Bab Bab 2 · 第2章

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 millpond, 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 headwork, 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,

gentlemanlike 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 overran 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 millpond; 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 travelling 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 marvellous, 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 hillside, 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

fireflies, 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 drive away

evil spirits, was to sing psalm tunes and the good people of Sleepy

Hollow, as they sat by their doors of an evening, were often filled with

awe at hearing his nasal melody, “in linked sweetness long drawn out,”

floating from the distant hill, or along the dusky road.

Another of his sources of fearful pleasure was to pass long winter

evenings with the old Dutch wives, as they sat spinning by the fire,

with a row of apples roasting and spluttering along the hearth, and

listen to their marvellous 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. He would delight them equally by

his anecdotes of witchcraft, and of the direful omens and portentous

sights and sounds in the air, which prevailed in the earlier times of

Connecticut; and would frighten them woefully with speculations upon

comets and shooting stars; and with the alarming fact that the world did

absolutely turn round, and that they were half the time topsy-turvy!

But if there was a pleasure in all this, while snugly cuddling in

the chimney corner of a chamber that was all of a ruddy glow from the

crackling wood fire, and where, of course, no spectre dared to show

its face, it was dearly purchased by the terrors of his subsequent walk

homewards. What fearful shapes and shadows beset his path, amidst the

dim and ghastly glare of a snowy night! With what wistful look did he

eye every trembling ray of light streaming across the waste fields from

some distant window! How often was he appalled by some shrub covered

with snow, which, like a sheeted spectre, beset his very path! 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! And how

often was he thrown into complete dismay by some rushing blast, howling

among the trees, in the idea that it was the Galloping Hessian on one of

his nightly scourings!

All these, however, were mere terrors of the night, phantoms of the mind

that walk in darkness; and though he had seen many spectres in his time,

and been more than once beset by Satan in divers shapes, in his lonely

perambulations, yet daylight put an end to all these evils; and he would

have passed a pleasant life of it, in despite of the Devil and all his

works, if his path had not been crossed by a being that causes more

perplexity to mortal man than ghosts, goblins, and the whole race of

witches put together, and that was--a woman.

Among the musical disciples who assembled, one evening in each week,

to receive his instructions in psalmody, was Katrina Van Tassel,

the daughter and only child of a substantial Dutch farmer. She was a

blooming lass of fresh eighteen; plump as a partridge; ripe and melting

and rosy-cheeked as one of her father’s peaches, and universally famed,

not merely for her beauty, but her vast expectations. She was withal a

little of a coquette, as might be perceived even in her dress, which was

a mixture of ancient and modern fashions, as most suited to set off

her charms. She wore the ornaments of pure yellow gold, which her

great-great-grandmother had brought over from Saardam; the tempting

stomacher of the olden time, and withal a provokingly short petticoat,

to display the prettiest foot and ankle in the country round.

Ichabod Crane had a soft and foolish heart towards the sex; and it is

not to be wondered at that so tempting a morsel soon found favor in his

eyes, more especially after he had visited her in her paternal mansion.

Old Baltus Van Tassel was a perfect picture of a thriving, contented,

liberal-hearted farmer. He seldom, it is true, sent either his eyes or

his thoughts beyond the boundaries of his own farm; but within those

everything was snug, happy and well-conditioned. He was satisfied with

his wealth, but not proud of it; and piqued himself upon the hearty

abundance, rather than the style in which he lived. His stronghold was

situated on the banks of the Hudson, in one of those green, sheltered,

fertile nooks in which the Dutch farmers are so fond of nestling. A

great elm tree spread its broad branches over it, at the foot of which

bubbled up a spring of the softest and sweetest water, in a little well

formed of a barrel; and then stole sparkling away through the grass, to

a neighboring brook, that babbled along among alders and dwarf willows.

Hard by the farmhouse was a vast barn, that might have served for a

church; every window and crevice of which seemed bursting forth with the

treasures of the farm; the flail was busily resounding within it from

morning to night; swallows and martins skimmed twittering about the

eaves; and rows of pigeons, some with one eye turned up, as if watching

the weather, some with their heads under their wings or buried in their

bosoms, and others swelling, and cooing, and bowing about their dames,

were enjoying the sunshine on the roof. Sleek unwieldy porkers were

grunting in the repose and abundance of their pens, from whence sallied

forth, now and then, troops of sucking pigs, as if to snuff the air.

A stately squadron of snowy geese were riding in an adjoining pond,

convoying whole fleets of ducks; regiments of turkeys were gobbling

through the farmyard, and Guinea fowls fretting about it, like

ill-tempered housewives, with their peevish, discontented cry. Before

the barn door strutted the gallant cock, that pattern of a husband, a

warrior and a fine gentleman, clapping his burnished wings and crowing

in the pride and gladness of his heart,--sometimes tearing up the earth

with his feet, and then generously calling his ever-hungry family of

wives and children to enjoy the rich morsel which he had discovered.