Josiah Ogden Hoffman, in whose family he had long been on a footing of
the most perfect intimacy, and his ardent love was fully reciprocated.
He was restlessly casting about for some assured means of livelihood
which would enable him to marry, and perhaps his distrust of a literary
career was connected with this desire, when after a short illness Miss
Hoffman died, in the eighteenth year of her age. Without being a
dazzling beauty, she was lovely in person and mind, with most engaging
manners, a refined sensibility, and a delicate and playful humor.
The loss was a crushing blow to Irving, from the effects of which he
never recovered, although time softened the bitterness of his grief into
a tender and sacred memory. He could never bear to hear her name spoken
even by his most intimate friends, or any allusion to her. Thirty years
after her death, it happened one evening at the house of Mr. Hoffman,
her father, that a granddaughter was playing for Mr. Irving, and in
taking her music from the drawer, a faded piece of embroidery was brought
forth. "Washington," said Mr. Hoffman, picking it up, "this is a piece
of poor Matilda's workmanship." The effect was electric. He had been
talking in the sprightliest mood before, but he sunk at once into utter
silence, and in a few moments got up and left the house.

After his death, in a private repository of which he always kept the key,
was found a lovely miniature, a braid of fair hair, and a slip of paper,
on which was written in his own hand, "Matilda Hoffman;" and with these
treasures were several pages of a memorandum in ink long since faded.
He kept through life her Bible and Prayer Book; they were placed nightly
under his pillow in the first days of anguish that followed her loss, and
ever after they were the inseparable companions of all his wanderings.
In this memorandum--which was written many years afterwards--we read the
simple story of his love: