Salmagundi; or, The whim-whams and opinions of Launcelot Langstaff, esq. [pseud.] and others. By William Irving, James Kirke Paulding and Washington Irving. Printed from the original ed., with a preface and notes by Evert A. Duyckinck.

224 SALMAGUNDI.
the hand, and bade him farewell the next morning-it was for
the last time I
He died a bachelor, at the age of sixty-three, though he had
been all his life trying to get married, and always thought himself on the point of accomplishing his wishes. His disappointments were not owing either to the deformity of his mind or
person; for in his youth he was reckohed handsome, and I
myself can witness for him that he had as kind a heart as ever
was fashioned by heaven; neither were they owing to his
poverty-which sometimes stands in an honest man's way-for
he was born to the inheritance of a small estate which was sufficient to establish his claim to the title of "one well to do in the
world." The truth is, my uncle had a prodigious antipathy to
doing things in a hurry. " A man should consider," said he to
me once, "that he can always get a wife, but cannot always get
rid of her. For my part," continued he, " I am a young fellow,
with the world before me"-he was about forty!-" and am
resolved to look sharp, weigh matters well, and know what's
what, before I marry: in short, Launce, I don't intend to do the
thing in a harry, depend upon it." On this whim-wham he proceeded. He began with young girls, and ended with widows.
The girls he courted until they grew old maids, or married out
of pure apprehension of incurring certain penalties hereafter;
and the widows, not having quite as much patience, generally at
the end of a year, while the good man thought himself in the
high road to success, married some harum-scarum young fellow,
who had not such an antipathy to doing things in a hurry.
My uncle would have inevitably sunk under these repeated
disappointments-for he did not want sensibility-had he not
hit upon a discovery which set all to rights at once. He consoled his vanity-for he was a little vain, and soothed his pride