The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon
Ichabod, who had no relish for this strange midnight companion, and
bethought himself of the adventure of Brom Bones with the Galloping
Hessian, now quickened his steed in hopes of leaving him behind. The
stranger, however, quickened his horse to an equal pace. Ichabod pulled
up, and fell into a walk, thinking to lag behind; the other did the
same. His heart began to sink within him; he endeavored to resume his
psalm tune, but his parched tongue clove to the roof of his mouth and
he could not utter a stave. There was something in the moody and
dogged silence of this pertinacious companion that was mysterious and
appalling. It was soon fearfully accounted for. On mounting a rising
ground, which brought the figure of his fellow-traveller in relief
against the sky, gigantic in height and muffled in a cloak, Ichabod was
horror-struck on perceiving that he was headless! but his horror was
still more increased on observing that the head, which should have
rested on his shoulders, was carried before him on the pommel of the
saddle. His terror rose to desperation, he rained a shower of kicks and
blows upon Gunpowder, hoping by a sudden movement to give his companion
the slip; but the spectre started full jump with him. Away, then, they
dashed through thick and thin, stones flying and sparks flashing at
every bound. Ichabod’s flimsy garments fluttered in the air as he
stretched his long lank body away over his horse’s head in the eagerness
of his flight.
They had now reached the road which turns off to Sleepy Hollow; but
Gunpowder, who seemed possessed with a demon, instead of keeping up it,
made an opposite turn and plunged headlong down hill to the left. This
road leads through a sandy hollow shaded by trees for about a quarter
of a mile, where it crosses the bridge famous in goblin story, and just
beyond swells the green knoll on which stands the whitewashed church.
As yet the panic of the steed had given his unskillful rider an apparent
advantage in the chase; but just as he had got halfway through the
hollow the girths of the saddle gave away and he felt it slipping from
under him. He seized it by the pommel and endeavored to hold it firm,
but in vain, and had just time to save himself by clasping old Gunpowder
round the neck, when the saddle fell to the earth, and he heard it
trampled under foot by his pursuer. For a moment the terror of Hans Van
Ripper’s wrath passed across his mind, for it was his Sunday saddle; but
this was no time for petty fears; the goblin was hard on his haunches,
and (unskilled rider that he was) he had much ado to maintain his seat,
sometimes slipping on one side, sometimes on another, and sometimes
jolted on the high ridge of his horse’s back-bone with a violence that
he verily feared would cleave him asunder.
An opening in the trees now cheered him with the hopes that the church
bridge was at hand. The wavering reflection of a silver star in the
bosom of the brook told him that he was not mistaken. He saw the walls
of the church dimly glaring under the trees beyond. He recollected the
place where Brom Bones’ ghostly competitor had disappeared. “If I can
but reach that bridge,” thought Ichabod, “I am safe.” Just then he heard
the black steed panting and blowing close behind him; he even fancied
that he felt his hot breath. Another convulsive kick in the ribs, and
old Gunpowder sprang upon the bridge; he thundered over the resounding
planks; he gained the opposite side; and now Ichabod cast a look behind
to see if his pursuer should vanish, according to rule, in a flash of
fire and brimstone. Just then he saw the goblin rising in his stirrups,
and in the very act of hurling his head at him. Ichabod endeavored to
dodge the horrible missile, but too late. It encountered his cranium
with a tremendous crash; he was tumbled headlong into the dust, and
Gunpowder, the black steed, and the goblin rider passed by like a
whirlwind.
The next morning the old horse was found, without his saddle and with
the bridle under his feet, soberly cropping the grass at his master’s
gate. Ichabod did not make his appearance at breakfast; dinner-hour
came, but no Ichabod. The boys assembled at the school-house and
strolled idly about the banks of the brook; but no schoolmaster. Hans
Van Ripper now began to feel some uneasiness about the fate of poor
Ichabod and his saddle. An inquiry was set on foot, and after diligent
investigation they came upon his traces. In one part of the road leading
to the church was found the saddle trampled in the dirt; the tracks of
horses’ hoofs, deeply dented in the road and evidently at furious speed,
were traced to the bridge, beyond which, on the bank of a broad part of
the brook, where the water ran deep and black, was found the hat of the
unfortunate Ichabod, and close beside it a spattered pumpkin.
The brook was searched, but the body of the schoolmaster was not to be
discovered. Hans Van Ripper, as executor of his estate, examined the
bundle which contained all his worldly effects. They consisted of two
shirts and a half, two stocks for the neck, a pair or two of worsted
stockings, an old pair of corduroy small-clothes, a rusty razor, a book
of psalm tunes full of dog’s ears, and a broken pitch-pipe. As to the
books and furniture of the school-house, they belonged to the community,
excepting Cotton Mather’s History of Witchcraft, a New England Almanac,
and a book of dreams and fortune-telling; in which last was a sheet of
foolscap much scribbled and blotted in several fruitless attempts to
make a copy of verses in honor of the heiress of Van Tassel. These magic
books and the poetic scrawl were forthwith consigned to the flames
by Hans Van Ripper, who from that time forward determined to send his
children no more to school, observing that he never knew any good
come of this same reading and writing. Whatever money the schoolmaster
possessed--and he had received his quarter’s pay but a day or
two before--he must have had about his person at the time of his
disappearance.
The mysterious event caused much speculation at the church on the
following Sunday. Knots of gazers and gossips were collected in the
churchyard, at the bridge, and at the spot where the hat and pumpkin
had been found. The stories of Brouwer, of Bones, and a whole budget of
others were called to mind, and when they had diligently considered them
all, and compared them with the symptoms of the present case, they shook
their heads and came to the conclusion that Ichabod had been carried
off by the galloping Hessian. As he was a bachelor and in nobody’s debt,
nobody troubled his head any more about him, the school was removed to
a different quarter of the hollow and another pedagogue reigned in his
stead.
It is true an old farmer, who had been down to New York on a visit
several years after, and from whom this account of the ghostly adventure
was received, brought home the intelligence that Ichabod Crane was still
alive; that he had left the neighborhood, partly through fear of the
goblin and Hans Van Ripper, and partly in mortification at having been
suddenly dismissed by the heiress; that he had changed his quarters to a
distant part of the country, had kept school and studied law at the same
time, had been admitted to the bar, turned politician, electioneered,
written for the newspapers, and finally had been made a justice of
the Ten Pound Court. Brom Bones too, who shortly after his rival’s
disappearance conducted the blooming Katrina in triumph to the altar,
was observed to look exceedingly knowing whenever the story of Ichabod
was related, and always burst into a hearty laugh at the mention of the
pumpkin; which led some to suspect that he knew more about the matter
than he chose to tell.
The old country wives, however, who are the best judges of these
matters, maintain to this day that Ichabod was spirited away by
supernatural means; and it is a favorite story often told about the
neighborhood round the intervening fire. The bridge became more than
ever an object of superstitious awe, and that may be the reason why the
road has been altered of late years, so as to approach the church by the
border of the mill-pond. The schoolhouse, being deserted, soon fell to
decay, and was reported to be haunted by the ghost of the unfortunate
pedagogue; and the plough-boy, loitering homeward of a still summer
evening, has often fancied his voice at a distance chanting a melancholy
psalm tune among the tranquil solitudes of Sleepy Hollow.
POSTSCRIPT
FOUND IN THE HANDWRITING OF MR. KNICKERBOCKER.
THE preceding tale is given almost in the precise words in which I heard
it related at a Corporation meeting of the ancient city of Manhattoes,
at which were present many of its sagest and most illustrious burghers.
The narrator was a pleasant, shabby, gentlemanly old fellow in
pepper-and-salt clothes, with a sadly humorous face, and one whom
I strongly suspected of being poor, he made such efforts to be
entertaining. When his story was concluded there was much laughter and
approbation, particularly from two or three deputy aldermen who had
been asleep the greater part of the time. There was, however, one tall,
dry-looking old gentleman, with beetling eyebrows, who maintained a
grave and rather severe face throughout, now and then folding his arms,
inclining his head, and looking down upon the floor, as if turning a
doubt over in his mind. He was one of your wary men, who never laugh but
upon good grounds--when they have reason and the law on their side.
When the mirth of the rest of the company had subsided and silence was
restored, he leaned one arm on the elbow of his chair, and sticking the
other akimbo, demanded, with a slight but exceedingly sage motion of the
head and contraction of the brow, what was the moral of the story and
what it went to prove.
The story-teller, who was just putting a glass of wine to his lips as a
refreshment after his toils, paused for a moment, looked at his inquirer
with an air of infinite deference, and, lowering the glass slowly to the
table, observed that the story was intended most logically to prove--
“That there is no situation in life but has its advantages and
pleasures--provided we will but take a joke as we find it;
“That, therefore, he that runs races with goblin troopers is likely to
have rough riding of it.
“Ergo, for a country schoolmaster to be refused the hand of a Dutch
heiress is a certain step to high preferment in the state.”
The cautious old gentleman knit his brows tenfold closer after this
explanation, being sorely puzzled by the ratiocination of the syllogism,
while methought the one in pepper-and-salt eyed him with something of a
triumphant leer. At length he observed that all this was very well, but
still he thought the story a little on the extravagant--there were one
or two points on which he had his doubts.
“Faith, sir,” replied the story-teller, “as to that matter, I don’t
believe one-half of it myself.”
D. K.
L’ENVOY.*
Go, little booke, God send thee good passage,
And specially let this be thy prayere,
Unto them all that thee will read or hear,
Where thou art wrong, after their help to call,
Thee to correct in any part or all.
CHAUCER’S Belle Dame sans Mercie.
IN concluding a second volume of the Sketch Book the Author cannot but
express his deep sense of the indulgence with which his first has been
received, and of the liberal disposition that has been evinced to treat
him with kindness as a stranger. Even the critics, whatever may be
said of them by others, he has found to be a singularly gentle and
good-natured race; it is true that each has in turn objected to some
one or two articles, and that these individual exceptions, taken in the