"I did not think you were a man to coin pretty speeches," she said.

"Your estimate of me was a wise one. You read human nature
correctly. But come and walk in the park with me. You will overtax
yourself if you practise any longer. The sunlight and the air are
vying with each other to-day to see which can be the most
intoxicating. Come and enjoy their sparring match with me; I want to
talk to you about one of my unfortunate parishioners. It is a
peculiarly pathetic case. I think you can help and advise me in the
matter."

It was a superb morning in early October. New York was like a
beautiful woman arrayed in her fresh autumn costume, disporting
herself before admiring eyes.

Absorbed in each other's society, their pulses beating high with
youth, love and health; the young couple walked through the crowded
avenues of the great city, as happily and as naturally as Adam and
Eve might have walked in the Garden of Eden the morning after
Creation.

Both were city born and city bred, yet both were as unfashionable and
untrammelled by custom as two children of the plains.

In the very heart of the greatest metropolis in America, there are
people who live and retain all the primitive simplicity of village
life and thought. Mr Irving had been one of these. Coming to New
York from an interior village when a young man, he had, through
simple and quiet tastes and religious convictions, kept himself
wholly free from the social life of the city in which he lived.