The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon
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,
gentleman-like 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
tea-pot. 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 overrun 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.
From his half-itinerant life, also, he was a kind of travelling gazette,
carrying the whole budget of local gossip from house to house, so that
his appearance was always greeted with satisfaction. He was, moreover,
esteemed by the women as a man of great erudition, for he had read
several books quite through, and was a perfect master of Cotton Mather’s
History of New England Witchcraft, in which, by the way, he most firmly
and potently believed.
He was, in fact, an odd mixture of small shrewdness and simple
credulity. His appetite for the marvellous and his powers of digesting
it were equally extraordinary, and both had been increased by his
residence in this spellbound region. No tale was too gross or monstrous
for his capacious swallow. It was often his delight, after his school
was dismissed in the afternoon, to stretch himself on the rich bed of
clover bordering the little brook that whimpered by his school-house,
and there con over old Mather’s direful tales until the gathering dusk
of the evening made the printed page a mere mist before his eyes. Then,
as he wended his way by swamp and stream and awful woodland to the
farmhouse where he happened to be quartered, every sound of Nature at
that witching hour fluttered his excited imagination--the moan of the
whip-poor-will* from the hillside; the boding cry of the tree-toad, that
harbinger of storm; the dreary hooting of the screech-owl, or the
sudden rustling in the thicket of birds frightened from their roost. The
fire-flies, too, which sparkled most vividly in the darkest places, now
and then startled him as one of uncommon brightness would stream across
his path; and if, by chance, a huge blockhead of a beetle came winging
his blundering flight against him, the poor varlet was ready to give up
the ghost, with the idea that he was struck with a witch’s token. His
only resource on such occasions, either to drown thought or drive away
evil spirits, was to sing psalm tunes; and the good people of Sleepy
Hollow, as they sat by their doors of an evening, were often filled with
awe at hearing his nasal melody, “in linked sweetness long drawn out,”
floating from the distant hill or along the dusky road.
* The whip-poor-will is a bird which is only heard at night.
It receives its name from its note, which is thought to
resemble those words.
Another of his sources of fearful pleasure was to pass long winter
evenings with the old Dutch wives as they sat spinning by the fire, with
a row of apples roasting and spluttering along the hearth, and listen
to their marvellous tales of ghosts and goblins, and haunted fields,
and haunted brooks, and haunted bridges, and haunted houses, and
particularly of the headless horseman, or Galloping Hessian of the
Hollow, as they sometimes called him. He would delight them equally
by his anecdotes of witchcraft and of the direful omens and portentous
sights and sounds in the air which prevailed in the earlier times of
Connecticut, and would frighten them woefully with speculations upon
comets and shooting stars, and with the alarming fact that the world did
absolutely turn round and that they were half the time topsy-turvy.
But if there was a pleasure in all this while snugly cuddling in the
chimney-corner of a chamber that was all of a ruddy glow from the
crackling wood-fire, and where, of course, no spectre dared to show
its face, it was dearly purchased by the terrors of his subsequent walk
homewards. What fearful shapes and shadows beset his path amidst the dim
and ghastly glare of a snowy night! With what wistful look did he eye
every trembling ray of light streaming across the waste fields from some
distant window! How often was he appalled by some shrub covered with
snow, which, like a sheeted spectre, beset his very path! How often did
he shrink with curdling awe at the sound of his own steps on the frosty
crust beneath his feet, and dread to look over his shoulder, lest he
should behold some uncouth being tramping close behind him! And how
often was he thrown into complete dismay by some rushing blast howling
among the trees, in the idea that it was the Galloping Hessian on one of
his nightly scourings!
All these, however, were mere terrors of the night, phantoms of the mind
that walk in darkness; and though he had seen many spectres in his time,
and been more than once beset by Satan in divers shapes in his lonely
perambulations, yet daylight put an end to all these evils; and he would
have passed a pleasant life of it, in despite of the devil and all his
works, if his path had not been crossed by a being that causes more
perplexity to mortal man than ghosts, goblins, and the whole race of
witches put together, and that was--a woman.
Among the musical disciples who assembled one evening in each week
to receive his instructions in psalmody was Katrina Van Tassel, the
daughter and only child of a substantial Dutch farmer. She was a
blooming lass of fresh eighteen, plump as a partridge, ripe and melting
and rosy-cheeked as one of her father’s peaches, and universally famed,
not merely for her beauty, but her vast expectations. She was withal a
little of a coquette, as might be perceived even in her dress, which was
a mixture of ancient and modern fashions, as most suited to set off
her charms. She wore the ornaments of pure yellow gold which her
great-great-grandmother had brought over from Saardam, the tempting
stomacher of the olden time, and withal a provokingly short petticoat to
display the prettiest foot and ankle in the country round.
Ichabod Crane had a soft and foolish heart towards the sex, and it is
not to be wondered at that so tempting a morsel soon found favor in his
eyes, more especially after he had visited her in her paternal mansion.
Old Baltus Van Tassel was a perfect picture of a thriving, contented,
liberal-hearted farmer. He seldom, it is true, sent either his eyes or
his thoughts beyond the boundaries of his own farm, but within those
everything was snug, happy, and well-conditioned. He was satisfied
with his wealth but not proud of it, and piqued himself upon the hearty
abundance, rather than the style, in which he lived. His stronghold was
situated on the banks of the Hudson, in one of those green, sheltered,
fertile nooks in which the Dutch farmers are so fond of nestling. A
great elm tree spread its broad branches over it, at the foot of which
bubbled up a spring of the softest and sweetest water in a little well
formed of a barrel, and then stole sparkling away through the grass to
a neighboring brook that bubbled along among alders and dwarf willows.
Hard by the farmhouse was a vast barn, that might have served for a
church, every window and crevice of which seemed bursting forth with the
treasures of the farm; the flail was busily resounding within it from
morning to night; swallows and martins skimmed twittering about the
eaves; and rows of pigeons, some with one eye turned up, as if watching
the weather, some with their heads under their wings or buried in their
bosoms, and others, swelling, and cooing, and bowing about their dames,
were enjoying the sunshine on the roof. Sleek, unwieldy porkers were
grunting in the repose and abundance of their pens, whence sallied
forth, now and then, troops of sucking pigs as if to snuff the air.
A stately squadron of snowy geese were riding in an adjoining pond,
convoying whole fleets of ducks; regiments of turkeys were gobbling
through the farmyard, and guinea-fowls fretting about it, like
ill-tempered housewives, with their peevish, discontented cry. Before
the barn-door strutted the gallant cock, that pattern of a husband, a
warrior, and a fine gentleman, clapping his burnished wings and crowing
in the pride and gladness of his heart--sometimes tearing up the earth
with his feet, and then generously calling his ever-hungry family of
wives and children to enjoy the rich morsel which he had discovered.
The pedagogue’s mouth watered as he looked upon this sumptuous promise
of luxurious winter fare. In his devouring mind’s eye he pictured to
himself every roasting-pig running about with a pudding in his belly
and an apple in his mouth; the pigeons were snugly put to bed in a
comfortable pie and tucked in with a coverlet of crust; the geese were
swimming in their own gravy; and the ducks pairing cosily in dishes,
like snug married couples, with a decent competency of onion sauce. In
the porkers he saw carved out the future sleek side of bacon and juicy
relishing ham; not a turkey but he beheld daintily trussed up, with
its gizzard under its wing, and, peradventure, a necklace of savory
sausages; and even bright Chanticleer himself lay sprawling on his back
in a side-dish, with uplifted claws, as if craving that quarter which
his chivalrous spirit disdained to ask while living.
As the enraptured Ichabod fancied all this, and as he rolled his great
green eyes over the fat meadow-lands, the rich fields of wheat, of rye,
of buckwheat, and Indian corn, and the orchards burdened with ruddy
fruit, which surrounded the warm tenement of Van Tassel, his heart
yearned after the damsel who was to inherit these domains, and his
imagination expanded with the idea how they might be readily turned into
cash and the money invested in immense tracts of wild land and shingle
palaces in the wilderness. Nay, his busy fancy already realized his
hopes, and presented to him the blooming Katrina, with a whole family of
children, mounted on the top of a wagon loaded with household trumpery,
with pots and kettles dangling beneath, and he beheld himself bestriding
a pacing mare, with a colt at her heels, setting out for Kentucky,
Tennessee, or the Lord knows where.
When he entered the house the conquest of his heart was complete. It
was one of those spacious farmhouses with high-ridged but lowly-sloping
roofs, built in the style handed down from the first Dutch settlers, the
low projecting eaves forming a piazza along the front capable of being
closed up in bad weather. Under this were hung flails, harness, various
utensils of husbandry, and nets for fishing in the neighboring
river. Benches were built along the sides for summer use, and a great
spinning-wheel at one end and a churn at the other showed the various
uses to which this important porch might be devoted. From this piazza
the wondering Ichabod entered the hall, which formed the centre of