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!

“Oh, my friend, I have been in such holes and corners; such filthy nooks and filthy corners; sweep offices and oyster cellars!  I have sworn brother to a leash of drawers, and can drink with any tinker in his own language during my life,—­faugh!  I shall not be able to bear the smell of small beer and tobacco for a month to come . . . .  Truly this saving one’s country is a nauseous piece of business, and if patriotism is such a dirty virtue,—­prythee, no more of it.”

He unsuccessfully solicited some civil appointment at Albany, a very modest solicitation, which was never renewed, and which did not last long, for he was no sooner there than he was “disgusted by the servility and duplicity and rascality witnessed among the swarm of scrub politicians.”  There was a promising young artist at that time in Albany, and Irving wishes he were a man of wealth, to give him a helping hand; a few acts of munificence of this kind by rich nabobs, he breaks out, “would be more pleasing in the sight of Heaven, and more to the glory and advantage of their country, than building a dozen shingle church steeples, or buying a thousand venal votes at an election.”  This was in the “good old times!”