upon their several merits, Hoffman paused in coming to this one, and
turning to Wilkins said, as if in hesitation, "though all the while
intending to admit him, Martin, I think he knows a little law."--"Make it
stronger, Jo," was the reply; "d---d little."]--Society more than ever
attracted him and devoured his time. He willingly accepted the office of
"champion at the tea-parties;" he was one of a knot of young fellows of
literary tastes and convivial habits, who delighted to be known as "The
Nine Worthies," or "Lads of Kilkenny." In his letters of this period I
detect a kind of callowness and affectation which is not discernible in
his foreign letters and journal.

These social worthies had jolly suppers at the humble taverns of the
city, and wilder revelries in an old country house on the Passaic, which
is celebrated in the "Salmagundi" papers as Cockloft Hall. We are
reminded of the change of manners by a letter of Mr. Paulding, one of his
comrades, written twenty years after, who recalls to mind the keeper of a
porter house, "who whilom wore a long coat, in the pockets whereof he
jingled two bushels of sixpenny pieces, and whose daughter played the
piano to the accompaniment of broiled oysters." There was some
affectation of roistering in all this; but it was a time of social
good-fellowship, and easy freedom of manners in both sexes. At the
dinners there was much sentimental and bacchanalian singing; it was
scarcely good manners not to get a little tipsy; and to be laid under
the table by the compulsory bumper was not to the discredit of a guest.
Irving used to like to repeat an anecdote of one of his early friends,
Henry Ogden, who had been at one of these festive meetings. He told
Irving the next day that in going home he had fallen through a grating
which had been carelessly left open, into a vault beneath. The solitude,
he said, was rather dismal at first, but several other of the guests fell
in, in the course of the evening, and they had, on the whole, a pleasant