beautiful signature of Washington Irving appears as the indorsement of a
draft, dated in 1814, when, if we may take this document as evidence,
his individuality seems to have been merged into the firm of "P. E.
Irving & Co." Never was anything less mercantile than this autograph,
though as legible as the writing of a bank-clerk. Without apparently
aiming at artistic beauty, it has all the Sketch Book in it. We find
the signature and seal of Pierpont, the latter stamped with the poet's
almost living countenance. What a pleasant device for a seal is one's
own face, which he may thus multiply at pleasure, and send letters to
his friends,--the Head without, and the Heart within! There are a few
lines in the school-girl hand of Margaret Davidson, at nine years old;
and a scrap of a letter from Washington Allston, a gentle and delicate
autograph, in which we catch a glimpse of thanks to his correspondent
for the loan of a volume of poetry. Nothing remains, save a letter from
Noah Webster, whose early toils were manifested in a spelling-book, and
those of his later age in a ponderous dictionary. Under date of
February 10, 1843, he writes in a sturdy, awkward hand, very fit for a
lexicographer, an epistle of old man's reminiscences, from which we
extract the following anecdote of Washington, presenting the patriot in
a festive light:--

"When I was travelling to the South, in the year 1783, I called on
General Washington at Mount Vernon. At dinner, the last course of
dishes was a species of pancakes, which were handed round to each guest,
accompanied with a bowl of sugar and another of molasses for seasoning
them, that each guest might suit himself. When the dish came to me, I
pushed by me the bowl of molasses, observing to the gentlemen present,
that I had enough of that in my own country. The General burst out with
a loud laugh, a thing very unusual with him. 'Ah,' said he, 'there is
nothing in that story about your eating molasses in New England.' There