’I can not tell you what a horrid state of mind I was in for a long time.  I seemed to care for nothing; the world was a blank to me.  I abandoned all thoughts of the law.  I went into the country, but could not bear solitude, yet could not enjoy society.  There was a dismal horror continually on my mind that made me fear to be alone.  I had often to get up in the night and seek the bedroom of my brother, as if the having of a human being by me would relieve me from the frightful gloom of my own thoughts.

’Months elapsed before my mind would resume any tone, but the despondency I had suffered for a long time in the course of this attachment, and the anguish that attended its final catastrophe, seemed to give a turn to my whole character, and threw some clouds into my disposition, which have ever since hung about it.  When I became more calm and collected, I applied myself, by way of occupation, to the finishing of my work.  I brought it to a close as well as I could, and published it; but the time and circumstances in which it was produced rendered me always unable to look upon it with satisfaction.  Still, it took with the public, and gave me celebrity, as an original work was something remarkable and uncommon in America.  I was noticed, caressed, and for a time elevated by the popularity I had gained.  Wherever I went, I was overwhelmed with attentions.  I was full of youth and animation, far different from the being I now am, and I was quite flushed with this early taste of public favor.  Still, however, the career of gayety and notoriety soon palled upon me.  I seemed to drift about without aim or object, at the mercy of every breeze; my heart wanted anchorage.  I was naturally susceptible, and tried to form other attachments, but my heart would not hold on.  It would continually revert to what it had lost; and whenever there was a pause in the hurry of novelty and excitement, I would sink into dismal dejection.  For years I could not talk on the subject of this hopeless regret; I could not even mention her name; but her image was continually before me, and I dreamed of her incessantly.’

The fragment of which the above is an extract, is doubly interesting as not only clearing up a mystery which the world has long desired to penetrate, but also as giving Irving’s experience in his own words.  It proves how deeply he felt the pangs of a rooted sorrow, and how impossible it was, amid all the attractions of society, for him to escape the power of one who had bidden to all earthly societies an everlasting farewell.  That his regrets over his early bereavement did not arise from overwrought dreams of excellence in the departed, is evident from the character she bore with others; and this is illustrated by the following extract from a faded copy of the Commercial Advertiser, which reads as follows: 

     ’OBITUARY,