The business reverses which befell the Irving brothers, and which drove Washington to the toil of the pen, and cast upon him heavy family responsibilities, defeated his plans of domestic happiness in marriage.  It was in this same year, 1816, when the fortunes of the firm were daily becoming more dismal, that he wrote to Brevoort, upon the report that the latter was likely to remain a bachelor:  “We are all selfish beings.  Fortune by her tardy favors and capricious freaks seems to discourage all my matrimonial resolves, and if I am doomed to live an old bachelor, I am anxious to have good company.  I cannot bear that all my old companions should launch away into the married state, and leave me alone to tread this desolate and sterile shore.”  And, in view of a possible life of scant fortune, he exclaims:  “Thank Heaven, I was brought up in simple and inexpensive habits, and I have satisfied myself that, if need be, I can resume them without repining or inconvenience.  Though I am willing, therefore, that Fortune should shower her blessings upon me, and think I can enjoy them as well as most men, yet I shall not make myself unhappy if she chooses to be scanty, and shall take the position allotted me with a cheerful and contented mind.”

When Irving passed the winter of 1823 in the charming society of the Fosters at Dresden, the success of the “Sketch-Book” and “Bracebridge Hall” had given him assurance of his ability to live comfortably by the use of his pen.

To resume.  The preliminary announcement of the History was a humorous and skillful piece of advertising.  Notices appeared in the newspapers of the disappearance from his lodging of “a small, elderly gentleman, dressed in an old black coat and cocked hat, by the name of Knickerbocker.”  Paragraphs from week to week, purporting to be the result of inquiry, elicited the facts that such an old gentleman had been seen traveling north in the Albany stage; that his name was Diedrich Knickerbocker; that he went away owing his landlord; and that he left behind a very curious kind of a written book, which would be sold to pay his bills if he did not return.  So skillfully was this managed that one of the city officials was on the point of offering a reward for the discovery of the missing Diedrich.  This little man in knee breeches and cocked hat was the germ of the whole “Knickerbocker legend,” a fantastic creation, which in a manner took the place of history, and stamped upon the commercial metropolis of the New World the indelible Knickerbocker name and character; and even now in the city it is an undefined patent of nobility to trace descent from “an old Knickerbocker family.”