Jarvis, the artist, was at that time the eccentric and elegant lion of society in Baltimore.  “Jack Randolph” had recently sat to him for his portrait.  “By the bye [the letter continues] that little ’hydra and chimera dire,’ Jarvis, is in prodigious circulation at Baltimore.  The gentlemen have all voted him a rare wag and most brilliant wit; and the ladies pronounce him one of the queerest, ugliest, most agreeable little creatures in the world.  The consequence is there is not a ball, tea-party, concert, supper, or other private regale but that Jarvis is the most conspicuous personage; and as to a dinner, they can no more do without him than they could without Friar John at the roystering revels of the renowned Pantagruel.”  Irving gives one of his bon mots which was industriously repeated at all the dinner tables, a profane sally, which seemed to tickle the Baltimoreans exceedingly.  Being very much importuned to go to church, he resolutely refused, observing that it was the same thing whether he went or stayed at home.  “If I don’t go,” said he, “the minister says I ’ll be d—–­d, and I ’ll be d—–­d if I do go.”

This same letter contains a pretty picture, and the expression of Irving’s habitual kindly regard for his fellow-men: 

“I was out visiting with Ann yesterday, and met that little assemblage of smiles and fascinations, Mary Jackson.  She was bounding with youth, health, and innocence, and good humor.  She had a pretty straw hat, tied under her chin with a pink ribbon, and looked like some little woodland nymph, just turned out by spring and fine weather.  God bless her light heart, and grant it may never know care or sorrow!  It’s enough to cure spleen and melancholy only to look at her.

“Your familiar pictures of home made me extremely desirous again to be there . . . .  I shall once more return to sober life, satisfied with having secured three months of sunshine in this valley of shadows and darkness.  In this space of time I have seen considerable of the world, but I am sadly afraid I have not grown wiser thereby, inasmuch as it has generally been asserted by the sages of every age that wisdom consists in a knowledge of the wickedness of mankind, and the wiser a man grows the more discontented he becomes with those around him.  Whereas, woe is me, I return in infinitely better humor with the world than I ever was before, and with a most melancholy good opinion and good will for the great mass of my fellow-creatures!”

Free intercourse with men of all parties, he thought, tends to divest a man’s mind of party bigotry.