custom vicinity scarecrow murmur
uncouth adjacent appalling personage
In a remote period of American history there lived in Sleepy Hollow a
worthy man whose name was Ichabod Crane. He sojourned, or, as he expressed
it, “tarried” in that quiet little valley for the purpose of instructing
the children of the vicinity.
He was tall, but very lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs,
hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, and feet that might have
served as shovels. His head was small, with huge ears, large glassy eyes,
and a long snipe nose. To see him striding along the crest of a hill on a
windy day, with his ill-fitting clothes fluttering about him, one might
have mistaken him for some scarecrow escaped from a cornfield.
His schoolhouse was a low building of one large room, rudely built of
logs. It stood in a rather lonely but pleasant place, just at the foot of
a woody hill, with a brook running close by, and a birch tree growing near
one end of it. From this place of learning the low murmur of children’s
voices, conning over their lessons, might be heard on a drowsy summer day
like the hum of a beehive. Now and then this was interrupted by the stern
voice of the master, or perhaps by the appalling sound of a birch twig, as
some loiterer was urged along the flowery path of knowledge.
When school hours were over, the teacher forgot that he was the master,
and was even the companion and playmate of the older boys; and on holiday
afternoons he liked to go home with some of the smaller ones who happened
to have pretty sisters, or mothers noted for their skill in cooking.
Indeed, it was a wise thing for him to keep on good terms with his pupils.
He earned so little by teaching school that he could scarcely have had
enough to eat had he not, according to country custom, boarded at the
houses of the children whom he instructed. With these he lived, by turns,
a week at a time, thus going the rounds of the neighborhood, with all his
worldly goods tied up in a cotton handkerchief.
He had many ways of making himself both useful and agreeable. He helped
the farmers in the lighter labors of their farms, raked the hay at harvest
time, mended the fences, took the horses to water, drove the cows from
pasture, and cut wood for the winter fire. He found favor in the eyes of
the mothers by petting the children, particularly the youngest; and he
would often sit with a child on one knee and rock a cradle with his foot
for whole hours together.
He was looked upon as a kind of idle, gentlemanlike personage of finer
tastes and better manners than the rough young men who had been brought
up in the country. He was always welcome at the tea table of a farmhouse;
and his presence was almost sure to bring out an extra dish of cakes or
sweetmeats, or the parade of a silver teapot. He would walk with the young
ladies in the churchyard between services on Sundays, gathering grapes for
them from the wild vines that overran the surrounding trees, or sauntering
with a whole bevy of them along the banks of the adjacent mill pond; while
the bashful country youngsters hung sheepishly back and hated him for his
fine manners.
One of his sources of pleasure was to pass long winter evenings with the
Dutch farmers, as they sat by the fire with a long row of apples roasting
and sputtering along the hearth. He listened to their wondrous 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. And then
he would entertain them with stories of witchcraft, and would frighten
them with woeful speculations about comets and shooting stars, and by
telling them that the world did really turn round, and that they were half
the time topsy-turvy.
There was pleasure in all this while snugly cuddling in the chimney corner
of a room that was lighted by the ruddy glow from a crackling wood fire,
and where no ghost dared show its face; but it was a pleasure dearly
bought by the terrors which would beset him during his walk homeward. How
fearful were the shapes and shadows that fell across his way in the dim
and ghastly glare of a snowy night! 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!