THE LEGEND SLEEPY HOLLOW
(PART2)
It is remarkable that this visionary
propensity is not confined to native inhabitants of this little retired Dutch
valley, but is unconsciously imbibed by everyone who resides there for a time.
However wide-awake they may have been before they entered that sleepy region,
they are sure, in a little time, to inhale the witching influence of the air
and begin to grow imaginative, to dream dreams, and see apparitions.
In this
by-place of nature there abode, some thirty years since, a worthy wight of the
name of Ichabod Crane, a native of Connecticut, who "tarried" in
Sleepy Hollow for the purpose of instructing the children of the vicinity. He
was tall and exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands
that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, and feet that might have served for
shovels. 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 weathercock
perched upon his spindle neck, to tell which way the wind blew. To see him
striding along on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about
him, one might have mistaken him for some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield.
His
schoolhouse was a low building of one large room, rudely constructed of logs.
It stood in a rather lonely but pleasant situation, just at the foot of a woody
hill, witha 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 on a drowsy summer's day, interrupted now and then by
the voice of the master in a tone of menace or command; or by the appalling
sound of the birch as he urged some wrongheaded Dutch urchin along the flowery
path of knowledge. All this he called "doing his duty," 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, Ichabod 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 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. To help out his maintenance he was,
according to custom in those parts, boarded and lodged at the homes of his
pupils a week at a time; thus going the rounds of the neighborhood, with all
his worldly effects tied up in a cotton handkerchief.
