The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1873-10-04

some Importance in the female circle of &
rural neighborhood; being considered a
kind of idle, gentleman-like parsonage,
of vastly superior taste and accomplish
ments to the rough country SWANS, 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, preadventure, the parade of a
silver teapot. Our man of letters, there
fore, was peculiarly happy in the smiles OF
all the country damscls. How he would
figure among them in the church yard, be-
tween services on Sundays! gathering
grapes for them from the wild vines that
overrun 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-pend; while the more
bashful country pumpkins hung sheepsh-
ly back, envying his superior elegance and
address.
From his half itinerant life, also, he was
kind of travelling gazette, carrying the
whole budget of local gossip from house
to house: so that his appearance was al
moreover, 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 ap-
petite for the marvellous, and his powers
of disesting it, were equally extraordinary
and both had been increased by his resi-
dence in this spellbound region. No tale
was too gross or monstrous for his capaci-
Gus swallow. 1t was often his delight,
after his school was dismissed in the after
noon, to stretch himself on the rich bed
whimpered by his school house, and there
con over old Mather's direful tales, until
the gathering dusk of the evening made
the printed page mere mist before his
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 whip-po
will from the hillside; the bodng cry of
the tree toad, that harbinger of storm;
the dreary hooting Of the screech- owl, or
the sudden rustiing in the thickets of
birds frightened from their roost. The
fire-tiies, too, which sparkled most wildly
in the darkest places, now and then startled
him, as one of uncommon brightness
would stream across his path; and if, by
chance, huge block head of beetle came
winging his laundering flight against him,
the poor varlet was ready to give up the
ghost, with the idea that he was struck
with a witch 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 pleas
ure was, to pass long winter evenings with
the Dutch wives as they sat spinning by
the fire, with row of apples roasting and
spluttering along the hearth, and listen to
their marvellous tales of ghosts and COB
Inns, and haunted fields, and haunted
brooks, and haunted bridges, and haunted
houses, and particularly of the headless
horseman, or Galloping Hessian of the
Hollow, as they sometimes call him. He
would delight them equally by his anec-
dotes 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 Brighten
them wofully with speculations upon COM
cts and shooting stars, and with the alarm
ing 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 COR
ner of chamber that was all of ruddy
glow fIom the cracking wood-fire, and
where, of course, no spectre dared to show
his 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 CHASTITY glare of a
snowy night With what wistful look did
he eye every trembling ray of light stream
ing across the waste fields from some dis
tant window - How often was he al
palled by some shrub covered with snow,
which, like a sheeted spectre, beset his
very path How often did he shrink with
curdlng 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 tramp
ing close behind him and how often was
he thrown into complete dismay by some
rushing blast, bowling 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 divers shapes,
in his lonely preambulations, yet daylight
put an end to all these evils; and lie would
have passed pleasant life of it, in despite
of the devil and all his works, if his path
had not been crossed by being that causes
more perplexity to mortal man than ghosts,
COLLINS, and the whole race of witches put
together, and that was-a woman.
Among the musical disciples who as
sembled, one evening in each week, to re-
oeive his instructions in psalmody, was
Katrina Van Tassel, the daughter and only
child of substantial Dutch farmer. She
was a blooming lass of fresh eighteen;
plump as partridge; ripe and melting and
rosy checked as one of her fathers peaches,
and universally famed, not merely for her