 THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLO by Washington Irving. 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 Tapanzee, and where they always prudently shortened sail and implored the protection of St. Nicholas when they crossed. There lies a small market town, or rural port, which by some is called Greensburg, but which is more generally and properly known by the name of Tarry Town. This name was given, we are told, on former days by the good housewives of the adjacent county, 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 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 enough murmur 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 tranquility. 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 prolonged and reverberated by the angry echoes. If ever I should wish for a retreat whether I might steal from the world and its distractions, and dream quietly away the remnant of a troubled life, I know of none more promising than this little valley. From the listless repose of the place, and the peculiar character of its inhabitants, though a descendants from the original Dutch settlers, this sequestered glen has long been known by the name of Sleepy Hollow, and its rustic lads are called the Sleepy Hollow Boys throughout all the neighbouring country. A drowsy, dreamy influence seems to hang over the land, and to pervade the very atmosphere. Some say that the place was bewitched by a high German doctor during the early days of the settlement, others that an old Indian chief, the prophet or wizard of his tribe, held his powwows there before the country was discovered by Master Hendrik 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 marvellous beliefs, are subject to trances, envisions, and frequently see strange sights, and hear music and voices in the air. The whole neighbourhood abounds with local tales, haunted spots and twilight superstitions. Stars shoot and meteors glare oftener across the valley than in any other part of the country, and the nightmare, with her whole ninefold, seems to make it the favourite scene of her gambles. The dominant spirit, however, that haunts this enchanted region, and seems to be commander in chief of all the powers of the air, is the apparition of a figure on horseback, without a head. It is said by some to be the ghost of a Hessian trooper, whose head had been carried away by a cannon-ball in some nameless battle during the Revolutionary War, and who is ever in a non-seen by the country folk hurrying along in the gloom of night, as if on the wings of the wind. This 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 churchyard, the ghost rides forth to the scene of battle in nightly quest of his head, and that the rushing speed with which he sometimes passes along the hollow, like a midnight blast, is owing to his being belated, and in a hurry to get back to the churchyard before daybreak. Such is the general purport of this legendary superstition, which has furnished materials for many a wild story in that region of shadows, and the 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 inhabitants of the valley, but is unconsciously imbibed by everyone who resides there for a time. However wide awake they may have been before they enter that sleepy region, they are sure in a little time to inhale the witching influence of the air, and begin to grow imaginative, to dream dreams, and see apparitions. I mention this peaceful spot with all possible laud, for it is in such little retired Dutch valleys found here and there imbusomed in the great state of New York that population, manners, and customs remain fixed, while the great torrent of migration and improvement, which is making such incessant changes in other parts of this restless country, sweeps by them unobserved. They are like those little nooks of still water which border a rapid stream, where we may see the straw and bubble riding quietly at anchor, or slowly revolving in their mimic harbor, undisturbed by the rush of the passing current, though many years have elapsed since I trod the drowsy shades of sleepy hollow, yet I question whether I should not still find the same trees and the same families vegetating in its sheltered bosom. In this by-place of nature there abode in a remote period of American history, that is to say, some thirty years since, a worthy white by the name of Ichabod Crane, who sojourned, or as he expressed it, tarried in sleepy hollow for the purpose of instructing the children of the vicinity. He was a native of Connecticut, a state which supplies the union with pioneers for the mind as well as for the forest, and sends forth yearly its legions of frontier woodsmen and country schoolmasters. The cognomen of Crane was not inapplicable to his person. He was tall but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a 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 some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield. His school-house 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 witty 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, you would find some embarrassment in getting out, an idea most probably borrowed by the architect, Jost van Houten, from the mystery of an eel-pot. The school-house 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 pupil's 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, per 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-born mind the golden maxim, spare the rod and spoil the child. Icobod Crane's scholars certainly were not spoiled. I would not have imagined, however, that he was one of those cruel potentates of the school who joy in the smart of their subjects. On the contrary, he administered justice with discrimination rather than severity, taking the burden off the backs of the weak and laying it on those of the strong. Your mere puny stripling that winced at the least flourish of the rod was passed by with indulgence, but the claims of justice were satisfied by inflicting a double portion on some little, tough, wrong-headed, broad-skirted Dutch urchin who sulked and swelled and gudogged 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 smarty urchin that he would remember it and thank him for it the longest day he had to live. When school hours were over he was even the companion and playmate of the larger boys, and on holiday afternoons would convoy some of the smaller ones home, who happened to have pretty sisters or good housewives for mothers noted for the comforts of the cupboard. Indeed it behooved him to keep on good terms with his pupils. The revenue arising from his school was small and would have been scarcely sufficient to furnish him with daily bread, for he was a huge feeder and, though lank, had the dilating powers of an anaconda, but to help out his maintenance he was, according to country custom in those parts, boarded and lodged at the houses of the farmers whose children he instructed. With these he lived successively a week at a time, thus going the rounds of the neighbourhood with all his worldly effects tied up in a cotton handkerchief. That all this might not be too onerous on the purses of his rustic patrons, who are apt to consider the costs of schooling a grievous burden and schoolmasters as mere drones, he had various ways of rendering himself both useful and agreeable. He assisted the farmers occasionally in the lighter labours of their farm, helped to make hay, mended the fences, took the horses to water, drove the cows from pasture, and cut wood for the winter fire. He laid aside too all the dominant dignity and absolute sway with which he lorded it in his little empire, the school, and became wonderfully gentle and ingratiating. He found favour in the eyes of the mothers by petting the children, particularly the youngest, and, like the lion-bold, which while him so magnanimously the lamb did hold, he would sit with a child on one knee and rock a cradle with his foot for whole hours together. In addition to his other vocations he was the singing master of the neighbourhood, and picked up many bright shillings by instructing the young folk in salmody. It was a matter of no little vanity to him on Sundays to take his station in front of the church gallery with a band of chosen singers, where, in his own mind, he completely carried away the palm from the parson. Certain it is, his voice resounded far above all the rest of the congregation, and there are peculiar quavers still to be heard in that church, and which may even be heard half a mile off, quite to the opposite side of the mill-pond on a still Sunday morning, which are said to be legitimately descended from the nose of Ichabod Crane. Thus by divers little makeshifts, in that ingenious way which is commonly denominated, by hook and by crook, the worthy pedagogue got on tolerably enough, and was thought by all who understand nothing of the labour of headwork to have a wonderfully easy life of it. The schoolmaster is generally a man of some importance in the female circle of a rural neighbourhood, being considered a kind of idle, gentleman-like personage of vastly superior taste and accomplishments to the rough country swings, and indeed inferior in learning only to the parson. His appearance, therefore, is apt to occasion some little stir at the tea-table of a farmhouse, and the addition of a supernumerary dish of cakes or sweet-meats, or, per adventure, the parade of a silver teapot. Our man of letters, therefore, was peculiarly happy in the smiles of all the country damsels, how he would figure among them in the churchyard between services on Sundays, gathering grapes for them from the wild vines that overran the surrounding trees, reciting for their amusement all the epitaphs on the tombstones, or sauntering with a whole bevy of them along the banks of the adjacent mill-pond, while the more bashful country bumpkins hung sheepishly back, envying him his superior elegance and address. From his half-itinerant life, also, he was a kind of travelling gazette, carrying the whole budget of local gossip from house to house, so that his appearance was always greeted with satisfaction. He was, more over, esteemed by the women as a man of great erudition, for he had read several books quite through, and was a perfect master of Cotton Mather's history of New England witchcraft, in which, by the way, he most firmly and potently believed. He was, in fact, an odd mixture of small shrewdness and simple credulity. His appetite for the marvellous and his powers of digesting it were equally extraordinary, and both had been increased by his residents in this spellbound region. No tale was too gross or monstrous for his capacious swallow. It was often his delight, after his school was dismissed in the afternoon, to stretch himself on the rich bed of clover bordering the little brook that whimpered by his 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 whipper-will from the hillside, the boating cry of the tree-toad, that harbinger of storm, the dreary hooting of the screech-owl, or the sudden rustling in the thicket of birds frightened from their roost. The fireflies, too, which sparkled most vividly in the darkest places, now and then startled him, as one of uncommon brightness which stream across his path, and if, by chance, a huge blockade of a beetle came winging his blundering flight against him, the poor varlet was ready to give up the ghost, with the idea that he was struck with a witch's token. His only resource on such occasions, either to drown thought or drive away evil spirits, was to sing Psalm tunes, and the good people of Sleepy Hollow, as they sat by their doors of an evening, were often filled with awe at hearing his nasal melody in linked sweetness long drawn out, floating from the distant hill, or along the dusky road. Another of his sources of fearful pleasure was to pass long winter evenings with the old Dutch wives as they sat spinning by the fire, with a row of apples roasting and spluttering along the hearth, and listen to their marvellous tales of ghosts and goblins, and haunted fields, and haunted brooks, and haunted bridges, and haunted houses, and particularly of the headless horsemen, or galloping hessian of the hollow, as they sometimes called him. He would delight them equally by his anecdotes of witchcraft, and of the direful omens and portentous sights and sounds in the air, which prevailed in the earlier times of Connecticut, and would frighten them woefully with speculations upon comets and shooting stars, and with the alarming fact that the world did absolutely turn round, and that they were half the time topsy-turvy. But if there was a pleasure in all this, while snugly cuddling in the chimney corner of a chamber that was all of a ruddy glow from the crackling wood fire, and where, of course, no specter dared to show its face. It was dearly purchased by the terrors of his subsequent walk homewards. What fearful shapes and shadows beset his path amidst the dim and ghastly glare of a snowy night? With what wistful look did he eye every trembling ray of light streaming across the waste-fields from some distant window? How often was he appalled by some shrub covered with snow, which, like a sheeted specter, 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 trapping close behind him? And how often was he thrown into complete dismay by some rushing blast howling among the trees, in the idea that it was the galloping hessian on one of his nightly scourings? All these, however, were mere terrors of the night, phantoms of the mind that walk in darkness, and though he had seen many spectres in his time, and been more than once beset by Satan in diver's shapes in his lonely perambulations, yet daylight put an end to all these evils, and he would have passed a pleasant life of it, in despite of the devil and all his works, if his path had not been crossed by a being that causes more perplexity to mortal man than ghosts, goblins, and the whole race of witches put together. And that was a woman. Among the musical disciples who assembled one evening in each week to receive his instructions in salmody was Katrina van Tassel, the daughter and only child of a substantial Dutch farmer. She was a blooming glass of fresh 18, 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 with all a little of a coquette, as might be perceived even in her dress, which was a mixture of ancient and modern fashions, as most suited to set off her charms. She wore the ornaments of pure yellow gold which her great-great-grandmother had brought over from Saardam, the tempting stomacher of the olden time, and with all a provokingly short petticoat to display the prettiest foot and ankle in the country round. Ichabod Crane had a soft and foolish heart towards the sex, and it is not to be wondered at that so tempting a morsel soon found favor in his eyes, more especially after he had visited her in her paternal mansion. Old Baltus van Tassel was a perfect picture of a thriving, contented, liberal-hearted farmer. He seldom, it is true, sent either his eyes or his thoughts beyond the boundaries of his own farm, but within those everything was snug, happy, and well-conditioned. He was satisfied with his wealth, but not proud of it, and peaked himself upon the hardy abundance rather than the style in which he lived. His stronghold was situated on the banks of the Hudson, in one of those green-sheltered fertile nooks in which the Dutch farmers are so fond of nestling. A great elm tree spread its broad branches over it, at the foot of which bubbled up a spring of the softest and sweetest water in a little well formed of a barrel, and then stole sparkling away through the grass to a neighboring brook that babbled along among alders and dwarf willows. Hard by the farmhouse was a vast barn that might have served for a church, every window and crevice of which seemed bursting forth with the treasures of the farm. The flail was busily resounding within it from morning to night, swallows and martins skimmed twittering about the eaves, and rows of pigeons, some with one eye turned up as if watching the weather, some with their heads under their wings or buried in their bosoms, and others swelling and cooing and bowing about their dames, were enjoying the sunshine on the roof. Sleek unwieldy porcars were grunting in the repose and abundance of their pens, from whence sallied forth now and then, troops of sucking pigs as if to snuff the air. A stately squadron of snowy geese were riding in an adjoining pond, convoying whole fleets of ducks. Regiments of turkeys were gobbling through the farmyard, and guinea fowls fretting around it, like ill-tempered housewives with their peevish, discontented cry. Before the barn door strutted the gallant cock, that pattern of a husband, a warrior and a fine gentleman, clapping his burnished wings and crowing in the pride and gladness of his heart, sometimes tearing up the earth with his feet, and then generously calling his ever-hungry family of wives and children to enjoy the rich morsel which he had discovered. The pedagogue's mouth watered as he looked upon this sumptuous promise of luxurious winter fare. In 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 paring cosily in dishes, like snug married couples, with a decent competency of onion sauce. In the porkers he saw carved out the future sleek side of bacon and juicy relishing ham, not a turkey, but he beheld daintily trussed up, with its gizzard under its wing, and, per adventure, a necklace of savory sausages, and even bright shanty clear 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 meadowlands, 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 Vantassel. 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 tracks 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 kettles dangling beneath, and he beheld himself bestriding 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 spacious 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 weather. Under this were hung flails, harness, various utensils of husbandry, and nets for fishing in the neighboring river. Benches were built along the sides for summer use, and a great spinning wheel at one end, and a churn at the other, showed the various uses to which this important porch might be devoted. From this piazza, the wandering Ichabod entered the hall, which formed the center 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 Lindsay 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 god of red peppers, and a door left a jar gave him a peep into the best parlor, where the claw-footed chairs and dark mahogany tables shone like mirrors, and irons with accompanying shovel and tongs glistened from their covert of asparagus tops. Mock oranges and conch shells decorated the mantelpiece. Strings of various colored bird's eggs were suspended above it. A great ostrich egg was hung from the center of the room, and a corner 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 Vantassel. In this enterprise, however, he had more real difficulties than generally fell to the lot of a knight-errant of yore, whose seldom 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 of which he achieved as easily as a man would carve his way to the center of a Christmas pie, and then the lady gave him her hand as a matter of course. Ichabod, 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 difficulties 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, roistering blade of the name of Abraham, or, according to the Dutch abbreviation, Bram van Brunt, the hero of the country round which rang with his feats of strength and hardy-hood. He was broad-shouldered and double-jointed, with short curly black hair, and a bluff but not unpleasant countenance, having a mingled air of fun and arrogance. From his herculean frame and great powers of limb, he had received the nickname of Bram 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 cockfights, 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 within air and tone that admitted of no gainsay or appeal. He was always ready for either a fight or a frolic, but had more mischief than ill-will in his composition, and with all his overbearing roughness there was a strong dash of waggish good-humour at bottom. He had three or four boon-companions who regarded him as their model, and at the head of whom he scoured the country, attending every scene of feud or merriment for miles around. 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 described 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, Hey, there goes Brom Bones and his gang! The neighbours 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 rent-a-pole 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 general caresses and endearments of a bear, yet it was whispered that she did not altogether discourage his hopes. Certain it is, his advances were signals for rival candidates to retire, who felt no inclination to cross a lion in his amours, in so much that when his horse was seen tied to Vantassel'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 carried 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 advances 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 interference of parents, which is so often a stumbling block in the path of lovers. Bolt van Tassel was an easy, indulgent soul. He loved his daughter even better 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 foolish 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 Bolt would sit smoking 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 fighting the wind on the pinnacle of the barn. In the meantime, 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 ours so favourable to the lover's eloquence. I profess not to know how women's hearts are a wood in one. To me they have always been matters 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 tramp of skill to gain the former, but a still greater proof of general's ship to maintain possession of the latter, for 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 way over the heart of a coquette is indeed 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 seen tied to the palings on Sunday nights, and a deadly feud gradually arose between him and the preceptor of Sleepy Hollow. Brom, who had a degree of rough chivalry in his nature, would feign have carried matters to open warfare and settled their pretensions to the lady according to the mode of those most concise and simple reasoners, the knights errant of yore, by single combat, but Ichabod was too conscious of the superior 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 became 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 witty 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 opportunities of turning him into ridicule in the presence of his mistress, and had a scoundrel dog whom he taught to whine in the most ludicrous manner, and introduced as a rival of Ichabods to instruct her insolvency. In this way matters went on for some time, without producing any material effect on the relative situations of the contending powers. On a fine autumnal afternoon, 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 ferrule, that sceptre of despotic power, the birch of justice reposed on three nails behind the throne, a constant terror to evildoers, 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, pop-guns, whirl-a-gigs, fly-cages, and whole legions of rampant little-paper game-cocks. Apparently there had been some appalling act of justice recently inflicted, 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 stillness reigned throughout the school room. It was suddenly interrupted by the appearance of a negro in toe-cloth jacket and trousers, a round-crowned fragment of a hat, like the cap of Mercury, and mounted on the back of a ragged, wild, half-broken colt, which he managed with a rope by way of halter. He came clattering up to the school door, with an invitation to Ichabod to attend a merry-making, or quilting frolic, to be held that evening at Meinheer Vantassels, 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 scampering away up the hollow, full of the importance and hurry of his mission. All was now bustling hubbub in the late quiet afternoon. 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, ink stands 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 racking 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 arranging his locks by a bit of broken looking glass that hung up in the school-house. 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 choloric old Dutchman by the name of Hans van Ripper, and, thus gallantly mounted, issued forth like a knight errant in quest of adventures. But it is meat, 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 bestowed, was a broken down plow-horse that had outlived almost everything but its viciousness. 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 burrs. One eye had lost its pupil, and was glaring in spectral, but the other had the gleam of a genuine devil in it. Still he must have had fire and metal in his day, if we may judge by the name he bore of gunpowder. He had, in fact, been a favorite steed of his masters, the choloric van Ripper, who was a furious rider, and had infused, very probably, some of his own spirit into the animal, for, old and broken down as he looked, there was more of the lurking devil in him than in any young filly in the country. 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 scepter, 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 daylight. 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 vials 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 from the quail at intervals from the neighbouring stubble field. The smallbirds were taking their farewell banquets. In the fullness of their revelry they fluttered, chirping and frolicking from bush to bush, and tree to tree, capricious from the very perfusion and variety around them. There was the honest cock robin, the favoured game of stripling sportsmen, with its loud quirless 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-tipped wings and yellow-tipped tail, and its little Montero 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 opened to every symptom of culinary abundance, ranged with delight over the treasures of Jolly Autumn. On all sides he beheld vast stores 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. Further 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, breathing the odour of the beehive, and as he beheld them, soft anticipations stole over his mind of dainty slap-jacks, well buttered and garnished with honey or treacle, by the delicate little dimpled hand of Katrina Vantassel. 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 disc down in the west. The wide bosom of the Tapan-Z lay motionless and glassy, accepting 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, changing 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 vessel was suspended in the air. It was toward evening that Ichabod arrived at the castle of the Hirvan Tassel, which he found thronged with the pride and flower of the adjacent country. Old farmers, a spare, leather-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 cushions and gay calico pockets hanging on the outside. Buxom lasses, almost as antiquated as their mothers, excepting where a straw hat, a fine ribbon, or perhaps a white frock, gave symptoms of city innovation. The suns, in short square-skirted coats, with rows of stupendous brass buttons, and their hair generally cued in the fashion of the times, especially if they could procure an eel-skin for the purpose. It being esteemed throughout the country as a potent nourisher and strengthener of the hair. Brom bones, however, was the hero of the scene, having come to the gathering on his favorite steed, Daredevil, a creature, like himself, full of metal 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 Vantassel'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 experience to Dutch housewives. There was the doughty doughnut, the tender oily cook, 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, delectable 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 vapour from the midst. Heaven bless the mark! I want breath and time to discuss 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 do with drink. He 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 this scene of almost unimaginable luxury and splendour. Then, he thought, how soon he turn his back upon the old school-house, snap his fingers in the face of Hans von Ripper and every other niggardly patron, and kick any itinerant pedagogue out of doors that should dare to call him comrade! Old Baltus Vantassel moved about among his guests with a face dilated with content and good humour, 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 shoulder, a broad laugh, and a pressing invitation to fall, too, 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 grey-headed negro who had been the itinerant orchestra of the neighbourhood for more than half a century. His instrument was as old and battered 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, bowing 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 who 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 neighbourhood, stood forming a pyramid of shining black faces at every door and window, gazing with delight at the scene, rolling their white eyeballs 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 graciously in reply to all his amorous oglings, while braum bones, sorely smitten with love and jealousy, sat brooding by himself in one corner. When the dance was at an end, Ichabod was attracted to a knot of the Sager folks, who, with Old Vantassel, sat smoking at one end of the piazza, gasping over former times and drawing out long stories about the war. This neighbourhood, at the time of which I am speaking, was one of those highly favoured 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 and infested with refugees, cowboys, and all kinds of border chivalry. Just sufficient time had elapsed to enable each storyteller to dress up his tale with a little becoming fiction, and, in the indistinctness of his recollection, to make himself the hero of every exploit. There was the story of Dofue 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 mine here to be lightly mentioned, who, in the battle of White Plains, being an excellent master of defence, parried a musket-ball with a small sword in so much that he absolutely felt it whizz 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 neighbourhood is rich in legendary treasures of the kind. Local tales and superstitions thrive best in these sheltered, long-settled retreats, but are trampled underfoot by the shifting throng that forms the population of most of our country-places. Besides, there is no encouragement for ghosts in most of our villages, for they have scarcely had time to finish their first snap and turn themselves in their graves, before their surviving friends have travelled away from the neighbourhood, 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 communities. 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 Vantassels, and, as usual, were doling out their wild and wonderful legends. Many dismal tales were told about funeral 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 neighbourhood. 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 favourite specter 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 favourite haunt of troubled spirits. It stands on a knoll, surrounded by locus trees and lofty elms, from among which its decent whitewashed walls shine modestly forth, like Christian purity beaming through the shades of retirement. A 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 woolly 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 formally 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 daytime, but occasioned a fearful darkness at night. Such was one of the favourite haunts of the headless horseman, and the place where he was most frequently encountered. The tale was told of Old Brower, a most heretical disbeliever in ghosts, how he met the horseman returning from his foray into sleepy hollow, and was obliged to get up behind him, how they galloped over bush and break, over hill and swamp, until they reached the bridge, when the horseman suddenly turned into a skeleton, threw Old Brower 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 bram bones, who made light of the galloping hessian as an errant jockey. He affirmed that on returning one night from the neighbouring 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. All these tales told in that drowsy undertone with which men talk in the dark, the countenance of the listeners only now and then receiving a casual gleam from the glare of a pipe sank deep into 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 farmers gathered together their families in their wagons, and were heard for some time rattling along the hollow roads and over the distant hills. Some of the damsels mounted on pillions behind their favourite swains, and their light-hearted laughter, mingling with a clatter of hooves, 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 lingered behind, according to the custom of country lovers, to have a tet-a-tet with the heiress, fully convinced that he was now on the high road to success. What past 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 chopfallen. Oh, these women, these women! Could that girl have been playing off any of her coquettish tricks? Was her encouragement of the poor pedagogue all a mere sham to secure her conquest of his rival? Heaven alone knows, not I. Let it suffice to say, Ichabod stole forth with the air of one who had been sacking a hen-roost, rather 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 uncurtiously 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 Ichabod, heavy-hearted and crestfallen, pursued his travels homeward, along the sides of the lofty hills which rise above Tarrytown, and which he had traversed so cheerily in the afternoon. The hour was as dismal as himself. Far below him the tapenze spread its dusky and indistinct waste of waters, with here and there the tall mast of a sloop riding quietly at anchor under the land. In the dead hush of midnight 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, accidentally 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 bullfrog from a neighbouring marsh, as if sleeping uncomfortably 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 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 neighbourhood, 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 tragic story of the unfortunate André, who had been taken prisoner hard by, and was universally known by the name of Major André's tree. The common people regarded it with 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 doful lamentations told concerning 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 shattered and his knees smote against the saddle. It was but the rubbing of one huge bow 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 brook crossed the road and ran into a marshy and thickly wooded glen, known by the name of Wiley 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 in chestnuts matted thick with wild grapevines through a cavernous gloom over it. To pass this bridge was the Severus Trial. It was at this identical spot that the unfortunate Andre was captured and under the covert of those chestnuts in vines where the sturdy yeoman concealed who surprised him. This has ever since been considered a haunted stream, and fearful are the feelings of the schoolboy 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 brambles and alder bushes. The schoolmaster now bestowed both whip and heel upon the starvelling 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 Ichabod. In the dark shadow of the grove, on the margin of the brook, he beheld something huge, misshapen 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. What was to be done? To turn and fly was now too late, and besides, what chance was there of escaping ghost or goblin, if such it was, which could ride upon the wings of the wind? Summoning up, therefore, a show of courage, he demanded in stammering accents, Who are you? He received no reply. He repeated his demand in a still more agitated voice. Still, there was no answer. Once more he cudgled the sides of the inflexible gunpowder and, shutting his eyes, broke forth with involuntary fervor into a solm tune. Just then the shadowy object of alarm put itself into 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 ascertained. He appeared to be a horseman of large dimensions, and mounted upon a black horse of powerful frame. He made no offer of molestation or sociability, but kept aloof on one side of the road, jogging along on the blind side of old gunpowder, who had now got over his fright and waywardness. Ichabod, who had no relish for this strange midnight companion, and but thought himself of the adventure of braum bones with a galloping 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 endeavoured to resume his solm 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 his 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 increased 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 desperation. He reigned 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 flooded in the air as he stretched his long, blank 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 possessed with a demon, instead of keeping up it, made an opposite turn and plunged headlong downhill to the left. This road leads to a sandy hollow shaded by trees for about a quarter of a mile, where it crosses the bridge famous in Goblin's story, and just beyond swells the green knoll on which stands the white-washed church. As yet the panic of the steed had given his unskillful rider an apparent advantage in the chase. But just as he had got halfway through the hollow, the girths of the saddle gave way and he felt it slipping 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 around the neck when the saddle fell to the earth, and he heard it trampled underfoot by his pursuer. For a moment the terror of Hans van Ripper's wrath passed across his mind, for it was his Sunday saddle, but this was no time for petty fears. The Goblin was hard on his haunches, and unskillful rider that he was, he had much adieu to maintain his seat, sometimes slipping on one side, sometimes on another, and sometimes jolted on the high ridge of his horse's backbone with a violence that he verily feared would cleave him asunder. Unopening 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 Brahms Bones's 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 fancied that he felt his hot breath. Another convulsive kick in the ribs, an old gunpowder sprang upon the bridge. He thundered over the resounding planks, he gained the opposite side, and now Ichabod cast a look behind to see if his pursuer should vanish, according to rule, in a flash of fire in Brimstone. Just then he saw the Goblin rising in his stirrups, and in the very act of hurling his head at him. Ichabod endeavored to dodge the horrible missile, but too late. It encountered his cranium with a tremendous crash. He was tumbled headlong into the dust, and gunpowder, 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 horse's hooves dently 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 schoolmaster 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 stalks for the neck, a pair or two of worsted stockings, an old pair of corduroy small clothes, a rusty razor, a book of psalm tombs full of dog's ears, and a broken pitch pipe. As to the books in furniture of the schoolhouse, they belonged to the community, accepting 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 fool's cap, much scribbled and blotted in several fruitless attempts to make a copy of verses in honour of the heiress of Van Tassel. These magic books and the poetic scroll 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 quarters' pay but a day or two before, he must have had about his person at the time of his disappearance. 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 Brower, 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 received, brought home the intelligence that Ichabod Crane was still alive, that he had left the neighborhood partly through fear of the goblin and Hans van Ripper, and partly in mortification at having been suddenly 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, electioneered, 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 disappearance 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 hardy laugh at the mention of the pumpkin, 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, maintained to this day that Ichabod was spirited away by supernatural means, and it is a favorite story often told about the neighborhood around 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 school-house, being deserted, soon fell to decay, and was reported to be haunted by the ghost of the unfortunate pedagogue, and the plow-boy, loitering homeward of a still summer evening, has often fancied his voice at a distance, chanting a melancholy psalm tune, among the tranquil solitudes of sleepy hollow. Postscript, found in the handwriting of Mr. Nickabocker. 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 Manhattanos, at which were present many of the sagest and most illustrious burgers. The narrator was a pleasant, shabby, gentlemanly old fellow in pepper and salt clothes, with a sadly humorous face, and one whom I strongly suspected of being poor, he made such efforts to be entertaining. When his story was concluded, there was much laughter in 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 beatling eyebrows, 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 turning a doubt over in his mind. He was one of your wary men who never laughed but upon good grounds, when they have reason and the law on their side. When the mirth of the rest of the company had subsided 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 of the head and contraction of the brow, what was the moral of the story and what it went to prove. The storyteller, 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 advantages 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 ratiosination 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 storyteller, as to that matter, I don't believe one half of it myself. D.K. End of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow The Mask of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe This is a LibriVox recording, all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Mask of the Red Death The Red Death had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal or so hideous. Blood was its avatar and its seal, the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow men, and the whole seizure, progress, and termination of the disease were the incidents of half an hour. But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hail and lighthearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated Abbeys. This was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the Prince's own eccentric yet august taste. A strong and lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron. The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts. They resolved to leave means neither of ingress nor egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within. The Abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime, it was folly to grieve or to think. The Prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatory, there were ballet dancers, there were musicians, there was beauty, there was wine. All these insecurities were within. Without was the Red Death. It was towards the close of the fifth or sixth month of his seclusion, and while the pestilence raged most furiously abroad, that the Prince Prospero entertained his thousand friends at a masked ball of the most unusual magnificence. It was a voluptuous scene, that masquerade, but first let me tell you of the rooms in which it was held. These were seven, an imperial suite. In many palaces, however, such suites form a long and straight vista while the folding doors slide back nearly to the walls on either hand, so that the view of the whole extent is scarcely impeded. Here, the case was very different, as might have been expected from the Duke's love of the Bizarre. The apartments were so irregularly disposed that the vision embraced but little more than one at a time. There was a sharp turn at every twenty or thirty yards, and at each turn a novel effect. To the right and left, in the middle of each wall, a tall and narrow gothic window looked out upon a closed corridor which pursued the windings of the suite. These windows were of stained glass, whose color varied in accordance with the prevailing hue of the decorations of the chamber into which it opened. That at the eastern extremity was hung, for example, in blue, and vividly blue were its windows. The second chamber was purple in ornaments and tapestries, and here the panes were purple. The third was green throughout, and so were the casements. The fourth was furnished and lighted with orange. The fifth with white. The sixth with violet. The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls, falling in heavy folds upon a carpet of the same material and hue. But in this chamber only, the color of the windows failed to correspond with the decorations. The panes here were scarlet, a deep blood color. Now in no one of the seven apartments was there any lamp or candelabrum amid the perfusion of golden ornaments that lay scattered to and fro or depended from the roof. There was no light of any kind emanating from lamp or candle within the suite of chambers. But in the corridors that followed the suite, there stood opposite to each window a heavy tripod bearing a brazier of flame that projected its rays through the tinted glass and so glaringly illumined the room, and thus were produced a multitude of gaudy and fantastic appearances. But in the western or black chamber the effect of the firelight that streamed upon the dark hangings through the blood tinted panes was ghastly in the extreme and produced so wild a look upon the countenances of those who entered that there were few of the company bold enough to set foot within its precincts at all. It was in this apartment also that there stood against the western wall a gigantic clock of ebony. Its pendulum swung to and fro with a dull heavy monotonous clang, and when the minute hand made the circuit of the face and the hour was to be stricken, there came from the brazen lungs of the clock a sound which was clear and loud and deep and exceedingly musical, but of so peculiar a note and emphasis that at each lapse of an hour the musicians of the orchestra were constrained to pause momentarily in their performance to hearken the sound, and thus the waltzers perforce ceased their evolutions, and there was a brief disconcert of the whole gay company, and while the chimes of the clock yet rang it was observed that the giddiest group pale and the more aged and sedate passed their hands over their brows as if in confused reverie or meditation, but when the echoes had fully ceased a light laughter at once pervaded the assembly. The musicians looked at each other and smiled as if at their own nervousness and folly, and made whispering vows, each to the other, that the next chiming of the clock should produce in them no similar emotion, and then after the lapse of 60 minutes, which embraced 3,600 seconds of the time that flies, there came yet another chiming of the clock, and then there were the same disconcert and tremulousness and meditation as before, but in spite of things it was a gay and magnificent revel. The tastes of the duke were peculiar, he had a fine eye for colors and effects. He disregarded the decor of mere fashion, his plans were bold and fiery, and his conceptions glowed with barbaric luster. There are some who would have thought him mad, his followers felt that he was not. It was necessary to hear and see and touch him to be sure that he was not. He had directed in great part the movable embellishments of the seven chambers upon occasion of this great fate, and it was his own guiding taste which had given character to the masqueraders. Be sure they were grotesque. There were much glare and glitter and pecancy and phantasm, much of what has been since seen in Hernani, and there were arabesque figures with unsuited limbs and appointments. There were delirious fancies such as the madman fashions. There were much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust. To and fro in the seven chambers there stopped, in fact, a multitude of dreams, and these, the dreams, writhed in and about taking cue from the rooms, and causing the wild music of the orchestra to seem as the echo of their steps, and there strikes the ebony clock which stands in the hall of the velvet, and then, for a moment, all is still, and all is silent, save the voice of the clock. The dreams are stiff, frozen as they stand, but the echoes of the chime die away, they have endured but an instant, and a light, half subdued laughter floats after them as they depart, and now again the music swells and the dreams live and writhe to and fro more merrily than ever, taking cue from the many tinted windows through which stream the rays from the tripods, but to the chamber which lies most westwardly of the seven, there are now none of the maskers who venture, for the night is waning away, and there flows a ruddier light through the blood-colored panes, and the blackness of the sable drapery appalls, and to him whose foot falls upon the sable carpet, there comes from the near clock of ebony a muffled peel more solemnly emphatic than any which reaches their ears who indulged in the more remote gayities of the other apartments, but these other apartments were densely crowded, and in them beat feverishly the heart of life, and the revel went whirlingly on, until at length there commenced the sounding of midnight upon the clock, and then the music ceased, as I have told, and the evolutions of the waltzers were quieted, and there was an uneasy cessation of all things as before, but now there were twelve strokes to be sounded by the bell of the clock, and thus it happened, perhaps, that more of thought crept, with more of time, into the meditations of the thoughtful among those who reveled, and thus too it happened, perhaps, that before the last echoes of the last chime had utterly sunk into the silence, there were many individuals in the crowd who had found leisure to become aware of the presence of a masked figure which had arrested the attention of no single individual before, and the rumour of this new presence having spread itself whisperingly around, there arose at length from the whole company a buzz, or murmur, expressive of disapprobation, surprise, then finally of terror, of horror, and of disgust. In an assembly of phantasm, such as I have painted, it may well be supposed that no ordinary appearance could have excited such sensation. In truth the masquerade license of the night was nearly unlimited, but the figure in question had outherited Herod, and gone beyond the bounds of even the Prince's indefinite decorum. There are cords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion, even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made. The whole company indeed seemed now deeply to feel that in the costume and bearing of the stranger, neither wit nor propriety existed. The figure was tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave. The mask which concealed the visage was made so nearly to resemble the countenance of a stiffened corpse, that the closest scrutiny must have had difficulty in detecting the cheat, and yet all this might have been endured, if not approved, by the mad revelers around, but the murmur had gone so far as to assume the type of red death. His vesture was dabbled in blood, and his broad brow, with all the features of the face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror. On the eyes of the prince perspero fell upon this spectral image, which, with a slow and solemn movement, as if more fully to sustain its role, stalked to and fro among the waters, he was seen to be convulsed, in the first moment with a strong shutter either of terror or distaste, but in the next his brow reddened with rage. Who dares, he demanded hoarsely of the courtiers who stood near him, who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery, seize him and unmask him, that we may know whom we have to hang at sunrise from the battlements. It was in the eastern, or blue chamber, in which stood the prince perspero as he uttered these words. They rang throughout the seven rooms loudly and clearly, for the prince was a bold and robust man, and the music had become hushed at the waving of his hand. It was in the blue room where stood the prince, with the group of pale courtiers by his side. At first, as he spoke, there was a slight rushing movement of this group in the direction of the intruder, who at the moment was also near at hand, and now, with deliberate and stately step, made closer approach to the speaker. But from a certain nameless awe with which the mad assumptions of the mummer had inspired the whole party, there were found none who put fourth hand to seize him, so that, unimpeded, he passed within a yard of the prince's person, and, while the vast assembly, as if with one impulse, shrank from the centers of the room to the walls, he made his way uninterruptedly, but with the same solemn and measured step which had distinguished him from the first, through the blue chamber to the purple, through the purple to the green, through the green to the orange, through this again to the white, and even thence to the violet, ere a decided movement had been made to arrest him. It was then, however, that the prince perspero, maddening with rage and the shame of his own momentary cowardice, rushed hurriedly through the six chambers, while none followed him on account of a deadly terror that had seized upon all. He bore aloft a drawn dagger, and had approached in rapid impetuosity to within three or four feet of the retreating figure, when the latter, having attained the extremity of the velvet apartment, turned suddenly and confronted his pursuer. There was a sharp cry, and the dagger dropped gleaming upon the sable carpet, upon which, instantly afterward, fell prostrate in death the prince perspero. Then, summoning the wild courage of despair, a throng of the revelers that once threw themselves into the black apartment, and seizing the mummer whose tall figure stood erect and motionless within the shadow of the ebony clock, gasped in unutterable horror at finding the grave sermons and corpse like mask, which they handled with so violent a rudeness, untenanted by any tangible form, and now was acknowledged the presence of the red death. He had come like a thief in the night, and one by one dropped the revelers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall, and the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay, and the flames of the tripods expired, and darkness and decay and the red death held a limitable dominion over all. End of The Mask of the Red Death Over an Absinthe Bottle by W. C. Morrow This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Christina Bowie Over an Absinthe Bottle by W. C. Morrow Arthur Kimberlin, a young man of very high spirit, found himself a total stranger in San Francisco on rainy evening, at a time when his heart was breaking, for his hunger was of that most poignant kind in which physical suffering is forced to the highest point without impairment of the mental functions. There remained in his possession not a thing that he might have ponded for a morsel to eat, and even as it was, he had stripped his body of all articles of clothing, except those which a remaining sense of decency compelled him to retain. Hence it was that cold assailed him, and conspired with hunger to complete his misery. Having been brought into the world and reared a gentleman, he lacked the courage to beg, and the skill to steal. Had not an extraordinary thing happened to him, he either would have drowned himself in the bay within 24 hours, or died of pneumonia in the street. He had been 70 hours without food, and his mental desperation had driven him far in its race with his physical needs to consume the strength within him, so that now, pale, weak, and tottering, he took what comfort he could find in the savory odors which came steaming up from the basement kitchens of the restaurants in Market Street, caring more to gain them than to avoid the rain. His teeth chattered, he shambled, stooped, and gasped. He was too desperate to curse his fate. He could only long for food. He could not reason. He could not understand that 10,000 hands might gladly have fed him. He could think only of the hunger which consumed him, and of food that could give him warmth and happiness. When he had arrived at Mason Street, he saw a restaurant a little way up that thoroughfare, and for that he headed, crossing the street diagonally. He stopped before the window and ogled the stakes, thick and lined with fat, big oysters lying on ice, slices of ham as large as his hat, whole roasted chickens, brown and juicy. He ground his teeth, groaned, and staggered on. A few steps beyond this was a drinking saloon, which had a private door at one side, with the words family entrance painted there on. In the recess of the door, which was closed, stood a man. In spite of his agony, Kimberlin saw something in the man's face that appalled and fascinated him. Night was on, and the light in the vicinity was dim, but it was apparent that the stranger had an appearance of whose character he himself must have been ignorant. Perhaps it was the unspeakable anguish of it that struck through Kimberlin's sympathies. The young man came to an uncertain halt and stared at the stranger. At first he was unseen, for the stranger looked straight out into the street with singular fixity, and the deathlike pallor of his face added a weirdness to the immobility of his gaze. Then he took notice of the young man. Ah, he said slowly, and with a peculiar distinctness, the rain has caught you too without overcoat or umbrella. Stand in this doorway. There's room for two. The voice was not unkind, though it had an alarming hardness. It was the first word that had been addressed to the sufferer since hunger had seized him, and to be spoken to at all, and have his comfort regarded in the slightest way, gave him cheer. He entered the embrasure and stood beside the stranger, who at once relapsed into his fixed gaze at nothing across the street. But presently the stranger stirred himself again. It may rain a long time, said he. I am cold, and I observe that you tremble. Let us step inside and get a drink. He opened the door, and Kimberlin followed, hope beginning to lay a warm hand upon his heart. The pale stranger led the way into one of the little private booths with which the place was furnished. Before sitting down, he put his hand into his pocket and drew forth a roll of bank bills. You are younger than I, he said. Won't you go to the bar and buy a bottle of absinthe, and bring a pitcher of water and some glasses? I don't like for the waiters to come around. Here's a twenty dollar bill. Kimberlin took the bill and started down the corridor towards the bar. He clutched the money tightly in his palm. It felt warm and comfortable, and sent a delicious tingling through his arm. How many glorious hot meals did that bill represent? He clenched it tighter and hesitated. He thought he smelled a broiled steak with fat little mushrooms and melted butter in the steaming dish. He stopped and looked back towards the door of the booth. He saw that the stranger had closed it. He could pass it, slip out the door, and buy something to eat. He turned and started, but the coward in him, there are other names for this, tripped his resolution. So he went straight to the bar and made the purchase. This was so unusual that the man who served him looked sharply at him. Ain't gonna drink all that, are you? He asked. I have friends in the box, replied Kimberlin, and we want to drink quietly and without interruption. We're in number seven. Oh, beg pardon, that's all right, said the man. Kimberlin's step was very much stronger and steadier as he returned with the liquor. He opened the door of the booth. The stranger sat at the side of the little table, staring at the opposite wall, just as he has stared across the street. He wore a wide brimmed, slouch hat, drawn well down. It was only after Kimberlin had sit the bottle, pitcher, and glasses on the table and seated himself opposite the stranger and within his range of vision that the pale man noticed him. Oh, you have brought it? How kind of you. Now please, lock the door. Kimberlin had slipped the change into his pocket and was in the act of bringing it out when the stranger said, keep the change, you will need it, for I'm going to get it back in a way that may interest you. Let us first drink and then I will explain. The pale man mixed two drinks of absinthe and water and the two drink. Kimberlin, unsophisticated, had never tasted the liquor before and he found it harsh and offensive, but no sooner had it reached his stomach than it began to warm him and sent the most delicious thrill through his frame. It will do as good, said the stranger. Presently we shall have more. Meanwhile, do you know how to throw dice? Kimberlin weakly confessed that he did not. I thought not. Well, please go to the bar and bring a dice box. I would ring for it, but I don't want the waiters to be coming in. Kimberlin fetched the box, again locked the door, and the game began. It was not one of the simple old games, but had complications in which judgment, as well as chance, played apart. After a game or two without stakes, the stranger said, you now seem to understand it. Very well, I will show you that you do not. We will now throw for a dollar a game, and in that way I shall win the money that you received and change. Otherwise I should be robbing you, and I imagine you cannot afford to lose. I mean no offense, I am a plain spoken man, but I believe in honesty before politeness. I merely want a little diversion and you are so kind nature that I am sure you will not object. On the contrary, replied Kimberlin, I shall enjoy it. Very well, but let us have another drink before we start. I believe I am growing colder. They drank again, and this time the starving man took his liquor with relish. At least it was something in his stomach, and it warmed and delighted him. The stake was a dollar aside. Kimberlin won, the pale stranger smiled grimly and opened another game. Again Kimberlin won, then the stranger pushed back his hat and fixed that still gaze upon his opponent, smiling yet. With this full view of the pale stranger's face, Kimberlin was more appalled than ever. He had begun to acquire a certain self-possession and ease, and his marveling at the singular character of the adventure had begun to weaken, when this new instant threw him back into confusion. It was the extraordinary expression of the stranger's face, that alarmed him. Never upon the face of a living being had he seen a pallor so deathlike and chilling. The face was more than pale. It was white. Kimberlin's observing faculty had been sharpened by the absence and, after having detected the stranger in an absent-minded effort two or three times to stroke a beard which had no existence, he reflected that some of the whiteness of the face might be due to the recent removal of a full beard. Besides the pallor there were deep and sharp lines upon the face, which the electric light brought out very distinctly. With the exception of the steady gaze of the eyes and an occasional hard smile that seemed out of place upon such a face, the expression was that of stone, inartistically cut. The eyes were black but of heavy expression. The lower lip was purple, the hands were fine, white and thin, and dark veins bulged out upon them. The stranger pulled down his hat. You are lucky, he said. Suppose we try another drink. There is nothing like absence to sharpen one's wits and I see that you and I are going to have a delightful game. After the drink the game proceeded, Kimberlin won from the very first, rarely losing a game. He became greatly excited. His eyes shone, color came to his cheeks. The stranger, having exhausted the role of bills which he first produced, drew forth another, much larger and of higher denominations. There were several thousand dollars in the roll. At Kimberlin's right hand were his winnings, something like two hundred dollars. The stakes were raised and the game went rapidly on. Another drink was taken. Then Fortune turned the stranger's way and he won easily. It went back to Kimberlin for he was now playing with all the judgment and skill he could command. Once only did it occur to him to wonder what he should do with the money if he should quit winner. But a sense of honor decided him that it would belong to the stranger. By this time the absence had so sharpened Kimberlin's faculties that the temporary satisfaction which it had brought to his hunger having passed, his physical suffering returned with increased aggressiveness. Could he not order a supper with his earnings? No, that was out of the question and the stranger said nothing about eating. Kimberlin continued to play while the manifestations of hunger took the form of sharp pains which darted through him viciously, causing him to writhe and grind his teeth. The stranger paid no attention for he was now wholly absorbed in the game. He seemed puzzled and disconcerted. He played with great care studying each throw minutely. No conversation passed between them now. They drank occasionally, the dice continued to rattle, the money kept piling up at Kimberlin's hand. The pale man began to behave strangely. At times he would start and throw back his head, as though he were listening. For a moment his eyes would sharpen and flash and then sink into heaviness again. More than once Kimberlin, who had now begun to suspect that this antagonist was some kind of monster, saw a frightfully ghastly expression sweep over his face and his features would become fixed for a very short time in a peculiar grimmets. It was noticeable, however, that he was steadily sinking deeper and deeper into a condition of apathy. Occasionally he would raise his eyes to Kimberlin's face after the young man had made an astonishingly lucky throw and keep them fixed there with a steadiness that made the young man quail. The stranger produced another roll of bills when the second was gone and this had a value many times as great as the others together. The stakes were raised to a thousand dollars a game and still Kimberlin won. At last the time came when the stranger braced himself for a final effort. With speech somewhat thick but very deliberate and quiet he said, you have won 74,000 dollars which is exactly the amount that I have remaining. We have been playing for several hours. I am tired and I suppose you are. Let us finish the game. Each will now stake all and throw a final game for it. Without hesitation Kimberlin agreed. The bills made a considerable pile on the table. Kimberlin threw and the box held but one combination that could possibly defeat him. This combination might be thrown once in 10,000 times. The starving man's heart beat violently as the stranger picked up the box with exasperating deliberation. It was a long time before he threw. He made his combinations and ended by defeating his opponent. He sat and looked at the dice a long time and then he slowly leaned back in his chair, settling himself comfortably, raised his eyes to Kimberlin's and fixed that unearthly stare upon him. He said not a word. His face contained not a trace of emotion or intelligence. He simply looked. One cannot keep one's eyes open very long without winking but the stranger did. He sat so motionless that Kimberlin began to be tortured. I will go now. He said to the stranger, said that when he had not assent and was starving. The stranger made no reply but did not relax his gaze and under that gaze the young man shrank back in his own chair, terrified. He became aware that two men were cautiously talking in an adjoining booth as there was now a deathly silence in his own he listened and this is what he heard. Yes he was seen to turn into the street about three hours ago and he was shaved. He must have done so and to remove a full beard would naturally make a great change in a man but it may not have been he. True enough but his extreme pallor attracted attention. You know that he had been troubled with heart disease lately and it has affected him seriously. Yes but his old skill remains why this is the most daring bank robbery we had ever had here a hundred and forty eight thousand dollars. Think of it how long has it been since he was let out the jolliette? Eight years and that time he has grown a beard and lived by dice throwing with men who thought they could detect him if he should swindle them but that is impossible. No human being can come winner out of a game with him. He is evidently not here. Let us look farther. Then the two men clinked glasses and passed out. The dice players the pale one and the starving one sat gazing at each other with a hundred and forty eight thousand dollars piled up between them. The winner made no move to take in the money he merely sat and stared at Kimberlin wholly and moved by the conversation in the adjoining room. His impetrpability was amazing his absolute stillness terrifying. Kimberlin began to shake with an agieu. The cold steady gaze of the strangers sent ice into his marrow. Unable to bear longer this unwavering look Kimberlin moved to one side and then he was amazed to discover that the eyes of the pale man instead of following him remained fixed upon the spot where he had sat or rather upon the wall behind it. A great dread beset the young man he feared to make the slightest sound. Voices of the men in the bar room were audible and the sufferer imagined that he had heard others whispering and tiptoeing in the passage outside his booth. He poured out some absinthe watching his strange companion all the while and drank alone and unnoticed. He took a heavy drink and it had a peculiar effect upon him. He felt his heart bounding with alarming force and rapidity and breathing was difficult. Still his hunger remained and that in the absinthe gave him an idea that the gastric acids were destroying him by digesting his stomach. He leaned forward and whispered to the stranger but was given no attention. One of the man's hands lay upon the table. Kimberlin placed his upon it and then drew back in terror. The hand was as cold as a stone. The money must not lie there exposed. Kimberlin arranged it into neat parcels looking furtively every moment at his immovable companion and immortal fear that he would stir. Then he sat back and waited. A deadly fascination impelled him to move back into his former position so as to bring his face directly before the gaze of the stranger and so the two sat and stared at each other. Kimberlin felt his breath coming heavier and his heart beats growing weaker but these conditions gave him comfort by reducing his anxiety and softening the pangs of hunger. He was growing more and more comfortable and yawned if he had dared he might have gone to sleep. Suddenly a fierce light flooded his vision and sent him with a bound to his feet. Had he been struck up on the head or stabbed to the heart? No he was sounded alive. The pale strangers still sat there staring at nothing and immovable but Kimberlin was no longer afraid of him. On the contrary an extraordinary buoyancy of spirit and elasticity of body made him feel reckless and daring. His former timidity and scruples vanished and he fell equal to any adventure. Without hesitation he gathered up the money and bestowed it in his several pockets. I am a fool to starve he said to himself with all this money ready to my hand. As cautiously as a thief he unlocked the door, stepped out, re-closed it and boldly with his head erect stalked out upon the street. Much his astonishment he found the city and the bustle of the early evening yet the sky was clear. It was evident to him that he had not been in the saloon as long as he had supposed. He walked along the street with the utmost unconcerned the dangers that beset him and laughed softly but gleefully. Would he not eat now? Would he not? Why he could buy a dozen restaurants. Not only that but he could hunt the city up and down for hungry men and feed them with the fattest steaks, the juiciest roasts, and the biggest oysters that the town could supply. As for himself he must eat first. After that he would set up a great establishment for feeding other hungry mortals without charge. Yes he would eat first, if he pleased. He would eat till he should burst. In what single place could he find sufficient to satisfy his hunger? Could he live sufficiently long to have an ox killed and roasted whole for his supper? Besides an ox he would order two dozen broiled chickens, 50 dozen oysters, a dozen crabs, 10 dozen eggs, 10 hams, eight young pigs, 20 wild ducks, 15 fish of four different kinds, eight salads, four dozen bottles of each clearant, burgundy and champagne, for pastry, eight plum puddings, and for dessert, bushels of nuts, ices, and confections. It would require time to prepare such a meal, and if he could only live until it could be made ready, it would be infinitely better than to spoil his appetite with a dozen or two meals of ordinary size. He thought he could live that long, for he felt amazingly strong and bright. Never in his life before had he walked with so great ease and lightness. His feet hardly touched the ground. He ran and leaped. It did him good to tantalize his hunger, for that would make his relish of the feast all the keener. Oh, but how they would stare when he would give his order, and how comically they would hang back, and how amazed he would be when he would throw a few thousands of dollars on the counter and tell them to take their money out of it and keep the change. Really, it was worthwhile to be so hungry as that, for then eating became an unspeakable luxury, and one must not be too great a hurry to eat when one is so hungry. That is beastly. How much of the joy of living do rich people miss from eating before they are hungry, before they have gone three days and nights without food, and how manly it is, and how great self-control it shows, to dally with starvation when one has a dazzling fortune in one's pocket, and every restaurant has an open door. To be hungry without money, that is despair. To be starving with a bursting pocket, that is sublime. Surely the only true heaven is that in which one famishes in the presence of abundant food, which he might have for the taking, and then a gorge stomach and a long sleep. The starving wretch, speculating thus, still kept from food, he felt himself growing in stature, and the people whom he met became pygmies. The streets widened and the stars became suns and dimmed the electric lights, and the most intoxicating odors and the sweetest music filled the air. Shouting, laughing, and singing, Kimberlin joined in a great chorus that swept over the city, and then the two detectives, who had traced the famous bank robber to the saloon in Mason Street, where Kimberlin had encountered the stranger of the panel of face, left the saloon, but unable to pursue the trail farther, had finally returned. They found the door of booth number seven locked. After wrapping and calling and receiving no answer, they burst open the door, and there they saw two men, one of middle age and the other very young, sitting perfectly still, and in the strangest manner imaginable, staring at each other across the table. Between them was a great pile of money arranged neatly in parcels, near at hand, were an empty absinthe bottle, a water pitcher, glasses, and a dice box, with the dice lying before the elder man as he had thrown them last. One of the detectives covered the elder man with a revolver and commanded, throw up your hands, but the dice thrower paid no attention. The detectives exchanged startled glances. They looked closer into the faces of the two men, and then they discovered that both were dead. End of Over an Absinthe Bottle by W. C. Morrow Recording by Christina Bowie