Having been a wanderer for a good many years, Irving now began to wish for a home. Accordingly he bought a little estate near Tarrytown on the Hudson River, and had the cottage on this land made over into "a little nookery somewhat in the Dutch style, quaint, but unpretending." In the first years spent in this pleasant home he contributed articles to the _Knickerbocker Magazine_, later collected and published under the title of _Wolfert's Roost_, and wrote _Abbotsford_ and _Newstead Abbey_, now part of the volume of _Crayon Miscellany_. So smoothly did the home life at Sunnyside flow along that Irving was none too well pleased to separate himself from it in 1842 when appointed minister of the United States to Spain. Nevertheless, he looked upon this event as the "crowning hour" of his life. During the thirteen years that remained to him after returning to Sunnyside in 1846, he produced the _Life of Mahomet and his Successors_, a _Life of Goldsmith_, an author whom he especially admired and appreciated, and a biography of his celebrated namesake, which, though entitled a _Life of Washington_, is nothing less than a history of the Revolution. In the very year this last great work was completed, Irving died, surrounded by the household to whom he had become so much endeared (November 28, 1859). In his writings Washington Irving has shown himself so gentle and unpretentious and so large-hearted, that his words concerning Oliver Goldsmith seem to apply with equal fitness to himself: "There are few writers for whom the reader feels such personal kindness." These same qualities were revealed also day by day in the smallest incidents of his life. Perhaps they were never more simply illustrated than on the occasion when he was traveling in a railway car behind a woman with two small children and a baby who was being constantly disturbed by the older children's efforts to climb to a seat by the window. Having taken in the situation, Irving began lifting first one and then the other of the little ones into his lap, allowing each just three minutes at the window, and this he continued until they had had enough, and the grateful mother had enjoyed a needed rest. Apparently he bore ill-will toward no one, and his ever-ready humor helped him to view the lives of others without harshness. Thus it is not only as a great literary artist, but as an American of the most worthy type, that he has won lasting honor. THE KNICKERBOCKER HISTORY OF NEW YORK _By_ WASHINGTON IRVING INTRODUCTORY NOTE _A History of New York by Diedrich Knickerbocker_ was published in 1809. Nearly forty years later Washington Irving, the real author, says it was his purpose in the history to embody the traditions of New York in an amusing form, to illustrate its local humors, customs and peculiarities in a whimsical narrative, which should help to bind the heart of the native inhabitant to his home. He adds: