Page 7 - Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, James Russell Lowell, Bayard Taylor
P. 7
"At length the sloop actually got under way. As she worked slowly out of
the dock into the stream, there was a great exchange of last words between
friends on board and friends on shore, and much waving of handkerchiefs
when the sloop was out of hearing.
"... What a time of intense delight was that first sail through the Highlands!
I sat on the deck as we slowly tided along at the foot of those stern
mountains, and gazed with wonder and admiration at cliffs impending far
above me, crowned with forests, with eagles sailing and screaming around
them; or listened to the unseen stream dashing down precipices; or beheld
rock, and tree, and cloud, and sky reflected in the glassy stream of the
river...
"But of all the scenery of the Hudson, the Kaatskill Mountains had the most
witching effect on my boyish imagination. Never shall I forget the effect
upon me of the first view of them predominating over a wide extent of
country, part wild, woody, and rugged; part softened away into all the
graces of cultivation. As we slowly floated along, I lay on the deck and
watched them through a long summer’s day, undergoing a thousand
mutations under the magical effects of atmosphere; sometimes seeming to
approach, at other times to recede; now almost melting into hazy distance,
now burnished by the hazy sun, until, in the evening, they printed
themselves against the glowing sky in the deep purple of an Italian
landscape."
CHAPTER III
A TRIP TO MONTREAL
Soon after returning from this trip, Irving became a clerk in the law office
of a Mr. Hoffman. There was a warm friendship between him and Mr.
Hoffman’s family. Mrs. Hoffman was his lifelong friend and, as he
afterwards said, like a sister to him; and he finally fell in love with Matilda,
one of Mr. Hoffman’s daughters, and was engaged to be married to her. Her
sad death at the age of seventeen was perhaps the greatest unhappiness of