the fair Republican, Miss Fairlie, who rejoiced in the defeat he and the Federals had sustained.

“What makes me the more outrageous is, that I got fairly drawn into the vortex, and before the third day was expired, I was as deep in mud and politics as ever a moderate gentleman would wish to be; and I drank beer with the multitude; and I talked hand-bill fashion with the demagogues; and I shook hands with the mob, whom my heart abhorreth.  ’T is true, for the first two days I maintained my coolness and indifference.  The first day I merely hunted for whim, character, and absurdity, according to my usual custom; the second day being rainy, I sat in the bar-room at the Seventh Ward, and read a volume of ‘Galatea,’ which I found on a shelf; but before I had got through a hundred pages, I had three or four good Feds sprawling round me on the floor, and another with his eyes half shut, leaning on my shoulder in the most affectionate manner, and spelling a page of the book as if it had been an electioneering hand-bill.  But the third day—­ah! then came the tug of war.  My patriotism then blazed forth, and I determined to save my country!