It's my second visit to this odd house, which sets high above the Hudson Strand. Lends me nothing more than fictional plots by another author's hand. Below, along the river's edge lie the rail road tracks Irving fought to keep out, to no avail.      This odd house has one object I just can't pull away from; How can something be so highly esteemed, almost revered... How can its fading reflective heart survive another 150 years? I wonder about the images this mirror has stored in micro layers of  silica and black matting... With- in lie the joys, and the haunts of a writer and his family, and their sad fading faces.   I can only imagine, by myself, as I look in this mirror, Irving brushing his thick russet plume of hair and maybe reciting lines that he himself holds dear. In my wonderment I can see it all, as if it were I standing there... in an other era.