63 Washington Irving.
" The people of Westchester County have erected this monument as well to commemorate a great event as to testify their high estimation of that integrity and patriotism which rejected every temptation,
rescued the United States from most imminent peril, by baffling the arts of a spy and the plots of a traitor."
Leaving the monument we wandered on up the road a little distance, and turning to the left descended a hill and entered the famous valley of Sleepy Hollow.
We passed over " the bridge famous in goblin story " where Brom Bones, disguised as the headless horseman, hurled his pumpkin head at his unfortunate rival, and turning to the right entered the path
which follows the Pocantico in its winding's through the glens and meadows and forests of Sleepy Hollow. There on our left on its " green bank shaded by trees," stands the old Dutch Church built more than two centuries ago by " that mighty patron of the olden
time, Frederick Philipsen."
The windows peep out through a mass of ivy which almost completely conceals the walls wherein still remain many of the bricks brought over from Holland by the devout pilgrims. I observed the two ancient weathercocks still pointing in opposite directions as they
did when Irving compared them in his quaintly humorous way to the
early Christian settlers with strong-propensities for schism and controversy. One pointed steadfastly toward northeast and the otherrigidly insisted that the wind was blowing up from the southwest.As a northeast storm was prevailing at the time it was evident that
one, at least, of these rivals in windy controversies was right, which is more than can always be said of theological disputants.' The sky cleared during the night, and when I returned, the fresh cool breezes,
tempered by the sunshine of a June morning, were blowing down from the Catskills and Highlands of the Hudson; but those inflexible prognosticators of foul weather still maintained, as I suppose they have
been doing through all the sunshine of two hundred years, that storms were approaching from opposite directions.
