THE SCHOOLMASTER OF SLEEPY HOLLOW
I. His School and His Friends
| custom | vicinity | scarecrow | murmur |
| uncouth | adjacent | appalling | personage |
In a remote period of American history there lived in Sleepy Hollow a worthy man whose name was Ichabod Crane. He sojourned, or, as he expressed it, “tarried” in that quiet little valley for the purpose of instructing the children of the vicinity.
He was tall, but very lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, and feet that might have served as shovels. His head was small, with huge ears, large glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose. To see him striding along the crest of a hill on a windy day, with his ill-fitting clothes fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for some scarecrow escaped from a cornfield.
His schoolhouse was a low building of one large room, rudely built of logs. It stood in a rather lonely but pleasant place, just at the foot of a woody hill, with a brook running close by, and a birch tree growing near one end of it. From this place of learning the low murmur of children’s voices, conning over their lessons, might be heard on a drowsy summer day like the hum of a beehive. Now and then this was interrupted by the stern voice of the master, or perhaps by the appalling sound of a birch twig, as some loiterer was urged along the flowery path of knowledge.
When school hours were over, the teacher forgot that he was the master, and was even the companion and playmate of the older boys; and on holiday afternoons he liked to go home with some of the smaller ones who happened to have pretty sisters, or mothers noted for their skill in cooking.
Indeed, it was a wise thing for him to keep on good terms with his pupils. He earned so little by teaching school that he could scarcely have had enough to eat had he not, according to country custom, boarded at the houses of the children whom he instructed. With these he lived, by turns, a week at a time, thus going the rounds of the neighborhood, with all his worldly goods tied up in a cotton handkerchief.
He had many ways of making himself both useful and agreeable. He helped the farmers in the lighter labors of their farms, raked the hay at harvest time, mended the fences, took the horses to water, drove the cows from pasture, and cut wood for the winter fire. He found favor in the eyes of the mothers by petting the children, particularly the youngest; and he would often sit with a child on one knee and rock a cradle with his foot for whole hours together.
He was looked upon as a kind of idle, gentlemanlike personage of finer tastes and better manners than the rough young men who had been brought up in the country. He was always welcome at the tea table of a farmhouse; and his presence was almost sure to bring out an extra dish of cakes or sweetmeats, or the parade of a silver teapot. He would walk with the young ladies in the churchyard between services on Sundays, gathering grapes for them from the wild vines that overran the surrounding trees, or sauntering with a whole bevy of them along the banks of the adjacent mill pond; while the bashful country youngsters hung sheepishly back and hated him for his fine manners.