This relic was of no
great intrinsic value; but, as he had written on this table many of his
later works, including "Mahomet," "Goldsmith," "Wolfert's Roost," and
"Washington," I prize it, of course, as one of the most interesting
mementos of Sunnyside.
As an illustration of habit, it may be added, that, some time after the
new table had been installed, I was sitting with him in the library,
when he searched long and fruitlessly for some paper which had been "so
_very_ carefully stowed away in some _very_ safe drawer" that it was
not to be found, and the search ended in a sort of half-humorous,
half-earnest denunciation of all "modern conveniences";--the simple old
table, with its primitive facilities, was, after all, worth a dozen of
these elegant contrivances for memory-saving and neatness.
One rather curious characteristic of Mr. Irving was excessive,
unaffected modesty and distrust of himself and of his own writings.
Considering how many a _debutant_ in letters, not yet out of his teens,
is so demonstratively self-confident as to the prospective effect of his
genius on an expecting and admiring world, it was always remarkable to
hear a veteran, whose fame for half a century had been cosmopolitan,
expressing the most timid doubts as to his latest compositions, and
fearing they were unequal to their position,--so unwilling, too, to
occupy an inch of ground to which any other writer might properly lay
claim.
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