The Legend of Sleepy Hollow – Part 2
- I mention this peaceful spot with all possible laud for it
is in such little retired Dutch valleys, found here and there
embosomed in the great State of New York, that
population, manners, and customs remain fixed, while the
great torrent of migration and improvement, which is
making such incessant changes in other parts of this restless
country, sweeps by them unobserved. They are like those
little nooks of still water, which border a rapid stream,
where we may see the straw and bubble riding quietly at
anchor, or slowly revolving in their mimic harbor,
undisturbed by the rush of the passing current. Though
many years have elapsed since I trod the drowsy shades of
Sleepy Hollow, yet I question whether I should not still
find the same trees and the same families vegetating in its
sheltered bosom.
In this by-place of naturearly its legions of frontier - woodmen and country schoolmasterse there abode, in a remote
period of American history, that is to say, some thirty years
since, a worthy wight of the name of Ichabod Crane, who
sojourned, or, as he expressed it, ‘tarried,’ in Sleepy
Hollow, for the purpose of instructing the children of the
vicinity. He was a native of Connecticut, a State which
supplies the Union with pioneers for the mind as well as - for the forest, and sends forth yearly its legions of frontier
- .woodmen and country schoolmasters
- The cognomen of
Crane was not inapplicable to his person. He was tall, but
exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and
legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that
might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most
loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at top,
with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe
nose, so that it looked like a weather-cock perched upon
his spindle neck to tell which way the wind blew. To see
him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day,
with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one
might have mistaken him for the genius of famine
descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped - .from a cornfield
His schoolhouse was a low building of one large room,
rudely constructed of logs; the windows partly glazed, and
partly patched with leaves of old copybooks. It was most
ingeniously secured at vacant hours, by a *withe twisted in
the handle of the door, and stakes set against the window
shutters; so that though a thief might get in with perfect
ease, he would find some embarrassment in getting out, —
an idea most probably borrowed by the architect, Yost
Van Houten, from the mystery of an eelpot. The
schoolhouse stood in a rather lonely but pleasant situation,
just at the foot of a woody hill, with a brook running close
by, and a formidable birch-tree growing at one end of it
From hence the low murmur of his pupils’ voices,
conning over their lessons, might be heard in a drowsy
summer’s day, like the hum of a beehive; interrupted now
and then by the authoritative voice of the master, in the
tone of menace or command, or, peradventure, by the
appalling sound of the birch, as he urged some tardy
loiterer along the flowery path of knowledge. Truth to
say, he was a conscientious man, and ever bore in mind
the golden maxim, ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child.’
Ichabod Crane’s scholars certainly were not spoiled.
I would not have it imagined, however, that he was
one of those cruel potentates of the school who joy in the
smart of their subjects; on the contrary, he administered
justice with discrimination rather than severity; taking the
burden off the backs of the weak, and laying it on those of
the strong. Your mere puny stripling, that winced at the
least flourish of the rod, was passed by with indulgence;
but the claims of justice were satisfied by inflicting a
double portion on some little tough wrong headed, broad
skirted Dutch urchin, who sulked and swelled and grew
dogged and sullen beneath the birch. All this he called
‘doing his duty by their parents;’ and he never inflicted a
chastisement without following it by the assurance, so
consolatory to the smarting urchin, that ‘he would
remember it and thank him for it the longest day he had to live.’
When school hours were over, he was even the
companion and playmate of the larger boys; and on
holiday afternoons would convoy some of the smaller ones
home, who happened to have pretty sisters, or good
housewives for mothers, noted for the comforts of the
cupboard. Indeed, it behooved him to keep on good terms
with his pupils. The revenue arising from his school was
small, and would have been scarcely sufficient to furnish
him with daily bread, for he was a huge feeder, and,
though lank, had the dilating powers of an anaconda; but
to help out his maintenance, he was, according to country
custom in those parts, boarded and lodged at the houses of
the farmers whose children he instructed. With these he
lived successively a week at a time, thus going the rounds
of the neighborhood, with all his worldly effects tied up in
a cotton handkerchief.
That all this might not be too onerous on the purses of
his rustic patrons, who are apt to considered the costs of
schooling a grievous burden, and schoolmasters as mere
drones he had various ways of rendering himself both
useful and agreeable. He assisted the farmers occasionally
in the lighter labors of their farms, helped to make hay,
mended the fences, took the horses to water, drove the
cows from pasture, and cut wood for the winter fire. He
laid aside, too, all the dominant dignity and absolute sway
with which he lorded it in his little empire, the school,
and became wonderfully gentle and ingratiating. He found
favor in the eyes of the mothers by petting the children,
particularly the youngest; and like the lion bold, which
whilom so magnanimously the lamb did hold, he would
sit with a child on one knee, and rock a cradle with his
foot for whole hours together.
In addition to his other vocations, he was the singing
master of the neighborhood, and picked up many bright
shillings by instructing the young folks in psalmody. It was
a matter of no little vanity to him on Sundays, to take his
station in front of the church gallery, with a band of
chosen singers; where, in his own mind, he completely
carried away the palm from the parson. Certain it is, his
voice resounded far above all the rest of the congregation;
and there are peculiar quavers still to be heard in that
church, and which may even be heard half a mile off,
quite to the opposite side of the mill-pond, on a still
Sunday morning, which are said to be legitimately
descended from the nose of Ichabod Crane. Thus, by
divers little makeshifts, in that ingenious way which is
commonly denominated ‘by hook and by crook,’ the
worthy pedagogue got on tolerably enough, and was
thought, by all who understood nothing of the labor of
headwork, to have a wonderfully easy life of it.
The schoolmaster is generally a man of some
importance in the female circle of a rural neighborhood;
being considered a kind of idle, gentlemanlike personage,
of vastly superior taste and accomplishments to the rough
country swains, and, indeed, inferior in learning only to
the parson. His appearance, therefore, is apt to occasion
some little stir at the tea-table of a farmhouse, and the
addition of a supernumerary dish of cakes or sweetmeats,
or, peradventure, the parade of a silver teapot. Our man of
letters, therefore, was peculiarly happy in the smiles of all
the country damsels. How he would figure among them
in the churchyard, between services on Sundays; gathering
grapes for them from the wild vines that overran the
surrounding trees; reciting for their amusement all the
epitaphs on the tombstones; or sauntering, with a whole
bevy of them, along the banks of the adjacent mill-pond;
while the more bashful country bumpkins hung sheepishly
.back, envying his superior elegance and address
