The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Morticia Knight

Author:Morticia Knight [Knight, Washington Irving and Morticia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Totally Entwined Group Ltd
Published: 2013-04-08T00:00:00+00:00

Postscript

Found in the handwriting of Mr Knickerbocker

The preceding tale is given almost in the precise words in which I heard it related at a Corporation meeting at the ancient city of Manhattoes, at which were present many of its sagest and most illustrious burghers. The narrator was a pleasant, shabby, gentlemanly fellow in pepper-and-salt clothes, with a sadly humorous face, and one whom one could easily strongly suspect of being poor—he made such efforts to be entertaining. When his story was concluded, there was much laughter and approbation, particularly from two or three deputy aldermen, who had been asleep the greater part of the time.

There was, however, one tall, dry-looking old gentleman with beetling eyebrows who maintained a grave and rather severe face throughout, now and then folding his arms, inclining his head, and looking down upon the floor, as if turning a doubt over in his mind. He was one of your wary men, who never laugh but upon good grounds—when they have reason and law on their side. When the mirth of the rest of the company had subsided, and silence was restored, he leaned one arm on the elbow of his chair, and sticking the other akimbo, demanded, with a slight but exceedingly sage motion of the head and contraction of the brow, what was the moral of the story, and what it went to prove?

The storyteller, who was just putting a glass of wine to his lips, as a refreshment after his toils, paused for a moment, looked at his inquirer with an air of infinite deference, and lowering the glass slowly to the table, observed that the story was intended most logically to prove—

“That there is no situation in life but has its advantages and pleasures—provided we will but take a joke as we find it.

“That, therefore, he that runs races with goblin troopers is likely to have rough riding of it.

“Ergo, for a country schoolmaster to be refused the hand of a Dutch heiress is a certain step to high preferment in the state.”

The cautious old gentleman knit his brows tenfold closer after this explanation, being sorely puzzled by the ratiocination of the syllogism, while, methought, the one in pepper-and-salt eyed him with something of a triumphant leer. At length he observed that all this was very well, but still he thought the story a little on the extravagant—there were one or two points on which he had his doubts.

“Faith, sir,” replied the storyteller, “as to that matter, I don’t believe one-half of it myself.”

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