33 The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
verses in honor of the heiress of Van Tassell. These magic books and the poetic scrawl were forthwith consigned to the flames by Hans
Van Ripper; who from that time forward determined to send his
children no more to school ; observing, that he never knew any good
come from this same reading and writing. Whatever money the
schoolmaster possessed, and he had received his quarter's pay but a
day or two before, he must have had about his person at the time of his disappearance.
The mysterious event caused much speculation at the church on
the following Sunday. Knots of gazers and gossips were collected
in the churchyard, at the bridge, and at the spot where the hat and
pumpkin had been found. The stories of Brouwer, of Bones, and a
whole budget of others, were called to mind ; and when they had
diligently considered them all, and compared them with the symptoms of the present case, they shook their heads, and came to the
conclusion that Ichabod had been carried off by the Galloping Hessian. As he was a bachelor, and in nobody's debt, nobody troubled
his head any more about him. The school was removed to a different
quarter of the Hollow, and another pedagogue reigned in his stead.
It is true, an old farmer, who had been down to New York on a
visit several years after, and from whom this account of the ghostly
adventure was received, brought home the intelligence that Ichabod
Crane was still alive ; that he had left the neighborhood, partly
through fear of the goblin and Hans Van Ripper, and partly in
mortification at having been suddenly dismissed by the heiress ;
that he had changed his quarters to a distant part of the country;
had kept school and studied law at the same time, had been ad-
mitted to the bar, turned politician, electioneered, written for the
newspapers, and finally had been made a justice of the Ten Pound
Court. Brom Bones too, who shortly after his rival's disappearance conducted the blooming Katrina in triumph to the altar; was
observed to look exceeding knowing whenever the story of Ichabod was related, and always burst into a hearty laugh at the
