The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
Page 4
girls can take care of themselves. Thus, while the busy damebustled about the house, or plied her spinning-wheel at one end of thepiazza, honest Balt would sit smoking his evening pipe at the other,watching the achievements of a little wooden warrior, who, armed with asword in each hand, was most valiantly fighting the wind on the pinnacleof the barn. In the mean time, Ichabod would carry on his suit with thedaughter by the side of the spring under the great elm, or saunteringalong in the twilight, that hour so favorable to the lover's eloquence.
I profess not to know how women's hearts are wooed and won. To me theyhave always been matters of riddle and admiration. Some seem to have butone vulnerable point, or door of access; while others have a thousandavenues, and may be captured in a thousand different ways. It is agreat triumph of skill to gain the former, but a still greater proof ofgeneralship to maintain possession of the latter, for man must battlefor his fortress at every door and window. He who wins a thousand commonhearts is therefore entitled to some renown; but he who keeps undisputedsway over the heart of a coquette is indeed a hero. Certain it is, thiswas not the case with the redoubtable Brom Bones; and from the momentIchabod Crane made his advances, the interests of the former evidentlydeclined: his horse was no longer seen tied to the palings on Sundaynights, and a deadly feud gradually arose between him and the preceptorof Sleepy Hollow.
Brom, who had a degree of rough chivalry in his nature, would fain havecarried matters to open warfare and have settled their pretensionsto the lady, according to the mode of those most concise and simplereasoners, the knights-errant of yore,--by single combat; but Ichabodwas too conscious of the superior might of his adversary to enter thelists against him; he had overheard a boast of Bones, that he would"double the schoolmaster up, and lay him on a shelf of his ownschoolhouse;" and he was too wary to give him an opportunity. There wassomething extremely provoking in this obstinately pacific system; itleft Brom no alternative but to draw upon the funds of rustic waggery inhis disposition, and to play off boorish practical jokes upon his rival.Ichabod became the object of whimsical persecution to Bones and his gangof rough riders. They harried his hitherto peaceful domains; smokedout his singing school by stopping up the chimney; broke into theschoolhouse at night, in spite of its formidable fastenings of witheand window stakes, and turned everything topsy-turvy, so that the poorschoolmaster began to think all the witches in the country heldtheir meetings there. But what was still more annoying, Brom took allopportunities of turning him into ridicule in presence of his mistress,and had a scoundrel dog whom he taught to whine in the most ludicrousmanner, and introduced as a rival of Ichabod's, to instruct her inpsalmody.
In this way matters went on for some time, without producing anymaterial effect on the relative situations of the contending powers. Ona fine autumnal afternoon, Ichabod, in pensive mood, sat enthroned onthe lofty stool from whence he usually watched all the concerns of hislittle literary realm. In his hand he swayed a ferule, that sceptre ofdespotic power; the birch of justice reposed on three nails behind thethrone, a constant terror to evil doers, while on the desk beforehim might be seen sundry contraband articles and prohibited weapons,detected upon the persons of idle urchins, such as half-munched apples,popguns, whirligigs, fly-cages, and whole legions of rampant littlepaper gamecocks. Apparently there had been some appalling act of justicerecently inflicted, for his scholars were all busily intent upon theirbooks, or slyly whispering behind them with one eye kept upon themaster; and a kind of buzzing stillness reigned throughout theschoolroom. It was suddenly interrupted by the appearance of a negro intow-cloth jacket and trowsers, a round-crowned fragment of a hat,like the cap of Mercury, and mounted on the back of a ragged, wild,half-broken colt, which he managed with a rope by way of halter. He cameclattering up to the school door with an invitation to Ichabod to attenda merry-making or "quilting frolic," to be held that evening atMynheer Van Tassel's; and having delivered his message with that air ofimportance, and effort at fine language, which a negro is apt to displayon petty embassies of the kind, he dashed over the brook, and was seenscampering away up the hollow, full of the importance and hurry of hismission.
All was now bustle and hubbub in the late quiet schoolroom. The scholarswere hurried through their lessons without stopping at trifles; thosewho were nimble skipped over half with impunity, and those who weretardy had a smart application now and then in the rear, to quicken theirspeed or help them over a tall word. Books were flung aside withoutbeing put away on the shelves, inkstands were overturned, benches throwndown, and the whole school was turned loose an hour before the usualtime, bursting forth like a legion of young imps, yelping and racketingabout the green in joy at their early emancipation.
The gallant Ichabod now spent at least an extra half hour at his toilet,brushing and furbishing up his best, and indeed only suit of rustyblack, and arranging his locks by a bit of broken looking-glass thathung up in the schoolhouse. That he might make his appearance before hismistress in the true style of a cavalier, he borrowed a horse from thefarmer with whom he was domiciliated, a choleric old Dutchman of thename of Hans Van Ripper, and, thus gallantly mounted, issued forth likea knight-errant in quest of adventures. But it is meet I should, inthe true spirit of romantic story, give some account of the looksand equipments of my hero and his steed. The animal he bestrode wasa broken-down plow-horse, that had outlived almost everything but itsviciousness. He was gaunt and shagged, with a ewe neck, and a head likea hammer; his rusty mane and tail were tangled and knotted with burs;one eye had lost its pupil, and was glaring and spectral, but the otherhad the gleam of a genuine devil in it. Still he must have had fire andmettle in his day, if we may judge from the name he bore of Gunpowder.He had, in fact, been a favorite steed of his master's, the choleric VanRipper, who was a furious rider, and had infused, very probably, some ofhis own spirit into the animal; for, old and broken-down as he looked,there was more of the lurking devil in him than in any young filly inthe country.
Ichabod was a suitable figure for such a steed. He rode with shortstirrups, which brought his knees nearly up to the pommel of the saddle;his sharp elbows stuck out like grasshoppers'; he carried his whipperpendicularly in his hand, like a sceptre, and as his horse jogged on,the motion of his arms was not unlike the flapping of a pair of wings. Asmall wool hat rested on the top of his nose, for so his scanty strip offorehead might be called, and the skirts of his black coat fluttered outalmost to the horses tail. Such was the appearance of Ichabod and hissteed as they shambled out of the gate of Hans Van Ripper, and it wasaltogether such an apparition as is seldom to be met with in broaddaylight.
It was, as I have said, a fine autumnal day; the sky was clear andserene, and nature wore that rich and golden livery which we alwaysassociate with the idea of abundance. The forests had put on their soberbrown and yellow, while some trees of the tenderer kind had been nippedby the frosts into brilliant dyes of orange, purple, and scarlet.Streaming files of wild ducks began to make their appearance high in theair; the bark of the squirrel might be heard from the groves of beechand hickory-nuts, and the pensive whistle of the quail at intervals fromthe neighboring stubble field.
The small birds were taking their farewell banquets. In the fullnessof their revelry, they fluttered, chirping and frolicking from bush tobush, and tree to tree, capricious from the very profusion and varietyaround them. There was the honest cock robin, the favorite game ofstripling sportsmen, with its loud querulous note; and the twitteringblackbirds flying in sable clouds; and the golden-winged woodpecker withhis crimson crest, his broad black gorget, and splendid plumage; and thecedar bird, with its red-tipt wings and yellow-tipt tail and its littlemonteiro cap of feathers; and the blue jay, that noisy coxcomb, in hisgay light blue coat and white underclothes, screaming and chattering,nodding and bobbing and bowing, and pretending to be on good terms withevery songster of the grove.
As Ichabod jogged slowly on his way, his eye, ever open to every symptomof culinary abundance, ranged with delight over the treasures of jollyautum
n. On all sides he beheld vast store of apples; some hanging inoppressive opulence on the trees; some gathered into baskets and barrelsfor the market; others heaped up in rich piles for the cider-press.Farther on he beheld great fields of Indian corn, with its golden earspeeping from their leafy coverts, and holding out the promise of cakesand hasty-pudding; and the yellow pumpkins lying beneath them, turningup their fair round bellies to the sun, and giving ample prospects ofthe most luxurious of pies; and anon he passed the fragrant buckwheatfields breathing the odor of the beehive, and as he beheld them, softanticipations stole over his mind of dainty slapjacks, well buttered,and garnished with honey or treacle, by the delicate little dimpled handof Katrina Van Tassel.
Thus feeding his mind with many sweet thoughts and "sugaredsuppositions," he journeyed along the sides of a range of hills whichlook out upon some of the goodliest scenes of the mighty Hudson. The