University of Virginia Library

ICHABOD CRANE.

In this by-place of nature there abode, in a remote

period of American history, that is to say, some thirty
years since, a worthy wight of the name of Ichabod
Crane; who sojourned, or, as he expressed it, “tarried,”
in Sleepy Hollow, for the purpose of instructing the children
of the vicinity. He was a native of Connecticut:
a state which supplies the Union with pioneers for the
mind as well as for the forest, and sends forth yearly its
legions of frontier woodmen and country schoolmasters.
The cognomen of Crane was not inapplicable to his person.
He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow
shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile
out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels,
and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His
head was small and flat at top, with huge ears, large
green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked
like a weathercock, perched upon his spindle neck, to tell
which way the wind blew. To see him striding along
the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging
and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken
him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth,
or some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield.

His school-room was a low building of one large room,
rudely constructed of logs; the windows partly glazed,
and partly patched with leaves of old copy books. It
was most ingeniously secured at vacant hours, by a withe
twisted in the handle of the door, and stakes set against
the window shutters; so that though a thief might get
in with perfect ease, he would find some embarrassment
in getting out; an idea most probably borrowed by the
architect, Yost Van Houten, from the mystery of an eelpot.
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 pupils' voices, conning over their lessons, might be
heard in a drowsy summer's day, like the hum of a beehive;
interrupted now and then by the authoritative
voice of the master, in a tone of menace or command;
or, peradventure, by the appalling sound of the birch, as
he urged some tardy loiterer along the flowery path of
knowledge. Truth to say, he was a conscientious man,
that ever bore in mind the golden maxim, “Spare the
rod and spoil the child.”—Ichabod Crane's scholars certainly
were not spoiled.

I would not have it imagined, however, that he was

one of those cruel potentates of the school, who joy in the
smart of their subjects; on the contrary he administered
justice with discrimination rather than severity; taking
the burthen 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 skulked and
swelled, and grew dogged, and sullen beneath the birch.
All this he called “doing his duty by their parents;”
and he never inflicted a chastisement, without following
it by the assurance, so consolatory to the smarting urchin,
that “he would remember it and thank him for it the
longest day he had to live.”

When school hours were over, he was even the companion
and playmate of the larger boys; and on holyday
afternoons would convoy some of the smaller ones home,
who happened to have pretty sisters, or good housewives
for mothers, noted for the comforts of the cupboard. Indeed
it behoved 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 maintainance, 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 farms; helped to make hay;
mended the fences; took the horses to water; drove the
cows from pasture; and cut wood for the winter fire.
He laid aside, too, all the dominant dignity and absolute
sway with which he lorded it in his little empire, the
school, and become 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 whilome so magnanimously the lamb

did hold, he would sit with a child on one knee and
rock a cradle 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 folks in psalmody.
It was a matter of no little vanity to him on Sundays,
to take his station in front of the church gallery, with a
band of chosen singers; where, in his own mind, he completely
carried away the palm from the parson. Certain
it is, his voice resounded far above all the rest of the
congregation; and there are peculiar quivers still to be
heard in that church, and may still be heard half-a-mile
off, quite to the opposite side of the mill-pond, on a still
Sunday morning, which are said to be legitimately descended
from the nose of Ichabod Crane. Thus, by divers
little makeshifts, in that ingenious way which is commonly
denominated “by hook and by crook,” the worthy
pedagogue got on tolerably enough, and was thought, by
all who understood nothing of the labour of headwork, to
have a wonderful easy life of it.