Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: were "Robinson Crusoe" and " Sindbad the Sailor." Besides these, he read many books of travel, and soon found himself wishing that he might go to sea. As he grew up he was able to gratify his taste for travel, and some of his finest books and stories relate to his experiences in foreign lands. In the introduction to the '' Sketch Book " he says, '' How wistfully would I wander about the pier-heads in fine weather, and watch the parting ships bound to distant climeswith what longing eyes would I gaze after their lessening sails, and waft myself in imagination to the ends of the earth " CHAPTER II Irving's First Voyage Up The Hudson River Irving's first literary composition seems to have been a play written when he was thirteen. It was performed at the house of a friend, in the presence of a famous actress of that day; but in after years Irving had forgotten even the title. His schooling was finished when he was sixteen. His elder brothers had attended college, and he never knew exactly why he did not. But he was not fond of hard study or hard work. He lived in a sort of dreamy leisure, which seemed particularly suited to his light, airy genius, so full of humor, sunshine, and loving-kindness. After leaving school, he began to study law in the office of a certain Henry Masterton. This was in the year 1800. He was admitted to the bar six years later; but he spent a great deal more of the intervening time in traveling and scribbling than in the study of law. His first published writing was a series of letters signed "Jonathan Oldstyle," printed in his brother's daily paper, "The Morning Chronicle," when the writer was nineteen years old. Irving's first journey was made the very year after he left school. It was a voyage in a sailing boat up the Hudson river to Albany; ...