"A pleasing land of drowsy head it was, Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye;

And of gay castles in the clouds that pass, Forever flushing round a summer sky."

—Castle of Indolence

In the bosom of one of those spacious coves which indent the eastern shore of the Hudson,

at that broad expansion of the river denominated by the ancient Dutch navigators the Tappaan

Zee, and where they always prudently shortened sail and implored the protection of St. Nicholas

when they crossed, there lies a small market town or rural port, which by some is called

Greensburgh, but which is more generally and properly known by the name of Tarry Town.

This name was given it, we are told, in former days, by the good housewives of the adjacent

country, from the inveterate propensity of their husbands to linger about the village

tavern on market days. Be that as it may, I do not vouch for the fact, but merely advert

to it, for the sake of being precise and authentic. Not far from this village, perhaps about three

miles, there is a little valley or rather lap of land among high hills, which is one

of the quietest places in the whole world. A small brook glides through it, with just

murmur enough to lull one to repose, and the occasional whistle of a quail, or tapping

of a woodpecker, is almost the only sound that ever breaks in upon the uniform tranquillity.

I recollect that, when a stripling, my first exploit in squirrel-shooting was in a grove

of tall walnut-trees that shades one side of the valley. I had wandered into it at noon-time,

when all nature is peculiarly quiet, and was startled by roar of my own gun, as it broke

the sabbath stillness around and was prolonged and reverberated by the angry echoes. If ever

I should wish for a retreat whither I might steal from the world and its distractions,

and dream quietly away the remnant of a troubled life, I know of none more promising than this

little valley. From the listless repose of the place and

the peculiar character of its inhabitants, who are descendants from the original Dutch

settlers, this sequestered glen has long been known by the name of Sleepy Hollow, and its

rustic lads are called the Sleepy Hollow Boys throughout all the neighboring country. A

drowsy, dreamy influence seems to hang over the land and to pervade the very atmosphere.

Some say that the place was bewitched by a high German doctor, during the early days

of the settlement; others, that an old Indian chief, the prophet or wizard of his tribe,

held his powwows there before the country was discovered by Master Hendrick Hudson.

Certain it is, the place still continues under the sway of some witching power that holds

a spell over the minds of the good people, causing them to walk in a continual reverie.

They are given to all kinds of marvelous beliefs; are subject to trances and visions, and frequently

see strange sights, and hear music and voices in the air. The whole neighborhood abounds

with local tales, haunted spots, and twilight superstitions; stars shoot and meteors glare

oftener across the valley than in any other part of the country, and the nightmare, with

her whole nine fold, seems to make it the favorite scene of her gambols.

The dominant spirit, however, that haunts this enchanted region and seems to be commander-in-chief

of all the powers of the air, is the apparition of a figure on horseback without a head. It

is said by some to be the ghost of a Hessian trooper, whose head had been carried away

by a cannon-ball in some nameless battle during the revolutionary war, and who is ever and

anon seen by the country folk, hurrying along in the gloom of night, as if on the wings

of the wind. His haunts are not confined to the valley, but extend at times to the adjacent

roads, and especially to the vicinity of a church that is at no great distance. Indeed,

certain of the most authentic historians of those parts, who have been careful in collecting

and collating the floating facts concerning this specter, allege that, the body of the

trooper having been buried in the churchyard, the ghost rides forth to the scene of battle

in nightly quest of his head, and that the rushing speed with which he sometimes passes

along the hollow like a midnight blast, is owing to his being belated, and in a hurry

to get back to the churchyard before daybreak. Such is the general purport of this legendary

superstition, which has furnished materials for many a wild story in that region of shadows,

and the specter is known at all the country firesides by the name of The Headless Horseman

of Sleepy Hollow. It is remarkable that the visionary propensity

I have mentioned is not confined to the native inhabitants of the valley, but is unconsciously

imbibed by every one 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. I mention this peaceful spot with all possible

laud; for it is in such little retired Dutch valleys, found here and there embosomed in

the great State of New York, that population, manners and customs remain fixed, while the

great torrent of migration and improvement, which is making such incessant changes in

other parts of this restless country, sweeps by them unobserved. They are like those little

nooks of still water which border a rapid stream, where we may see the straw and bubble

riding quietly at anchor, or slowly revolving in their mimic harbor, undisturbed by the

rush of the passing current. Though many years have elapsed since I trod the drowsy shades

of Sleepy Hollow, yet I question whether I should not still find the same trees and the

same families vegetating in its sheltered bosom.

In this by-place of nature there abode, in a remote period of American history, that

is to say, some thirty years since, a worthy wight of the name of Ichabod Crane, who sojourned,

or, as he expressed it, "tarried," in Sleepy Hollow, for the purpose of instructing the

children of the vicinity. He was a native of Connecticut, a State which supplies the

Union with pioneers for the mind as well as for the forest, and sends forth yearly its

legions of frontier woodmen and country schoolmasters. The cognomen of Crane was not inapplicable

to his person. He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and

legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels,

and his whole frame most loosely hung together. 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

the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him,

one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some

scarecrow eloped from a cornfield. His schoolhouse was a low building of one

large room, rudely constructed of logs, the windows partly glazed and partly patched with

leaves of copy-books. It was most ingeniously secured at vacant hours by a withe twisted

in the handle of the door, and stakes set against the window-shutters; so that, though

a thief might get in with perfect case, he would find some embarrassment in getting out—an

idea most probably borrowed by the architect, Yost Van Houten, from the mystery of an ellpot.

The schoolhouse stood in a rather lonely but pleasant situation, just at the foot of a

woody hill, with a 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 of a drowsy summer's day, like the hum of a beehive; interrupted now and

then by the authoritative voice of the master in the tone of menace or command; or, peradventure,

by the appalling sound of the birch, as he urged some tardy loiterer along the flowery

path of knowledge. Truth to say, he was a conscientious man, that ever bore in mind

the golden maxim, "spare the rod and spoil the child."—Ichabod Crane's scholars certainly

were not spoiled. I would not have it imagined, however, that

he was one of those cruel potentates of the school who joy in the smart of their subjects;

on the contrary, he administered justice with discrimination rather than severity, taking

the burden off the backs of the weak and laying it on those of the strong. Your mere puny

stripling, that winced at the least flourish of the rod, was passed by with indulgence;

but the claims of justice were satisfied by inflicting a double portion on some little,

tough, wrong headed, broad-skirted Dutch urchin, who sulked and swelled and grew dogged and

sullen beneath the birch. All this he called "doing his duty by their parents"; 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, he was even the

companion and playmate of the larger boys; and on holyday 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 was small, and 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; but to help out his maintenance, he was, according

to country custom in those parts, boarded and lodged at the houses of the farmers whose

children he instructed. With these he lived successively a week at a time, thus going

the rounds of the neighborhood with all his worldly effects tied up in a cotton handkerchief.

That all this might not be too onerous on the purses of his rustic patrons, who are

apt to consider the costs of schooling a grievous burden and schoolmasters as mere drones, he

had various ways of rendering himself both useful and agreeable. He assisted the farmers

occasionally in the lighter labors of their farms; helped to make hay; mended the fences;

took the horses to water; drove the cows from pasture, and cut wood for the winter fire.

He laid aside, too, all the dominant dignity and absolute sway with which he lorded it

in his little empire, the school, and became wonderfully gentle and ingratiating. He found

favor in the eyes of the mothers, by petting the children, particularly the youngest; and

like the lion bold, which whilom so magnanimously the lamb did hold, he would sit with a child

on one knee and rock a cradle with his foot for whole hours together.

In addition to his other vocations, he was the singing-master of the neighborhood, and

picked up many bright shillings by instructing the young folks in psalmody. It was a matter

of no little vanity to him on Sundays to take his station in front of the church gallery,

with a band of chosen singers; where, in his own mind, he completely carried away the palm

from the parson. Certain it is, his voice resounded far above all the rest of the congregation,

and there are peculiar quavers still to be heard in that church, and which may even be

heard half a mile off, quite to the opposite side of the mill-pond, on a still Sunday morning,

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 head-work, 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 teapot. 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 traveling 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 marvelous, and his powers of digesting it,

were equally extraordinary; and both had been increased by his residence in this spell-bound

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 schoolhouse, and there

con over old Mather's direful tales, until the gathering dusk of 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 hill-side; 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