# Tea, a poem/Ichabod Crane

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 wa a native of Connecticut: a state which suplies the Union with pioneers for the mind as well as for the forest, and sends forth yearly its legons of frontier woodmen and country schoolmasters. The cognomen of 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 sleves, 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 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 case, he would find some embarrassment in getting out; an idea most probably borrowed by the architect, Yost Van Houten from the mystry of an eel-pot. The school​house stood in a rather lonely but pleasan, situaiion, just at the foot of a woody hill with 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 drousy summer's day, like the hum of a bee-hive; interrupted now and then by the authoritative voice, of the master, in the the tone of menace or command; or, peradventure, by the appalling sound of the birch, as he urged some tardy loiterer along the flowery path of knowledge. Truth to say, he was a conscientious man, that ever bore in mind the golden maxim, "Spare the road and the child."—Ichabod Crane's scholars certainly were not spoiled.
I would not have it imagined, however that he was one of these cruel potentates of the school, who joy in the smart of their subjects; on the contrary, he administred justice with discrimination rather than severity; taking the burthen off 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 holiday afternoons' would convoy some of the smaller ones home, who happened so 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 arrising 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 the 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 grevious burden, and shoolmasters 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 asside too all the dominant dignity and absolute sway with which he lorded it in his little empire, the school, and became wonderful gentile and ingratiating. He found favour in the eyes of the mothers, by petting the children, particuarly the youngest; and like the lion bold, which whilom so magnimously 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 siniging master of the neighbourhood, and picked up many bright shillings by instrusting 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 gallarry, 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 peculier 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 head-work, to have a wonderful easy life of it.
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