iO 004,8 A, "^^ Number 51 J..^>- ~ .,-- , .■ ■ m i ii.i>iimjjm .ft! 1922 Copy 2 pJDElLTEMjRESERilS RIVERSIDE LITERATURE SERIES Complete Catalogue and Price Lint free upon application 1. Longfellow's Evangeline. 2. Longfellow's Courtship of Miles Standish. 3. Dramatization of Miles Standish. 4. Wliittier's Snow-Bound, etc. 5. Whittier's Mabel Martin. 6. Holmes's Grandmother's Story. 7. 8, 9. Hawthorne's Grandfather's Chair. 10. Hawthorne's Biographical Series. 11. Longfellow's Children's Hour, etc. 13, 14. Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha. 16. Bayard Taylor's Lars. \7, 18. Hawthorne's Wonder-Book. 19, 20. Franklin's Autobiography. 21. Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac, and Other Papers. 22. 23. Hawthorne's Tangle wood Tales. 24. Washington's Farewell Addresses, etc. 25, 26. Longfellow's Golden Legend. 27. Thoreau's Forest Trees, etc. 23. Burroughs's Birds and Bees. 29. Hawthorne's Little Datfydowndilly, etc. 30. Lowell's Vision of Sir Launfal, etc. 31. Holmes's My Hunt after the Captain, etc. 32. Lincoln's Gettysburg Speech, etc. 33-35. Longfellow's Tales of a Wayside Lin. 36. Burroughs's Sharp Eyes, etc. 37. Warner's A-Hunting of the Deer, etc. 38. Longfellow's Building of the Ship, etc. 39. Lowell's Books and Libraries, etc. 40. Hawthorne's Tales of the White Hills. 41. Whittier's Tent on the Beach, etc. 42. Emerson's Fortune of the Republic, etc. 43. Bryant's Ulysses among the Phaeacians. 44. Edgeworth's Waste not. Want not, etc. 45. Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome. 46. Old Testament Stories. 47. 48. Scudder's Fables and Folk Stories. 49, .50. Andersen's Stories. 51. Irving's Rip Van Winkle, etc. 52. Irving's The Voyage, etc. 53. Scott's Lady of the Lake. 54. Bryant's Tliaiiatopsis, etc. 55. Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. 56. Webster's First Bunker Hill Oration. 57. Dickens's Christmas Carol. 58. Dickens's Cricket on the Hearth. 59. Verse and Prose for Beginners in Reading. GO, 61. The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers. 62. Fiske's War of Independence. 63. Longfellow's Paul Revere 's Ride, etc. 64-66. Lambs' Tales from Shakespeare. 67. Shakespeare's Julius Cresar. 68. Goldsmith's Deserted Village, etc. 69. Hawthorne's The Old Manse, etc. 70. 71. Selection from Whittier's Child Life. 72. Milton's Minor Poems. 73. Tennyson's Enoch Arden, etc. 74. Gray's Elegy ; Cowper's John Gilpin. 75. Scudder's George Washington. 76. Wordsworth's Intimations of Immortality. 77. Bums's Cotter's Saturday Night, etc. 78. Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield. 79« Lamb's Old China, etc. 80. Coleridge's Ancient Mariner ; Campbell's Lochiel's Warning, etc. 81. Holmes's Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. 82. Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales. 83. Eliot's Silas Marner. 84. Dana's Two Years Before the Mast. 85. Hughes's Tom Brown's School Days. 86. Scott's Ivanhoe. 87. Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. 88. Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. 89. 90. Swift's Gulliver's Voyages. 91. Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables. 92. Burroughs's A Bunch of Herbs, etc. 93. Shakespeare's As You Like It. 94. Milton's Paradise Lost. Books I-IIL 95-98. Cooper's Last of the Mohicans. 99. Tennyson's Coming of Arthur, etc. 100. Burke's Conciliation with the Colonies. 101. Pope's Iliad. Books I, VI, XXII, XXIV. 102. Macaulay's Johnson and Goldsmith. 103. Macaulay's Milton. 104. Macaulay's Addison. 105. Carlyle's Essay on Burns. 106. Shakespeare's Macbeth. 107. 108. Grimms' Tales. ^ 109. Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. De Quincey's Flight of a Tartar Tribe. Tennyson's Princess. Cranch's .^neid. Books I-III. Poems from Emerson. Peabody's Old Greek Folk Stories. Browning's Pied Piper of Hamelin, etc. Shakespeare's Hamlet. 118. Stories from the Arabian Nights. 119, 120. Poe's Poems and Tales. 121. Speech by Hayne on Foote's Resolution. 122. Speech by Webster in Reply to Hayne. 123. Lowell's Democracy, etc. 124. Aldrich's The Cruise of the Dolphin. 125. Dryden's Palamon and Arcite. 126. Ruskin's King of the Golden River, etc. Keats's Ode on a Grecian Urn, etc. Byron's Prisoner of Chillon, etc. Plato's Judgment of Socrates. Emerson's The Superlative, etc. Emerson's Nature, etc. Arnold's Sohrab and Rustnm, etc. Schurz's Abraham Lincoln. Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel. Chaucer's Prologue. Chaucer's The Knight's Tale, etc. Bryant's Iliad. Bks. I, VI, XXII, XXIV. Hawthorne's The Custom House, etc. 139. Howells's Doorstep Acquaintance, and Other Sketches. 140. Thackeray's Henry Esmond. 142. Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies. 144. Scudder's The Book of Legends. 145. Hawthorne's The Gentle Boy, and Other Tales. 146. Longfellow's Giles Corey. 147. Pope's Rape of the Lock, etc. 148. Hawthorne's Marble Faun. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117, 127. 128. 129. 130. 131. 132. 133. 134. 135. 136. 137. 138. {See also back covers) (74) ^g^"L^^^-yc.^ ®l)e Hibcr^itJe iliteraturr ^ttit$ RIP YAN WINKLE AND OTHER AMERICAN ESSAYS FROM THE SKETCH BOOK BY WASHINGTON IRVING / WITH INTRODUCTION, EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR STUDY V New Edition BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO SAN FRANCISCO HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY M CONTENTS I ^ ^'S^ Chronological Table » . . iii Biographical Sketch of Irving vii Map of the Regions Mentioned xviii Rip Van Winkle 7 Legend of Sleepy Hollow 32 Philip of Pokanoket 76 ^Explanatory Notes, with Questions and Topics for Study i The selections from "The Sketch Book" included in this number of the Riverside Literature Series are used by permission of, and by arrangement vvitli, Messrs. G. P. Put- nam's Sons, the authorized publishers of Irving's works. COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY y COPYRIGHT, 1 891, BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED AG0ni22 ^ CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. ■ H0Vi3'22'' -u >5 oX _ CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE, 111 IV CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. ^ o O H 1 1 g a3 psic, the d to P a o .1 111 till till s C5 ^ >2;fe > W m ^ 2 ^ J5 p ■«*< S CO •* »o H T 4, s § 00 00 1-1 00 § g g ""I '"' Tl l-( t- 1-1 s H Cd g lis 1 p 2-Q S 3 H 1 ^1 fi.l. a 1 ^Pl^ .^ (M M s CO S i 1 - oil ^11 1 am 1 1 1 ^1 ill 1^1 1! SI ii i k ill =1 Ii g rt «i ^ w i-s H W ^ i2; CO -t* t- a> ,_! CI Ti4 10 «j o o TO i-( as 00 00 00 TO 00 ■r-t *-• ■J 1,-g ^8 ■^ a >i M a II p^ . M 1 1 §M£o < ^< M ii 11 CC 1-1 « w a •< 3 o i Ills „ '^ lUJIi ililllllllillillll m pc] Ah ^ -<^ M W W M CD 00 10 1 1 O «o 1 i 00 2 2 03 .-cOO T-l t-< ^ 00 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. li Si 0*0 V ^ s rt .^ M M - -I 3" 00 (J) Si o ® bo ba 3 1 ^ 3 S3 q a . 1 ^3 1 as -a 1^1- ^1" CO M tH o a Jh 03 t- _ - ■ o a >>9 a o t o 1 Si 00^ c8 ,0 I I « 6 53 S « ^ ?5 ^ 00 00 u i5S ,M -, ^-^ 1 azin ded id man bo a g'O 'a S^ls M W o o 2 PH i S eS S^ 0.2 M •s.^ *- o-g g Ss H)«.a ddled my poor head sadly ! " It was with some difficulty that he found the way to his own house, which he approached with silent awe, expecting every moment to hear the shrill voice of Dame Van Winkle. He found the house gone to decay — the roof fallen in, the windows shattered, and the doors off the hinges. A half -starved dog that 22 WASHINGTOJy IRVING. looked like Wolf was skulking about it. Rip called iiim by name, but the cur snarled, showed his teeth, and passed on. This was an unkind cut indeed — "My very dog," sighed poor Eip, "has forgotten me!" He entered the house, which, to tell the truth, Dame Yan Winkle had always kept in neat order. It was 3mpty, forlorn, and apparently abandoned. This deso- lateness overcame all his connubial fears — he called loudly for his wife and children — the lonely cham- bers rang for a moment with his voice, and then again all was silence. He now hurried forth, and hastened to his old re- sort, the village inn — but it, too, was gone. A large, rickety wooden building stood in its place, with great gaping windows, some of them broken and mended with old hats and petticoats, and over the door was painted, " The TJnion Hotel, by Jonathan Doolittle.'' Instead of the great tree that used to shelter the quiet little Dutch inn of yore, there now was reared a tall naked pole, with something on the top that looked like a red night-cap, and from it was fluttering a flag, on which was a singular assemblage of stars and stripes — all this was strange and incomprehensible. He recognizea on the sign, however, the ruby face of King George, under which he had smoked so many a peaceful pipe ; but even this was singularly metamor- phosed. The red coat was changed for one of blue and buff, a sword was held in the hand instead of a sceptre, the head was decorated with a cocked hat, and underneath was painted in large characters, Gen- eral Washington. There was, as usual, a crowd of folk about the door, but none that Rip recollected. The very character of JtIP VAN WINKLE. 28 fclie people seemed changed. There was a busy^ bus- tling, disputatious tone about it, instead of the accus- tomed phlegm and drowsy tranquillity. He looked in vain for the sage Nicholas Vedder, with his broad face, double chin, and fair long pipe, uttering clouds of tobacco-smoke instead of idle speeches ; or Van Bummel, the school-master, doling forth the contents of an ancient newspaper. In place of these, a lean, bilious-looking fellow, with his pockets full of hand- bills, was haranguing vehemently about rights of citi- zens — elections — members of congress — - liberty — Bunker's Hill — heroes of seventy-six — and other words, which were a perfect Babylonish jargon to the bewildered Van Winkle. The appearance of Rip, with his long grizzled beard, his rusty fowling-piece, his uncouth dress, and an army of women and children at his heels, soon attracted the attention of the tavern-politicians. They crowded round him, eying him from head to foot with great curiosity. The orator bustled up to him, and, draw- ing him partly aside, inquired " on which side he voted ? " Rip started in vacant stupidity. Another short but busy little fellow pulled him by the arm, and, rising on tiptoe, inquired in his ear, " Whether he was Federal or Democrat ? " Rip was equally at ?. loss to comprehend the question ; when a knowing, self-important old gentleman, in a sharp cocked hat, made his way through the crowd, putting them to the right and left with his elbows as he passed, and plant- ing himself before Van Winkle, with one arm akimbo^ the other resting on his cane, his keen eyes and sharp hat penetrating, as it were, into his very soul, de- manded in an austere tone, '^ what brought him to the election with a gun on his shoulder, and a mob at his 24 WASHINGTON IRVING, heels, and whether he meant to breed a riot in the village ? " — " Alas ! gentlemen," cried Rip, somewhat dismayed, " I am a poor quiet man, a native of the place, and a loyal subject of the king, God bless him ! " Here a general shout burst from the bystanders — " A tory ! a tory ! a spy ! a refugee ! hustle him \ away with him ! " It was with great difficulty that the self-important man in the cocked hat restored order; and, having assumed a tenfold austerity of brow, demanded again of the unknown culprit what he came there for, and whom he was seeking ? The poor man humbly assured him that he meant no harm, but merely came there in search of some of his neigh- bors, who used to keep about the tavern. " Well — who are they ? — name them." Rip bethought himself a moment, and inquired.^ " Where 's Nicholas Yedder ? " There was a silence for a little while, when an old man replied, in a thin, piping voice : " Nicholas Ved- der ! why, he is dead and gone these eighteen years ! There was a wooden tombstone in the churchyard that used to tell all about him, but that 's rotten and gone too." " Where 's Brom Dutcher ? " " Oh, he went off to the army in the beginning of the war ; some say he was killed at the storming of Stony Point 1 — others say he was drowned in a squall at the foot of Antony's Nose.^ I don't know — he never came back again." 1 On the Hudson. The place Is famous for the daring assault made by Mad Anthony Wayne, July 15, 1779. 2 A few miles above Stony Point is the promontory of An- tony's Nose. If we are to believe Diedrich Knickerbocker, it RIP VAN WINKLE. 26 ** Where 's Van Bummel, the school-master ? " " He went off to the wars too, was a great militia general, and is now in Congress." Rip's heart died away at hearing of these sad changes in his home and friends, and finding himself thus alone in the world. Every answer puzzled him ioo, by treating of such enormous lapses of time, and of matters which he could not understand : war — Congress - — Stony Point ; he had no courage to ask after any more friends, but cried out in despair, " Does nobody here know Rip Van Winkle ? " " Oh, Rip Van Winkle ! " exclaimed two or three, *' Oh, to be sure ! that 's Rip Van Winkle yonder, lean- ing against the tree." Rip looked, and beheld a precise counterpart of himself, as he went up the mountain : apparently as lazy, and certainly as ragged. The poor fellow was now completely confounded. He doubted his own identity, and whether he was himself or another man. was named after Antony Yan Corlear, Stuyvesant's trumpeter, " It must be known, then, that the nose of Antony the trum- peter was of a very histy size, strutting boldly from his counte- nance like a mountain of Golconda. . . . Now thus it happened, that bright and early in the morning the good Antony, having washed his burly visage, was leaning over the quarter railing of the galley, contemplating it in the glassy wave below. Just at this moment the illustrious sun, breaking in all his splendor from behind a high bluff of the highlands, did dart one of Ms most potent beams full upon the refulgent nose of the sounder of brass — the reflection of which shot straightway down, hissing hot, into the water and killed a mighty sturgeon that was sport- ing beside the vessel ! . , . When this astonishing miracle came to be made known to Peter Stuyvesant he . . . marvelled ex- ceedingly ; and as a monument thereof, he gave the name of Antony's Nose to a stout promontory in the neighborhood, and it has continued to be called Antony's Nose ever since that time," History of New York, book VI. chap. iv. 26 WASHINGTON IRVING^ In the midst of his bewilderment, the man in the cocked hat demanded who he was, and what was his name ? " God knows," exclaimed he, at his wit's end ; " I 'm not myself — I 'm somebody else — that 's me yonder — no — that 's somebody else got into my shoes — I was myself last night, but I fell asleep on the moun- tain, and they 've changed my gun, and everything's changed, and I 'm changed, and I can't tell what 's my name, or who I am ! " The bystanders began now to look at each other nod, wink significantly, and tap their fingers against their foreheads. There was a whisper, also, about securing the gun, and keeping the old fellow from doing mischief, at the very suggestion of which the self-important man in the cocked hat retired with some precipitation. At this critical moment a fresh, comely woman pressed through the throng to get a peep at the gray-bearded man. She had a chubby child in her arms, which, frightened at his looks, began to cry. " Hush, Rip," cried she, " hush, you little fool ; the old man won't hurt you." The name of the child, the air of the mother, the tone of her voice, all awakened a train of recollections in his mind. " What is your name, my good woman ? " asked he. "Judith Gardenier." *' And your father's name ? " "Ah, poor man. Rip Van Winkle was his namec but it 's twenty years since he went away from home with his gun, and never has been heard of since, ■ — his dog came home without him ; but whether he shot himself, or was carried away by the Indians, nobodj can tell. I was then but a little girl." Rip had but one question more to ask ; and he put it with a faltering voice : — RIP VAN WINKLE. 27 *' Where 's your mother ? '* " Oh, she too had died but a short time since ; she broke a blood-vessel in a fit of passion at a New Eng- land peddler." There was a drop of comfort at least, in this inteL ligence. The honest man could contain himself nc longer. He caught his daughter and her child in his arms. " I am your father ! " cried he — " Young Rip Van Winkle once — old Rip Van Winkle now ! Does nobody know poor Rip Van Winkle ? " All stood amazed, until an old woman tottering out from among the crowd, put her hand to her brow, and peering under it in his face for a moment, exclaimed, " Sure enough it is Rip Van Winkle — it is himself! Welcome home again, old neighbor — Why, where have you been these twenty long years?" Rip's story was soon told, for the whole twenty years had been to him but as one night. The neigh- bors stared when they heard it; some were seen to wink at each other, and put their tongues in their cheeks ; and the self-important man in the cocked hat, who when the alarm was over, had returned to the field, screwed down the corners of his mouth, and shook his head — upon which there was a general shaking of the head throughout the assemblage. It was determined, however, to take the opinion of old Peter Vanderdonk, who was seen slowly advan- cing up the road. He was a descendant of the histo= rian of that name,^ who wrote one of the earliest accounts of the province. Peter was the most ancient inhabitant of the village, and well versed in all the wonderful events and traditions of the neighborhood. He recollected Rip at once, and corroborated his story * Adrian Vanderdonk, 28 WASHINGTON IRVING. in the most satisfactory manner. He assured the company that it was a fact, handed down from his ancestor the historian, that the Kaatskill Mountains had always been haunted by strange beings. That it was affirmed that the great Hendrick Hudson, the first discoverer of the river and country, kept a kind of vigil there every twenty years, with his crew of the Half -moon ; being permitted in this way to revisit the scenes of his enterprise, and keep a guardian eye upon the river and the great city called by his name» That his father had once seen them in their old Dutch dresses playing at ninepins in a hollow of the moun- tain ; and that he himself had heard, one summer afternoon, the sound of their balls like distant peals of thunder. To make a long story short, the company broke up, and returned to the more important concerns of the election. Rip's daughter took him home to live with her ; she had a snug well-furnished house, and a stout cheery farmer for a husband, whom E,ip recollected for one of the urchins that used to climb upon his back. As to Rip's son and heir, who was the ditto of himself, seen leaning against the tree, he was employed to work on the farm ; but evinced an hereditary dis' position to attend to anything else but his business. Rip now resumed his old walks and habits ; he soon found many of his former cronies, though all rather the worse for the wear and tear of time ; and preferred mp.king friends among the rising generation, with whom he soon grew into great favor. Having nothing to do at home, and being arrived at that happy age when a man can be idle with impu- nity, he took his place once more on the bench at the inn door, and was reverenced as one of the patriarchs RIP VAN WINKLE. 29 sf the village, and a chronicle of the old times " before the war." It was some time before he could get into ■;he regular track of gossip, or could be made to com- prehend the strange events that had taken place dur- ing his torpor. How that there had been a revolu- tionary war — that the country had thrown off the yoke of old England — and that, instead of being a subject of his Majesty George the Third, he was now a free citizen of the United States. Eip, in fact, was no politician ; the changes of states and empires made but little impression on him ; but there was one spe- cies of despotism under which he had long groaned,, and that was — petticoat government. Happily that was at an end ; he had got his neck out of the yoke of matrimony, and could go in and out whenever he pleased, without dreading the tyranny of Dame Van Winkle. Whenever her name was mentioned, how- ever, he shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, and cast up his eyes, which might pass either for an ex- pression of resignation to his fate, or joy at his deliv- erance. He used to tell his story to every stranger that ar- rived at Mr. Doolittle's hotel. He was observed, at first, to vary on some points every time he told it, which was, doubtless, owing to his having so recently- awaked. It at last settled down precisely to the tale I have related, and not a man, woman, or child in the neighborhood but knew it by heart. Some always pretended to doubt the reahty of it, and insisted that Rip had been out of his head, and that this was one point on which he always remained flighty. The old Dutch inhabitants, however, almost universally gave it full credit. Even to this day they never hear a thunder-storm of a summer afternoon about the Kaats- 30 WASHINGTON IRVING. kill, but they say Hendrick Hudson and his crew are at their game of ninepins ; and it is a common wish of all henpecked husbands in the neighborhood, when life hangs heavy on their hands, that they might have a quieting draught out of Rip Van Winkle's flagon. NOTE. The foregoing Tale, one would suspect, had been suggested tc Mr. Knickerbocker by a little German superstition about the Emperor Frederick der Rothbart,^ and the Kypphaiiser moun- tain ; the subjoined note, however, which he had appended to the tale, shows that it is an absolute fact, narrated with his usual fidelity. " The story of Rip Van Winkle may seem incredible to many, but nevertheless I give it my full belief, for I know the vicinity of our old Dutch settlements to have been very subject to mar- vellous events and appearances. Indeed, I have heard many stranger stories than this, in the villages along the Hudson ; all of which were too well authenticated to admit of a doubt. I have even talked with Rip Van Winkle myself, who, when last I saw him, was a very old venerable man, and so perfectly rational and consistent on every other point, that I think no conscientious person could refuse to take this into the bargain ; nay, I have seen a certificate on the subject taken before a country justice and signed with a cross, in the justice's own handwriting. The story therefore, is beyond the possibility of doubt. "D. K." POSTSCRIPT. The following are travelling notes from a memorandum-bool jf Mr. Knickerbocker : — The Kaatsberg, or Catskill Mountains, have always been a re gion full of fable. The Indians considered them the abode of spirits, who influenced the weather, spreading sunshine or clouds 1 Frederick I. of Germany, 1121-1190, called Barbarossa, der Rothhart (Redbeard or Rufus), was fabled not to have died but to have gone into a long sleep, from which he would awake when Germany should need him. The same legend was told by ;he Danes of their Holger. EIP VAN WINKLE. 31 over the landscape, and sending good or bad hunting seasons. They were ruled by an old squaw spirit, said to be their mother. She dwelt on the highest peak of the Catskills, and had charge of the doors of day and night tc open and shut them at the proper hour. She hung up the new moons in the skies, and cut up the old ones into stars. In times of drought, if properly propitiated, she would spin light summer clouds out of cobwebs and morning dew, and send them off from the crest of the moun- tain, flake after flake, like flakes of carded cotton, to float in the air ; until, dissolved by the heat of the sun, they would fall in gentle showers, causing the grass to spring, the fruits to ripen, and the corn to grow an inch an hour. If displeased, however, she would brew up clouds black as ink, sitting in the midst of them like a bottle-bellied spider in the midst of its web ; and when these clouds broke, woe betide the valleys ! In old times, say the Indian traditions, there was a kind of Manitou or Spirit, who kept about the wildest recesses of the Catskill Mountains, and took a mischievous pleasure in wreaking all kinds of evils and vexations upon the red men. Sometimes he would assume the form of a bear, a panther, or a deer, lead the bewildered hunter a weary chase through tangled forest and among ragged rocks ; and then spring off with a loud ho ! ho ! leaving him aghast on the brink of a beetling precipice or raging torrent. The favorite abode of this Manitou is still shown. It is a great rock or cliff on the loneliest part of the mountains, and from the flowering vines which clamber about it, and the wild flowers which abound in its neighborhood, is known by the name of the Garden Rock. Near the foot of it is a small lake, the haunt of the solitary bittern, with water-snakes basking in the sun on the leaves of the pond-lilies which lie on the surface. This place was held in great awe by the Indians, insomuch that the boldest hunter would not pursue his game within its pre- cincts. Once upon a time, however, a hunter, who had lost his way, penetrated to the Garden Rock, where he beheld a number of gourds placed in the crotches of trees. One of these he seized and made off with it, but in the hurry of his retreat he let it fall among the rocks, when a great stream gushed forth, which washed him away and swept him down precipices, where he was dashed to pieces, and the stream made its way to the Hudson, and continues to flow to the present day ; being the identical stream known by the name of the Kaaters-kill. THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW. FOUND AMONG THE PAPERS OF THE LATE DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER. 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. Cadle oj TndolenceA 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 Tap pan Zee,^ and where they always prudently shortened sail and implored the pro- tection of St. Nicholas^ when they crossed, there lies a small market town or rural port, which by some is called Green sburgh, but which is more generally and 1 An exquisite poem by James Thomson, an English poet, who lived from 1700 to 1748. In it he describes a beautiful pal- ace with groves and lawns and flowery beds, where everything ministers to the ease and luxury of its lotus-eating inmates. He seems to have gathered his materials from Tasso, an Italian poet of the sixteenth century, and his inspiration from Spenser, an English poet of the same century and the author of The Faerie Queene. 2 The " Mediterranean " of the river, as Irving was pleased to call it, about ten miles long and four wide. 3 The patron saint of children, also of sailors. Tradition says that he was bishop of Myra in Lydia, and died in 326 A, d. He is revered by the young as the bearer of gifts on Christmas eve. The Dutch know him as Santa Clans (or Klaus). Irving alludes to him frequently in his humorous History of New York. THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW. 33 properly known by the name of Tarry Town. This name was given, we are told, in former clays, 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 two 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 noontime, when all nature is peculiarly quiet, and was startled by the roar of my own gun, as it broke the Sabbath stillness around and was pro- longed 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 pe° culiar character of its inhabitants, who are descend- ants from the original Dutch settlers, this sequestered glen has long been known by the name of Sleepy ^ Irving subsequently bought the little stone cottage where the Van Tassels were said to have lived, enlarged and improved it, and gave it the name of Sunnyside. Here he spent his declin* Uig years, thus gratifying the wish implied in the text. 34 WASHINGTON IRVING, 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 doc- tor, 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 fre- quently 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 often er across the valley than in any other part of the country, and the night- mare, with her whole ninefold,^ 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 fig- ure 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 ^ More commonly known as Henry Hudson. He was an emi- nent English navigator, who, while seeking a northwest passage to India, discovered the river and the bay that bears his name, the former in 1609 and the latter in 1610. In 1611 a mutinous crew forced him and eight men into a small boat and abandoned them to their fate. They were never heard of afterwards. ' " He met the night-mare and her nine-fold." — King Lear. THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW. 35 and anon seen by the country folk hurrying along in che 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 ^ 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 spectre, allege that the body of the trooper having been buried in the church^ yard, 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 b>elated, and in a hurry to get back to the churchyard before daybreak. Such is the general purport of this legendary super* dtition, which has furnished materials for many a wild story in that region of shadows; and the spectre 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 inhabi- tants 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 ^he 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 ^ This little Dutch church, which was built in 1699, is said to be still standing 36 WASHINGTON IRVING. fixed, while the great torrent of migration and im- provenient, 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 vege- tating 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, "tar- ried," in Sleepy Hollow, for the purpose of instructing the children of the vicinity. He was a native of Con- necticut, a State which supplies the Union with pio- neers for the mind as well as for the forest, and sends forth yearly its legions of frontier woodmen and coun- try schoolmasters. The cognomen of Crane was not inapplicable to his person. He was tall, but exceed- ingly 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 weather- cock 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 Rpme scarecrow eloped from a cornfield- THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW. 37 His schoolhouse was a low building- of one large room, rudely constructed of logs ; the windows partly glazed, and partly patched with leaves of old 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 ease, he would find some embarrassment in getting out, — an idea most probably borrowed by the architect, Yost Van Hou- ten, from the myster}^ of an eelpot.^ 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 in 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, and 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 1 A trap for catching eels, its funnel-shaped aperture favoring their entrance but thwarting their escape. 2 The thought, but not the wording, is from the Bible, as the following quotations show: — "He that spareth his rod hateth his son." — Prov. xiii. 24. " Love /B a boy by poets styl'd ; Then spare the rod and spoil the child." — Butler's Bndibras. 38 WASHINGTON IRVING, severity ; taking the burden off the backs of tb€ 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 com. panion and playmate of the larger boys ; and on holi- day 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 suffi- cient 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 him- THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW. 39 self both useful and agreeable. He assisted the farm- ers 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 be= came wonderfully gentle and ingratiating. He found favor in the eyes of the mothers by petting the chil- dren, particularly the youngest ; and like the lion bold, which whilom so magnanimously the lamb did hold,i 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 sing- ing-master of the neighborhood, and picked up many bright shillings by instructing the young folks ir 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 completel}^ 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 ^ In the New England Primer, almost the only juvenile book in the early schools of this country, occurs the following rude couplet : — " The Lion bold The Lamb doth hold." A coarse woodcut, representing a lion with his paw resting lov- ingly (!) on a lamb, accompanies the rhymes ; and the main object seems to be to impress indelibly on the learner's mind the letter L, 40 WA SHING TON IR VING. from the nose of Iclmbod Crane. Thus, by divers little makeshifts, in that ingenious way which is com- monly denominated "by hook and by crook," the worthy pedagogue got on tolerably enough, and was thought, by all who understood nothing of the labo of headwork, to have a wonderfully easy life of it. The schoolmaster is generally a man of some impor tance in the female circle of a rural neighborhood ; being considered a kind of idle, gentlemanlike person- age, of vastly superior taste and accomj^lishments to the rough country swains, and, indeed, inferior in learning only to the parson. His appearance, there- fore, 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 pa- rade of a silver teapot. Our man of letters, therefore., was peculiarly happy in the smiles of all the coun- try damsels. How he would figure among them in the churchyard, between services on Sundays! gather- ing 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 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 kipd ol traveling gazette, carrying the whole budget of , acal gossip from house to house, so that his appearance was always greeted with satisfaction. He was, more- over, esteemed by the women as a man of great erudi tion,for he had read several books quite through, and was a perfect master of Cotton Mather's^ "History of 1 Cotton Mather was a New England clergyman, son of THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW. 41 New England Witchcraft," in which, by the way, he most firmly and potently believed. He was, in fact, an odd mixture of small shrewd- ness and simple credulity. His appetite for the niar= velous, 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 toe 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 school-house, 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, to the sudden rustling in the thicket of birds frightened from their roost. The fireflies, too, which sparkled most vividly in the dark- est 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 Increase Mather and grandson of John Cotton. He was born in Boston in 1663, graduated at Harvard College in 1684, and ordained minister in Boston the same year. He was a diligent and prolific student, his various publications numbering nearly four hundred. Like most persons of his time, he believed in the existence of witches, and thought he was doing God's service in hunting them down. He died in 1728. 42 WASHINGTON IRVING. 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 marvelous 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 Hol- low, 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 Con- necticut ; and would frighten them woefully with spec- ulations upon comets and shooting stars ; and with the alarming fact that the world did absolutely turi* 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 i From Miltou's U Allegro. THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW, 43 ^aste 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 scouriugs ! 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 pleas- ant life of it, in spite 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 Yan 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 1 An allusion to the old and widespread belief that ghosts, goblins, and witches were the obedi<4nt subjects and emissaries of the Evil One. 44 WASHINGTON IRVING, her dress, whicli 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-grand mother had brought over from Saar- dam ; ^ 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 pic- ture 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-con- ditioned. 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 Hud- son, 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 bar- rel; 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 ^ Also known as Zaandam, a town of Holland about five miles from Amsterdam, historically famous as the place where Peter the Great of Kussia worked as a shipwright and learned how to build shi^fL THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW. 45 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 snutf the air. A stately squadron of snowy geese were rid- ing 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, discon- tented 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 gener- ously calling his ever-hungry family of wives and chil- dren to enjoy the rich morsel which he had discov- ered. The pedagogue's mouth watered as he looked upon this sumptuous promise of luxurious winter fare. Id his devouring mind's eye, he pictured to himself every roasting-pig running about with a pudding in his belly, and an apple in his mouth ; the pigeons were snugly put to bed in a comfortable pie, and tucked in with a coverlet of crust ; the geese were swimming in their own gravy ; and the ducks pairing cosily in dishes, like snug married couples, with a decent com- petency of onion sauce. In the porkers he saw carved 46 WASHINGTON IRVING. out the future sleek side of bacon, and juicy relishing ham ; not a turkey but he behekl daintily trussed up, with its gizzard under its wing, and, peradventure, a necklace of savory sausages ; and even bright chanti- cleer himself lay sprawling on his back, in a side dish, with uplifted claws, as if craving that quarter which his chivalrous spirit disdained to ask while living. As the enraptured Ichabod fancied all this, and as he rolled his great green eyes over the fat meadow lands, the rich fields of wheat, of rye, of buckwheat, and Indian corn, and the orchards burdened with ruddy fruit, which surrounded the warm tenement of Van Tassel, his heart yearned after the damsel who was to inherit these domains, and his imagination expanded with the idea, how they might be readily turned into cash, and the money invested in immense tracts of wild land, and shingle palaces in the wilderness. Nay, his busy fancy already realized his hopes, and presented to him the blooming Katrina, with a whole family of children, mounted on the top of a wagon loaded with household trumpery, with pots and ket- tles dangling beneath ; and he beheld himself bestrid- ing a pacing mare, with a colt at her heels, setting out for Kentucky, Tennessee,^ — or the Lord knows where ! When he entered the house, the conquest of his heart was complete. It was one of those spacioua farmhouses, with high-ridged but lowly sloping roofs, built in the style handed down from the first Dutch settlers ; the low projecting eaves forming a piazza along the front, capable of being closed up in bad 1 At tlie time the Sketch Book, which contains the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, was published (1819), the far West that erai' grants made their goal was east of the Mississippi. THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW, 47 weather. Under this were hung flails, harness, vari- ous utensils of husbandry, and nets for fishing in the neighboring river. Benches were built along the side? for summer use ; and a great spinning-wheel at ova end, and a churn at the other, showed the various uses to which this important porch might be devoted. From this piazza the wondering Ichabod entered the hall, which formed the centre of the mansion, and the place of usual residence. Here rows of resplendent pewter, ranged on a long dresser, dazzled his eyes. In one corner stood a huge bag of wool, ready to be spun; in another, a quantity of linsey-woolsey just from the loom ; ears of Indian corn, and strings of dried apples and peaches, hung in gay festoons along the walls, mingled with the gaud of red peppers ; and a door left ajar gave him a peep into the best parlor, where the claw-footed chairs and dark mahogany tables shone like mirrors ; andirons, with their accom- panying shovel and tongs, glistened from their covert of asparagus tops ; mock-oranges and conch-shells decorated the mantelpiece ; strings of various-colored birds' eggs were suspended above it ; a great ostrich egg was hung from the centre of the room, and a cor- ner cupboard, knowingly left open, displayed immense treasures of old silver and well-mended china. From the moment Ichabod laid his eyes upon these regions of delight, the peace of his mind was at an end, and his only study was how to gain the affections of the peerless daughter of Van Tassel. In this enterprise, however, he had more real difficulties than generally fell to the lot of a knight-errant of yore,^ who seldom 1 A good type of the hero Irving had in mind may be found in Don Quixote, the wandering knight whom Spanish Cervantes im- mortalized in his inimitable Don Quixvte de la Mancha (1605). 48 WASHINGTON IRVING. had anything but giants, enchanters, fiery dragons, and such like easily conquered adversaries, to contend with ; and had to make his way merely through gates of iron and brass, and walls of adamant to the castle keep, where the lady of his heart was confined ; all which he achieved as easily as a man would carve his way to the centre of a Christmas pie ; and then the lady gave him her hand as a matter of course. Icha- bod, on the contrary, had to win his way to the heart of a country coquette, beset with a labyrinth of whims and caprices, which were forever presenting new diffi- culties and impediments ; and he had to encounter a host of fearful adversaries of real flesh and blood, the numerous rustic admirers, who beset every portal to her heart, keeping a watchful and angry eye upon each other, but ready to fly out in the common cause against any new competitor. Among these, the most formidable was a burly, roaring, roystering blade, of the name of Abraham, or, according to the Dutch abbreviation, Brom Van Brunt, the hero of the country round, which rang with his feats of strength and hardihood. He was broad-shouldered and double-jointed, with short curly black hair, and a bluff but not unpleasant counte- nance, having a mingled air of fun and arrogancCc From his Herculean frame and great powers of limb, he had received the nickname of Brom Bones, by which he was universally known. He was famed for great knowledge and skill in horsemanship, being as dexterous on horseback as a Tartar. He was foremost at all races and cock-fights; and, with the ascendancy which bodily strength always acquires in rustic life, was the umpire in all disputes, setting his hat on one side, and giving his decisions with an air and tone that THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW. 49 admitted of no gainsay or appeal. He was always ready for either a fight or a frolic ; but had more mis- chief than ill-will in his composition ; and with all his overbearing roughness, there was a strong dash of waggish good humor at bottom. He had three or four boon companions, who regarded him as their model, and at the head of whom he scoured the coun- try, attending every scene of feud or merriment for miles round. In cold weather he was distinguished by a fur cap, surmounted with a flaunting fox's tail ; and when the folks at a country gathering descried this well-known crest at a distance, whisking about among a squad of hard riders, they always stood by for a squall. Sometimes his crew would be heard dashing along past the farmhouses at midnight, with whoop and halloo, like a troop of Don Cossacks ; ^ and the old dames, startled out of their sleep, would listen for a moment till the hurry-scurry had clattered by, and then exclaim, " Ay, there goes Brom Bones and his gang ! " The neighbors looked upon him with a mixture of awe, admiration, and good-will ; and, when any madcap prank or rustic brawl occurred in the vicinity, always shook their heads, and warranted Brom Bones was at the bottom of it. This rantipole hero had for some time singled out the blooming Katrina for the object of his uncouth gallantries, and though his amorous toyings were something like the gentle caresses and endearments oi ^ The Cossacks are restless and warlike Russian tribes, of excellent service to the Russian army as scouts, skirmishers, and irregular cavalry. They are widely distributed over the empire, and are popularly known by their localities as the Cossacks of the river Don, of the Danube, of the Black Sea, of the Caucasus, «jid so on. 60 WASHINGTON IRVING. a bear, yet it was whispered that slie did not alto gether discourage his hopes. Certain it is, his ad- vances were signals for rival candidates to retire, who felt no inclination to cross a lion in his amours ; inso- much, that when his horse was seen tied to Van Tas- sel's paling, on a Sunday night, a sure sign that his master was courting, or, as it is termed, " sparking,''' within, all other suitors passed by in despair, and car- ried the war into other quarters. Such was the formidable rival with whom Ichabod Crane had to contend, and, considering all things, a stouter man than he would 'have shrunk from the competition, and a wiser man would have despaired. He had, however, a happy mixture of pliability and perseverance in his nature ; he was in form and spirit like a supple-jack — yielding, but tough ; though he bent, he never broke; and though he bowed beneath the slightest pressure, yet, the moment it was away — jerk ! — he was as erect, and carried his head as high as ever. To have taken the field openly against his rival would have been madness ; for he was not a man to be thwarted in his amours-, any more than that stormy lover, Achilles.^ Ichabod, therefore, made his ad- vances in a quiet and gently insinuating manner. Under cover of his character of singing-master, he made frequent visits at the farmhouse ; not that he had anything to apprehend from the meddlesome inter- ference of parents, which is so often a stumbling-block in the path of lovers. Bait Van Tassel was an easy, ^ The most famous warrior of the Trojan War. The Iliad oi Homer begins with the wrath of Achilles, in the tenth year of the war, because Agamemnon had taken from him Briseis, a beautiful captive, to whom he was strongly attached. THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW, 51 indulgent sonl ; he loved his daughter better even than his pipe, and, like a reasonable man and an excellent father, let her have her way in everything. His notable little wife, too, had enough to do to attend to her housekeeping and manage her poultry ; for, as she sagely observed, ducks and geese are fool- ish things, and must be looked after, but girls can take care of themselves. Thus, while the busy dame bustled about the house, or plied her spinning-wheel at one end of the piazza, honest Bait would sit smok- ing his evening pipe at the other, watching the achievements of a little wooden warrior, who, armed with a sword in each hand, was most valiantly fight- ing the wind on the pinnacle of the barn. In the mean time, Ichabod would carry on his suit with the daughter by the side of the spring under the great elm, or sauntering along 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 they have always been mat- ters of riddle and admiration. Some seem to have but one vulnerable point, or door of access ; while others have a thousand avenues, and may be captured in a thousand different ways. It is a great triumph of skill to gain the former, but a still greater proof of generalship to maintain possession of the latter, for a man must battle for his fortress at every door and window. He who wins a thousand common hearts is therefore entitled to some renown ; but he who keeps undisputed sway over the heart of a coquette is in- deed a hero. Certain it is, this was not the case with the redoubtable Brom Bones ; and from the moment Ichabod Crane made his advances, the interests of the former evidently declined : his horse was no longer 62 WASHINGTON IRVING. seen tied to the palings on Sunday nights, and a deadly feud gradually arose between him and the pre- ceptor of Sleepy Hollow. Brom, who had a degree of rough chivalry in his nature, would fain have carried matters to open war- fare and have settled their pretensions to the lady, according to the mode of those most concise and siin= pie reasoners, the knights-errant of yore, — by single combat ; but Ichabod was too conscious of the supe- rior might of his adversary to enter the lists against him; he had overheard a boast of Bones, that he would " double the schoolmaster up, and lay him on a shelf of his own schoolhouse ; " and he was too wary to give him an opportunity. There was something extremely provoking in this obstinately pacific system ; it left Brom no alternative but to draw upon the funds of rustic waggery in his disposition, and to play off boorish practical jokes upon his rival. Ichabod be- came the object of whimsical persecution to Bones and his gang of rough riders. They harried his hitherto peaceful domains, smoked out his singing-school by stopping up the chimney, broke into the schoolhouse at night, in spite of its formidable fastenings of withe and window stakes, and turned everything topsy-turvy, so that the poor schoolmaster began to think all the witches in the country held their meetings there. But what was still more annoying, Brom took all opportu- nities of turning him into ridicule in presence of his vnistress, and had a scoundrel dog whom he taught to vhine in the most ridiculous manner, and introduced \s a rival of Ichabod's, to instruct her in psalmody. In this way matters went on for some time, without producing any material effect on the relative situa- tions of the contending powers. On a fine autumnal THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW. 53 ifternoon, Ichabod, in pensive mood, sat enthroned on the lofty stool from whence he usually watched all the concerns of his little literary realm. In his hand he swayed a ferule, that sceptre of despotic power; the birch of justice reposed on three nails behind the throne, a constant terror to evil doers ; while on the desk before him 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 little paper game-cocks. Apparently there had been some appalling act of justice recently in- flicted, for his scholars were all busily intent upon their books, or slyly whispering behind them with one eye kept upon the master ; and a kind of buzzing still- ness reigned throughout the schoolroom. It was sud- denly interrupted by the appearance of a negro in tow-cloth jacket and trowsers, a round-crowned frag- ment 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 came i^Jattering up to the school-door with an invitation to Ichabod to attend a merry-making or " quilting- frolic," 1 to be held that evening at Mynheer Van Tassel's ; and having delivered his message with that air of importance and effort at fine language which a negro is apt to display on petty embassies of the kind, he dashed over the brook, and was seen scam- pering away up the Hollow, full of the importance and hurry of his mission. 1 "Now were mstituted ' quilting-bees,' and * husking-bees,' and other rural assemblages, where, under the inspiring influ- ence of the fiddle, toil was enlivened by gayety and followed up t)y tilt; dance." — Irving's History of New York. 54 WASHINGTON IRVING, All was now bustle and hubbub in the late quiat schoolroom. The scholars were hurried through their lessons without stopping at trifles ; those who were nimble skipped over half with impunity, and those who were tardy had a smart application now and then in the rear, to quicken their speed or help them over a tall word. Books were flung aside without being put away on the shelves, inkstands were overturned, benches thrown down, and the whole school was turned loose an hour before the usual time, bursting forth like a legion of young imps, yelping and racket- ing about 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 rusty black, and arran- ging his locks by a bit of broken looking-glass that hung up in the schoolhouse. That he might make his appearance before his mistress in the true style of a cavalier, he borrowed a horse from the farmer with whom he was domiciliated, a choleric old Dutchman of the name of Hans Van Ripper, and, thus gallantly mounted, issued forth like a knight-errant in quest cf adventures. But it is meet I should, in the true spirit of romantic story, give some account of the looks and equipments of my hero and his steed. The animal he bestrode was a broken-down plow-horse, that had outlived almost everything but its vicious- ness. He was gaunt and shagged, with a ewe neck, and a head like a 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 other had the gleam of a genuine devil in it. Still he must have had fire and mettle in his day, if we may judge from the name he bore of Gunpowder. He had, in THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW, 55 fact, been a favorite steed of his master's, the choleric Van Ripper, who was a furious rider, and had infused, very probably, some of his own spirit into the ani- mal ; for, old and broken-down as he looked, there was more of the lurking devil in him than in any young filly in the countr}?. Ichabod was a suitable figure for such a steed. He rode with short stirrups, which brought his knees nearly up to the pommel of the saddle ; his sharp elbows stuck out like grasshoppers' ; he carried his whip perpendicularly 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. A small wool hat rested on the top of his nose, for so his scanty strip of forehead might be called, and the skirts of his black coat fluttered out almost to the horse's tail. Such was the appearance of Ichabod and his steed as they shambled out of the gate of Hans Van Ripper, and it was altogether such an apparition as is seldom to be met with in broad day- light. It was, as I have said, a fine autumnal day ; the sky was clear and serene, and nature wore that rich and golden livery which we always associate with the idea of abundance. The forests had put on their sober brown and yellow, while some trees of the tenderer kind had been nipped by the frosts into brilliant dyes of orange, purple, and scarlet. Streaming files of wild ducks began to make their appearance high in the air ; the bark of the squirrel might be heard from the groves of beech and hickory-nuts, and the pensive whistle of the quail a.t intervals from the neighboring stubble field. The small birds were taking their farewell ban* quets. In the fullness of their revelry, they fluttered, 56 WASHINGTON IRVING. chirping and frolicking from bush to bush, and tree to tree, capricious from the very profusion and variety around them. There was the honest cockrobin, the favorite game of stripling sportsmen, with its loud querulous note ; and the twittering blackbirds flying in sable clouds; and the golden-winged woodpecker, with his crimson crest, his broad black gorget, and splendid plumage; and the cedar-bird, with its red- tipt wings and yellow-tipt tail and its little monteiro^ cap of feathers ; and the blue jay, that noisy coxcomb, in his gay light blue coat and white underclothes, screaming and chattering, nodding and bobbing and bowing, and pretending to be on good terms with every songster of the grove. As Ichabod jogged slowly on his way, his eye, ever open to every symptom of culinary abundance, ranged with delight over the treasures of jolly autumn. On all sides he beheld vast store of apples : some hanging in oppressive opulence on the trees ; some gathered into baskets and barrels for the market; others heaped up in rich piles for the cider-press. Farther on he beheld great fields of Indian corn, with its golden ears peeping from their leafy coverts, and holding out the promise of cakes and hasty-pudding; and the yellow pumpkins lying beneath them, turning up their fair round bellies to the sun, and giving ample prospects of the most luxurious of pies ; and anon he passed the fragrant buckwheat fields breath- ing the odor of the beehive, and as he beheld them, soft anticipations stole over his mind of dainty slap-jacks, 1 Same as montero (mon-ta'-ro), a horseman's or huntsman's cap, having a round crown with flaps which could be drawn down over the sides of the face. " Hia hat was like a helmet or Spaaiah montero." — Bacom. THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW. 57 well buttered, and garnished with honey or treacle, by the delicate little dimpled hand of Katrina Van Tas= sel. Thus feeding his mind with many sweet thoughts and " sugared suppositions," he journeyed along the sides of a range of hills which look out upon some of the goodliest scenes of the mighty Hudson. The sun gradually wheeled his broad disk down in the west. The wide bosom of the Tappan Zee lay mo- tionless and glassy, excepting that here and there a gentle undulation waved and prolonged the blue shadow of the distant mountain. A few amber clouds floated in the sky, without a breath of air to move them. The horizon was of a fine golden tint, chan- ging gradually into a pure apple green, and from that into the deep blue of the mid-heaven. A slanting ray lingered on the woody crests of the precipices that overhung some parts of the river, giving greater depth to the dark gray and purple of their rocky sides. A sloop was loitering in the distance, dropping slowly down with the tide, her sail hanging uselessly against the mast ; and as the reflection of the sky gleamed along the still water, it seemed as if the ves- sel was suspended in the air. It was toward evening that Ichabod arrived at the castle of theHeer Van Tassel, which he found thronged with the pride and flower of the adjacent country. Old farmers, a spare leathern-faced race, in homespun coats and breeches, blue stockings, huge shoes, and magnificent pewter buckles. Their brisk, withered little dames, in close crimped caps, long-waisted short- gowns, homespun petticoats, with scissors and pin-cush- ions, and gay calico pockets hanging on the outside. Buxom lasses, almost as antiquated as their mothers. 58 WASHINGTON IRVING. excepting where a straw liat, a fine ribbon, or perhaps a white frock, gave symptoms of city innovation. The sons, in short square-skirted coats, with rows of stu- pendous brass buttons, and their hair generally queued in the fashion of the times, especially if they could procure an eelskin for the purpose, it being esteemed l;hroughout the country as a potent nourisher and ^tr^ngthener of the hair. Brom Bones, however, was the hero of the scene, leaving come to the gathering on his favorite steed Daredevil, a creature, like himself, full of mettle and mischief, and which no one but himself could manage. He was, in fact, noted for preferring vicious animals, given to all kinds of tricks which kept the rider in constant risk of his neck, for he held a tractable, well- broken horse as unworthy of a lad of spirit. Fain would I pause to dwell upon the world of charms that burst upon the enraptured gaze of my hero, as he entered the state parlor of Van Tassel's mansion. Not those of the bevy of buxom lasses, with their luxurious display of red and white ; but the ample charms of a genuine Dutch country tea-table, in the sumptuous time of autumn. Such heaped-up platters of cakes of various and almost indescribable kinds, known only to experienced Dutch housewives ! There was the doughty doughnut, the tender oly- koek,^ and the crisp and crumbling cruller,* sweet cakes and short cakes, ginger cakes and honey cakes, and the whole family of cakes. And then there were apple pies, and peach pies, and pumpkin pies ; besides slices of ham and smoked beef ; and moreover delec- ^ Pronounced o'-U-cook^ from a Dutch word that means oil' eake. A cake of dough sweetened and fried in lard, — some thing like the cruller, but richer and tenderer. THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW, 59 fcable dishes of preserved plums, and peaches, and pears, and quinces ; not to mention broiled shad and roasted chickens ; together with bowls of milk and cream, all mingled higgledy-piggledy, pretty much as I have enumerated them, with the motherly teapot sending up its clouds of vapor from the midst — Hea- ven bless the mark! I want breath and time to dis cuss this banquet as it deserves, and am too eager to get on with my story. Happily, Ichabod Crane was not in so great a hurry as his historian, but did ample justice to every dainty. He was a kind and thankful creature, whose heart dilated in proportion as his skin was filled with good cheer, and whose spirits rose with eating, as some men's do with drink. Pie could not help, too, rolling his large eyes round him as he ate, and chuckling with the possibility that he might one day be lord of all ftiis scene of almost unimaginable luxury and splen- dor. Then, he thought, how soon he'd turn his back upon the old school-house ; snap his fingers in the face of Hans Van Ripper, and every other niggardly patron, and kick any itinerant pedagogue out of doors that should dare to call him comrade ! Old Baltus Van Tassel moved about among his guests with a face dilated with content and good- humor, round and jolly as the harvest moon„ His hospitable attentions were brief, but expressive, being confined to a shake of the hand, a slap on the shoul- der, a loud laugh, and a pressing invitation to " fall to, and help themselves." And now the sound of the music from the common room, or hall, summoned to the dance. The musician was an old gray-headed negro, who had been the itir- erant orchestra of the neighborhood for more than 60 WASHINGTON IRVING. half a century. His instrament was as old and bat* tered as himself. The greater part of the time he scraped on two or three strings, accompanying every movement of the bow with a motion of the head ; bow- ing almost to the ground, and stamping with his foot whenever a fresh couple were to start. Ichabod prided himself upon his dancing as much as upon his vocal powers. Not a limb, not a fibre about him was idle ; and to have seen his loosely hung frame in full motion, and clattering about the room, you would have thought St. Vitus himself, that blessed patron of the dance, was figuring before you in person. He was the admiration of all the negroes ; who, having gathered, of all ages and sizes, from the farm and the neighborhood, stood forming a pyramid of shining black faces at every door and window; gazing with delight at the scene ; rolling their white eye-balls, and showing grinning rows of ivory from ear to ear. How could the flogger of urchins be otherwise than animated and joyous ? the lady of his heart was his partner in the dance, and smiling gra- ciously in reply to all his amorous oglings; while Brom Bones, sorely smitten with love and jealousy, sat brooding by himself in one corner. When the dance was at an end, Ichabod was at- tracted to a knot of the sager folks, who, with Old Van Tassel, sat smoking at one end of the piazza, gossip-, ing over former times, and drawing out long stories about the war. This neighborhood, at the time of which I am speaking, was one of those highly favored places which abound with chronicle and great men. The British and American line had run near it during the war ; it had, therefore, been the scene of marauding. THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW, 61 and infested with refugees, cow-boys, and all kinds of border chivalry. Just sufficient time had elapsed to enable each story-teller to dress up his tale with a lit- tle becoming fiction, and, in the indistinctness of his recollection, to make himself the hero of every ex- ploit. There was the story of Doffue Martling, a large blue-bearded Dutchman, who had nearly taken a British frigate with an old iron nine-pounder from a mud breastwork, only that his gun burst at the sixth discharge. And there was an old gentleman who shall be nameless, being too rich a mynheer ^ to be lightly mentioned, who, in the battle of White Plains, being an excellent master of defence, parried a mus- ket-ball with a small-sword, insomuch that he abso- lutely felt it whiz round the blade, and glance off at the hilt ; in proof of which he was ready at any time to show the sword, with the hilt a little bent. There were several more that had been equally great in the field, not one of whom but was persuaded that he had a considerable hand in bringing the war to a happy termination. But all these were nothing to the tales of ghosts and apparitions that succeeded. The neighborhood is rich in legendary treasures of the kind. Local tales and superstitions thrive best in these sheltered, long settled retreats ; but are trampled under foot by the shifting throng that forms the population of most of our country places. Besides, there is no encourage- ment for ghosts in most of our villages, for they have jcarcely had time to finish their first nap and turn ^ Pronounced min-har'. Literally, my lord. It is the ordi- nary title of address among Dutchmen, corresponding to sir or Mr. in English use. Hence, a Dutchman. 62 WASHINGTON IRVING. themselves in their graves, before their surviving friends have travelled away from the neighborhood ; so that when they turn out at night to walk their rounds, they have no acquaintance left to call upon. This is perhaps the reason why we so seldom hear of ghosts except in our long-established Dutch communi- ties. The immediate cause, however, of the prevalence of supernatural stories in these parts, was doubtless owing to the vicinity of Sleepy Hollow. There was a contagion in the very air that blew from that haunted region ; it breathed forth an atmosphere of dreams and fancies infecting all the land. Several of the Sleepy Hollow people were present at Van Tassel's, and, as usual, were doling out their wild and wonder- ful legends. Many dismal tales were told about fune- ral trains, and mourning cries and wailings heard and seen about the great tree where the unfortunate Major Andre was taken, and which stood in the neighbor- hood. Some mention was made also of the woman in white, that haunted the dark glen at Raven Rock, and was often heard to shriek on winter nights before a storm, having perished there in the snow. The chief part of the stories, however, turned upon the favorite spectre of Sleepy Hollow, the Headless Horseman^ who had been heard several times of late, patrolling the country; and, it was said, tethered his horse nightly among the graves in the churchyard. The sequestered situation of this church seems always to have made it a favorite haunt of troubled spirits. It stands on a knoll, surrounded by locust- trees and lofty elms, from among which its decent whitewashed walls shine modestly forth, like Christian ourity beaming through the shades of retirementc A THE LEGEND OF SLEEI-Y HOLLOW. 63 gentle slope descends from it to a silver sheet of water, bordered by high trees, between which, peeps may be caught at the blue hills of the Hudson. To look upon its grass-grown yard, where the sunbeams seem to sleep so quietly, one would think that there at least the dead might rest in peace. On one side of the church extends a wide woody dell, along which raves a large brook among broken rocks and trunks of fallen trees. Over a deep black part of the stream, not far from the church, was formerly thrown a wooden bridge ; the road that led to it, and the bridge itself, were thickly shaded by overhanging trees, which cast a gloom about it, even in the day- time ; but occasioned a fearful darkness at night. Such was one of the favorite haunts of the Headless Horseman, and the place where he was most frequently encountered. The tale was told of old Brouwer, a most heretical disbeliever in ghosts, how he met the Horseman returning from his foray into Sleepy Hol- low, and was obliged to get up behind him ; how they galloped over bush and brake, over hill and swamp, until they reached the bridge ; when the Horseman suddenly turned into a skeleton, threw old Brouwer into the brook, and sprang away over the tree-tops with a clap of thunder. This story was immediately matched by a thrice marvellous adventure of Brom Bones, who made light of the Galloping Hessian as an arrant jockey. He affirmed that on returnino^ one nioht from the neioh- boring village of Sing Sing, he had been overtaken by this midnight trooper ; that he had offered to race with him for a bowl of punch, and should have won it too, for Daredevil beat the goblin horse all hollow, but just as they came to the church bridge, the Hessian bolted, and vanished in a flash of fire. 64 WASHINGTON IRVING. All these tales, told in that drowsy undertone with which men talk in the dark, the countenances of the listeners only now and then receiving a casual gleam from the glare of a pipe, sank deep in the mind of Ichabod. He repaid them in kind with large extracts from his invaluable author. Cotton Mather, and added many marvellous events that had taken place in his native State of Connecticut, and fearful sights which he had seen in his nightly walks about Sleepy Hollow. The revel now gradually broke up. The old farm* ers gathered together their families in their wagons, and were heard for some time rattling along the hol- low roads, and over the distant hills. Some of the damsels mounted on pillions behind their favorite swains, and their light-hearted laughter, mingling with the clatter of hoofs, echoed along the silent woodlands, sounding fainter and fainter, until they gradually died away, — and the late scene of noise and frolic was all silent and deserted. Ichabod only lin- gered behind, according to the custom of country lov- ers, to have a tete-a-tete with the heiress ; fully con- vinced that he was now on the high road to success. What passed at this interview I will not pretend to say, for in fact I do not know. Something, however, I fear me, must have gone wrong, for he certainly sallied forth, after no very great interval, with an air quite desolate and chapfallen. Oh, these women ! these women ! Could that girl have been playing off any of her coquettish tricks? Was her encourage- ment of the poor pedagogue all a mere sham to secure her conquest of his rival ? Heaven only knows, not I ! Let it suffice to say, Ichabod stole forth with the air of one who had been sacking a henroost, rather THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW. 65 than a fair lady's heart. Without looking to the right or left to notice the scene of rural wealth, on which he had so often gloated, he went straight to the stable, and with several hearty cuffs and kicks roused his steed most uncourteously from the comfortable quarters in which he was soundly sleeping, dreaming of mountains of corn and oats, and whole valleys of timothy and clover. It was the very witching time of night ^ that Icha- bod, heavy-hearted and crest-fallen, pursued his travels homewards, along the sides of the lofty hills which rise above Tarry Town, and which he had traversed so cheerily in the afternoon. The hour was as dismai as himself. Far below him the Tappan Zee sprea* its dusky and indistinct waste of waters, with her and there the tall mast of a sloop, riding quietly at anchor under the land. In the dead hush of mid- night, he could even hear the barking of the watch- dog from the opposite shore of the Hudson ; but it was so vague and faint as only to give an idea of his distance from this faithful companion of man. Now and then, too, the long-drawn crowing of a cock, acci- dentally awakened, would sound far, far off, from some farmhouse away among the hills — but it was like a dreaming sound in his ear. No signs of life occurred near him, but occasionally the melancholy chirp of a cricket, or perhaps the guttural twang of a bull-frog from a neighboring marsh, as if sleeping uncomfor- tably and turning suddenly in his bed. All the stories of ghosts and goblins that he had heard in the afternoon now came crowding upon his recollection. The night grew darker and darker ; the 1 *' 'T is now the very witching time of night When churchyards yawn." — Hamlet, 66 WASHINGTON IRVING, stars seemed to sink deeper in the sky, and driving clouds occasionally hid them from his sight. He had never felt so lonely and dismal. He was, moreover, approaching the very place where many of the scenes of the ghost stories had been laid. In the centre of the road stood an enormous tulip-tree, which towered like a giant above all the other trees of the neighbor- hood, and formed a kind of landmark. Its limbs were gnarled and fantastic, large enough to form trunks for ordinary trees, twisting down almost to the earth, and rising again into the air. It was connected with the tragical story of the unfortunate Andr^, who had been taken prisoner hard by ; and was universally known by the name of Major Andre's tree. The common people regarded it v/ith a mixture of respect and superstition, partly out of sympathy for the fate of its ill-starred namesake, and partly from the tales of strange sights, and doleful lamentations, told con- cerning it. As Ichabod approached this fearful tree, he began to whistle ; he thought his whistle was answered ; it was but a blast sweeping sharply through the dry branches. As he approached a little nearer, he thought he saw something white, hanging in the midst of the tree : he paused, and ceased whistling ; but, on looking more narrowly, perceived that it was a place where the tree had been scathed by lightning, and the white wood laid bare. Suddenly he heard a groan — ■ his teeth chattered, and his knees smote against the saddle : it was but the rubbing of one huge bough upon another, as they were swayed about by the breeze. He passed the tree in safety, but new perils lay before him. About two hundred yards from the tree, a small THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW. 67 brook crossed the road, and ran into a marshy and thickly-wooded glen, known by the name of Wiley's Swamp. A few rough logs, laid side by side, served for a bridge over this stream. On that side of the road where the brook entered the wood, a group of oaks and chestnuts, matted thick with wild grape-vines, threw a cavernous gloom over it. To pass this bridge was the severest trial. It was at this identical spot that the unfortunate Andre was captured, and under the covert of those chestnuts and vines were the sturdy yeomen concealed who surprised him. This has ever since been considered a haunted stream, and fearful are the feelings of the school-boy who has to pass it alone after dark. As he approached the stream his heart began to thump ; he summoned up, however, all his resolution, gave his horse half a score of kicks in the ribs, and attempted to dash briskly across the bridge ; but instead of starting forward, the perverse old animal made a lateral movement, and ran broadside against the fence. Ichabod, whose fears increased with the delay, jerked the reins on the other side, and kicked lustily with the contrary foot : it was all in vain ; his steed started, it is true, but it was only to plunge to the opposite side of the road into a thicket of bram- bles and alder-bushes. The schoolmaster now be- stowed both whip and heel upon the starveling ribs of old Gunpowder, who dashed forward, snuffling and snorting, but came to a stand just by the bridge, with a suddenness that had nearly sent his rider sprawling over his head. Just at this moment a plashy tramp by the side of the bridge caught the sensitive ear of Icha- bod. In the dark shadow of the grove, on the margin of the brook, he beheld something huge, misshapen, 68 WASHINGTON IRVING. and towering. It stirred not, but seemed gathered up in the gloom, like some gigantic monster ready to spring upon the traveller. The hair of the affrighted pedagogue rose upon his head with terror. W hat was to be done ? To turn md fly was now too late ; and besides, what chance tvas there of escaping ghost or goblin, if such it was. which could ride upon the wings of the wind ? Sum- moning up, therefore, a show of courage, he demanded in stammering accents, "Who are you?" He re- ceived no reply. He repeated his demand in a still more agitated voice. Still there was no answer. Once more he cudgelled the sides of the inflexible Gunpowder, and, shutting his eyes, broke forth with involuntary fervor into a psalm tune. Just then the shadowy object of alarm put itself in motion, and with a scramble and a bound stood at once in the middle of the road. Though the night was dark and dismal, yet the form of the unknown might now in some degree be ascertained. He appeared to be a horse- man of large dimensions, and mounted on a black horse of powerful frame. He made no offer of moles- tation or sociability, but kept aloof on one side of the road, jogging along on the blind side of old Gun- powder, who had now got over his fright and way° wardness. Ichabod, who had no relish for this strange mid- night companion, and bethought himself of the adven- ture of Brom Bones with the Galloping Hessian, now quickened his steed in hopes of leaving him behind. The stranger, however, quickened his horse to an equal pace. Ichabod pulled up, and fell into a walk, thinking to lag behind, — the other did the same. His heart began to sink within him : he endeavored to THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW, 69 resume his psalm tune, but his parched tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, and he could not utter a stave. There was something in the moody and dogged silence of this pertinacious companion that was mysterious and appalling. It was soon fearfully accounted for. On mounting a rising ground, which brought the figure of his fellow-traveller in relief against the sky, gigantic in height, and muffled in a cloak, Ichabod was horror-struck on perceiving that he was headless ! but his horror was still more in- creased on observing that the head, which should have rested on his shoulders, was carried before him on the pommel of his saddle ! His terror rose to des- peration ; he rained a shower of kicks and blows upon Gunpowder, hoping by a sudden movement to give his companion the slip ; but the spectre started full jump with him. Away, then, they dashed through thick and thin ; stones flying and sparks flashing at every bound. Ichabod's flimsy garments fluttered in the air, as he stretched his long lank body away over his horse's head, in the eagerness of his flight. They had now reached the road which turns off to Sleepy Hollow; but Gunpowder, who seemed pos- sessed with a demon, instead of keeping up it, made an opposite turn, and plunged headlong down hill to the left. This road leads through a sandy hollow, shaded by trees for about a quarter of a mile, where it crosses the bridge famous in goblin story ; and just beyond swells the green knoll on which stands the whitewashed church. As yet the panic of the steed had given his un skilful rider an apparent advantage in the chase ; but just as he had got half way through the hollow, the girths of the saddle gave way, and he felt it slipping 70 WASHINGTON IRVING, from under him. He seized it by the pommel, and endeavored to hold it firm, but in vain ; and had just time to save himself by clasping old Gunpowder round the neck, when the saddle fell to the earth, and he heard it trampled under foot by his pursuer. For a moment the terror of Hans Van Ripper's wrath passed across his mind, — for it was his Sunday sad- dle ; but this was no time for petty fears ; the goblin was hard on his haunches ; and (unskilful rider that he was !) he had much ado to maintain his seat ; some- times slipping on one side, sometimes on another, and sometimes jolted on the high ridge of his horse's back- bone, with a violence that he verily feared would cleave him asunder. An opening in the trees now cheered him with the hopes that the church bridge was at hand. The wavering reflection of a silver star in the bosom of the brook told him that he was not mistaken. He saw the walls of the church dimly glaring under the trees beyond. He recollected the place where Brom Bones' ghostly competitor had disappeared. "If I can but reach that bridge," ^ thought Ichabod, "I am safe." Just then he heard the black steed panting and blowing close behind him ; he even fan- cied that he felt his hot breath. Another convulsive kick in the ribs, and old Gunpowder sprang upon the bridge ; he thundered over the resounding planks ; he 1 It was a superstitious belief that witches could not cross the middle of a stream. In Burns's tale of Tarn O^Shanter the here is represented as urging his horse to gain the keystone of the bridge so as to escape the hotly pursuing witches : — " Now, do thy speedy utmost, Meg, And win the keystane of the brig : There at them thou thy tail may toss, — A running stream they dare not cross 1 " THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW, 71 gained the opposite side ; and now Icliabod cast a look behind to see if his pursuer should vanish, according to rule, in a flash of fire and brimstone. Just then he saw the goblin rising in his stirrups, and in the very act of hurling his head at him. Ichabod endeav- ored to dodge the horrible missile, but too late. It encountered his cranium with a tremendous crash, ~ he was tumbled headlong into the dust, and Gun- powder, the black steed, and the goblin rider, passed by like a whirlwind. The next morning the old horse was found without his saddle, and with the bridle under his feet, soberly cropping the grass at his master's gate. Ichabod did not make his appearance at breakfast ; dinner-hour came, but no Ichabod. The boys assembled at the schoolhouse, and strolled idly about the banks of the brook ; but no schoolmaster. Hans Van Ripper now began to feel some uneasiness about the fate of poor Ichabod, and his saddle. An inquiry was set on foot, and after diligent investigation they came upon his traces. In one part of the road leading to the church was found the saddle trampled in the dirt; the tracks of horses' hoofs deeply dented in the road, and evidently at furious speed, were traced to the bridge, beyond which, on the bank of a broad part of the brook, where the water ran deep and black, was found the hat of the unfortunate Ichabod, and close beside it a shattered pumpkin. The brook was searched, but the body of the school- master was not to be discovered. Hans Van Ripper, as executor of his estate, examined the bundle which contained all his worldly effects. They consisted of two shirts and a half ; two stocks for the neck ; a pair or two of worsted stockings ; an old pair of corduroy 72 WASHINGTON IRVING. small-clothes ; a rusty razor ; a book of psalm tunes ful of dog's-ears ; and a broken pitch-pipe. As tc the books and furniture of the schoolhouse, they be- longed to the community, excei^ting Cotton Mather's History of Witchcraft, a New England Almanac, and a book of dreams and fortune-telling ; in which last was a sheet of foolscap much scribbled and blotted in several fruitless attempts to make a copy of verses in honor of the heiress of Van Tassel. These magic books and the poetic scrawl were forthwith consigned to the flames by Hans Van Ripper ; who, from that time forward, determined to send his children no more to school ; observing that he never knew any good come of this same reading and writing. Whatever money the schoolmaster possessed, and he had received his quarter's pay but a day or two before, he must have had about his person at the time of his disap23earance. The mysterious event caused much speculation at the church on the following Sunday. Knots of gazers and gossips were collected in the churchyard, at the bridge, and at the spot where the hat and pumpkin had been found. The stories of Brouwer, of Bones, and a whole budget of others were called to mind ; and when they had diligently considered them all, and compared them with the symptoms of the present case, they shook their heads, and came to the conclusion that Ichabod had been carried off by the Galloping Hessian. As he was a bachelor, and in nobody's debt, nobody troubled his head any more about him ; the school was removed to a different quarter of the Hollow, and another pedagogue reigned in his stead. It is true, an old farmer, who had been down to New York on a visit several years after, and from whom this account of the ghostly adventure was re- THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW. 7b ceived, brought home the intelligence that Ichabod Crane was still alive ; that he had left the neighbor- hood partly through fear of the goblin and Hans Van Ripper, and partly in mortification at having been sud- denly dismissed by the heiress ; that he had changed his quarters to a distant part of the country ; had kept school and studied law at the same time ; had been admitted to the bar ; turned politician ; election- eered ; written for the newspapers ; and finally had been made a justice of the ten pound court.^ Brom Bones, too, who, shortly after his rival's disappear- ance conducted the blooming Katrina in triumph to the altar, was observed to look exceedingly knowing whenever the story of Ichabod was related, and always burst into a hearty laugh at the mention of the pump- kin ; which led some to suspect that he knew more about the matter than he chose to tell. The old country wives, however, who are the best judges of these matters, maintain to this day that Ichabod was spirited away by supernatural means ; and it is a favorite story often told about the neigh- borhood round the winter evening fire. The bridge became more than ever an object of superstitious awe ; and that may be the reason why the road has been altered of late years, so as to approach the church by the border of the mill-pond. The schoolhouse being deserted soon fell to decay, and was reported to be haunted by the ghost of the unfortunate pedagogue; and the plough-boy, loitering homeward of a still sum= mer evening, has often fancied his voice at a distance, chanting a melancholy psalm tune among the tranquii solitudes of Sleepy Hollow. ^ A court of justice authorized to deal with cases in which the imount of money involved does not exceed ten pounds. POSTSCRIPT. ffOITND IN THE HANDWRITING OF MR. KNICKERBOCKERo The preceding tale is given almost in the precise words in which I heard it related at a Corporation meeting of the ancient city of the Manhattoes,^ at which were present many of its sagest and most illus- trious burghers. The narrator was a pleasant, shabby, gentlemanly old fellow in pepper-and-salt clothes, with a sadly humorous face ; and one whom I strongly sus- pected of being poor, — he made such efforts to be entertaining. When his story was concluded there was much laughter and approbation, particularly from two or three deputy aldermen, who had been asleep the greater part of the time. There was, however, one tall, dry-looking old gentleman, with beetling eye- brows, who maintained a grave and rather severe face throughout ; now and then folding his arms, inclining his head, and looking down upon the floor, as if turn* ing a doubt over in his mind. He was one of your wary men, who never laugh but upon good grounds — when they have reason and the law on their side. When the mirth of the rest of the company had sub- sided, and silence was restored, he leaned one arm on the elbow of his chair, and sticking the other akimbo, demanded, with a slight but exceedingly sage motion 1 The city of New York, as it is named in Diedrich Knicker- bocker's (Irving's) History of New York. POSTSCRIPT, 75 of the head, and contraction of the brow, what wa? the moral of the story, and what it went to prove. The story-teller, who was just putting a glass of wine to his lips, as a refreshment after his toils, paused for a moment, looked at his inquirer with an air of infinite deference, and, lowering the glass slowly to the table, observed that the story was intended most logically to prove : — "That there is no situation in life but has its ad- vantages and pleasures, provided we will but take a joke as we find it ; " That, therefore, he that runs races with goblin troopers is likely to have rough riding of it ; " Ergo, for a country schoolmaster to be refused the hand of a Dutch heiress is a certain step to high preferment in the state." The cautious old gentleman knit his brows tenfold closer after this explanation, being sorely puzzled by the ratiocination of the syllogism ; while, methought, the one in pepper-and-salt eyed him with something of a triumphant leer. At length he observed that all this was very well, but still he thought the story a little on the extravagant ; there were one or two points on which he had his doubts. " Faith, sir," replied the story-teller, " as to that matter, I don't believe one half of it myself." D. K INTRODUCTION TO PHILIP OF FOKANOKETo King Philip's War was due to the steady encroachment of the English upon the forests and hunting-grounds of the Indians. For fifty-five years peaceful relations had been maintained between the colonists and the powerful tribe of the Wampanoags ( Wawm-pa-no'-agz), on whose lands Plymouth and other settlements had been planted. Philip, chief of the tribe, foreseeing the ultimate destruction of his people, resolved to depart from the policy of Massasoit, his father, and to turn upon the colonists. Rumors of war preceded its outbreak for many years. It is still a matter of doubt whether hostilities began in an accident or as the result of a deliberate plot. Once opened, they were carried on in a vindictive and desperate spirit. The war began in June, 1675, at Swansea, in Plymouth colony. It involved the Narragansetts and other New England tribes. Month after month saw scenes of ambush, assault, burning, pilla- ging, and butchery. The war was as savagely carried on by the English as by the Indians. It ended in the summer of 1676 through sheer exhaustion of the Indians. During this war thirteen towns were destroyed and many others suffered severely, six hundred buildings were burned, six hundred colonists were slain, many thousands suffered di- rectly from the losses that accompany war, and frightful expenses were rolled up, entailing burdens upon feeble and sparsely settled communities that it took years to lighten. The mental anguish everywhere caused by the secrecy and cruelty of methods natural to Indian warfare, even when the dreaded blow did not fall, cannot be told. PHILIP OF POKANOKET. 77 From two to three thousand Indians were killed or cap- tured, and the wretched remnants of the tribes whose power was broken eitlier united with other tribes or, lingering about their old homes, ceased thereafter to be a serious menace to the colonies. The various remains of Indian tribes in Massachusetts to-day, some of them descendants of the Indians that sur- vived King Philip's War, number between one and two thousand souls. They are, to a certain extent, wards of the State of whose soil they were once the haughty owners. PHILIP OF POKANOKET. AN INDIAN MEMOIR. As monumental bronze unchanged his look ; A soul that pity touch'd, but never shook : Tram'd, from his tree-rock'd cradle to his bier, The fierce extremes of good and ill to brook Impassive — fearing but the shame of fear — A stoio of the w^oods — a man without a tear. Campbell. It is to be regretted that those early writers who treated of the discovery and settlement of America have not given us more particular and candid accounts of the remarkable characters that flourished in savage life. The scanty anecdotes which have reached us are full of peculiarity and interest ; they furnish us with nearer glimpses of human nature, and show what man is in a comparatively primitive state, and what he owes to civilization. There is something of the charm of discovery in lighting upon these wild and unex- plored tracts of human nature ; in witnessing, as it were, the native growth of moral sentiment ; and per- ceiving those generous and romantic qualities which 78 WASHINGTON IRVING. have been artificially cultivated by society, vegetating in spontaneous hardihood and rude magnificence. In civilized life, where the happiness, and indeed almost the existence, of man depends so much upon the opinion of his fellow-men, he is constantly acting a studied part. The bold and peculiar traits of native character are refined away, or softened down by the levelling influence of what is termed good breeding ; and he practises so many petty deceptions, and affects so many generous sentiments, for the purposes of pop- ularity, that it is difficult to distinguish his real from his artificial character. The Indian, on the contrary, free from the restraints and refinements of polished \ife, and, in a great degree, a solitary and indepen- dent being, obeys the impulses of his inclination or the dictates of his judgment; and thus the attributes of his nature, being freely indulged, grow singly great and striking. Society is like a lawn, where every roughness is smoothed, every bramble eradicated, and where the eye is delighted by the smiling verdure of a velvet surface ; he, however, who would study nature in its wildness and variety, must plunge into the for- est, must explore the glen, must stem the torrent, and dare the precipice. These reflections arose on casually looking through a volume of early colonial history wherein are re- corded, with great bitterness, the outrages of the Indians, and their wars with the settlers of New Eng land. It is painful to perceive, even from these par tial narratives, how the footsteps of civilization may be traced in the blood of the aborigines; how easily the colonists were moved to hostility by the lust ol conquest ; how merciless and exterminating was their warfare. The imagination shrinks at the idea, how PHILIP OF POKANOKET, 79 many intellectual beings were hunted from the earth ; how many brave and noble hearts, of nature's sterling coinage, were broken down and trampled in the dust ! Such was the fate of Philip of Pokanoket,^ an Indian warrior, whose name was once a terror through- out Massachusetts and Connecticut. He was the most distinguished of a number of contemporary sa- chems who reigned over the Pequods, the Narragan- setts, the Wampanoags, and the other eastern tribes^ at the time of the first settlement of New England : a band of native untaught heroes ; who made the most generous struggle of which human nature is capable ', fighting to the last gasp in the cause of their coun- try, without a hope of victory or a thought of renown. Worthy of an age of poetry, and fit subjects for local story and romantic fiction, they have left scarcely any authentic traces on the page of history, but stalk ^ Po-ko-no'ket, now Bristol, Rhode Island. The orthography of Indian names in this memoir is unsettled. The early colo- nists heard these names from Indian lips, but they could not spell them in a uniform way. The same Indian sometimes had several names. The same name showed minor diversities in pronunciation. The colonists were not exact in interpreting In- dian sounds. Moreover, they did not spell common English words with consistency. It was natural, therefore, that a great deal of confusion should appear both in their spelling and in their pronunciation of Indian names. Thus Philip's name ap- pears in various deeds and records under the following forms: Pometacom, Pumatacom, Pometacome, Metacom, Metacome, Meta- cum, Metacomet, Metamo'cet, and so on. For Pokonoket may be found PoconoJcet, Pocanakett, Pakanawkett, and Pawkunnawkeet ; for Miantoni'mo, Miantonimoh, Miantonomio, Miantonomo, Mian- tonomah, and Miantunnomah ; for Canon'chet, QuanancJiit, Qua- nanchett, and Quanonchet ; for Wet'amoe, Weetimoo and Wetti- more. Study of these variations reveals the pronunciation of the forms adopted by Irving. 80 WASHINGTON IRVING. like gigantic shadows in the dim twilight of tradi- tion.^ When the Pilgrims, as the Plymouth settlers arc called by their descendants, first took refuge on the shores of the New World, from the religious persecu- tions of the Old, their situation was to the last degree gloomy and disheartening. Few in number, and that number rapidly perishing away through sickness and hardships ; surrounded by a howling wilderness and savage tribes ; exposed to the rigors of an almost arc- tic winter, and the vicissitudes of an ever-shifting cli- mate ; their minds were filled with doleful forebodings, and nothing preserved them from sinking into despon- dency but the strong excitement of religious enthusi- asm. In this forlorn situation they were visited by Massasoit, chief sagamore of the Wampanoags, a powerful chief, who reigned over a great extent of country. Instead of taking advantage of the scanty number of the strangers, and expelling them from his territories into wliich they had intruded, he seemed at once to conceive for them a generous friendship, and extended towards them the rites of primitive hospital- ity. He came early in the spring to their settlement of New Plymouth,'^ attended by a mere handful of fol- lowers ; entered into a solemn league of peace and amity ; sold them a portion of the soil, and promised to secure for them the good will of his savage allies. Whatever may be said of Indian perfidy, it is certain 1 While correcting the proof-sheets of this article, the author is informed that a celebrated English poet has nearly finished an heroic poem on the story of Philip of Pokanoket. — W. I. 2 Simply Plymouth, Massachusetts, which for a time was spoken of as New Plymouth to distinguish it from the town of the same name in England, PHILIP OF POKANOKET. 81 that the integrity and good faith of Massasoit have never been impeached. He continued a firm and magnanimous friend of the white men ; suffering them to extend their possessions, and to strengthen them- selves in the land ; and betraying no jealousy of their increasing power and prosperity. Shortly before his death, he came once more to New Plymouth, with his son Alexander, for the purpose of renewing the cove- nant of peace, and of securing it to his posterity. At this conference, he endeavored to protect the religion of his forefathers from the encroaching zeal of the missionaries ; and stipulated that no further attempt should be made to draw off his people from their ancient faith ; but, finding the English obsti- nately opposed to any such condition, he mildly relin- quished the demand. Almost the last act of his life was to bring his two sons,^ Alexander and Philip (as they had been named by the English), to the residence of a principal settler, recommending mutual kindness and confidence, and entreating that the same love and amity which had existed between the white men and himself might be continued afterwards with his children. The good old sachem died in peace, and was happily gathered to his fathers before sorrow came upon his tribe ; his children remained behind to experience the ingratitude of white men. ^ " In Anno 1662, Plymouth Colony was in some Danger of being involved in Trouble by the Wampanoag Indians. After Massasoit was dead, his two Sons called Wamsutta and Metacomet [Irving gives the name as Metamocet'] came to the Court at Plymouth pretending high respect for the English, and therefore desired English Names might be imposed on them, whereupon the Court there named Wamsutta (the elder Brother) Alexander, and Metacomet (the younger Brother) Philip." — Increase Mather. The English doubtless had iu mind the famous Macedonian warriors. 82 WASHINGTON IRVING. His eldest son, Alexander, succeeded him. He was of a quick and impetuous temper, and proudly tena- cious of his hereditary rights and dignity. The intru- sive policy and dictatorial conduct of the strangers excited his indignation ; and he beheld with uneasi- ness their exterminating wars with the neighboring tribes. He was doomed soon to incur their hostility, being accused of plotting with the Narragansetts to rise against the English and drive them from the land. It is impossible to say whether this accusation was warranted by facts, or was grounded on mere sus- picions. It is evident, however, by the violent and overbearing measures of the settlers, that they had by this time begun to feel conscious of the rapid increase of their power, and to grow harsh and inconsiderate in their treatment of the natives. They dispatched an armed force to seize upon Alexander and to bring him before their courts. He was traced to his woodland haunts, and surprised at a hunting house, where he was reposing with a band of his followers, unarmed, after the toils of the chase. The suddenness of his arrest, and the outrage offered to his sovereign dignity, so preyed upon the irascible feelings of this proud savage as to throw him into a raging fever ; he was permitted to return home on condition of sending his son as a pledge for his re-appearance ,• but the blow he had received was fatal, and before he reached his home he fell a victim to the agonies of a wounded spirit. The successor of Alexander was Metamocet, or King Philip, as he was called by the settlers, on account of his lofty spirit and ambitious temper. These, together with his well-known energy and enter- prise, had rendered him an object of great jealousy and apprehension, and he was accused of having PHILIP OF POKANOKET. 85 always cherished a secret and implacable hostility to- wards the whites. Such may very probably, and very naturally, have been the case. He considered them as originally but mere intruders into the country, who had presumed upon indulgence, and were extending an influence baneful to savage life. He saw the whole race of his countrymen melting before them from the face of the earth ; their territories slipping from their hands, and their tribes becoming feeble, scattered, and dependent. It may be said that the soil was originally purchased by the settlers ; but who does not know the nature of Indian purchases, in the early periods of colonization? The Europeans al- ways made thrifty bargains, through their superior adroitness in traffic ; and they gained vast accessions of territory, by easily -provoked hostilities. An uncul- tivated savage is never a nice inquirer into the refine- ments of law, by which an injury may be gradually and legally inflicted. Leading facts are all by which he judges; and it was enough for Philip to know that before the intrusion of the Europeans his coun^ trymen were lords of the soil, and that now they were becoming vagabonds in the land of their fathers. But whatever may have been his feelings of general hostility, and his particular indignation at the treat- ment of his brother, he suppressed them for the pres- ent ; renewed the contract with the settlers ; and resided peaceably for many years at Pokanoket, or, as it was called by the English, Mount Hope, the ancient seat of dominion of his tribe. Suspicions, however, which were at first but vague and indefinite, began to acquire form and substance ; and he was at length charged with attempting to instigate the various east- ern tribes to rise at once, and, by a simultaneous 84 WASHINGTON IRVING. effort, to throw off the yoke of their oppressors. It is difficult at this distant period to assign the proper credit due to these early accusations against the Indi- ans. There was a proneness to suspicion, and ar aptness to acts of violence on the part of the whites, that gave weight and importance to every idle tale. Informers abounded where tale-bearing met witl countenance and reward, and the sword was readily unsheathed when its success was certain and it carved out empire. The only positive evidence on record against Philip is the accusation of one Sausaman, a renegade Indian, whose natural cunning had been quickened by a par- tial education which he had received among the set- tlers. He changed his faith and his allegiance two or three times with a facility that evinced the looseness of his principles. He had acted for some time as Philip's confidential secretary and counsellor, and had enjoyed his bounty and protection. Finding, however, that the clouds of adversity were gathering round his patron, he abandoned his service and went over to the whites ; and, in order to gain their favor, charged his former beuef actor with plotting against their safety. A rigorous investigation took place. Philip and sev- eral of his subjects submitted to be examined, but nothing was proved against them. The settlers, how- ever, had now gone too far to retract ; they had pre- viously determined that Philip was a dangerous neigh- bor ; they had publicly evinced their distrust, and had done enough to insure his hostility ; according, there- fore, to the usual mode of reasoning in these cases, his destruction had become necessary to their security. Sausaman, the treacherous informer, was shortly after found dead in a pond, having fallen a victim to the PHILIP OF POKANOKET. 85 vengeance of his tribe. Three Indians, one of whom was a friend and counsellor of Philip, were appre- hended and tried, and, on the testimony of one very questionable witness, were condemned and executed as murderers. This treatment of his subjects and ignominiors punishment of his friend outraged the pride and exas- perated the passions of Philip. The bolt which had fallen thus at his very feet awakened him to the gath- ering storm, and he determined to trust himself no longer in the power of the white men. The fate of his insulted and broken-hearted brother still rankled in his mind ; and he had a further warning in the tragical story of Miantonimo, a great sachem of the Narragansetts, who, after manfully facing his accus- ers before a tribunal of the colonists, exculpating himself from a charge of conspiracy, and receiving assurances of amity, had been perfidiously dispatched at their instigation. Philip therefore gathered his fighting men about him, persuaded all strangers that he could to join his cause, sent the women and chil- dren to the Narragansetts for safety, and wherever he appeared was continually surrounded by armed warriors. When the two parties were thus in a state of dis- trust and irritation, the least spark was sufficient to set them in a flame. The Indians, having weapons in their hands, grew mischievous, and committed various petty depredations. In one of their maraudings, a warrior was fired upon and killed by a settler. This was the signal for open hostilities ; the Indians pressed to revenge the death of their comrade, and the alarm of war resounded through the Plymouth colony. In the early chronicles of these dark ^nd melan« 86 WASHINGTON IRVING. choly times, we meet with many indications of the diseased state of the public mind. The gloom of religious abstraction, and the wildness of their situa- tion, among trackless forests and savage tribes, had disposed the colonists to superstitious fancies, and had filled their imaginations with the frightful chimeras of witchcraft and spectrology.^ They were much given also to a belief in omens. The troubles with Philip and his Indians were preceded, we are told, by a variety of those awful warnings which forerun great and public calamities. The perfect form of an Indian bow appeared in the air at New Plymouth, which was looked upon by the inhabitants as a " prodigious apparition." At Hadley, Northampton, and other towns in their neighborhood, " was heard the report of a great piece of ordnance, with the shaking of the earth and a considerable echo." Others were alarmed on a still, sunshiny morning by the discharge of guns and muskets; bullets seemed to whistle past them, and the noise of drums resounded in the air, seeming to pass away to the westward ; others fancied that they heard the galloping of horses over their heads ; and certain monstrous births which took place about the time filled the superstitious in some towns with doleful forebodings. Many of these portentous sights and sounds may be ascribed to natural phenomena; to the northern lights which occur vividly in those latitudes ; the meteors which explode in the air ; the casual rushing of a blast through the top branches of the forest ; the crash of falling trees or disrupted rocks ; and to those other uncouth sounds and echoes which will sometimes strike the ear so strangely 1 To Irving's mind this word means the supposed science that treats of apparitions. PHILIP OF POKANOKET, 87 amidst the profound stillness of woodland solitudes. These may have startled some melancholy imagina- tions, may have been exaggerated by the love for the marvellous, and listened to with that avidity with tv^hich we devour whatever is fearful and mysterious. The universal currency of these superstitious fancies, and the grave record made of them by one of the learned men ^ of the day, are strongly characteristic of the times. The nature of the contest that ensued was such as too often distinguishes the warfare between civilized men and savages. On the part of the whites it was conducted with superior skill and success, but with a wastefulness of the blood and a disregard of the nat- ural rights of their antagonists ; on the part of the Indians it was waged with the desperation of men fearless of death, and who had nothing to expect from peace, but humiliation, dependence, and decay. The events of the war are transmitted to us by a worthy clergyman of the time, who dwells with hor- ror and indignation on every hostile act of the Indi- ans, however justifiable, while he mentions with applause the most sanguinary atrocities of the whites. Philip is reviled as a murderer and a traitor, without considering that he was a true born prince, gallantly fighting at the head of his subjects to avenge the wrongs of his family, to retrieve the tottering power of his line, and to deliver his native land from the oppression of usurping strangers. 1 Rev. Increase Mather, pastor of the Old North Church in Boston for sixty-two years. He was born in 1639 and died in 1723. Among his ninety-two distinct publications are full accounts of King Philip's War, in which popular superstitions and well authenticated facts are woven together after the fash- ion of the times. 88 WASHINGTON IRVING. The project of a wide and simultaneous revolt, if such had really been formed, was worthy of a capa- cious mind, and, had it not been prematurely discov- ered, might have been overwhelming in its conse- quences. The war that actually broke out was but a war of detail, a mere succession of casual exploits and unconnected enterprises. Still it sets forth the military genius and daring prowess of Philip ; and wherever, in the prejudiced and passionate narrations that have been given of it, we can arrive at simple facts, we find him displaying a vigorous mind, a fer- tility in expedients, a contempt of suffering and hard- ship, and an unconquerable resolution, that command our sympathy and applause. Driven from his paternal domains at Mount Hope, he threw himself into the depths of those vast and trackless forests that skirted the settlements, and were almost impervious to anything but a wild beast or an Indian. Here he gathered together his forces, like the storm accumulating its stores of mischief in the bosom of the thunder-cloud, and would suddenly emerge at a time and place least expected, carrjdng havoc and dismay into the villages. There were now and then indications of these impending ravages that filled the minds of the colonists with awe and appre- hension. The report of a distant gun would perhaps be heard from the solitary woodland, where there was known to be no white man ; the cattle which had been wandering in the woods would sometimes return home wounded ; or an Indian or two would be seen lurking about the skirts of the forests, and suddenly disap- pearing, as the lightning will sometimes be seen play- ing silently about the edge of the cloud that is brew- ing up the tempest. PHILIP OF POKANOKET. 89 Though sometimes pursued and even surrounded by the settlers, yet Philip as often escaped almost mi- raculously from their toils, and, plunging into the wil- derness, would be lost to all search or inquiry until he again emerged at some far distant quarter, laying the country desolate. Among his strongholds were the great swamps or morasses which extend in some parts of New England, composed of loose bogs of deep black mud, perplexed with thickets, brambles, rank weeds, the shattered and mouldering trunks of fallen trees, overshadowed by lugubrious hemlocks. The un- certain footing and the tangled mazes of these shaggy wilds rendered them almost impracticable to the white man, though the Indian could thread their labyrinths with the agility of a deer. Into one of these, the great swamp of Pocasset Neck, was Philip once driven with a band of his followers. The English did not dare to pursue him, fearing to venture into these dark and frightful recesses, where they might perish in fens and miry pits or be shot down by lurking foes. They therefore invested the entrance to the neck, and began to build a fort, with the thought of starving out the foe ; but Philip and his warriors wafted themselves on a raft over an arm of the sea, in the dead of night, leaving the women and children behind ; and escaped away to the westward, kindling the flames of war among the tribes of Massachusetts and the Nipmuck coantry,^ and threatening the colony of Connecticuto ^ Written also Nipmug, Nipmiik, and Neepniuck. This coun- try was northwest of the lands of the Wampanoags, among whom the Pilgrims settled. It lay chiefly in the southern part of the Worcester County of to-day, but partly in northern Con- necticut. At the time of King Philip's War, it was within the jurisdiction of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay. An old writer tells how John Eliot, the apostle to the Indians, visited "the seven new praying towns in the Nipmug country " in 1663. 90 WASHINGTON IRVING. In this way Philip became a theme of universal apprehension. The mystery in which he was envel- oped exaggerated his real terrors. He was an evil that walked in darkness, whose coming none could foresee, and against which none knew when to be on the alert. The whole country abounded with rumors and alarms. Philip seemed almost possessed of ubi- quity ; for, in whatever part of the widely extended frontier an irruption from the forest took place, Philip was said to be its leader. Many superstitious notions also were circulated concerning him. He was said to deal in necromancy, and to be attended by an old In- dian witch or prophetess, whom he consulted, and who assisted him by her charms and incantations. This indeed was frequently the case with Indian chiefs ; either through their own credulity, or to act upon that of their followers ; and the influence of the prophet and the dreamer over Indian superstitions has been fully evidenced in recent instances of savage warfare. At the time that Philip effected his escape from Pocasset, his fortunes were in a desperate condition. His forces had been thinned by repeated fights, and he had lost almost the whole of his resources. In this time of adversity he found a faithful friend in Canon- chet, chief sachem of all the Narragansetts. He was the son and heir of Miantonimo, the great sachem, who, as already mentioned, after an honorable acquit- tal of the charge of conspiracy, had been privately put to death at the perfidious instigations of the set- tlers. " He was the heir," says the old chronicler, *' of all his father's pride and insolence, as well as of his malice towards the English ; " he certainly was the heir of his insults and injuries, and the legitimate avenger of his murder. Though he had forborne to PHILIP OF POKANOKET. 91 take an active part in this hopeless war, yet he re- ueived Philip and his broken forces with open arms, >nd gave them the most generous countenance and support. This at once drew upon him the hostility of the English, and it was determined to strike a signal blow, that should involve both the sachems in one common ruin. A great force was therefore gathered tegether from Massachusetts, Plymouth,^ and Con= necticut, and was sent into the Narragansett country in the depth of winter, when the swamps, being frozen and leafless, could be traversed with comparative facil- ity, and would no longer afford dark and impenetra- ble fastnesses to the Indians. Apprehensive of attack, Canonchet had conveyed the greater part of his stores, together with the old, the infirm, the women and children of his tribe, to a strong fortress, where he and Philip had likewise drawn up the flower of their forces. This fortress, deemed by the Indians impregnable, was situated upon a rising mound or kind of island, of five or six acres, in the midst of a swamp ; it was constructed with a degree of judgment and skill vastly superior to what is usually displayed in Indian fortification, and indi- cative of the martial genius of these two chieftains. Guided by a renegado Indian, the English pene- trated, through December snows, to this stronghold, and came upon the garrison by surprise. The fight was fierce and tumultuous. The assailants were re- pulsed in their first attack, and several of their brav- est officers were shot down in the act of storming the fortress, sword in hand. The assault was renewed ^ It should be remembered that Massachusetts and Plymouth were at this time separate colonies, each with its own governor and legislative body. They were not united until 1692. 92 WASHINGTON IRVING. with greater success. A lodgment was effected. The Indians were driven from one post to another. They disputed their ground inch by inch, fighting with the fury of despair. Most of their veterans were cut to pieces ; and after a long and bloody battle, Philip and Canon chet, with a handful of surviving warriors, re- treated from the fort, and took refuge in the thickets of the surrounding forest. The victors set fire to the wigwams and the fort ; the whole was soon in a blaze ; many of the old men, the women, and the children perished in the flames. This last outrage overcame even the stoicism of the savage. The neighboring woods resounded with the yells of rage and despair uttered by the fugitive war- riors as they beheld the destruction of their dwellings, and heard the agonizing cries of their wives and off- spring. " The burning of the wigwams," says a con- temporary writer,^ " the shrieks and cries of the women and children, and the yelling of the warriors, exhibited a most horrible and affecting scene, so that it greatly moved some of the soldiers." The same writer cautiously adds, " They were in much doubt then, and afterwards seriously inquired, whether burn- ing their enemies alive could be consistent with hu- manity and the benevolent principles of the gospel." The fate of the brave and generous Canonchet is worthy of particular mention : the last scene of his life is one of the noblest instances on record of Indian magnanimity. Broken down in his power and resources by this signal defeat, yet faithful to his ally and to the hap- less cause which he had espoused, he rejected all over- 1 Rev. W. Ruggles, from whose manuscripts the quotations are made. PHILIP OF POKANOKET. 93 tures of peace, offered on condition of betraying Philip and his followers, and declared that " he would fight it out to the last man, rather than become a ser- vant to the English." His home being destroyed, his country harassed and laid waste by the incursions of the conquerors, he was obliged to wander away to the banks of the Connecticut, where he formed a rallying point to the whole body of western Indians, and laid waste several of the English settlements. Early in the spring he departed on a hazardous expedition, with only thirty chosen men, to penetrate to Seaconck, in the vicinity of Mount Hope, and to procure seed-corn to plant for the sustenance of his troops. This little band of adventurers had passed safely through the Pequod country ,i and were in the centre of the Narragansett, resting at some wigwams near Pautucket River, when an alarm was given of an approaching enemy. Having but seven men by him at the time, Canonchet dispatched two of them to the top of a neighboring hill, to bring intelligence of the foe. Panic-struck by the appearance of a troop of Eng- lish and Indians rapidly advancing, they fled in breathless terror past their chieftain, without stopping to inform him of the danger. Canonchet sent another scout, who did the same. He then sent two more, one of whom, hurrying back in confusion and affright, told him that the whole British army was at hand. Canonchet saw there was no choice but immediate flight. He attempted to escape round the hill, but was perceived and hotly pursued by the hostile Indi- ans and a few of the fleetest of the English. Finding the swiftest pursuer close upon his heels, he threw off 1 Southern Connecticut. 94 WASHINGTON IRVING. first his blanket, then his silver-laced coat and belt of peag,^ by which his enemies knew him to be Canon- chet, and redoubled the eagerness of pursuit. At length, in dashing through the river, his foot slipped upon a stone, and he fell so deep as to wet his gun. This accident so struck him with despair that, as he afterwards confessed, " his heart and his bowels turned within him, and he became like a rotten stick, void of strength. '* To such a degree was he unnerved that, being seized by a Pequod Indian within a short distance of the river, he made no resistance, though a man of great vigor of body and boldness of heart. But on being made prisoner, the whole pride of his spirit rose within him ; and from that moment we find, in the anecdotes given by his enemies, nothing but repeated flashes of elevated and prince-like heroism. Being questioned by one of the English who first came up with him, and who had not attained his twenty-second year, the proud-hearted warrior, looking with lofty contempt upon his youthful countenance, replied, " You are a child — you cannot understand matters of war — let your brother or your chief come" — him will I answer." Though repeated offers were made to him of his life, on condition of submitting with his nation to the English, yet he rejected them with disdain, and re- fused to send any proposals of the kind to the great body of his subjects, saying that he knew none of them would comply. Being reproached with his breach of faith towards the whites, his boast that he ^ Pronounced />ee9 ; bits of shells, rounded and polished, and strung on a thread. These beads were used as money, the black and purple varieties being valued at twice as much as the white. PHILIP OF POKANOKET. 95 would not deliver up a Wampanoag nor the paring of a Wampanoag's nail, and his threat that he would burn the English alive in their houses, he disdained to justify himself, haughtily answering that others were as forward for the war as himself, and " he desired to hear no more thereof." So noble and unshaken a spirit, so true a fidelity to his cause and his friend, might have touched the feel° ings of the generous and the brave ; but Canonchet was an Indian; a being towards whom war had no courtesy, humanity no law, religion no compassion, — he was condemned to die. The last words of his that are recorded are worthy the greatness of his soul. When sentence of death was passed upon him, he observed "that he liked it well, for he should die before his heart was soft, or he had spoken anything unworthy of himself." His enemies gave him the death of a soldier, for he was shot at Stoningham, by three young sachems of his own rank. The defeat of the Narragansett fortress and the death of Canonchet were fatal blows to the fortunes of King Philip. He made an ineffectual attempt to raise a head of war, by stirring up the Mohawks ^ to take arms ; but though possessed of the native talents of a statesman, his arts were counteracted by the supe- rior arts of his enlightened enemies, and the terror of their warlike skill began to subdue the resolution of the neighboring tribes. The unfortunate chieftain saw himself daily stripped of power, and his ranks rapidly thinning around him. Some were suborned by the whites ; others fell victims to hunger and 1 One of the five (subsequently six) tribes that made up the great New York confederacy known as the Five Nations. The Mohawks dwelt in the valley of the river that bears their name. 96 WASHINGTON IRVING, fatigue, and to the frequent attacks by which they were harassed. His stores were all captured ; his chosen friends were swept away from before his eyes ; his uncle was shot down by his side ; his sister was carried into captivity ; and in one of his narrow escapes he was compelled to leave his beloved wife and only son to the mercy of the enemy. " His ruin," says the historian, " being thus gradually carried on, his misery was not prevented, but augmented thereby; being himself made acquainted with the sense and experimental feeling of the captivity of his children, loss of friends, slaughter of his subjects, bereavement of all family relations, and being stripped of all out- ward comforts, before his own life should be taken away." To fill up the measure of his misfortunes, his own followers began to plot against his life, that by sacri- ficing him they might purchase dishonorable safety. Through treachery, a number of his faithful adher- ents, the subjects of Wetamoe, an Indian princess of Pocasset, a near kinswoman and confederate of Philip, were betrayed into the hands of the enemy. Wetamoe was among them at the time, and attempted to make her escape by crossing a neighboring river ; either exhausted by swimming, or starved with cold and hunger, she was found dead and naked near the water side. But persecution ceased not at the grave ; even death, the refuge of the wretched, where the wicked commonly cease from troubling, was no pro- tection to this outcast female, whose great crime was a,ffectionate fidelity to her kinsman and her friend. Her corpse was the object of unmanly and dastardly vengeance ; the head was severed from the body and set upon a pole, and was thus exposed, at Taunton, to PHILIP OF POKANOKET, 97 the view of her captive subjects. They immediately recognized the features of their unfortunate queen, and were so affected at this barbarous spectacle that, WQ are told, they broke forth into the " most horrid and diabolical lamentations." However Philip had borne up against the compli- cated miseries and misfortunes that surrounded him, the treachery of his followers seemed to wring his heart and reduce him to despondency. It is said that " he never rejoiced afterwards, nor had success in any of his designs." The spring of hope was broken — the ardor of enterprise was extinguished; he looked around, and all was danger and darkness ; there was no eye to pity, nor any arm that could bring deliver- ance. With a scanty band of followers, who still remained true to his desperate fortunes, the unhappy Philip wandered back to the vicinity of Mount Hope, the ancient dwelling of his fathers. Here he lurked about, " like a spectre, among the scenes of former DOwer and prosperity, now bereft of home, of family and friend." There needs no better picture of his des- titute and piteous situation, than that furnished by the homely pen of the chronicler, who is unwarily enlisting the feelings of the reader in favor of the hapless warrior whom he reviles. " Philip," he says^ " like a savage wild beast, having been hunted by the English forces through the woods above a hundred miles backward and forward, at last was driven to his own den upon Mount Hope, where he retired with a few of his best friends into a swamp, which proved but a prison to keep him fast till the messen- gers of death came by divine permission to execute vengeance upon him." Even in this last refuge of desperation and despair, 98 WASHINGTON IRVING. a sullen grandeur gathers round his memory. We pic* ture him to ourselves seated among his careworn fol- lowers, brooding in silence over his blasted fortunes, and acquiring a savage sublimity from the wildness and dreariness of his lurking-place. Defeated but not dismayed, crushed to the earth but not humili- ated, he seemed to grow more haughty beneath dis- aster and to experience a fierce satisfaction in drain- ing the last dregs of bitterness. Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune ; but great minds rise above it. The very idea of submission awakened the fury of Philip, and he smote to death one of his followers who proposed an expedient of peace. The brother of the victim made his escape, and in revenge betrayed the retreat of his chieftain. A body of white men and Indians were immediately dispatched to the swamp where Philip lay crouched, glaring with fury and despair. Before he was aware of their approach, they had begun to surround him. In a little while he saw five of his trustiest followers laid dead at his feet ; all resistance was vain ; he rushed forth from his cov- ert, and made a headlong attempt to escape, but was shot through the heart by a renegado Indian of his own nation. Such is the scanty story of the brave but unfortu- nate King Philip ; persecuted while living, slandered and dishonored when dead. If, however, we consider even the prejudiced anecdotes furnished us by his ene- mies, we may perceive in them traces of amiable and lofty character, sufficient to awaken sympathy for his fate and respect for his memory. We find that amidst all the harassing cares and ferocious passions of constant warfare, he was alive to the softer feelings of connubial love and paternal tenderness, and to the PHILIP OF POKANOKET. 99 generous sentiment of friendship. The captivity of his *' beloved wife and only son " is mentioned with exultation, as causing him poignant misery ; the death of any near friend is triumphantly recorded as a new blow on his sensibilities ; but the treachery and deser- tion of many of his followers, in whose affections he had confided, is said to have desolated his heart, and to have bereaved him of all further comfort. He was a patriot, attached to his native soil ; a prince, true to his subjects, and indignant of their wrongs ; a sol- dier, daring in battle, firm in adversity, patient of fatigue, of hunger, of every variety of bodily suffer- ing, and ready to perish in the cause he had espoused. Proud of heart, and with an untamable love of nat- ural liberty, he preferred to enjoy it among the beasts of the forests, or in the dismal and famished recesses of swamps and morasses, rather than bow his haughty spirit to submission, and live dependent and despised in the ease and luxury of the settlements. With heroic qualities and bold achievements that would have graced a civilized warrior, and have rendered him the theme of the poet and the historian, he lived a wanderer and a fugitive in his native land, and went down, like a lonely bark foundering amid darkness and tempest, — without a pitying eye to weep his fallj or a friendly hand to record his struggle. EXPLANATORY NOTES. RIP VAN WINKLE. Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow are the two pieces of writing by which Irving is best known to-day. They are in themselves excellent stories, and they have the added in- terest, from a literary point of view, of first exemplifying the form in which the short story was to become established during the nineteenth century. This form afterwards was brought to higher artistic perfection and wider general application by such writers as Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Bret Harte in America, and Robert Louis Stevenson, Rudyard Ejp- hng, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in England. A very striking view of the development of the short story may be o.btained by reading the following examples in the order given: The Black Cat and The Fall of the House of Usher, by Poe; Howe's Mas- querade, by Hawthorne; Tennessee's Partner, by Bret Harte; The Sieur de Maletroit's Door, by Stevenson; The Man Who Would he King and The Drums of the Fore and Aft, by Kipling; Silver Blaze, by Conan Doyle. The story of Rip Van Winkle has been dramatized by Dion Boucicault, and the part of Rip himself was for many years finely interpreted by Joseph Jefferson. PAGE 10 Fort Christina : a fort on the Delaware established by the Swedes and captured by Stuyvesant in 1655. termagant: scolding, bad-tempered. The word comes from the devil-character Termagant in the old Miracle plays. 12 galligaskins : loose breeches. 13 a gallows air: a guilty or downcast look. a rubicund portrait: a sign-board with a highly-colored picture of King George III. 14 the most gigantic word: We are reminded of the school- master in Goldsmith's Deserted Village: While words of learned length and thundering sound Amazed the gaping rustics ranged around; And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew That one small head could carry all he knew. junto : a political club, a faction. From the Bpsniish junta, council. virago : a violent, turbulent woman. ii WASHINGTON IRVING, PAGE 15 shagged: covered with bushes. See Scott, Lay of the Last Minstrel: Land of brown heath and shaggy wood. Land of the mountain and the flood. 16 jerkin: short coat, jacket. 17 outlandish: foreign. doublets: close-fitting body-garments, with or without sleeves. sugar-loaf hat : hat with a high, rounded crown. In those days sugar was manufactured and sold in the form of " loaves "; these were cone-shaped, and about a foot high. 18 hanger: short curved sword, roses: rosettes of ribbon. Dominie : minister — the term was usually appUed to a schoolmaster. Hollands: gin made in Holland. 19 firelock: or "flintlock," a gun in which the charge was ignited by the hammer striking a spark from a piece of flint. The percussion cap was invented later. roisters: revellers, roysterers. 22 a red night cap: a "liberty cap," placed on top of a lib- erty pole. 23 phlegm: apathy, dullness. Babylonish jargon : a mere confusion of words. The refer- ence is to the Bible story of the Tower of Babel — see Genesis xi. Federal or Democrat: After the Revolution the country was divided into two political parties. The Federahsts, with Hamilton at their head, believed in a strong central government; while the Democrats, led by Jefferson, wished to reserve many local powers to the individual states. a tory: the "tories" were those who remained faithful to the British Government. 28 Hendrick Hudson: Henry Hudson was a famous English sailor who discovered the Hudson River in 1609, while in the service of the Dutch East India Company. He sailed up as far as the site of Alban}'^, hunting for a short route to India, He was afterwards employed by the British Gov- ernment in a similar search and was eventually cast adrift in an open boat in Hudson's Bay by his mutinous crew (1611). the Half -Moon: the ship in which the voyage up the Hudson was made. the great city called by his name: an odd slip on Irving's part — New York was never named after Hudson. 30 Note. This passage, as well as the Prefatory Note to the story, gives an excellent idea of Irving's quiet humor. He revives the familiar figure of Diedrich Knickerbocker in EXPLANATORY NOTES. iii order to bestow upon the tale a pleasant air of historical accuracy. Questions and Topics for Study. Which parts of the story seem to you to be best — the charac- ter drawing, the incidents in the hollow, or the descriptions of scenery? Discuss fully. Write an imaginary conversation between Mr. DooHttle and the "seK-important man" on the subject of Rip's return. Do you know of any story, other than Rip Van Winkle, where the plot turns upon prolonged absence? THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW. The charm of this story hes in its leisurely movement, its pleasmg and varied descriptive passages, and the touches throughout of slightly malicious humor. It is as if Irving him- seK stood by, watching with a smile the pecuHarities of the schoolmaster. PAGE 33 Tarry Town: The purchase of "Sunnyside" by Irving is mentioned in a letter to his brother Peter in 1835 : " You have been told, no doubt, of a purchase I have made of ten acres, lying at the foot of Oscar's farm on the river bank. It is a beautiful spot, capable of being made a little para- dise. There is a small stone cottage on it, built about a cen- tury since, and inhabited by one of the Van Tassels. My idea is to make a little nookery somewhat in the Dutch style, quaint but unpretending." original Dutch settlers : The region about New York and the Lower Hudson was settled by emigrants sent out by the Dutch West India Company in 1623-29. 34 Hessian trooper: The Hessians were soldiers from Hesse, Germany, hired by the British Government during the Revolution to fight in America. The custom of using mer- cenary soldiers was common at the time. After the war the Hessians were offered the choice of being sent home or of taking up farm lands in the British Colony of Nova Scotia. Many of them accepted the latter offer, and their descend- ants may be found in the original district to-day. 35 back to the churchyard: It was an ancient belief that ghosts must return to their place before "cock-crow." 39 whilom: formerly, once upon a time. An old-fashioned word, introduced purposely, to give a flavor to the story. carried away the palm: won a victory over. A palm branch was the ancient sign of victory; there is a well- known Latin proverb, "Palmam qui meruit ferat" — "let him who deserves it bear the palm." 41 harbinger: here, one who gives warning. The word IV WASHINGTON IRVING. PAGE originally meant an officer who was sent before a royal party to arrange for lodging and entertainment. varlet: wretch — used contemptuously. The word has deteriorated in meaning; originally it signified a boy of noble birth who was in training for knighthood, 42 fearful pleasure: pleasure that is full of fears. Compare the lines from Gray's Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College, where, speaking of truant schoolboys, he says: They hear a voice in every wind, And snatch a fearful joy. 43 perambulations: wanderings about. 46 chanticleer: the cock. craving that quarter: asking for mercy. "Quarter" originally meant "peace," "friendship." 47 linsey-woolsey: coarse cloth made of a mixture of linen and wool. Indian corn: what we call to-day, simply, "corn." It was termed Indian corn by the early English settlers, to dis- tinguish it from wheat, which was (and still is) known as "corn" in England. gaud: bright ornament. knight- errant: The best example of the true knight- errant to be found in fiction is the Black Knight in Ivanhoe. 48 Herculean: gigantic. Hercules was the hero of Greek myth, famous for his strength. Tartar: the Tartars were a race of wild nomadic horse- men, who inhabited the southern steppes of Russia. 49 rantipole: wild, rough. An unusual word. 50 supple-jack : a climbing plant with a strong, supple stem. 53 ferule : cane. The word is no longer used in this sense. a negro : slaves were not uncommon in the North at the period of the story. There were a good many of them in New York at the time of Irving' s youth. cap of Mercury: Mercury, the messenger of the gods, was represented as wearing a close-fitting winged cap. petty embassies: trivial errands. 57 The sun gradually wheeled: This passage contains a con- trolled and effective description of a noble scene. It should be compared with the passage in Riy Van Winkle beginning "In a long ramble of the kind," on page 15. It was towards evening: Here we have an almost first- hand account of a picturesque gathering. Note the fine choice of descriptive epithets, in this and the preceding paragraph. 58 queued: gathered into a pig-tail. Long hair for men was the fashion of the time. The use of an "eelskin" would seem to us a somewhat unpleasant manner of arranging the queue. EXPLANATORY NOTES, V PAGE 59 Heaven bless the mark! An exclamatory expression, here used humorously. The origin of the phrase is un- certain; the following explanation is taken from Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable: "In archery, when an archer shot well it was customary to cry out * God save the mark! ' — that is, prevent anyone coming after to hit the same mark and displace my arrow. Ironically it was said to a novice whose arrow was nowhere." want: lack. 60 St. Vitus : There was an old superstition in some parts of Europe that good health could be ensured for a year by dancing before an image of this saint on the occasion of his festival. The name "St. Vitus's dance" is given to a nerv- ous disorder which affects the limbs. 61 There was the story : note the typical irony of this para- graph. White Plains : a village about twenty miles north of New York, where a victory was gained by the British under Howe over the Americans under Washington, on October 28, 1776. 62 Major Andre: an officer in the British army during the Revolutionary War. He was chosen to arrange with Arnold for the transfer of West Point to British possession. He secured from Arnold maps and plans, but was captured at Tarry town, and executed as a spy. 63 arrant jockey: unmitigated cheat. should have won it: would certainly have won it. "Should," in the sense of "would" or "ought to," is now obsolete, but was good usage at least as late as 1859, for we find it in Dickens's Tale of Two Cities, Book I, chapter v: " He should have been of a hot temperament, for, although it was a bitter day, he wore no coat." 64 pillions: pads or cushions placed behind the saddle and adjusted for a second rider. chapfallen: gloomy, "down in the mouth." 69 stave : a few bars from a piece of music. 71 stocks: A "stock" was a stiff band of horse-hair or leather, covered with some lighter material and fastened behind with a buckle. 72 small-clothes: knee-breeches. pitch-pipe: a small instrument used to give the note in starting a tune. 74 The Postscript is introduced, like the Note at the end of Rip Van Winkle, to give a touch of pretended reality. sadly: solemnly. one of your wary men: one who was always on his guard. The word "your" is used in a colloquial sense. 75 Ergo: therefore. A word employed by old-time logicians in stating the conclusion of an argument. VI WASHINGTON IRVING. puzzled by the ratiocination of the syllogism: puzzled by the line of reasoning in the argument. A "syllogism" is argument reduced to its lowest terms, in which two "prem- ises" lead to a "conclusion." For example: All men are mortal; I am a man; Therefore, I am mortal. The syllogism of the story-teller is, of course, pure nonsense. Questions and Topics for Study. Write a short theme on one of the following topics: a. The Village Junto. b. School-teaching in Sleepy Hollow. c. A Riverside Farm-house. Describe a person with whom you are familiar, using methods similar to those employed in Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. In writing a theme about the Dutch settlements along the Hudson River, what help would you secure (a) from your school history, and (b) from Irving's stories ? PHILIP OF POKANOKET. It has been said that Irving was a story-teller rather than a historian. This sketch offers a fair test of the truth of the state- ment: he is more interested throughout, one can see, in the nar- rative qualities of the facts than in the facts themselves. Hence we find here some material which does not bear directly on the subject. He was handicapped, perhaps, because he was writing at second hand — others had told the same story before him. With the present essay should be compared another of similar nature — Traits of Indian Character. Both arouse our interest and sympathy rather than our intellectual approval. PAGE 79 sachems: chiefs, rulers. 80 sagamore : Indian of high rank — the word has about the same significance as "sachem." 83 a nice enquirer: close, or exact. 85 mauraudings: forays, expeditions for plunder. 86 chimeras : horrible stories. The Chimera was a fabulous beast, part lion, part goat, and part dragon. 89 toils: snares, ambushes. perplexed with thickets: an unusual but effective phrase descriptive of tangled woodland. lugubrious hemlocks: melancholy, gloomy, wafted themselves: sailed. 90 ubiquity: the quality of being everywhere at once, necromancy: magic. 95 suborned: won over by bribery. EXPLANATORY NOTES. vii PAGE 96 starved : killed. Originally, "starve" meant "die"; it is now used only of death from hunger. 98 shot through the heart : King Philip was slain on August 12, 1676. Questions and Topics for Study. Discuss the questions at issue between King Philip and the Colonists. Which side do you think was in the right? Compare Irving's methods (a) as a story-teller and (b) as an historian. Which do you consider the more effective? Find some instances of the treatment of the Indians (a) by the Colonists, (b) by the United States Government. Books on Patriotic Subjects [ AM AN AMERICAN By Sara Cone Bryant (Mrs. Theodore F. Borsf). "Americanism," says Mrs. Borst, "needs to be taught as definitely as do geography and arithmetic. . The grade teachers are doing splendid work for patriotism, with songs and recitations, story- telling, and talks on civic virtues. I have tried to give them some- thing more definite and coordinated, something that will serve as a real textbook on 'Being an American.'" STORIES OF PATRIOTISM. Edited by Norma H. Deming and Katharine I. Bemis. A series of stirring tales of patriotic deeds by Americans from the time of the colonists to the present. There are also stories about famous heroes of our Allies in the Great War. THE PATRIOTIC READER. Edited by Katharine I. Bemis, Mathilde E. Holtz, and Henry L. Smith. The selections cover the history of our country from Colonial times. A distinguishing feature is the freshness of material and the admirable arrangement. The book gives one a familiarity with literature that presents the highest ideals of freedom, justice, and liberty. THE LITTLE BOOK OF THE FLAG. By Eva March Tappan. In her own entertaining style, Miss Tappan has written the story of Our Flag. She tells children how to behave toward the flag in a fashion that makes such behavior a sacred duty. There are selec- tions for Reading and Memorizing. A COURSE IN CITIZENSHIP AND PATRIOTISM. Edited by E. L. Cabot, F. F. Andrews, F. E. Coe, M. Hill, and M. McSkimmon. Good citizenship grows out of love of country and in turn pro- motes the spirit of internationalism. This book teaches how to de- velop these qualities most effectually. AMERICANIZATION AND CITIZENSHIP. By Hanson Hart Webster. "Well calculated to inculcate love for America, especially among the foreign born. This is to be desired at this time more than ever before." — His Eminence, James Cardinal Gibbons. HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 1932 THE TAPPAN-KENDALL HISTORIES By EVA MARCH TAPPAN, Ph.D., and CALVIN N. KENDALL, LL D. Book I. American Hero Stories. {For Grades 7V-K) • By Eva March Tappan- A logical introduction to Miss Tappan's ^« Elernentary History of Our Country The stories are chronologically arranged and appealingly told. 3ook II. An Elementary History of Our Country. {For Grades V-VI.) By Eva March Tappan. A short, connected, and interesting story of the course of events in our history since the discovery of America. The narrative is simple, and makes a special appeal through its anecdotes of great men. There are numerous stimulating suggestions for written work. Book III. Our European Ancestors. {^For Grade VI.) By Eva March Tappan. The historical bond of union between Europe and America is adequately developed in this book. In every detail the book follows the course in history laid down for the sixth f^ade by the Committee of Eight of the American Historical Association. Book IV. History of the United States for Grammar Schools. {For Grades VII-VIII.) By Reuben Gold Thwaites, LL.D., and Calvin N. Kendall, LL.D. There is an adequate and up-to-date account of our social and industrial development, and authoritative chapters on the Great War. This history combines accurate scholarship, unusual interest, and a most complete and helpful teaching equipment. TIMELY BOOKS OF PATRIOTIC INTEREST i Am An American. {For Grades V-VI.) By Sara Cone Bryant (Mrs. Theodore F. Borst) Stories of Patriotism. {For Grades V-VI) Compiled by Norma H. Deming and Katharine I. Bemis The Patriotic Reader. {For Grades VII-VIII a7id Junior High Schools.) Compiled by K. I. Bemis, M. E. Holtz, and H. L. Smith, Ph.D. The Little Book of the Flag. {For Grades VI, VII, VIII.) By Eva March Tappan . The Little Book of the War. {For Grades VII-VIII and Junior High Schools.) By Eva March Tappan American Ideals. {For High Schools.) Edited by Norman Foerster and W. W. Pierson, Jr. Liberty, Peace, and Justice. {For High Schools.) Speeches and Addresses on Democracy and Patriotism, 1776-1918. River- side Literature Series, No. 261 A Treasury of War Poetry. {For High Schools.) British and American oems of the World War. Edited by GK-dRGB Her- bert Clarke. Riverside Literature Series, No. 262 Americanization and Citizenship. Lessons in Community and National Ideals for New Americans. By Hanson Hart Webster HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY GEOGRAPHICAL READERS Home Life Around the World. By George A. Mirick. With illustrations from photographs bj Burton Holmes. The Twins Series of Geographical Readers. By Lucy Fitch Perkins. Illustrated by the author. The Dutch Twins Primer. — The Eskimo Twins. — The Dutch Twins. — The Japanese Twins. — The Irish Twins. — ■ The Mexican Twins. — The Belgian Twins. — The French Twins. — The Italian Twins. — The Scotch Twins. Representative Cities of the United States. By Caroline W. Hotchkiss. Grades VII and VIII. Illus- trated. The British Isles. Bv Everett T. Tomlinson. Grades VII and VIII. Illustrated INDUSTRIAL READERS America at Work. By Joseph Husband. The Industrial Readers. By Eva March Tappan. Illustrated. The Farmer and His Friends. — Diggers in the Earth.— Makers of Many Things. — Travelers and Traveling. HISTORICAL READERS The Twins Series of Historical Readers. By Lucy Fitch Perkins. Illustrated by the author. The Cave Twins. — The Spartan Twins. — The Puritan Twins. History Readers. By Eva March Tappan. Illustrated. The Story of the Greek People. — The Story of the Roman People, — Old World Hero Stories. — Our European Ances- tors. — Letters from Colonial Children. — -American Here Stories. — The Little Book of the War. Heroes Every Child Should Know. Edited by Hamilton Wright Mabie. Illustrated. Dramatized Scenes from American History. By Augusta Stevenson. Grades VI-VIII. Illustrated HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY HIGH SCHOOL ENGLISH SHORT STORIES OF AMERICA By Robert L. Ramsay, Professor of English, University of Missouri. The material is unhackneyed. Only one of the stories here reprinted , we be- lieve, is included in any similar collection. The workmanship is of high excel- lence. The stories are all of the best quality and are written by authors whose rank is recognized by all critics. It is a well-rounded collection. Altheugh ai the stories are classed as local color stories, they are not merely that, but sup Dly also excellent illustrations of the most skillful handling of plot, character and atmosphere. ENGLISH FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS By W. F. Webster, Principal of the East High School, Minneapolis, Minne- sota. This is a book for first and second year high-school pupils. It expresses well the newer motive in the teaching of English — less memorizing and more doing; less stress upon the rhetorical term — more stress upon the larger qualities of good composition. PRACTICAL ENGLISH COMPOSITION. In Four Books. By Edwin L. Miller, Principal of the Northwestern High School, De- troit, Michigan. This series is designed to teach English composition as expressed in letter writing, journalism, expository writing, and argumentation- THE BUSINESS LETTER By Ion E. Dvvyer, Principal Bristol County Business School, Taunton, Mass. This book covers enough of the field of correspondence to give the student an excellent working knowledge of the subject. PRACTICAL BUSINESS ENGLISH By Oscar C. Gallagher, Superintendent of Schools, Brookline, Mass., and Leonard B. Moulton, High School of Commerce, Boston. A live, up-to-date text on English as used in the business world. The psychological side of letter-writing is emphasized. Adequate suggestions for class work are given. MODERN PROSE AND POETRY FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS Edited by Margaret Ashmun, formerly Instructor in English in the University of Wisconsin. These selections are taken from volumes most of which have not hitherto been accessible to high-school classes. PROSE LITERATURE FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS With some suggestions for correlation with Composition "Edited by Margaret Ashmun. With an Introduction by Willard G. Bleyer, Assistant Professor of Journalism in the University of Wisconsin. The selections in this book cover a wide field, and make an immediate appeal to students of high -school age. The suggestions for study, questions, and notes are all practical and helpful. THE HIGH SCHOOL PRIZE SPEAKER Edited by William L. Snow. The forty-five selections from literature comprising this book have been winners in the Prize Speaking Contest of the Brookline (Mass.) High School. HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 2201 TRANSLATIONS Wright {^Editor) — Masterpieces of Greek Literature. In translation. 456 pages. Bryant — Homer's The Iliad. Translated into English blank verse. Abridged to conform to the college entrance requirements in English, With Map, Pronouncing Vocabulary, Suggestions for Study, etc. Riverside Literature Series, No. 243. Bryant — Homer's The Odyssey. Translated into English blank verse. With Map and Pronouncing Vocabulary. Sttidents^ Edition. Palmer — Homer's The Odyssey. Revised Edition. Trans- lated into English prose. With an Introduction, Portrait Bust, Maps, and Outlines, Questions, and Suggestions. Riverside Literature Series, No. 180. More — ^schylus, Prometheus Bound. Translated into English prose. With an Introduction and Notes. More — Plato's The Judgment of Socrates: The Apology, Crito, Closing Scene of the Phaedo. Translated into English prose. Riverside Literature Series, No. 129. Palmer — Sophocles' Antigone. Translated into English prose. With an Introduction and Notes. Greek Leaders. A supplementary text comprising eleven biographies, for use in high school classes in ancient history. B) Leslie W. Hopkinson, under the editorship of William S. Ferguson, Professor of Ancient History, Harvard University. Laing {Editor) — Masterpieces of Latin Literature. In trans- lation. 496 pages. Williams — Virgil's The iEneid. Translated into English blank verse. With Introduction, Illustrations, and Pronouncing Vocabulary. Riverside Literature Series, No. 193. Cranch — Virgil's The ^Eneid. Translated into English blank verse. Students^ Edition. Harris — Seneca's Medea, and The Daughters of Troy. Translated into English verse. With an Introduction. Norton — Dante's Divine Comedy. Complete Edition, three volumes in one. Translated into English prose. With Intro- duction and Notes. HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY O^e j^allag Lore ^i^aty minvt ^erte g I. THE FALL OF THE YEAR IL WINTER riL THE SPRING OF THE YEAR IV, SUMMER BY DALLAS LORE SHARP AuiAor of « The Pace of the Fields^ ^Tke Lay of the Land,'' etc. Illustrated by ROBERT BRUCE HORSFALL Because of the personal, intimate touch and the numerous episodes revealing the author's sincere enjoyment of nature, boys and girls will read these books with increasing delight and be much the richer for the reading. Teachers may be assured that Mr. Sharp's natural history is authentic, for he is an enemy to all "na- ture-faking." His reputation as a nature writer is second only to John Burroughs's. In these books, his aim is to inspire a real love foi and interest in nature on the part of school children Throughout the books are chapters on *' Things to See," " Things to Do," and "Things to Hear." These, with the full Notes and Suggestions to the Teacher and for the Pupil, make a very helpful classrooip equipment. HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY IMS PRACTICAL ENGLISH COMPOSITION In Four Books By EDWIN L. MILLER Pnndpal of the Northwestern High School Detroit, Michigan This series marks a radical departure in methods of teaching EngHsh. It is flexible, direct, and informal. In line with the modern tendency in education, it emphasizes the practical aspect, the why of learning to write and to speak good English. Original work is encouraged in both teacher and pupils, and especial attention is given to training in oral composition. While designed for independent use in the four years of the high school, the books will admirably supplement a formal treatise on rhetoric anrl composition. Book I Teaches the freshman how to write a correct, coherent, readable letter, how to speak fluent, graceful, precise English, how to gather material and criticise his own w ork, and begins the study of description. Book II Reviews description, teaches the sophomore the fundamentals of narration through news writing, and takes up advertisement writing. Book III Begins advanced composition in the junior year, deals with various methods of narration and description, and takes up exposition in detail. Book IV Reviews exposition and develops the subject of argumentation — oration and debating — in the senior year. The author has devoted several years to the perfection of the plan embodied in th •■ series. Not only has he succeeded in rounding out a live coarse of English instruction from the teacher's point of view, but he has presented each chapter in such a way that the pupil realizes its importance to him. HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 1949 RIVERSIDE LITERATURE SERIES (Continued) 150. 151. 152. 153. 154. 155. 15(5. 157. 158. 159. 160. 161. 102. 163. 104. Kkj. 100. 167. 168. 169. 170. 171, 173. 174. 175. 176. 177. 178. 179. 180. 181. 182. 183. 184. 185. 186. 187, 189. 190. 191. 192. 193. 194. 195. 196. 197. 198, ■200. 'iOl. 20-2. 203. 204. 205. 206. 207. 208. 209. 210. 211. 212. 213. 214. 215. 216. 217. Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. Ouida's Dog of Flauders, etc. Ewing's Jackanapes, etc. Martineau's The Peasant and thp. Prince. Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. Shakespeare's Tempest. Irving's Life of Goldsmith. Tennyson's Gareth and Ljiiette, etc. The Song of Roland. Malory's Merlin and Sir Balin. Beowulf. Spenser's Faerie Queene. Book I. Dickens's Tale of Two Cities. Prose an 1 Poetry of Cardinal Newman. Shakespeare'o Henry V. De Qaincey's Joan of Arc, etc. Scott's Quentin Durward. Carlyle's Heroes and Hero-Worship. Longfellow's Autobiographical Poems. Slielley's Poems. Lowell's My Garden Acquaintance, etc. Lamb's Essays of Elia. 172. Emerson's Essays. Kate Douglas Wiggin's Flag-Raising. Kate Douglas Wiggin's Finding a Home. Whittier's Autobiographical Poems. Burroughs' s Afoot and Afloat. Bacon's Essays. Selections from John Ruskin. King Arthur Stories from Malory. Palmer's Odyssey. Goldsmith's The Good-Natured Man. Goldsmith s She Stoops to Conquer. Old English and Scottish Ballads. Shakespeare's King Lear. Moores's Life of Lincoln. Thoreau's Camping in the Maine Woods. 188. Huxley's Autobiography, and Essays. Byron's Childe Harold, Canto IV, etc. Washington's Farewell Address, and Web- ster's Bunker Hill Oration. The Second Shepherds' Play, etc. Mrs. Gaskell's Cranford. Williams's -iEneid. Irving's Bracebridge Hall. Selections. Thoreau's Walden. Sheridan's The Rivals. Barton's Captains of Industry. Selected. 199. Macanlay'sLordClive and W.Hastings. Howells's The Rise of Silas Lapham. Harris's Little Mr.Thimblefinger Stories. Jewett's The Night Before Thanksgiving. Shumway's Nibelungenlied. Sheffield's Old Testament Narrative. Powers's A Dickens Reader. Goethe's Faust. Part I, Cooper's The Spy. Aldrich's Story of a Bad Boy. Warner's Being a Boy. Wiggin's Polly Oliver's Probl3m. Milton's Areopagitica, etc. Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Hemingway's Le Morte Arthur Moores's life of Columbus. Bret Harte's Tennessee's Partn 5r, etc. Udall's Ralph Roister Doister. Austin's Standish of Standish, Drama- tized, 218. 269. Selected Lyrics from Wordsworth, Keats, and Shelley. Selected Lyrics from Dryden, Collins, Gray, Cowper, and Burns. Southern Poems. Macaulay's Speeches on Copyright; Lin- coln's Cooper Union Address. Briggs's College Life. Selections from the Prose Writings of Mat- thew Arnold. Perry's American Mind and American Idealism. Newman's University Subjects. Burroughs's Studies in Nature and Lit- erature. Bryce's Promoting Good Citizenship. Selected Englisli Letters. Jewett's Play-Day Stories. Grenfell's Adrift on an Ice-Pan. Muir's Stickeen. Wiggin's Tlie Birds' Christmas Carol. Tennyson's Idylls. (Selected.) Selected Essays. Briggs's To College Girls. Lowell's Literary Essays. (Selected.) Short Stories. Selections from American Poetry. Howells's The Sleeping Car, and The Parlor Car. Mills's Story of a Thousand-Year Pine, etc. Eliot's Training for an Effective Life. Bryant's Iliad. Abridged Edition. Lockwood's English Sonnets. Antin's At School in the Promised Land. Shepard's Shakespeare Questions. Muir's The Boyhood of a Naturalist. Boswell's Life of Johnson. Palmer's SeLf-Cultivation in English, and The Glory of the Imperfect. Sheridan's The School for Scandal. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Piers the Ploughman. Howells's A Modern Instance. Helen Keller's The Story of My Life. Rittenhouse's The Little Book of Modern Verse. Rittenhouse's The Little Book of Ameri- can Poets. Richards's High Tide. Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book I. Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II. Burroughs's The Wit of a Duck, etc. Irving's Tales from the Alhambra. Liberty, Peace, and Justice. A Treasury of War Poetry. Peabody's The Piper. Wiggin's Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. Aldrich's Marjorie Daw, Goliath, etc. Sharp's Ways of the Woods. Rittenhouse's The Second Book of Mod- ern Verse. Drinkwater's Abraham Lincoln. Wordsworth : Selections. Arnold : Es- say on Wordsworth. Burroughs's Nature Near Home, etc. Mills's Being Good to Bears, etc. (See also back cotter) Wf) o aiP) RIVERSIDE LITERi library of congress {Continue EXTRA NU^ Warriner's Teaching of English Classics in the Grades. Longfellow Leaflets. Whittier Leaflets. Holmes Leaflets. Thomas ' s Ho w to Teach English Classics . Holbrook's Northland Heroes. Minimum College Requirements in Eng- lish for Study. The Riverside Song Book. Lowell's Fable for Critics. Selections from American Authors. Lowell Leaflets. Holbrook's Hiawatha Primer. Selections from English Authors. Hawthorne'sTwice-Told Tales. Selected. S living's Essays from Sketch Book. Se- lected. T Literature for the Study of Language. U A Dramatization of the Song of Hia- watha. V Holbrook's Book of Nature Myths. W Brown's In the Days of Giants. X Poems for the Study of Language. D 016 117 712 P 9 Y Z nine oczcctcu i-uciud. AA Coleridge's The Ancient Mariner and Lowell's The Vision of Sir Launfal. Poe's The Raven, Whittier's Snow Bound, and Longfellow's The Court- ship of Miles Standish. Selections for Study and Memorizing Sharp's The Year Out-of-Doors. Poems for Memorizing. Poems for Reading and Memonzing, Grades I and II. Poems for Reading and Memorizing > Grade III. Poems for Reading and Memorizing Grade IV. Poems for Reading and Memonzing Grade V. Poems for Reading and Memorizing, Grade VI. Selections for Reading and Memoriz- ing, Grade VII. Selections for Reading and Memoriz- ing, Grade VIII. BB CO T)D i:e FF GG HH JJ KK LL MM LIBRARY BINDING 135-136 . Chaucer's Prologue , The Knight ' s Tale. 168. Shelley's Poems. Selected. 177. Bacon's Essays. 181-182. Goldsmith's Plays. 187-188. Huxley's Autobiography and Essays. 191. Second Shepherds' Play, etc. 211. Milton's Areopagitici, etc. 216. Ralph Roister Doister. 222. Briggs's College Life. 223. Matthew Arnold's Prose Selections. 224. Perry's The American Mind. etc. 225. Newman's University Subjects. 226. Burroughs 's Studies in Nature and Literature. 227. Bryce's Promoting Good Citizenship, 235. Briggs's To College Girls. 236. Lowell's Selected Literary Essays. 242. Eliot's The Training for an Effective Life. 244. Lockwood's English Sonnets. 246. Shepard's Shakespeare Questions. 248. Eoswell's Life of Johnson. Abridged. 250. Sheridan's The School for Scandal. 251. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Piers the Ploughman. 252. Howells's A Modern Instance. 254. Rittenhouse's The Little Book of Modem Verse. 255. Rittenhouse's The Little Book of American Poets 256. Richards's High lide. 267. Rittenhouse's Second Book 01 Modern Verse . 258. Drinkwater's Abraham Lincoln. K. Minimum College Requirements in English for Study. Complete Catalogue and Price List free upon applicatiof. HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY (76) LIBRARY OF CONGRESS w U16 117 712 A W