ed gun, as of the enchanted weapons of the heroes of classic story. THE chronicle here goes on to recount divers wonderful stories of the wars of the Roost, from which it would seem, that this little warrior nest carried the terror of its arms into every sea, from Spiting Devil Creek to Antony's Nose; that it even bearded the stout island of Manhattan, invading it at night, penetrating to its centre, and burning down the famous Delancey house, the conflagration of which makes such a blaze in revolutionary history. Nay more, in their extravagant daring, these cocks of the Roost meditated a nocturnal descent upon New York itself, to swoop upon the British commanders, Howe and Clinton, by surprise, bear them off captive, and perhaps put a triumphant close to the war! In different parts of the stone walls of his mansion, he had made loop-holes, through which he might fire upon an assailant. His wife was stout-hearted as himself, and could load as fast as he could fire; and then he had an ancient and redoubtable sister, Nochie Van Wurmer, a match, as he said, for the stoutest man in the country. Thus garrisoned, the little Roost was fit to stand a siege, and Jacob Van Tassel was the man to defend it to the last charge of powder. He was, as I have already hinted, of pugnacious propensities; and, not content with being a patriot at home, and fighting for the security of his own fireside, he extended his thoughts abroad, and entered into a confederacy with certain of the bold, hard- All these and many similar exploits are recorded riding lads of Tarrytown, Petticoat Lane, and Sleepy by the worthy Diedrich, with his usual minuteness Hollow, who formed a kind of Holy Brotherhood, and enthusiasm, whenever the deeds in arms of his Scouring the country to clear it of Skinner and Cow-kindred Dutchmen are in question; but though most bow, and all other border vermin. The Roost was of these warlike stories rest upon the best of all one of their rallying points. Did a band of marauders authority, that of the warriors themselves, and from Manhattan island come sweeping through the though many of them are still current among the neighborhood, and driving off cattle, the stout Jacob revolutionary patriarchs of this heroic neighbourhood, and his compeers were soon clattering at their heels, yet I dare not expose them to the incredulity of a and fortunate did the rogues esteem themselves if tamer and less chivalric age. Suffice it to say, the they could but get a part of their booty across the frequent gatherings at the Roost, and the hardy lines, or escape themselves without a rough handling. projects set on foot there, at length drew on it the Should the mosstroopers succeed in passing with fiery indignation of the enemy; and this was quicktheir cavalgada, with thundering tramp and dusty ened by the conduct of the stout Jacob Van Tassel; whirlwind, across Kingsbridge, the Holy Brother- with whose valorous achievements we resume the hood of the Roost would rein up at that perilous course of the chronicle. pass, and, wheeling about, would indemnify themselves by foraging the refugee region of Morrisania. THIS doughty Dutchman, continues the sage When at home at the Roost, the stout Jacob was DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER, was not content with not idle; but was prone to carry on a petty warfare taking a share in all the magnanimous enterprises of his own, for his private recreation and refresh-concocted at the Roost, but still continued his petty ment. Did he ever chance to espy, from his look-out warfare along shore. A series of exploits at length place, a hostile ship or galley anchored or becalmed raised his confidence in his prowess to such a height, near shore, he would take down his long goose- that he began to think himself and his goose-gun a gun from the hooks over the fire-place, sally out match for any thing. Unluckily, in the course of one alone, and lurk along shore, dodging behind rocks of his prowlings, he descried a British transport and trees, and watching for hours together, like a aground, not far from shore, with her stern swung veteran mouser intent on a rat-hole. So sure as a toward the land, within point-blank shot. The boat put off for shore, and came within shot, bang! temptation was too great to be resisted; bang! as went the great goose-gun; a shower of slugs and usual, went the great goose-gun, shivering the cabin buck-shot whistled about the ears of the enemy, and windows, and driving all hands forward. Bang! before the boat could reach the shore, Jacob had bang! the shots were repeated. The reports brought scuttled up some woody ravine, and left no trace several sharp-shooters of the neighbourhood to the behind. spot; before the transport could bring a gun to bear, or land a boat, to take revenge, she was soundly peppered, and the coast evacuated. This was the last of Jacob's triumphs. He fared like some heroic spider, that has unwittingly ensnared a hornet, to his immortal glory, perhaps, but to the utter ruin of his web. About this time, the Roost experienced a vast accession of warlike importance, in being made one of the stations of the water-guard. This was a kind of aquatic corps of observation, composed of long, sharp, canoe-shaped boats, technically called whale-boats, that lay lightly on the water, and could be rowed with great rapidity. They were manned by resolute fellows, skilled at pulling an oar, or handling a musket. These lurked about in nooks and bays, and behind those long promontories which run out into the Tappan Sea, keeping a look-out, to give notice of the approach or movements of hostile ships. They roved about in pairs; sometimes at night, with muffled oars, gliding like spectres about frigates and guardships riding at anchor, cutting off any boats that made for shore, and keeping the enemy in constant uncasiness. These musquito-cruisers generally kept ale of by day, so that their harboring places might not be discovered, but would pull quietly along, under shadow of the shore, at night, to take up their quarters at the Roost. Hither, at such time, would also repair the hard-riding lads of the hills, to hold secret councils of war with the ocean chivalry;' and in these nocturnal meetings were concerted many of those daring forays, by land and water, that resounded throughout the border. It was not long after this, during the absence of Jacob Van Tassel on one of his forays, and when nc one was in garrison but his stout-hearted spouse, his redoubtable sister, Nochie Van Wurmer, and a strapping negro wench, called Dinah, that an armed vessel came to anchor off the Roost, and a boat full of men pulled to shore. The garrison flew to arms, that is to say, to mops, broom-sticks, shovels, tongs, and all kinds of domestic weapons; for, unluckily, the great piece of ordnance, the goose-gun, was absent with its owner. Above all, a vigorous defence was made with that most potent of female weapons, the tongue. Never did invaded hen-roost make a more vociferous outcry. It was all in vain. The house was sacked and plundered, fire was set to each corner, and in a few moments its blaze shed a baleful light far over the Tappan Sea. The invaders then pounced upon the blooming Laney Van Tassel, the beauty of the Roost, and endeavored to bear her off to the boat. But here was the real tug of war. The mother, the aunt, and the strapping | dle of the stream, though not a boat is to be denegro wench, all flew to the rescue. The struggle scried. This I should have been apt to ascribe to continued down to the very water's edge; when a some boat rowed along under the shadows of the voice from the armed vessel at anchor, ordered the western shore, for sounds are conveyed to a great spoilers to let go their hold; they relinquished their distance by water, at such quiet hours, and I can prize, jumped into their boats, and pulled off, and distinctly hear the baying of the watch-dogs at night, the heroine of the Roost escaped with a mere rum- from the farms on the sides of the opposite mountpling of the feathers. ains. The ancient traditionists of the neighborhood, however, religiously ascribed these sounds to a judgment upon one Rumbout Van Dam, of Spiting Devil, who danced and drank late one Saturday night, at a Dutch quilting frolic, at Kakiat, and set day morning; swearing he would not land till he reached Spiting Devil, if it took him a month of Sundays. He was never seen afterward, but is often heard plying his oars across the Tappan Sea, a Flying Dutchman on a small scale, suited to the size of his cruising-ground; being doomed to ply between Kakiat and Spiting Devil till the day of judgment, but never to reach the land. THE fear of tiring my readers, who may not take such an interest as myself in these heroic themes, induces me to close here my extracts from this pre-off alone for home in his boat, on the verge of Suncious chronicle of the venerable Diedrich. Suffice it briefly to say, that shortly after the catastrophe of the Roost, Jacob Van Tassel, in the course of one of his forays, fell into the hands of the British; was sent prisoner to New York, and was detained in captivity for the greater part of the war. In the mean time, the Roost remained a melancholy ruin; its stone walls and brick chimneys alone standing, blackened by fire, and the resort of bats and owlets. It was not until the return of peace, when this belligerent neighborhood once more resumed its quiet agricultural pursuits, that the stout Jacob sought the scene of his triumphs and disasters; rebuilt the Roost, and reared again on high its glittering weather-cocks. There is one room in the mansion which almost overhangs the river, and is reputed to be haunted by the ghost of a young lady who died of love and green apples. I have been awakened at night by the sound of oars and the tinkling of guitars beneath the window; and seeing a boat loitering in the moonlight, have been tempted to believe it the FlyDoes any one want farther particulars of the for- ing Dutchman of Spiting Devil, and to try whether tunes of this eventful little pile? Let him go to the a silver bullet might not put an end to his unhappy fountain-head, and drink deep of historic truth. cruisings; but, happening to recollect that there was Reader! the stout Jacob Van Tassel still lives, a a living young lady in the haunted room, who might venerable, gray-headed patriarch of the revolution, be terrified by the report of fire-arms, I have renow in his ninety-fifth year! He sits by his fire-frained from pulling trigger. margin of the river, and goes by the name of the Indian spring; but I have my doubts as to its rejuvenating powers, for though I have drank oft and copiously of it, I cannot boast that I find myself GEOFFREY CRAYON. side, in the ancient city of the Manhattoes, and As to the enchanted fountain, said to have been passes the long winter evenings, surrounded by his gifted by the wizard sachem with supernatural pow children, and grand-children, and great-grand-chil-ers, it still wells up at the foot of the bank, on the dren, all listening to his tales of the border wars, and the heroic days of the Roost. His great goosegun, too, is still in existence, having been preserved for many years in a hollow tree, and passed from hand to hand among the Dutch burghers, as a pre-growing younger. cious relique of the revolution. It is now actually in possession of a contemporary of the stout Jacob, one almost his equal in years, who treasures it up at his house in the Bowerie of New-Amsterdam, hard by the ancient rural retreat of the chivalric Peter Stuyvesant. I am not without hopes of one day seeing this formidable piece of ordnance restored to its proper station in the arsenal of the Roost. Before closing this historic document, I cannot but advert to certain notions and traditions concerning the venerable pile in question. Old-time edifices are apt to gather odd fancies and superstitions about them, as they do moss and weather-stains; and this is in a neighbourhood a little given to old-fashioned notions, and who look upon the Roost as somewhat of a fated mansion. A lonely, rambling, down-hill lane leads to it, overhung with trees, with a wild brook dashing along, and crossing and re-crossing it. This lane I found some of the good people of the neighborhood shy of treading at night; why, I could not for a long time ascertain; until I learned that one or two of the rovers of the Tappan Sea, shot by the stout Jacob during the war, had been buried hereabout, in unconsecrated ground. SLEEPY HOLLOW. BY GEOFFREY CRAYON, GENT. HAVING pitched my tent, probably for the remainder of my days, in the neighbourhood of Sleepy Hollow, I am tempted to give some few particulars concerning that spell-bound region; especially as it has risen to historic importance under the pen of my revered friend and master, the sage-historian of the New Netherlands. Beside, I find the very existence of the place has been held in question by many; who, judging from its odd name and from the odd stories current among the vulgar concerning it, have rashly deemed the whole to be a fancifu! creation, like the Lubber Land of mariners. I must confess there is some apparent cause for doubt, in consequence of the colouring given by the worthy Another local superstition is of a less gloomy Diedrich to his descriptions of the Hollow; who, in kind, and one which I confess I am somewhat dis- this instance, has departed a little from his usually posed to cherish. The Tappan Sea, in front of the sober if not severe style; beguiled, very probably, Roost, is about three miles wide, bordered by a lofty by his predilection for the haunts of his youth, and line of waving and rocky hills. Often, in the still by a certain lurking taint of romance whenever any twilight of a summer evening, when the sea is like thing connected with the Dutch was to be described. glass, with the opposite hills throwing their purple I shall endeavor to make up for this amiable error shadows half across it, a low sound is heard, as of on the part of my venerable and venerated friend by the steady, vigorous pull of oars, far out in the mid-presenting the reader with a more precise and sta tistical account of the Hollow; though I am not sure that I shall not be prone to lapse in the end into the very error I am speaking of, so potent is the witchery of the theme. I believe it was the very peculiarity of its name and the idea of something mystic and dreamy connected with it that first led me in my boyish ramblings into Sleepy Hollow. The character of the valley seemed to answer to the name; the slumber of past ages apparently reigned over it; it had not awakened to the stir of improvement which had put all the rest of the world in a bustle. Here reigned good, old long-forgotten fashions; the men were in home-spun garbs, evidently the product of their own farms and the manufacture of their own wives; the women were in primitive short gowns and petticoats, with the venerable sun-bonnets of Holland origin. The lower part of the valley was cut up into small farms, each consisting of a little meadow and corn-field; an orchard of sprawling, gnarled apple-trees, and a garden, where the rose, the marigold, and the hollyhock were permitted to skirt the domains of the capacious cabbage, the aspiring pea, and the portly pumpkin. Each had its prolific little mansion teeming with children; with an old hat nailed against the wall for the housekeeping wren; a motherly hen, under a coop on the grass-plot, clucking to keep around her a brood of vagrant chickens; a cool, stone well, with the moss-covered bucket suspended to the long balancing-pole, according to the antediluvian idea of hydraulics; and its spinning-wheel humming within doors, the patriarchal music of home manufacture. The Hollow at that time was inhabited by families which had existed there from the earliest times, and which, by frequent intermarriage, had become so interwoven, as to make a kind of natural commonwealth. As the families had grown larger the farms had grown smaller; every new generation requiring a new subdivision, and few thinking of swarming from the native hive. In this way that happy golden mean had been produced, so much extolled by the poets, in which there was no gold and very little silver. One thing which doubtless contributed to keep up this amiable mean was a general repugnance to sordid labor. The sage inhabitants of Sleepy Hollow had read in their Bible, which was the only book they studied, that labor was originally inflicted upon man as a punishment of sin; they regarded it, therefore, with pious abhorrence, and never humiliated themselves to it but in cases of extremity. There seemed, in fact, to be a league and covenant against it throughout the Hollow as against a common enemy. Was any one compelled by dire necessity to repair his house, mend his fences, build a barn, or get in a harvest, he considered it a great evil that entitled him to call in the assistance of his friends. He accordingly proclaimed a bee' or rustic gathering, whereupon all his neighbors hurried to his aid like faithful allies; attacked the task with the desperate energy of lazy men eager to overcome a job; and, when it was accomplished, fell to eating and drinking, fiddling and dancing for very joy that so great an amount of labor had been vanquished with so little sweating of the brow. Yet, let it not be supposed that this worthy community was without its periods of arduous activity. Let but a flock of wild pigeons fly across the valley and all Sleepy Hollow was wide awake in an instant. The pigeon season had arrived! Every gun and net was forthwith in requisition. The flail was thrown down on the barn floor; the spade rusted in the garden; the plough stood idle in the furrow; every one was to the hill-side and stubble-field at daybreak to shoot or entrap the pigeons in the ↑ periodical mi grations. So, likewise, let but the word be given that the shad were ascending the Hudson, and the worthies of the Hollow were to be seen launched in boats upon the river setting great stakes, and stretching their nets like gigantic spider-webs half across the stream to the great annoyance of navigators. Such are the wise provisions of Nature, by which she equalizes rural affairs. A laggard at the plough is often extremely industrious with the fowling-piece and fishing-net; and, whenever a man is an indifferent farmer, he is apt to be a first-rate sportsman. For catching shad and wild pigeons there were none throughout the country to compare with the lads of Sleepy Hollow. I As I have observed, it was the dreamy nature of the name that first beguiled me in the holiday rovings of boyhood into this sequestered region. shunned, however, the populous parts of the Hollow, and sought its retired haunts far in the foldings of the hills, where the Pocantico winds its wizard stream' sometimes silently and darkly through solemn woodlands; sometimes sparkling between grassy borders in fresh, green meadows; sometimes stealing along the feet of rugged heights under the balancing sprays of beech and chestnut trees. A thousand crystal springs, with which this neighborhood abounds, sent down from the hill-sides their whimpering rills, as if to pay tribute to the Pocantico. In this stream I first essayed my unskilful hand at angling. I loved to loiter along it with rod in hand, watching my float as it whirled amid the eddies or drifted into dark holes under twisted roots and sunken logs, where the largest fish are apt to lurk. I delighted to follow it into the brown recesses of the woods; to throw by my fishing-gear and sit upon rocks beneath towering oaks and clambering grape-vines; bathe my feet in the cool current, and listen to the summer breeze playing among the tree-tops. My boyish fancy clothed all nature around me with ideal charms, and peopled it with the fairy beings I had read of in poetry and fable. Here it was I gave full scope to my incipient habit of day-dreaming, and, to a certain propensity, to weave up and tint sober realities with my own whims and imaginings, which has sometimes made life a little too much like an Arabian tale to me, and this working-day world' rather like a region of romance. The great gathering-place of Sleepy Hollow in those days was the church. It stood outside of the Hollow, near the great highway, on a green bank shaded by trees, with the Pocantico sweeping round it and emptying itself into a spacious mill-pond. At that time the Sleepy Hollow church was the only place of worship for a wide neighborhood. It was a venerable edifice, partly of stone and partly of brick, the latter having been brought from Holland in the early days of the province, before the arts in the New Netherlands could aspire to such a fabrication. On a stone above the porch were inscribed the names of the founders, Frederick Filipsen, a mighty patroon of the olden time, who reigned over a wide extent of this neighborhood and held his seat of power at Yonkers; and his wife, Katrina Van Courtlandt, of the no less potent line of the Van Courtlandts of Croton, who lorded it over a great part of the Highlands. The capacious pulpit, with its wide-spreading sounding-board, were likewise early importations from Holland; as also the communion-table, of massive form and curious fabric. The same might be said of a weather-cock perched on top of the bel fry, and which was considered orthodox in all windy matters, until a small pragmatical rival was set up Hollow and its church, as I recollect them to have on the other end of the church above the chancel. been in the days of my boyhood. It was in my This latter bore, and still bears, the initials of Fred- stripling days, when a few years had passed over erick Filipsen, and assumed great airs in conse- my head, that I revisited them, in company with the quence. The usual contradiction ensued that al- venerabie Diedrich. I shall never forget the antiways exists among church weather-cocks, which can quarian reverence with which that sage and excellent never be brought to agree as to the point from which man contemplated the church. It seemed as if all the wind blows, having doubtless acquired, from his pious enthusiasm for the ancient Dutch dynasty their position, the christian propensity to schism swelled within his bosom at the sight. The tears and controversy. stood in his eyes, as he regarded the pulpit and the Behind the church, and sloping up a gentle accliv-communion-table; even the very bricks that had ity, was its capacious burying-ground, in which slept come from the mother country, seemed to touch a the earliest fathers of this rural neighborhood. Here filial chord within his bosom. He almost bowed in were tombstones of the rudest sculpture; on which were inscribed, in Dutch, the names and virtues of many of the first settlers, with their portraitures curiously carved in similitude of cherubs. Long rows of grave-stones, side by side, of similar names, but various dates, showed that generation after generation of the same families had followed each other and been garnered together in this last gatheringplace of kindred. Let me speak of this quiet grave-yard with all due reverence, for I owe it amends for the heedlessness of my boyish days. I blush to acknowledge the thoughtless frolic with which, in company with other whipsters, I have sported within its sacred bounds during the intervals of worship; chasing butterflies, plucking wild flowers, or vieing with each other who could leap over the tallest tomb-stones, until checked by the stern voice of the sexton. The congregation was, in those days, of a really rural character. City fashions were as yet unknown, or unregarded, by the country people of the neighborhood. Steam-boats had not as yet confounded town with country. A weekly market-boat from Tarrytown, the Farmers' Daughter,' navigated by the worthy Gabriel Requa, was the only communication between all these parts and the metropolis. A rustic belle in those days considered a visit to the city in much the same light as one of our modern fashionable ladies regards a visit to Europe; an event that may possibly take place once in the course of a life-time, but to be hoped for, rather than expected. Hence the array of the congregation was chiefly after the primitive fashions existing in Sleepy Hollow; or if, by chance, there was a departure from the Dutch sun-bonnet, or the apparition of a bright gown of flowered calico, it caused quite a sensation throughout the church. As the dominie generally preached by the hour, a bucket of water was providently placed on a bench near the door, in summer, with a tin cup beside it, for the solace of those who might be athirst, either from the heat of the weather, or the drouth of the sermon. Around the pulpit, and behind the communiontable, sat the elders of the church, reverend, grayheaded, leathern-visaged men, whom I regarded with awe, as so many apostles. They were stern in their sanctity, kept a vigilant eye upon my giggling companions and myself, and shook a rebuking finger at any boyish device to relieve the tediousness of compulsory devotion. Vain, however, were all their efforts at vigilance. Scarcely had the preacher held forth for half an hour, on one of his interminable sermons, than it seemed as if the drowsy influence of Sleepy Hollow breathed into the place; one by one the congregation sank into slumber; the sanctified elders leaned back in their pews, spreading their handkerchiefs over their faces, as if to keep off the flies; while the locusts in the neighboring trees would spin out their sultry summer notes, as if in imitation of the sleep-provoking tones of the dominie. I have thus endeavored to give an idea of Sleepy deference to the stone above the porch, containing the names of Frederick Filipsen and Katrina Van Courtlandt, regarding it as the linking together of those patronymic names, once so famous along the banks of the Hudson; or rather as a key-stone, binding that mighty Dutch family connexion of yore, one foot of which rested on Yonkers, and the other on the Croton. Nor did he forbear to notice with admiration, the windy contest which had been carried on, since time immemorial, and with real Dutch perseverance, between the two weather-cocks; though I could easily perceive he coincided with the one which had come from Holland. Together we paced the ample church-yard. With deep veneration would he turn down the weeds and brambles that obscured the modest brown gravestones, half sunk in earth, on which were recorded, in Dutch, the names of the patriarchs of ancient days, the Ackers, the Van Tassels, and the Van Warts. As we sat on one of the tomb-stones, he recounted to me the exploits of many of these worthies; and my heart smote me, when I heard of their great doings in days of yore, to think how heedlessly I had once sported over their graves. From the church, the venerable Diedrich proceeded in his researches up the Hollow. The genius of the place seemed to hail its future historian. All nature was alive with gratulation. The quail whistled a greeting from the corn-field; the robin carolled a song of praise from the orchard; the loquacious catbird flew from bush to bush, with restless wing, proclaiming his approach in every variety of note, and anon would whisk about, and perk inquisitively into his face, as if to get a knowledge of his physiognomy; the wood-pecker, also, tapped a tattoo on the hollow apple-tree, and then peered knowingly round the trunk, to see how the great Diedrich relished his salutation; while the ground-squirel scampered along the fence, and occasionally whisked his tail over his head, by way of a huzza! The worthy Diedrich pursued his researches in the valley with characteristic devotion; entering familiarly into the various cottages, and gossipping with the simple folk, in the style of their own simplicity. I confess my heart yearned with admiration, to see so great a man, in his eager quest after knowledge, humbly demeaning himself to curry favor with the humblest; sitting patiently on a three-legged stool, patting the children, and taking a purring grimalkin on his lap, while he conciliated the good-will of the old Dutch housewife, and drew from her long ghost stories, spun out to the humming accompaniment of her wheel. His greatest treasure of historic lore, however, was discovered in an old goblin-looking mill, situated among rocks and waterfalls, with clanking wheels, and rushing streams, and all kinds of uncouth noises. A horse-shoe, nailed to the door to keep off witches and evil spirits, showed that this mill was subject to awful visitations. As we approached it, an old negro thrust his head, all dabbled with flour, out of a hole above the water-wheel, and grinned, and rolled his eyes, and looked like the very hobgoblin | ued to be apparent. The elders round the pulpit of the place. The illustrious Diedrich fixed upon were men whom I had left in the gamesome frolic of him, at once, as the very one to give him that inval- their youth, but who had succeeded to the sanctity of uable kind of information never to be acquired from station of which they once had stood so much in awe. books. He beckoned him from his nest, sat with What most struck my eye was the change in the him by the hour on a broken mill-stone, by the side female part of the congregation. Instead of the of the waterfall, heedless of the noise of the water, primitive garbs of homespun manufacture and anand the clatter of the mill; and I verily believe it tique Dutch fashion, I beheld French sleeves, French was to his conference with this African sage, and capes, and French collars, and a fearful fluttering of the precious revelations of the good dame of the French ribbands. spinning-wheel, that we are indebted for the surprising though true history of Ichabod Crane and the headless horseman, which has since astounded and edified the world. But I have said enough of the good old times of my youthful days; let me speak of the Hollow as I found it, after an absence of many years, when it was kindly given me once more to revisit the haunts of my boyhood. It was a genial day, as I approached that fated region. The warm sunshine was tempered by a slight haze, so as to give a dreamy effect to the landscape. Not a breath of air shook the foliage. The broad Tappan Sea was without a ripple, and the sloops, with drooping sails, slept on its glassy bosom. Columns of smoke, from burning brush-wood, rose lazily from the folds of the hills, on the opposite side of the river, and slowly expanded in mid-air. The distant lowing of a cow, or the noontide crowing of a cock, coming faintly to the ear, seemed to illustrate, rather than disturb, the drowsy quiet of the scene. When the service was ended I sought the churchyard, in which I had sported in my unthinking days of boyhood. Several of the modest brown stones, on which were recorded in Dutch the names and virtues of the patriarchs, had disappeared, and had been succeeded by others of white marble, with urns and wreaths, and scraps of English tomb-stone poetry, marking the intrusion of taste and literature and the English language in this once unsophisticated Dutch neighborhood. As I was stumbling about among these silent yet eloquent memorials of the dead, I came upon names familiar to me; of those who had paid the debt of nature during the long interval of my absence. Some I remembered, my companions in boyhood, who had sported with me on the very sod under which they were now mouldering; others who in those days had been the flower of the yeomanry, figuring in Sunday finery on the church green; others, the whitehaired elders of the sanctuary, once arrayed in awful sanctity around the pulpit, and ever ready to rebuke the ill-timed mirth of the wanton stripling who, now a man, sobered by years and schooled by vicissitudes, looked down pensively upon their graves. 'Our fathers,' thought I, where are they !-and the prophets, can they live for ever!' I entered the Hollow with a beating heart. Contrary to my apprehensions, I found it but little changed. The march of intellect, which had made such rapid strides along every river and highway, had not yet, apparently, turned down into this favored valley. Perhaps the wizard spell of ancient days still reigned over the place, binding up the fac-a troop of idle urchins, who came gambolling about ulties of the inhabitants in happy contentment with things as they had been handed down to them from yore. There were the same little farms and farmhouses, with their old hats for the housekeeping wren; their stone wells, moss-covered buckets, and long balancing poles. There were the same little rills, whimpering down to pay their tributes to the Pocantico; while that wizard stream still kept on its course, as of old, through solemn woodlands and fresh green meadows: nor were there wanting joyous holiday boys to loiter along its banks, as I had done; throw their pin-hooks in the stream, or launch their mimic barks. I watched them with a kind of melancholy pleasure, wondering whether they were under the same spell of the fancy that once rendered this valley a fairy land to me. Alas! alas! to me every thing now stood revealed in its simple reality. The echoes no longer answered with wizard tongues; the dream of youth was at an end; the spell of Sleepy Hollow was broken ! I was disturbed in my meditations by the noise of the place where I had so often gambolled. They were checked, as I and my playmates had often been, by the voice of the sexton, a man staid in years and demeanor. I looked wistfully in his face; had I met him any where else, I should probably have passed him by without remark; but here I was alive to the traces of former times, and detected in the demure features of this guardian of the sanctuary the lurking lineaments of one of the very playmates I have alluded to. We renewed our acquaintance. He sat down beside me, on one of the tomb-stones over which we had leaped in our juvenile sports, and we talked together about our boyish days, and held edifying discourse on the instability of all sublunary things, as instanced in the scene around us. He was rich in historic lore, as to the events of the last thirty years and the circumference of thirty miles, and from him I learned the appalling revolution that was taking place throughout the neighborhood. All this I clearly perceived he attributed to the boasted I sought the ancient church on the following Sun- march of intellect, or rather to the all-pervading inday. There it stood, on its green bank, among the fluence of steam. He bewailed the times when the trees; the Pocantico swept by it in a deep dark only communication with town was by the weekly stream, where I had so often angled; there expand-market-boat, the Farmers' Daughter,' which, under ed the mill-pond, as of old, with the cows under the the pilotage of the worthy Gabriel Requa, braved willows on its margin, knee-deep in water, chewing the perils of the Tappan Sea. Alas! Gabriel and the cud, and lashing the flies from their siles with the Farmers' Daughter' slept in peace. Two steamtheir tails. The hand of improvement, however, had boats now splashed and paddled up daily to the little been busy with the venerable pile. The pulpit, fab-rural port of Tarrytown. The spirit of speculation ricated in Holland, had been superseded by one of and improvement had seized even upon that once modern construction, and the front of the semi- quiet and unambitious little dorp. The whole neighGothic edifice was decorated by a semi-Grecian por-borhood was laid out into town lots. Instead of the tico. Fortunately, the two weather-cocks remained undisturbed on their perches at each end of the church, and still kept up a diametrical opposition to each other on all points of windy doctrine. On entering the church the changes of time contin little tavern below the hill, where the farmers used to loiter on market days and indulge in cider and gingerbread, an ambitious hotel, with cupola and verandas, now crested the summit, among churches built in the Grecian and Gothic styles, showing the |