51 Wolfert 's Roost.
papers. Such was the legend connected with the old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow. The church itself was a monument of by-gone days. It had been built in the early times of the province. A tablet over the portal bore the names of its founders—Frederick Philipsen,
a mighty man of yore, patroon of Yonkers, and his wife Katrina Van Courtlandt, of the Van Courtlandts of Croton, a powerful family connection,—with one foot resting on Spiting Devil Creek and the other on the Croton River.
Two weathercocks, with the initials of these illustrious personages, graced each end of the church, one perched over the belfry, the other over the chancel. As usual with ecclesiastical weathercocks, each
pointed a different way, and there was a perpetual contradiction between them on all points of windy doctrine—emblematic, alas ! of the
Christian propensity to schism and controversy.
In the burying-ground adjacent to the church reposed the earliest fathers of a-wide rural neighborhood. Here families were garnered
together, side by side, in long platoons in this last gathering-place of kindred. With pious hand would Diedrich Knickerbocker turn down
the weeds and bramble's which had overgrown the tombstones to decipher inscriptions in Dutch and English of the names and virtues
of succeeding generations of Van Tassels, Van Warts, and other historical worthies, with their portraitures faithfully carved, all bearing the family likeness to cherubs.
The congregation in those days was of a truly rural character.City fashions had not as yet stole up to Sleepy Hollow. Dutch sunbonnets and honest homespun still prevailed. Every thing was in primitive style, even to the bucket of water and tin cup near the
door in summer, to assuage the thirst caused by the heat of the weather or the drought of the sermon.
The pulpit, with its widespreading sounding-board, and the communion-table, curiously carved, had each come from Holland in the olden time, before the arts had sufficiently advanced in the colony
for such achievements. Around these on Sundays would be gath-
