Monday, November 26 , Bible as literature

Due today: vocabulary 5
Friday, November 30: test on Biblical characters and a theme associated.
In class: we are going to spend the next couple days looking at the Bible through a literary lens. If you checked last Wednesday's blog, you are already familiar with this material. Below is another copy of the class handout. We will use this as an accompanyment to the power point, which illustrates how the characters have been portrayed through art. If you are absent, you should bring in your jump drive, so that I can give you the power point, as there is a literary elements sheet that goes along with it.

Planning ahead: For Friday, November 30, please read two short stories: Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, answering the accompanying questions and James Fennimore Cooper's excerpt from The Prairie, with the accompanying graphic organizer. handouts in class; copies below. This is four days worth of homework. Do not wait until the last minute. Read through the accompanying material first. Mark up your short stories. as you read along, so that you will be able to respond more efficiently. In The Prairie you need textual evidence.
Planning even further ahead: For Monday, December 3, please read Edgar Allen Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher and respond to the accompanying material- in complete sentences and TEXTUAL EVIDENCE when applicable. This should be written / typed on a separate sheet of paper.   handout in class; copy below

The Bible as Literature     excerpted from Alicia D. Lloyd

 

I. Introduction

                The Bible not only has had a great influence on Western culture, including Western literature, but also has been considered a work of high literary quality in its own right, both in its original languages and in translation. So it is not surprising that a survey of the Bible and its influence is often considered an important part of an English language or literature curriculum. The Bible introduces techniques and ideas that can be applied to the study of other works of literature as well. These include introducing the historical and cultural background of the work, describing how understanding the genre used is related to the interpretation of meaning, discussing the ways that the work has been used by other authors and artists, and comparing translations and how the work has influenced the usage of its original language as well as the languages it has been translated into.

 

II. Historical and Cultural Background

 

                Since the materials contained in the Bible were produced or edited between 2,000 and 4,000 years ago in the Middle East, it is essential to have some background knowledge of the environment which the Bible materials represent.

                                The two-thirds of the Bible that is referred to as the Old Testament, or the Hebrew Scriptures, can be considered to be a history of the Jewish people, including their origins and mission in the world, while the New Testament describes how this mission was fulfilled and expanded to include the world’s other nations. Just as at present, in ancient times Israel was a small nation, greatly influenced by the empires which waxed and waned around it.

 

 

III. Genre and Interpretation

 

Though the Bible is one volume, it is also a library of 66 books composed and edited by different human authors over a long period of time. It can particularly be noted that the arrangement of the 39 books of the Old Testament are written in Hebrew. Four of the major genres which are found within the Bible include narrative, poetry, letters, and prophecy or revelation. The techniques for understanding narrative—the analysis of plot and characters—are the same as those used in reading fiction or non-fiction accounts in any language, and the Bible writers have long been recognized as superb storytellers. The parables, or short stories with a point, were used as a teaching technique by Jesus. The poetry or letters have features unique to Hebrew poetry, while the letters follow an ancient letter-writing convention. Prophecy or revelation is perhaps the most unusual genre in the Bible, and its content is expressed through poetry or prose. The classroom environment is interested in looking at the characters and narrative of the Bible, not the sermon points. This is to enrich the understanding of the literature covered.

IV. The Bible’s Literary Influence

 

There are three main ways in which the Bible has influenced or been used in Western literature. Over the ages, writers have loved to mine the Bible’s narrative riches, taking a Bible story and retelling it in a new form: a long novel, a stage play, a musical, an opera, or a screenplay. One of the examples is the story of Joseph and his brothers from the Old Testament Book of Genesis. In the twentieth century this story was adapted by Andrew Lloyd Webber for one of his earliest Broadway productions, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. The success of this musical with urbane New Yorkers is a testament to the power of this 4,000-year-old story.

Sometimes, a writer uses a Bible story as a starting point and then expands it with new characters and events not in the original. An example of this is the short story, “The Other Wise Man” (which was later made into the film The Fourth Wise Man), based on the story of the visit of the Magi to Jesus and his parents in Bethlehem, found in the Gospel of Matthew.

The most abundant kind of inspiration that the Bible has provided for Western literature is, of course, the many themes to be found in its stories and teachings. Often the use of a Biblical phrase in the title of a novel or play will indicate the presence of such a theme. Other times, there is no explicit reference in the particular literary work, yet those familiar with the Bible will recognize the source of the themes. Even works that seem to be in direct opposition to certain Biblical concepts have none the less been influenced by the Biblical material.

One of the Reformation’s tenets was that every Christian believer should be able to read and interpret the Bible for themselves, thus providing a huge impetus for both translating the Bible into local languages and extending the availability of at least basic education. These twin factors have meant that the most widely used of these early translations have exerted a great influence on the vocabulary and idioms of the local languages. A prime example of this is the King James Version (KJV) of 1611, which is still in wide circulation, even though the English of four hundred years ago can be difficult for modern readers to understand. The long popularity of this translation has meant that many idiomatic phrases still in use in modern English have been derived from it.

 

Character List

1.       Jesus of Nazareth -  The central figure of the New Testament, whose life, death, and resurrection are chronicled in the books. The four Gospels describe Jesus’s life until his resurrection, and the remainder of the New Testament concerns itself with the community of followers of Jesus that steadily grows after his death.

2.       Paul of Tarsus -  More than half of the books in the New Testament have been attributed to Paul of Tarsus, the great missionary who directs the spread of Christianity after the death of Jesus. In these books, Paul uses his keen mind and robust intellect to develop Christianity’s first sophisticated theology. In the period immediately following Jesus’s death, he is an active persecutor of Jesus’s followers, but he later converts and becomes the most active proponent of Christ’s disciples.

3.       Peter -  The first of Jesus’s disciples. Extremely devoted to Jesus and his mission, Simon is able to recognize Jesus as the Messiah before the other apostles. As a result, Jesus makes him the “rock”—renaming Simon “Peter,” which means rock—on which his church would be built (Matthew 16:13–20). Although Peter denies his association with Jesus after Jesus’s arrest, Peter later becomes one of the leaders of the church in Jerusalem.

4.       John the Baptist -  The forerunner to Jesus, spreading the word of Jesus’s imminent arrival. John the Baptist is an old ascetic who lives in the desert, wears a loincloth, and feeds on locusts and honey.

5.       Mary Magdalene -  A female follower of Jesus since the time of his Galilean ministry, when he exorcises her of seven demons (Luke 8:2). Mary Magdalene is a close friend of Jesus. She is one of the women who discover that Jesus’s body is not in his grave. Following this event, she witnesses the resurrected Jesus. She is also known as Mary of Magdala.

6.       Pontius Pilate -  As prefect, Pontius Pilate governs Judea by the authority of the Roman Empire during the time of Jesus’s trial in Jerusalem. The Gospels differ on the extent of Pilate’s responsibility for Jesus’s crucifixion. What is clear, however, is that Pilate holds the ultimate authority to determine whether or not Jesus should be executed.

7.       Judas Iscariot -  One of the Twelve Apostles, Judas betrays Jesus to the authorities in exchange for thirty pieces of silver. According to Matthew, Judas commits suicide out of remorse (Matthew 27:3–10).

8.       Mary, Mother of Jesus -  Luke’s narrative of Jesus’s infancy focuses heavily on the courage and faith of Mary, who becomes impregnated by the Holy Spirit. She is also one of the only people who remains with Jesus through the crucifixion. Gospel writers who have a high esteem for the female leaders in the early church community point to Mary as a model of discipleship.

9.       Joseph -  Mary’s husband. Joseph is a direct paternal descendent of the great King David, which makes Jesus an heir to the Davidic line. This heritage reinforces Jesus’s place in the Jewish tradition.

10.    Luke -  A traveling companion of Paul. Christian tradition dating back to the second century CE. claims that Luke is the author of the Gospel that bears his name and of Acts of the Apostles.

11.    Caiaphas -  The high priest who presides over Jesus’s trial. Though it is Pilate who declares the verdict of Jesus’s guilt, the Gospel writers are insistent that Caiaphas is also responsible for the crucifixion.

12.    Herod the Great -  The King of Palestine from 37 to 4 BCE According to Matthew, Herod hears of Jesus’s birth and decides to kill the child, who is prophesied to become king of the Jews. To evade Herod’s orders, Joseph takes Jesus and Mary to Egypt

13.    Moses- an early leader of the Hebrews and probably the most important figure in Judaism. He was raised in the court of the Pharaoh in Egypt, but then led the Hebrew people out of Egypt. Moses is said to have talked with God. His story is told in the Biblical book Exodus

14.    David-Warrior, musician, poet (author of Psalm 23 - The Lord is My Shepherd), friend of Jonathan, and king, David (1005-965 BCE) is familiar from the story of his killing the giant Goliath with his sling during the battle that the Israelites fought against the Philistines. He was from the tribe of Judah, and followed Saul as king of the United Monarchy. His son Absalom (born to Maacha) rebelled against David and was killed. After causing the death of Bathsheba's husband, Uriah, David married her. Their son Solomon (968-928BCE ) was the last king of the United Monarchy.

15.    Solomon- (ruled 968-928BCE), born in Jerusalem to David and Bathsheba, was the last king of the United Monarchy. He is credited with finishing the First Temple in Jerusalem to house the Ark of the Covenant. The name of Solomon is associated with proverbial wisdom. One example of his wisdom is the story a disputed baby. Solomon suggested to the 2 would-be mothers that he use his sword to divide the baby in half. The real mother was willing to give her baby away. Solomon is also known for meeting with the Queen of Sheba.     The Wisdom of Solomon

16.     Nebuchadnezzar-  (ruled c. 605 BCE.-562 BCE) was an important Babylonian king whose Biblical significance lies in his destroying the First Temple in Jerusalem and starting the period of Babylonian Captivity.

17.    Cyrus-While in the Babylonian captivity, the Jews looked to prophecies about their release. Contrary to expectation, the non-Jewish king of Persia, Cyrus the great, was the one to conquer the Chaldean (Babylonian) Kingdom (in 538 BCE.), and secure their release and return to their homeland.. Cyrus is mentioned 23 times in the Old Testament. (Hebrew Bible) Books mentioning him include Chronicles, Ezra, and Isaiah. The main source on Cyrus is Herodotus.

18.    Maccabees- the name of a priestly Jewish family which ruled Palestine in the second and first centuries BCE and wrested Judea from the rule of the Seleucids and their Greek practices. They are the founders of the Hasmonean dynasty. The Jewish holiday Hanukkah commemorates the Maccabees' recapture of Jerusalem and reconsecration of the Temple in December 164 BCE.

19.    Herod Antipas and Herodias- Herod Antipas, a son of Herod the Great, was the ruler of Galilee and Peraea from 4 BCE-CE 39. Herodias was the niece of Herod Antipas who divorced Herod's brother to marry Herod. This marriage violated Jewish custom and John the Baptist is said to have criticized it. Herod and Herodias' daughter (Salome) is said to have asked for the head of John the Baptist in exchange for dancing for an audience. Herod may have had a role in the trial of Jesus.

Bible as literature                accompanying organizer literary elements organizer

For each of the following, identify at least two character, setting, tone or thematic connections that can be made.

1.JesusofNazareth  ______________________________________________________________________________

 

 

2.PaulofTarsus ______________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

3.Peter _________________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

4.JohntheBaptist _________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

5.MaryMagdalene _________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

6.PontiusPilate ____________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

7.JudasIscariot_____________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

8.Mary,MotherofJesus ___________________________________________________________________________

 

 

9.Joseph ____________________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

10.Luke ____________________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

11.Caiaphas ______________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

12.HerodtheGreat _________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

13.Moses ____________________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

14. David__________________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

15. Solomon_______________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

16.Nebuchadnezzar __________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

17. Cyrus ___________________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

18. Maccabees ________________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

19.HerodAntipasandHerodias __________________________________________________________________________

 

Legend of Sleepy Hollow   story and accompanying quiz

THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW

by Washington Irving

FOUND AMONG THE PAPERS OF THE LATE DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER.

 

        A pleasing land of drowsy head it was,

          Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye;

        And of gay castles in the clouds that pass,

          Forever flushing round a summer sky.

                                         CASTLE OF INDOLENCE.

 

In the bosom of one of those spacious coves which indent the eastern shore of the Hudson, at that broad expansion of the river denominated by the ancient Dutch navigators the Tappan Zee, and where they always prudently shortened sail and implored the protection of St. Nicholas when they crossed, there lies a small market town or rural port, which by some is called Greensburgh, but which is more generally and properly known by the name of Tarry Town. This name was given, we are told, in former days, by the good housewives of the adjacent country, from the inveterate propensity of their husbands to linger about the village tavern on market days. Be that as it may, I do not vouch for the fact, but merely advert to it, for the sake of being precise and authentic. Not far from this village, perhaps about two miles, there is a little valley or rather lap of land among high hills, which is one of the quietest places in the whole world. A small brook glides through it, with just murmur enough to lull one to repose; and the occasional whistle of a quail or tapping of a woodpecker is almost the only sound that ever breaks in upon the uniform tranquillity.

I recollect that, when a stripling, my first exploit in squirrel-shooting was in a grove of tall walnut-trees that shades one side of the valley. I had wandered into it at noontime, when all nature is peculiarly quiet, and was startled by the roar of my own gun, as it broke the Sabbath stillness around and was prolonged and reverberated by the angry echoes. If ever I should wish for a retreat whither I might steal from the world and its distractions, and dream quietly away the remnant of a troubled life, I know of none more promising than this little valley.

From the listless repose of the place, and the peculiar character of its inhabitants, who are descendants from the original Dutch settlers, this sequestered glen has long been known by the name of SLEEPY HOLLOW, and its rustic lads are called the Sleepy Hollow Boys throughout all the neighboring country. A drowsy, dreamy influence seems to hang over the land, and to pervade the very atmosphere. Some say that the place was bewitched by a High German doctor, during the early days of the settlement; others, that an old Indian chief, the prophet or wizard of his tribe, held his powwows there before the country was discovered by Master Hendrick Hudson. Certain it is, the place still continues under the sway of some witching power, that holds a spell over the minds of the good people, causing them to walk in a continual reverie. They are given to all kinds of marvellous beliefs, are subject to trances and visions, and frequently see strange sights, and hear music and voices in the air. The whole neighborhood abounds with local tales, haunted spots, and twilight superstitions; stars shoot and meteors glare oftener across the valley than in any other part of the country, and the nightmare, with her whole ninefold, seems to make it the favorite scene of her gambols.

The dominant spirit, however, that haunts this enchanted region, and seems to be commander-in-chief of all the powers of the air, is the apparition of a figure on horseback, without a head. It is said by some to be the ghost of a Hessian trooper, whose head had been carried away by a cannon-ball, in some nameless battle during the Revolutionary War, and who is ever and anon seen by the country folk hurrying along in the gloom of night, as if on the wings of the wind. His haunts are not confined to the valley, but extend at times to the adjacent roads, and especially to the vicinity of a church at no great distance. Indeed, certain of the most authentic historians of those parts, who have been careful in collecting and collating the floating facts concerning this spectre, allege that the body of the trooper having been buried in the churchyard, the ghost rides forth to the scene of battle in nightly quest of his head, and that the rushing speed with which he sometimes passes along the Hollow, like a midnight blast, is owing to his being belated, and in a hurry to get back to the churchyard before daybreak.

Such is the general purport of this legendary superstition, which has furnished materials for many a wild story in that region of shadows; and the spectre is known at all the country firesides, by the name of the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow.

It is remarkable that the visionary propensity I have mentioned is not confined to the native inhabitants of the valley, but is unconsciously imbibed by every one who resides there for a time. However wide awake they may have been before they entered that sleepy region, they are sure, in a little time, to inhale the witching influence of the air, and begin to grow imaginative, to dream dreams, and see apparitions.

I mention this peaceful spot with all possible laud, for it is in such little retired Dutch valleys, found here and there embosomed in the great State of New York, that population, manners, and customs remain fixed, while the great torrent of migration and improvement, which is making such incessant changes in other parts of this restless country, sweeps by them unobserved. They are like those little nooks of still water, which border a rapid stream, where we may see the straw and bubble riding quietly at anchor, or slowly revolving in their mimic harbor, undisturbed by the rush of the passing current. Though many years have elapsed since I trod the drowsy shades of Sleepy Hollow, yet I question whether I should not still find the same trees and the same families vegetating in its sheltered bosom.

In this by-place of nature there abode, in a remote period of American history, that is to say, some thirty years since, a worthy wight of the name of Ichabod Crane, who sojourned, or, as he expressed it, "tarried," in Sleepy Hollow, for the purpose of instructing the children of the vicinity. He was a native of Connecticut, a State which supplies the Union with pioneers for the mind as well as for the forest, and sends forth yearly its legions of frontier woodmen and country schoolmasters. The cognomen of Crane was not inapplicable to his person. He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weather-cock perched upon his spindle neck to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield.

His schoolhouse was a low building of one large room, rudely constructed of logs; the windows partly glazed, and partly patched with leaves of old copybooks. It was most ingeniously secured at vacant hours, by a withe twisted in the handle of the door, and stakes set against the window shutters; so that though a thief might get in with perfect ease, he would find some embarrassment in getting out,—an idea most probably borrowed by the architect, Yost Van Houten, from the mystery of an eelpot. The schoolhouse stood in a rather lonely but pleasant situation, just at the foot of a woody hill, with a brook running close by, and a formidable birch-tree growing at one end of it. From hence the low murmur of his pupils' voices, conning over their lessons, might be heard in a drowsy summer's day, like the hum of a beehive; interrupted now and then by the authoritative voice of the master, in the tone of menace or command, or, peradventure, by the appalling sound of the birch, as he urged some tardy loiterer along the flowery path of knowledge. Truth to say, he was a conscientious man, and ever bore in mind the golden maxim, "Spare the rod and spoil the child." Ichabod Crane's scholars certainly were not spoiled.

I would not have it imagined, however, that he was one of those cruel potentates of the school who joy in the smart of their subjects; on the contrary, he administered justice with discrimination rather than severity; taking the burden off the backs of the weak, and laying it on those of the strong. Your mere puny stripling, that winced at the least flourish of the rod, was passed by with indulgence; but the claims of justice were satisfied by inflicting a double portion on some little tough wrong-headed, broad-skirted Dutch urchin, who sulked and swelled and grew dogged and sullen beneath the birch. All this he called "doing his duty by their parents;" and he never inflicted a chastisement without following it by the assurance, so consolatory to the smarting urchin, that "he would remember it and thank him for it the longest day he had to live."

When school hours were over, he was even the companion and playmate of the larger boys; and on holiday afternoons would convoy some of the smaller ones home, who happened to have pretty sisters, or good housewives for mothers, noted for the comforts of the cupboard. Indeed, it behooved him to keep on good terms with his pupils. The revenue arising from his school was small, and would have been scarcely sufficient to furnish him with daily bread, for he was a huge feeder, and, though lank, had the dilating powers of an anaconda; but to help out his maintenance, he was, according to country custom in those parts, boarded and lodged at the houses of the farmers whose children he instructed. With these he lived successively a week at a time, thus going the rounds of the neighborhood, with all his worldly effects tied up in a cotton handkerchief.

That all this might not be too onerous on the purses of his rustic patrons, who are apt to consider the costs of schooling a grievous burden, and schoolmasters as mere drones, he had various ways of rendering himself both useful and agreeable. He assisted the farmers occasionally in the lighter labors of their farms, helped to make hay, mended the fences, took the horses to water, drove the cows from pasture, and cut wood for the winter fire. He laid aside, too, all the dominant dignity and absolute sway with which he lorded it in his little empire, the school, and became wonderfully gentle and ingratiating. He found favor in the eyes of the mothers by petting the children, particularly the youngest; and like the lion bold, which whilom so magnanimously the lamb did hold, he would sit with a child on one knee, and rock a cradle with his foot for whole hours together.

In addition to his other vocations, he was the singing-master of the neighborhood, and picked up many bright shillings by instructing the young folks in psalmody. It was a matter of no little vanity to him on Sundays, to take his station in front of the church gallery, with a band of chosen singers; where, in his own mind, he completely carried away the palm from the parson. Certain it is, his voice resounded far above all the rest of the congregation; and there are peculiar quavers still to be heard in that church, and which may even be heard half a mile off, quite to the opposite side of the millpond, on a still Sunday morning, which are said to be legitimately descended from the nose of Ichabod Crane. Thus, by divers little makeshifts, in that ingenious way which is commonly denominated "by hook and by crook," the worthy pedagogue got on tolerably enough, and was thought, by all who understood nothing of the labor of headwork, to have a wonderfully easy life of it.

The schoolmaster is generally a man of some importance in the female circle of a rural neighborhood; being considered a kind of idle, gentlemanlike personage, of vastly superior taste and accomplishments to the rough country swains, 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 sweetmeats, or, peradventure, the parade of a silver teapot. Our man of letters, therefore, was peculiarly happy in the smiles of all the country damsels. How he would figure among them in the churchyard, between services on Sundays; gathering grapes for them from the wild vines that overran 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 millpond; while the more bashful country bumpkins hung sheepishly back, envying his superior elegance and address.

From his half-itinerant life, also, he was a kind of travelling gazette, carrying the whole budget of local gossip from house to house, so that his appearance was always greeted with satisfaction. He was, 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 appetite for the marvellous, and his powers of digesting it, were equally extraordinary; and both had been increased by his residence in this spell-bound region. No tale was too gross or monstrous for his capacious swallow. It was often his delight, after his school was dismissed in the afternoon, to stretch himself on the rich bed of clover bordering the little brook that whimpered by his schoolhouse, and there con over old Mather's direful tales, until the gathering dusk of evening made the printed page a mere mist before his eyes. Then, as he wended his way by 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-poor-will from the hillside, the boding cry of the tree toad, that harbinger of storm, the dreary hooting of the screech owl, or the sudden rustling in the thicket of birds frightened from their roost. The fireflies, too, which sparkled most vividly in the darkest places, now and then startled him, as one of uncommon brightness would stream across his path; and if, by chance, a huge blockhead of a beetle came winging his blundering flight against him, the poor varlet was ready to give up the ghost, with the idea that he was struck with a witch's 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 pleasure was to pass long winter evenings with the old Dutch wives, as they sat spinning by the fire, with a row of apples roasting and spluttering along the hearth, and listen to their marvellous tales of ghosts and goblins, 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 called him. He would delight them equally by his anecdotes 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 frighten them woefully with speculations upon comets and shooting stars; and with the alarming 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 corner of a chamber that was all of a ruddy glow from the crackling wood fire, and where, of course, no spectre dared to show its 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 ghastly glare of a snowy night! With what wistful look did he eye every trembling ray of light streaming across the waste fields from some distant window! How often was he appalled by some shrub covered with snow, which, like a sheeted spectre, beset his very path! How often did he shrink with curdling 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 tramping close behind him! And how often was he thrown into complete dismay by some rushing blast, howling 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 perambulations, yet daylight put an end to all these evils; and he would have passed a pleasant life of it, in despite of the Devil and all his works, if his path had not been crossed by a being that causes more perplexity to mortal man than ghosts, goblins, and the whole race of witches put together, and that was—a woman.

Among the musical disciples who assembled, one evening in each week, to receive his instructions in psalmody, was Katrina Van Tassel, the daughter and only child of a substantial Dutch farmer. She was a blooming lass of fresh eighteen; plump as a partridge; ripe and melting and rosy-cheeked as one of her father's peaches, and universally famed, not merely for her beauty, but her vast expectations. She was withal a little of a coquette, as might be perceived even in her dress, which was a mixture of ancient and modern fashions, as most suited to set off her charms. She wore the ornaments of pure yellow gold, which her great-great-grandmother had brought over from Saardam; the tempting stomacher of the olden time, and withal a provokingly short petticoat, to display the prettiest foot and ankle in the country round.

Ichabod Crane had a soft and foolish heart towards the sex; and it is not to be wondered at that so tempting a morsel soon found favor in his eyes, more especially after he had visited her in her paternal mansion. Old Baltus Van Tassel was a perfect picture of a thriving, contented, liberal-hearted farmer. He seldom, it is true, sent either his eyes or his thoughts beyond the boundaries of his own farm; but within those everything was snug, happy and well-conditioned. He was satisfied with his wealth, but not proud of it; and piqued himself upon the hearty abundance, rather than the style in which he lived. His stronghold was situated on the banks of the Hudson, in one of those green, sheltered, fertile nooks in which the Dutch farmers are so fond of nestling. A great elm tree spread its broad branches over it, at the foot of which bubbled up a spring of the softest and sweetest water, in a little well formed of a barrel; and then stole sparkling away through the grass, to a neighboring brook, that babbled along among alders and dwarf willows. Hard by the farmhouse was a vast barn, that might have served for a church; every window and crevice of which seemed bursting forth with the treasures of the farm; the flail was busily resounding within it from morning to night; swallows and martins skimmed twittering about the eaves; and rows of pigeons, some with one eye turned up, as if watching the weather, some with their heads under their wings or buried in their bosoms, and others swelling, and cooing, and bowing about their dames, were enjoying the sunshine on the roof. Sleek unwieldy porkers were grunting in the repose and abundance of their pens, from whence sallied forth, now and then, troops of sucking pigs, as if to snuff the air. A stately squadron of snowy geese were riding in an adjoining pond, convoying whole fleets of ducks; regiments of turkeys were gobbling through the farmyard, and Guinea fowls fretting about it, like ill-tempered housewives, with their peevish, discontented cry. Before the barn door strutted the gallant cock, that pattern of a husband, a warrior and a fine gentleman, clapping his burnished wings and crowing in the pride and gladness of his heart,—sometimes tearing up the earth with his feet, and then generously calling his ever-hungry family of wives and children to enjoy the rich morsel which he had discovered.

The pedagogue's mouth watered as he looked upon this sumptuous promise of luxurious winter fare. In his devouring mind's eye, he pictured to himself every roasting-pig running about with a pudding in his belly, and an apple in his mouth; the pigeons were snugly put to bed in a comfortable pie, and tucked in with a coverlet of crust; the geese were swimming in their own gravy; and the ducks pairing cosily in dishes, like snug married couples, with a decent competency of onion sauce. In the porkers he saw carved out the future sleek side of bacon, and juicy relishing ham; not a turkey but he beheld daintily trussed up, with its gizzard under its wing, and, peradventure, a necklace of savory sausages; and even bright chanticleer himself lay sprawling on his back, in a side dish, with uplifted claws, as if craving that quarter which his chivalrous spirit disdained to ask while living.

As the enraptured Ichabod fancied all this, and as he rolled his great green eyes over the fat meadow lands, the rich fields of wheat, of rye, of buckwheat, and Indian corn, and the orchards burdened with ruddy fruit, which surrounded the warm tenement of Van Tassel, his heart yearned after the damsel who was to inherit these domains, and his imagination expanded with the idea, how they might be readily turned into cash, and the money invested in immense tracts of wild land, and shingle palaces in the wilderness. Nay, his busy fancy already realized his hopes, and presented to him the blooming Katrina, with a whole family of children, mounted on the top of a wagon loaded with household trumpery, with pots and kettles dangling beneath; and he beheld himself bestriding a pacing mare, with a colt at her heels, setting out for Kentucky, Tennessee,—or the Lord knows where!

When he entered the house, the conquest of his heart was complete. It was one of those spacious farmhouses, with high-ridged but lowly sloping roofs, built in the style handed down from the first Dutch settlers; the low projecting eaves forming a piazza along the front, capable of being closed up in bad weather. Under this were hung flails, harness, various utensils of husbandry, and nets for fishing in the neighboring river. Benches were built along the sides for summer use; and a great spinning-wheel at one end, and a churn at the other, showed the various uses to which this important porch might be devoted. From this piazza the wondering Ichabod entered the hall, which formed the centre of the mansion, and the place of usual residence. Here rows of resplendent pewter, ranged on a long dresser, dazzled his eyes. In one corner stood a huge bag of wool, ready to be spun; in another, a quantity of linsey-woolsey just from the loom; ears of Indian corn, and strings of dried apples and peaches, hung in gay festoons along the walls, mingled with the gaud of red peppers; and a door left ajar gave him a peep into the best parlor, where the claw-footed chairs and dark mahogany tables shone like mirrors; andirons, with their accompanying shovel and tongs, glistened from their covert of asparagus tops; mock-oranges and conch-shells decorated the mantelpiece; strings of various-colored birds eggs were suspended above it; a great ostrich egg was hung from the centre of the room, and a corner cupboard, knowingly left open, displayed immense treasures of old silver and well-mended china.

From the moment Ichabod laid his eyes upon these regions of delight, the peace of his mind was at an end, and his only study was how to gain the affections of the peerless daughter of Van Tassel. In this enterprise, however, he had more real difficulties than generally fell to the lot of a knight-errant of yore, who seldom had anything but giants, enchanters, fiery dragons, and such like easily conquered adversaries, to contend with and had to make his way merely through gates of iron and brass, and walls of adamant to the castle keep, where the lady of his heart was confined; all which he achieved as easily as a man would carve his way to the centre of a Christmas pie; and then the lady gave him her hand as a matter of course. Ichabod, on the contrary, had to win his way to the heart of a country coquette, beset with a labyrinth of whims and caprices, which were forever presenting new difficulties and impediments; and he had to encounter a host of fearful adversaries of real flesh and blood, the numerous rustic admirers, who beset every portal to her heart, keeping a watchful and angry eye upon each other, but ready to fly out in the common cause against any new competitor.

Among these, the most formidable was a burly, roaring, roystering blade, of the name of Abraham, or, according to the Dutch abbreviation, Brom Van Brunt, the hero of the country round, which rang with his feats of strength and hardihood. He was broad-shouldered and double-jointed, with short curly black hair, and a bluff but not unpleasant countenance, having a mingled air of fun and arrogance. From his Herculean frame and great powers of limb he had received the nickname of BROM BONES, by which he was universally known. He was famed for great knowledge and skill in horsemanship, being as dexterous on horseback as a Tartar. He was foremost at all races and cock fights; and, with the ascendancy which bodily strength always acquires in rustic life, was the umpire in all disputes, setting his hat on one side, and giving his decisions with an air and tone that admitted of no gainsay or appeal. He was always ready for either a fight or a frolic; but had more mischief than ill-will in his composition; and with all his overbearing roughness, there was a strong dash of waggish good humor at bottom. He had three or four boon companions, who regarded him as their model, and at the head of whom he scoured the country, attending every scene of feud or merriment for miles round. In cold weather he was distinguished by a fur cap, surmounted with a flaunting fox's tail; and when the folks at a country gathering descried this well-known crest at a distance, whisking about among a squad of hard riders, they always stood by for a squall. Sometimes his crew would be heard dashing along past the farmhouses at midnight, with whoop and halloo, like a troop of Don Cossacks; and the old dames, startled out of their sleep, would listen for a moment till the hurry-scurry had clattered by, and then exclaim, "Ay, there goes Brom Bones and his gang!" The neighbors looked upon him with a mixture of awe, admiration, and good-will; and, when any madcap prank or rustic brawl occurred in the vicinity, always shook their heads, and warranted Brom Bones was at the bottom of it.

This rantipole hero had for some time singled out the blooming Katrina for the object of his uncouth gallantries, and though his amorous toyings were something like the gentle caresses and endearments of a bear, yet it was whispered that she did not altogether discourage his hopes. Certain it is, his advances were signals for rival candidates to retire, who felt no inclination to cross a lion in his amours; insomuch, that when his horse was seen tied to Van Tassel's paling, on a Sunday night, a sure sign that his master was courting, or, as it is termed, "sparking," within, all other suitors passed by in despair, and carried the war into other quarters.

Such was the formidable rival with whom Ichabod Crane had to contend, and, considering all things, a stouter man than he would have shrunk from the competition, and a wiser man would have despaired. He had, however, a happy mixture of pliability and perseverance in his nature; he was in form and spirit like a supple-jack—yielding, but tough; though he bent, he never broke; and though he bowed beneath the slightest pressure, yet, the moment it was away—jerk!—he was as erect, and carried his head as high as ever.

To have taken the field openly against his rival would have been madness; for he was not a man to be thwarted in his amours, any more than that stormy lover, Achilles. Ichabod, therefore, made his advances in a quiet and gently insinuating manner. Under cover of his character of singing-master, he made frequent visits at the farmhouse; not that he had anything to apprehend from the meddlesome interference of parents, which is so often a stumbling-block in the path of lovers. Balt Van Tassel was an easy indulgent soul; he loved his daughter better even than his pipe, and, like a reasonable man and an excellent father, let her have her way in everything. His notable little wife, too, had enough to do to attend to her housekeeping and manage her poultry; for, as she sagely observed, ducks and geese are foolish things, and must be looked after, but girls can take care of themselves. Thus, while the busy dame bustled about the house, or plied her spinning-wheel at one end of the piazza, honest Balt would sit smoking his evening pipe at the other, watching the achievements of a little wooden warrior, who, armed with a sword in each hand, was most valiantly fighting the wind on the pinnacle of the barn. In the mean time, Ichabod would carry on his suit with the daughter by the side of the spring under the great elm, or sauntering along in the twilight, that hour so favorable to the lover's eloquence.

I profess not to know how women's hearts are wooed and won. To me they have always been matters of riddle and admiration. Some seem to have but one vulnerable point, or door of access; while others have a thousand avenues, and may be captured in a thousand different ways. It is a great triumph of skill to gain the former, but a still greater proof of generalship to maintain possession of the latter, for man must battle for his fortress at every door and window. He who wins a thousand common hearts is therefore entitled to some renown; but he who keeps undisputed sway over the heart of a coquette is indeed a hero. Certain it is, this was not the case with the redoubtable Brom Bones; and from the moment Ichabod Crane made his advances, the interests of the former evidently declined: his horse was no longer seen tied to the palings on Sunday nights, and a deadly feud gradually arose between him and the preceptor of Sleepy Hollow.

Brom, who had a degree of rough chivalry in his nature, would fain have carried matters to open warfare and have settled their pretensions to the lady, according to the mode of those most concise and simple reasoners, the knights-errant of yore,—by single combat; but Ichabod was too conscious of the superior might of his adversary to enter the lists against him; he had overheard a boast of Bones, that he would "double the schoolmaster up, and lay him on a shelf of his own schoolhouse;" and he was too wary to give him an opportunity. There was something extremely provoking in this obstinately pacific system; it left Brom no alternative but to draw upon the funds of rustic waggery in his disposition, and to play off boorish practical jokes upon his rival. Ichabod became the object of whimsical persecution to Bones and his gang of rough riders. They harried his hitherto peaceful domains; smoked out his singing school by stopping up the chimney; broke into the schoolhouse at night, in spite of its formidable fastenings of withe and window stakes, and turned everything topsy-turvy, so that the poor schoolmaster began to think all the witches in the country held their meetings there. But what was still more annoying, Brom took all opportunities of turning him into ridicule in presence of his mistress, and had a scoundrel dog whom he taught to whine in the most ludicrous manner, and introduced as a rival of Ichabod's, to instruct her in psalmody.

In this way matters went on for some time, without producing any material effect on the relative situations of the contending powers. On a fine autumnal afternoon, Ichabod, in pensive mood, sat enthroned on the lofty stool from whence he usually watched all the concerns of his little literary realm. In his hand he swayed a ferule, that sceptre of despotic power; the birch of justice reposed on three nails behind the throne, a constant terror to evil doers, while on the desk before him might be seen sundry contraband articles and prohibited weapons, detected upon the persons of idle urchins, such as half-munched apples, popguns, whirligigs, fly-cages, and whole legions of rampant little paper gamecocks. Apparently there had been some appalling act of justice recently inflicted, for his scholars were all busily intent upon their books, or slyly whispering behind them with one eye kept upon the master; and a kind of buzzing stillness reigned throughout the schoolroom. It was suddenly interrupted by the appearance of a negro in tow-cloth jacket and trowsers, a round-crowned fragment of a hat, like the cap of Mercury, and mounted on the back of a ragged, wild, half-broken colt, which he managed with a rope by way of halter. He came clattering up to the school door with an invitation to Ichabod to attend a merry-making or "quilting frolic," to be held that evening at Mynheer Van Tassel's; and having delivered his message with that air of importance, and effort at fine language, which a negro is apt to display on petty embassies of the kind, he dashed over the brook, and was seen scampering away up the hollow, full of the importance and hurry of his mission.

All was now bustle and hubbub in the late quiet schoolroom. The scholars were hurried through their lessons without stopping at trifles; those who were nimble skipped over half with impunity, and those who were tardy had a smart application now and then in the rear, to quicken their speed or help them over a tall word. Books were flung aside without being put away on the shelves, inkstands were overturned, benches thrown down, and the whole school was turned loose an hour before the usual time, bursting forth like a legion of young imps, yelping and racketing about the green in joy at their early emancipation.

The gallant Ichabod now spent at least an extra half hour at his toilet, brushing and furbishing up his best, and indeed only suit of rusty black, and arranging his locks by a bit of broken looking-glass that hung up in the schoolhouse. That he might make his appearance before his mistress in the true style of a cavalier, he borrowed a horse from the farmer with whom he was domiciliated, a choleric old Dutchman of the name of Hans Van Ripper, and, thus gallantly mounted, issued forth like a knight-errant in quest of adventures. But it is meet I should, in the true spirit of romantic story, give some account of the looks and equipments of my hero and his steed. The animal he bestrode was a broken-down plow-horse, that had outlived almost everything but its viciousness. He was gaunt and shagged, with a ewe neck, and a head like a hammer; his rusty mane and tail were tangled and knotted with burs; one eye had lost its pupil, and was glaring and spectral, but the other had the gleam of a genuine devil in it. Still he must have had fire and mettle in his day, if we may judge from the name he bore of Gunpowder. He had, in fact, been a favorite steed of his master's, the choleric Van Ripper, who was a furious rider, and had infused, very probably, some of his own spirit into the animal; for, old and broken-down as he looked, there was more of the lurking devil in him than in any young filly in the country.

Ichabod was a suitable figure for such a steed. He rode with short stirrups, which brought his knees nearly up to the pommel of the saddle; his sharp elbows stuck out like grasshoppers'; he carried his whip perpendicularly in his hand, like a sceptre, and as his horse jogged on, the motion of his arms was not unlike the flapping of a pair of wings. A small wool hat rested on the top of his nose, for so his scanty strip of forehead might be called, and the skirts of his black coat fluttered out almost to the horses tail. Such was the appearance of Ichabod and his steed as they shambled out of the gate of Hans Van Ripper, and it was altogether such an apparition as is seldom to be met with in broad daylight.

It was, as I have said, a fine autumnal day; the sky was clear and serene, and nature wore that rich and golden livery which we always associate with the idea of abundance. The forests had put on their sober brown and yellow, while some trees of the tenderer kind had been nipped by the frosts into brilliant dyes of orange, purple, and scarlet. Streaming files of wild ducks began to make their appearance high in the air; the bark of the squirrel might be heard from the groves of beech and hickory-nuts, and the pensive whistle of the quail at intervals from the neighboring stubble field.

The small birds were taking their farewell banquets. In the fullness of their revelry, they fluttered, chirping and frolicking from bush to bush, and tree to tree, capricious from the very profusion and variety around them. There was the honest cock robin, the favorite game of stripling sportsmen, with its loud querulous note; and the twittering blackbirds flying in sable clouds; and the golden-winged woodpecker with his crimson crest, his broad black gorget, and splendid plumage; and the cedar bird, with its red-tipt wings and yellow-tipt tail and its little monteiro cap of feathers; and the blue jay, that noisy coxcomb, in his gay light blue coat and white underclothes, screaming and chattering, nodding and bobbing and bowing, and pretending to be on good terms with every songster of the grove.

As Ichabod jogged slowly on his way, his eye, ever open to every symptom of culinary abundance, ranged with delight over the treasures of jolly autumn. On all sides he beheld vast store of apples; some hanging in oppressive opulence on the trees; some gathered into baskets and barrels for the market; others heaped up in rich piles for the cider-press. Farther on he beheld great fields of Indian corn, with its golden ears peeping from their leafy coverts, and holding out the promise of cakes and hasty-pudding; and the yellow pumpkins lying beneath them, turning up their fair round bellies to the sun, and giving ample prospects of the most luxurious of pies; and anon he passed the fragrant buckwheat fields breathing the odor of the beehive, and as he beheld them, soft anticipations stole over his mind of dainty slapjacks, well buttered, and garnished with honey or treacle, by the delicate little dimpled hand of Katrina Van Tassel.

Thus feeding his mind with many sweet thoughts and "sugared suppositions," he journeyed along the sides of a range of hills which look out upon some of the goodliest scenes of the mighty Hudson. The sun gradually wheeled his broad disk down in the west. The wide bosom of the Tappan Zee lay motionless and glassy, excepting that here and there a gentle undulation waved and prolonged the blue shadow of the distant mountain. A few amber clouds floated in the sky, without a breath of air to move them. The horizon was of a fine golden tint, changing gradually into a pure apple green, and from that into the deep blue of the mid-heaven. A slanting ray lingered on the woody crests of the precipices that overhung some parts of the river, giving greater depth to the dark gray and purple of their rocky sides. A sloop was loitering in the distance, dropping slowly down with the tide, her sail hanging uselessly against the mast; and as the reflection of the sky gleamed along the still water, it seemed as if the vessel was suspended in the air.

It was toward evening that Ichabod arrived at the castle of the Heer Van Tassel, which he found thronged with the pride and flower of the adjacent country. Old farmers, a spare leathern-faced race, in homespun coats and breeches, blue stockings, huge shoes, and magnificent pewter buckles. Their brisk, withered little dames, in close-crimped caps, long-waisted short gowns, homespun petticoats, with scissors and pincushions, and gay calico pockets hanging on the outside. Buxom lasses, almost as antiquated as their mothers, excepting where a straw hat, a fine ribbon, or perhaps a white frock, gave symptoms of city innovation. The sons, in short square-skirted coats, with rows of stupendous brass buttons, and their hair generally queued in the fashion of the times, especially if they could procure an eel-skin for the purpose, it being esteemed throughout the country as a potent nourisher and strengthener of the hair.

Brom Bones, however, was the hero of the scene, having come to the gathering on his favorite steed Daredevil, a creature, like himself, full of mettle and mischief, and which no one but himself could manage. He was, in fact, noted for preferring vicious animals, given to all kinds of tricks which kept the rider in constant risk of his neck, for he held a tractable, well-broken horse as unworthy of a lad of spirit.

Fain would I pause to dwell upon the world of charms that burst upon the enraptured gaze of my hero, as he entered the state parlor of Van Tassel's mansion. Not those of the bevy of buxom lasses, with their luxurious display of red and white; but the ample charms of a genuine Dutch country tea-table, in the sumptuous time of autumn. Such heaped up platters of cakes of various and almost indescribable kinds, known only to experienced Dutch housewives! There was the doughty doughnut, the tender oly koek, and the crisp and crumbling cruller; sweet cakes and short cakes, ginger cakes and honey cakes, and the whole family of cakes. And then there were apple pies, and peach pies, and pumpkin pies; besides slices of ham and smoked beef; and moreover delectable dishes of preserved plums, and peaches, and pears, and quinces; not to mention broiled shad and roasted chickens; together with bowls of milk and cream, all mingled higgledy-piggledy, pretty much as I have enumerated them, with the motherly teapot sending up its clouds of vapor from the midst—Heaven bless the mark! I want breath and time to discuss this banquet as it deserves, and am too eager to get on with my story. Happily, Ichabod Crane was not in so great a hurry as his historian, but did ample justice to every dainty.

He was a kind and thankful creature, whose heart dilated in proportion as his skin was filled with good cheer, and whose spirits rose with eating, as some men's do with drink. He could not help, too, rolling his large eyes round him as he ate, and chuckling with the possibility that he might one day be lord of all this scene of almost unimaginable luxury and splendor. Then, he thought, how soon he'd turn his back upon the old schoolhouse; snap his fingers in the face of Hans Van Ripper, and every other niggardly patron, and kick any itinerant pedagogue out of doors that should dare to call him comrade!

Old Baltus Van Tassel moved about among his guests with a face dilated with content and good humor, round and jolly as the harvest moon. His hospitable attentions were brief, but expressive, being confined to a shake of the hand, a slap on the shoulder, a loud laugh, and a pressing invitation to "fall to, and help themselves."

And now the sound of the music from the common room, or hall, summoned to the dance. The musician was an old gray-headed negro, who had been the itinerant orchestra of the neighborhood for more than half a century. His instrument was as old and battered as himself. The greater part of the time he scraped on two or three strings, accompanying every movement of the bow with a motion of the head; bowing almost to the ground, and stamping with his foot whenever a fresh couple were to start.

Ichabod prided himself upon his dancing as much as upon his vocal powers. Not a limb, not a fibre about him was idle; and to have seen his loosely hung frame in full motion, and clattering about the room, you would have thought St. Vitus himself, that blessed patron of the dance, was figuring before you in person. He was the admiration of all the negroes; who, having gathered, of all ages and sizes, from the farm and the neighborhood, stood forming a pyramid of shining black faces at every door and window, gazing with delight at the scene, rolling their white eyeballs, and showing grinning rows of ivory from ear to ear. How could the flogger of urchins be otherwise than animated and joyous? The lady of his heart was his partner in the dance, and smiling graciously in reply to all his amorous oglings; while Brom Bones, sorely smitten with love and jealousy, sat brooding by himself in one corner.

When the dance was at an end, Ichabod was attracted to a knot of the sager folks, who, with Old Van Tassel, sat smoking at one end of the piazza, gossiping over former times, and drawing out long stories about the war.

This neighborhood, at the time of which I am speaking, was one of those highly favored places which abound with chronicle and great men. The British and American line had run near it during the war; it had, therefore, been the scene of marauding and infested with refugees, cowboys, and all kinds of border chivalry. Just sufficient time had elapsed to enable each storyteller to dress up his tale with a little becoming fiction, and, in the indistinctness of his recollection, to make himself the hero of every exploit.

There was the story of Doffue Martling, a large blue-bearded Dutchman, who had nearly taken a British frigate with an old iron nine-pounder from a mud breastwork, only that his gun burst at the sixth discharge. And there was an old gentleman who shall be nameless, being too rich a mynheer to be lightly mentioned, who, in the battle of White Plains, being an excellent master of defence, parried a musket-ball with a small sword, insomuch that he absolutely felt it whiz round the blade, and glance off at the hilt; in proof of which he was ready at any time to show the sword, with the hilt a little bent. There were several more that had been equally great in the field, not one of whom but was persuaded that he had a considerable hand in bringing the war to a happy termination.

But all these were nothing to the tales of ghosts and apparitions that succeeded. The neighborhood is rich in legendary treasures of the kind. Local tales and superstitions thrive best in these sheltered, long-settled retreats; but are trampled under foot by the shifting throng that forms the population of most of our country places. Besides, there is no encouragement for ghosts in most of our villages, for they have scarcely had time to finish their first nap and turn themselves in their graves, before their surviving friends have travelled away from the neighborhood; so that when they turn out at night to walk their rounds, they have no acquaintance left to call upon. This is perhaps the reason why we so seldom hear of ghosts except in our long-established Dutch communities.

The immediate cause, however, of the prevalence of supernatural stories in these parts, was doubtless owing to the vicinity of Sleepy Hollow. There was a contagion in the very air that blew from that haunted region; it breathed forth an atmosphere of dreams and fancies infecting all the land. Several of the Sleepy Hollow people were present at Van Tassel's, and, as usual, were doling out their wild and wonderful legends. Many dismal tales were told about funeral trains, and mourning cries and wailings heard and seen about the great tree where the unfortunate Major André was taken, and which stood in the neighborhood. Some mention was made also of the woman in white, that haunted the dark glen at Raven Rock, and was often heard to shriek on winter nights before a storm, having perished there in the snow. The chief part of the stories, however, turned upon the favorite spectre of Sleepy Hollow, the Headless Horseman, who had been heard several times of late, patrolling the country; and, it was said, tethered his horse nightly among the graves in the churchyard.

The sequestered situation of this church seems always to have made it a favorite haunt of troubled spirits. It stands on a knoll, surrounded by locust-trees and lofty elms, from among which its decent, whitewashed walls shine modestly forth, like Christian purity beaming through the shades of retirement. A gentle slope descends from it to a silver sheet of water, bordered by high trees, between which, peeps may be caught at the blue hills of the Hudson. To look upon its grass-grown yard, where the sunbeams seem to sleep so quietly, one would think that there at least the dead might rest in peace. On one side of the church extends a wide woody dell, along which raves a large brook among broken rocks and trunks of fallen trees. Over a deep black part of the stream, not far from the church, was formerly thrown a wooden bridge; the road that led to it, and the bridge itself, were thickly shaded by overhanging trees, which cast a gloom about it, even in the daytime; but occasioned a fearful darkness at night. Such was one of the favorite haunts of the Headless Horseman, and the place where he was most frequently encountered. The tale was told of old Brouwer, a most heretical disbeliever in ghosts, how he met the Horseman returning from his foray into Sleepy Hollow, and was obliged to get up behind him; how they galloped over bush and brake, over hill and swamp, until they reached the bridge; when the Horseman suddenly turned into a skeleton, threw old Brouwer into the brook, and sprang away over the tree-tops with a clap of thunder.

This story was immediately matched by a thrice marvellous adventure of Brom Bones, who made light of the Galloping Hessian as an arrant jockey. He affirmed that on returning one night from the neighboring village of Sing Sing, he had been overtaken by this midnight trooper; that he had offered to race with him for a bowl of punch, and should have won it too, for Daredevil beat the goblin horse all hollow, but just as they came to the church bridge, the Hessian bolted, and vanished in a flash of fire.

All these tales, told in that drowsy undertone with which men talk in the dark, the countenances of the listeners only now and then receiving a casual gleam from the glare of a pipe, sank deep in the mind of Ichabod. He repaid them in kind with large extracts from his invaluable author, Cotton Mather, and added many marvellous events that had taken place in his native State of Connecticut, and fearful sights which he had seen in his nightly walks about Sleepy Hollow.

The revel now gradually broke up. The old farmers gathered together their families in their wagons, and were heard for some time rattling along the hollow roads, and over the distant hills. Some of the damsels mounted on pillions behind their favorite swains, and their light-hearted laughter, mingling with the clatter of hoofs, echoed along the silent woodlands, sounding fainter and fainter, until they gradually died away,—and the late scene of noise and frolic was all silent and deserted. Ichabod only lingered behind, according to the custom of country lovers, to have a tête-à-tête with the heiress; fully convinced that he was now on the high road to success. What passed at this interview I will not pretend to say, for in fact I do not know. Something, however, I fear me, must have gone wrong, for he certainly sallied forth, after no very great interval, with an air quite desolate and chapfallen. Oh, these women! these women! Could that girl have been playing off any of her coquettish tricks? Was her encouragement of the poor pedagogue all a mere sham to secure her conquest of his rival? Heaven only knows, not I! Let it suffice to say, Ichabod stole forth with the air of one who had been sacking a henroost, rather than a fair lady's heart. Without looking to the right or left to notice the scene of rural wealth, on which he had so often gloated, he went straight to the stable, and with several hearty cuffs and kicks roused his steed most uncourteously from the comfortable quarters in which he was soundly sleeping, dreaming of mountains of corn and oats, and whole valleys of timothy and clover.

It was the very witching time of night that Ichabod, heavy-hearted and crestfallen, pursued his travels homewards, along the sides of the lofty hills which rise above Tarry Town, and which he had traversed so cheerily in the afternoon. The hour was as dismal as himself. Far below him the Tappan Zee spread its dusky and indistinct waste of waters, with here and there the tall mast of a sloop, riding quietly at anchor under the land. In the dead hush of midnight, he could even hear the barking of the watchdog from the opposite shore of the Hudson; but it was so vague and faint as only to give an idea of his distance from this faithful companion of man. Now and then, too, the long-drawn crowing of a cock, accidentally awakened, would sound far, far off, from some farmhouse away among the hills—but it was like a dreaming sound in his ear. No signs of life occurred near him, but occasionally the melancholy chirp of a cricket, or perhaps the guttural twang of a bullfrog from a neighboring marsh, as if sleeping uncomfortably and turning suddenly in his bed.

All the stories of ghosts and goblins that he had heard in the afternoon now came crowding upon his recollection. The night grew darker and darker; the stars seemed to sink deeper in the sky, and driving clouds occasionally hid them from his sight. He had never felt so lonely and dismal. He was, moreover, approaching the very place where many of the scenes of the ghost stories had been laid. In the centre of the road stood an enormous tulip-tree, which towered like a giant above all the other trees of the neighborhood, and formed a kind of landmark. Its limbs were gnarled and fantastic, large enough to form trunks for ordinary trees, twisting down almost to the earth, and rising again into the air. It was connected with the tragical story of the unfortunate André, who had been taken prisoner hard by; and was universally known by the name of Major André's tree. The common people regarded it with a mixture of respect and superstition, partly out of sympathy for the fate of its ill-starred namesake, and partly from the tales of strange sights, and doleful lamentations, told concerning it.

As Ichabod approached this fearful tree, he began to whistle; he thought his whistle was answered; it was but a blast sweeping sharply through the dry branches. As he approached a little nearer, he thought he saw something white, hanging in the midst of the tree: he paused and ceased whistling but, on looking more narrowly, perceived that it was a place where the tree had been scathed by lightning, and the white wood laid bare. Suddenly he heard a groan—his teeth chattered, and his knees smote against the saddle: it was but the rubbing of one huge bough upon another, as they were swayed about by the breeze. He passed the tree in safety, but new perils lay before him.

About two hundred yards from the tree, a small brook crossed the road, and ran into a marshy and thickly-wooded glen, known by the name of Wiley's Swamp. A few rough logs, laid side by side, served for a bridge over this stream. On that side of the road where the brook entered the wood, a group of oaks and chestnuts, matted thick with wild grape-vines, threw a cavernous gloom over it. To pass this bridge was the severest trial. It was at this identical spot that the unfortunate André was captured, and under the covert of those chestnuts and vines were the sturdy yeomen concealed who surprised him. This has ever since been considered a haunted stream, and fearful are the feelings of the schoolboy who has to pass it alone after dark.

As he approached the stream, his heart began to thump; he summoned up, however, all his resolution, gave his horse half a score of kicks in the ribs, and attempted to dash briskly across the bridge; but instead of starting forward, the perverse old animal made a lateral movement, and ran broadside against the fence. Ichabod, whose fears increased with the delay, jerked the reins on the other side, and kicked lustily with the contrary foot: it was all in vain; his steed started, it is true, but it was only to plunge to the opposite side of the road into a thicket of brambles and alder bushes. The schoolmaster now bestowed both whip and heel upon the starveling ribs of old Gunpowder, who dashed forward, snuffling and snorting, but came to a stand just by the bridge, with a suddenness that had nearly sent his rider sprawling over his head. Just at this moment a plashy tramp by the side of the bridge caught the sensitive ear of Ichabod. In the dark shadow of the grove, on the margin of the brook, he beheld something huge, misshapen and towering. It stirred not, but seemed gathered up in the gloom, like some gigantic monster ready to spring upon the traveller.

The hair of the affrighted pedagogue rose upon his head with terror. What was to be done? To turn and fly was now too late; and besides, what chance was there of escaping ghost or goblin, if such it was, which could ride upon the wings of the wind? Summoning up, therefore, a show of courage, he demanded in stammering accents, "Who are you?" He received no reply. He repeated his demand in a still more agitated voice. Still there was no answer. Once more he cudgelled the sides of the inflexible Gunpowder, and, shutting his eyes, broke forth with involuntary fervor into a psalm tune. Just then the shadowy object of alarm put itself in motion, and with a scramble and a bound stood at once in the middle of the road. Though the night was dark and dismal, yet the form of the unknown might now in some degree be ascertained. He appeared to be a horseman of large dimensions, and mounted on a black horse of powerful frame. He made no offer of molestation or sociability, but kept aloof on one side of the road, jogging along on the blind side of old Gunpowder, who had now got over his fright and waywardness.

Ichabod, who had no relish for this strange midnight companion, and bethought himself of the adventure of Brom Bones with the Galloping Hessian, now quickened his steed in hopes of leaving him behind. The stranger, however, quickened his horse to an equal pace. Ichabod pulled up, and fell into a walk, thinking to lag behind,—the other did the same. His heart began to sink within him; he endeavored to resume his psalm tune, but his parched tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, and he could not utter a stave. There was something in the moody and dogged silence of this pertinacious companion that was mysterious and appalling. It was soon fearfully accounted for. On mounting a rising ground, which brought the figure of his fellow-traveller in relief against the sky, gigantic in height, and muffled in a cloak, Ichabod was horror-struck on perceiving that he was headless!—but his horror was still more increased on observing that the head, which should have rested on his shoulders, was carried before him on the pommel of his saddle! His terror rose to desperation; he rained a shower of kicks and blows upon Gunpowder, hoping by a sudden movement to give his companion the slip; but the spectre started full jump with him. Away, then, they dashed through thick and thin; stones flying and sparks flashing at every bound. Ichabod's flimsy garments fluttered in the air, as he stretched his long lank body away over his horse's head, in the eagerness of his flight.

They had now reached the road which turns off to Sleepy Hollow; but Gunpowder, who seemed possessed with a demon, instead of keeping up it, made an opposite turn, and plunged headlong downhill to the left. This road leads through a sandy hollow shaded by trees for about a quarter of a mile, where it crosses the bridge famous in goblin story; and just beyond swells the green knoll on which stands the whitewashed church.

As yet the panic of the steed had given his unskilful rider an apparent advantage in the chase, but just as he had got half way through the hollow, the girths of the saddle gave way, and he felt it slipping from under him. He seized it by the pommel, and endeavored to hold it firm, but in vain; and had just time to save himself by clasping old Gunpowder round the neck, when the saddle fell to the earth, and he heard it trampled under foot by his pursuer. For a moment the terror of Hans Van Ripper's wrath passed across his mind,—for it was his Sunday saddle; but this was no time for petty fears; the goblin was hard on his haunches; and (unskilful rider that he was!) he had much ado to maintain his seat; sometimes slipping on one side, sometimes on another, and sometimes jolted on the high ridge of his horse's backbone, with a violence that he verily feared would cleave him asunder.

An opening in the trees now cheered him with the hopes that the church bridge was at hand. The wavering reflection of a silver star in the bosom of the brook told him that he was not mistaken. He saw the walls of the church dimly glaring under the trees beyond. He recollected the place where Brom Bones's ghostly competitor had disappeared. "If I can but reach that bridge," thought Ichabod, "I am safe." Just then he heard the black steed panting and blowing close behind him; he even fancied that he felt his hot breath. Another convulsive kick in the ribs, and old Gunpowder sprang upon the bridge; he thundered over the resounding planks; he gained the opposite side; and now Ichabod cast a look behind to see if his pursuer should vanish, according to rule, in a flash of fire and brimstone. Just then he saw the goblin rising in his stirrups, and in the very act of hurling his head at him. Ichabod endeavored to dodge the horrible missile, but too late. It encountered his cranium with a tremendous crash,—he was tumbled headlong into the dust, and Gunpowder, the black steed, and the goblin rider, passed by like a whirlwind.

The next morning the old horse was found without his saddle, and with the bridle under his feet, soberly cropping the grass at his master's gate. Ichabod did not make his appearance at breakfast; dinner-hour came, but no Ichabod. The boys assembled at the schoolhouse, and strolled idly about the banks of the brook; but no schoolmaster. Hans Van Ripper now began to feel some uneasiness about the fate of poor Ichabod, and his saddle. An inquiry was set on foot, and after diligent investigation they came upon his traces. In one part of the road leading to the church was found the saddle trampled in the dirt; the tracks of horses' hoofs deeply dented in the road, and evidently at furious speed, were traced to the bridge, beyond which, on the bank of a broad part of the brook, where the water ran deep and black, was found the hat of the unfortunate Ichabod, and close beside it a shattered pumpkin.

The brook was searched, but the body of the schoolmaster was not to be discovered. Hans Van Ripper as executor of his estate, examined the bundle which contained all his worldly effects. They consisted of two shirts and a half; two stocks for the neck; a pair or two of worsted stockings; an old pair of corduroy small-clothes; a rusty razor; a book of psalm tunes full of dog's-ears; and a broken pitch-pipe. As to the books and furniture of the schoolhouse, they belonged to the community, excepting Cotton Mather's "History of Witchcraft," a "New England Almanac," and a book of dreams and fortune-telling; in which last was a sheet of foolscap much scribbled and blotted in several fruitless attempts to make a copy of verses in honor of the heiress of Van Tassel. 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 of 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 admitted 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 exceedingly knowing whenever the story of Ichabod was related, and always burst into a hearty laugh at the mention of the pumpkin; which led some to suspect that he knew more about the matter than he chose to tell.

The old country wives, however, who are the best judges of these matters, maintain to this day that Ichabod was spirited away by supernatural means; and it is a favorite story often told about the neighborhood round the winter evening fire. The bridge became more than ever an object of superstitious awe; and that may be the reason why the road has been altered of late years, so as to approach the church by the border of the millpond. The schoolhouse being deserted soon fell to decay, and was reported to be haunted by the ghost of the unfortunate pedagogue and the plowboy, loitering homeward of a still summer evening, has often fancied his voice at a distance, chanting a melancholy psalm tune among the tranquil solitudes of Sleepy Hollow.

 

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving  

 

 1. The main character in “The Legend of Sleep Hollow” was

A)    Ichabod Crane                                    C) Katrina Van Tassel

B)    Brom Bones                            D) Headless Horseman

 

 2.  Ichabod enjoyed stories about

A)   Racehorses                             C) famous teachers

B)    Dutch settlers                          D) ghosts and goblins

 

3.  Ichabod was in love with Katrina’s

A) Looks                                       C) horse

B) Singing                                     D) wealth

 

 4.  How does Ichabod go about gaining the affections of Katrina?

A)    teaches her to sing                C) teaches her to read

B)    teachers her to dance              D) teaches her to ride a horse

 

 5.  At the end of the party, Ichabod

A)    kisses Katrina                          C) is a very happy man

B)    gets dumped by Katrina        D) eats all of the leftover food

 

 6.  How does Ichabod usually solve conflicts?

A).    avoids them                               C) fights

B) meets them head on                       D) thinks his way through them

 

 7.  Ichabod’s main conflict, the antagonist, in “The Legend of Sleep Hollow” was

A) Katrina                                           C) Headless Horseman

B). Brom Bones                                  D) Hans Van Ripper

 

  8.  Washington Irving makes fun of the American Revolution by

A)    telling about how a man nearly sunk a war boat by himself

B)    telling how a man deflected a bullet with a sword

C)    telling how many people believed they were responsible for the happy outcome of the war

D)    all of the above

 

         9.  At the end of the story, Ichabod had a career as a

A)    Lawyer                                                C) schoolteacher

B)    Judge                                       D) all of the above

 

  10.  We can assume that Ichabod Crane

A). was spirited away by the headless horseman

B). was scared away by Brom Bones

C). married Katrina

 

          11. How are Icabod and Brom similar in this story?

           A. Both like Katrina                                     C. Both work very hard.

           B. Both enjoy reading                                               D. All of the above

 

           12.  How are Icabod and Brom different in this story?

A.    Icabod works with his head; Brom works with his body.

B.     Icabod is not good with horses; Brom is skilled with horses.

C.     Icabod is skinny and weak; Brom is muscular and strong.

D.    All of the above

 

          13. Because food is always on Icabod’s mind:

A.    He stays with students whose mothers are good cooks.

B.     He is more interested in the table of food than the pretty girls at the party.

C.     He “sees” the animals on the farm as if they were prepared food.

D.    All of the above.

 

       14.  What is the meaning of pedagogue, in the sentence: “Icabod Crane, that worthy pedagogue, stayed in Sleepy Hollow for the purpose of instructing the children of the vicinity.”

A.    Judge                     C. farmer

B.     schoolteacher        D. politician

 

Prairie material excerpt and organizer

 

Nationalism, which we associate with Romanticism, is in this case linked with the emergence of an American personality, and in the following comes to the fore through the literary element of setting. In Cooper’s The Leatherstocking Tales, note how setting comes to mold the characters.  As well, you should see how setting connects to theme. For example, the theme of a man stranded in the mountains, struggling to survive, might concern the powerlessness of man confronted by the forces of nature. (Keep that idea in mind for when we look at the literary movement of Naturalism).

From The Prairie by James Fenimore Cooper

 

            In the following excerpt, Natty Bumppo is close to death.  He is visited by Duncan Uncas Middleton, an army officer whose life Bumppo had saved a year earlier and been living the tribe of hard-heart, a young Pawnee chief, whom Bumppo had adopted as a son.  As Bumppo’s death approaches, both the Indians and the white men are deeply saddened.

 

When they entered the town, its inhabitants were seen collected in an

open space, where they were arranged with the customary deference to

age and rank. The whole formed a large circle, in the centre of which,

were perhaps a dozen of the principal chiefs. Hard-Heart waved his

hand as he approached, and, as the mass of bodies opened, he rode

through, followed by his companions. Here they dismounted; and as the

beasts were led apart, the strangers found themselves environed by a

thousand, grave, composed, but solicitous faces.

 

Middleton gazed about him, in growing concern, for no cry, no song, no

shout welcomed him among a people, from whom he had so lately parted

with regret. His uneasiness, not to say apprehensions, was shared by

all his followers. Determination and stern resolution began to assume

the place of anxiety in every eye, as each man silently felt for his

arms, and assured himself, that his several weapons were in a state

for service. But there was no answering symptom of hostility on the

part of their hosts. Hard-Heart beckoned for Middleton and Paul to

follow, leading the way towards the cluster of forms, that occupied

the centre of the circle. Here the visiters found a solution of all

the movements, which had given them so much reason for apprehension.

 

The trapper was placed on a rude seat, which had been made, with

studied care, to support his frame in an upright and easy attitude.

The first glance of the eye told his former friends, that the old man

was at length called upon to pay the last tribute of nature. His eye

was glazed, and apparently as devoid of sight as of expression. His

features were a little more sunken and strongly marked than formerly;

but there, all change, so far as exterior was concerned, might be said

to have ceased. His approaching end was not to be ascribed to any

positive disease, but had been a gradual and mild decay of the

physical powers. Life, it is true, still lingered in his system; but

it was as if at times entirely ready to depart, and then it would

appear to re-animate the sinking form, reluctant to give up the

possession of a tenement, that had never been corrupted by vice, or

undermined by disease. It would have been no violent fancy to have

imagined, that the spirit fluttered about the placid lips of the old

woodsman, reluctant to depart from a shell, that had so long given it

an honest and an honourable shelter.

 

His body was placed so as to let the light of the setting sun fall

full upon the solemn features. His head was bare, the long, thin,

locks of grey fluttering lightly in the evening breeze. His rifle lay

upon his knee, and the other accoutrements of the chase were placed at

his side, within reach of his hand. Between his feet lay the figure of

a hound, with its head crouching to the earth as if it slumbered; and

so perfectly easy and natural was its position, that a second glance

was necessary to tell Middleton, he saw only the skin of Hector,

stuffed by Indian tenderness and ingenuity in a manner to represent

the living animal. His own dog was playing at a distance, with the

child of Tachechana and Mahtoree. The mother herself stood at hand,

holding in her arms a second offspring, that might boast of a

parentage no less honourable, than that which belonged to the son of

Hard-Heart. Le Balafre was seated nigh the dying trapper, with every

mark about his person, that the hour of his own departure was not far

distant. The rest of those immediately in the centre were aged men,

who had apparently drawn near, in order to observe the manner, in

which a just and fearless warrior would depart on the greatest of his

journeys.

 

The old man was reaping the rewards of a life remarkable for

temperance and activity, in a tranquil and placid death. His vigour in

a manner endured to the very last. Decay, when it did occur, was

rapid, but free from pain. He had hunted with the tribe in the spring,

and even throughout most of the summer, when his limbs suddenly

refused to perform their customary offices. A sympathising weakness

took possession of all his faculties; and the Pawnees believed, that

they were going to lose, in this unexpected manner, a sage and

counsellor, whom they had begun both to love and respect. But as we

have already said, the immortal occupant seemed unwilling to desert

its tenement. The lamp of life flickered without becoming

extinguished. On the morning of the day, on which Middleton arrived,

there was a general reviving of the powers of the whole man. His

tongue was again heard in wholesome maxims, and his eye from time to

time recognised the persons of his friends. It merely proved to be a

brief and final intercourse with the world on the part of one, who had

already been considered, as to mental communion, to have taken his

leave of it for ever.

 

When he had placed his guests in front of the dying man, Hard-Heart,

after a pause, that proceeded as much from sorrow as decorum, leaned a

little forward and demanded--

 

"Does my father hear the words of his son?"

 

"Speak," returned the trapper, in tones that issued from his chest,

but which were rendered awfully distinct by the stillness that reigned

in the place. "I am about to depart from the village of the Loups, and

shortly shall be beyond the reach of your voice."

 

"Let the wise chief have no cares for his journey," continued Hard-

Heart with an earnest solicitude, that led him to forget, for the

moment, that others were waiting to address his adopted parent; "a

hundred Loups shall clear his path from briars."

 

"Pawnee, I die as I have lived, a Christian man," resumed the trapper

with a force of voice that had the same startling effect upon his

hearers, as is produced by the trumpet, when its blast rises suddenly

and freely on the air, after its obstructed sounds have been heard

struggling in the distance: "as I came into life so will I leave it.

Horses and arms are not needed to stand in the presence of the Great

Spirit of my people. He knows my colour, and according to my gifts

will he judge my deeds."

 

"My father will tell my young men, how many Mingoes he has struck, and

what acts of valour and justice he has done, that they may know how to

imitate him."

 

"A boastful tongue is not heard in the heaven of a white man,"

solemnly returned the old man. "What I have done, He has seen. His

eyes are always open. That, which has been well done, will He

remember; wherein I have been wrong will He not forget to chastise,

though He will do the same in mercy. No, my son; a Pale-face may not

sing his own praises, and hope to have them acceptable before his

God."

 

A little disappointed, the young partisan stepped modestly back,

making way for the recent comers to approach. Middleton took one of

the meagre hands of the trapper, and struggling to command his voice,

he succeeded in announcing his presence. The old man listened like one

whose thoughts were dwelling on a very different subject, but when the

other had succeeded in making him understand, that he was present, an

expression of joyful recognition passed over his faded features--"I

hope you have not so soon forgotten those, whom you so materially

served!" Middleton concluded. "It would pain me to think my hold on

your memory was so light."

 

"Little that I have ever seen is forgotten," returned the trapper: "I

am at the close of many weary days, but there is not one among them

all, that I could wish to overlook. I remember you with the whole of

your company; ay, and your grand'ther, that went before you. I am

glad, that you have come back upon these plains, for I had need of

one, who speaks the English, since little faith can be put in the

traders of these regions. Will you do a favour to an old and dying

man?"

 

"Name it," said Middleton; "it shall be done."

 

"It is a far journey to send such trifles," resumed the old man, who

spoke at short intervals, as strength and breath permitted; "a far and

weary journey is the same; but kindnesses and friendships are things

not to be forgotten. There is a settlement among the Otsego hills--"

 

"I know the place," interrupted Middleton, observing that he spoke

with increasing difficulty; "proceed to tell me, what you would have

done."

 

"Take this rifle, and pouch, and horn, and send them to the person,

whose name is graven on the plates of the stock,--a trader cut the

letters with his knife,--for it is long, that I have intended to send

him such a token of my love."

 

"It shall be so. Is there more that you could wish?"

 

"Little else have I to bestow. My traps I give to my Indian son; for

honestly and kindly has he kept his faith. Let him stand before me."

 

Middleton explained to the chief what the trapper had said and

relinquished his own place to the other.

 

"Pawnee," continued the old man, always changing his language to suit

the person he addressed, and not unfrequently according to the ideas

he expressed, "it is a custom of my people for the father to leave his

blessing with the son, before he shuts his eves for ever. This

blessing I give to you; take it, for the prayers of a Christian man

will never make the path of a just warrior, to the blessed prairies,

either longer, or more tangled. May the God of a white man look on

your deeds with friendly eyes, and may you never commit an act, that

shall cause Him to darken His face. I know not whether we shall ever

meet again. There are many traditions concerning the place of Good

Spirits. It is not for one like me, old and experienced though I am,

to set up my opinions against a nation's. You believe in the blessed

prairies, and I have faith in the sayings of my fathers. If both are

true, our parting will be final; but if it should prove, that the same

meaning is hid under different words, we shall yet stand together,

Pawnee, before the face of your Wahcondah, who will then be no other

than my God. There is much to be said in favour of both religions, for

each seems suited to its own people, and no doubt it was so intended.

I fear, I have not altogether followed the gifts of my colour,

inasmuch as I find it a little painful to give up for ever the use of

the rifle, and the comforts of the chase. But then the fault has been

my own, seeing that it could not have been His. Ay, Hector," he

continued, leaning forward a little, and feeling for the ears of the

hound, "our parting has come at last, dog, and it will be a long hunt.

You have been an honest, and a bold, and a faithful hound. Pawnee, you

cannot slay the pup on my grave, for where a Christian dog falls,

there he lies for ever; but you can be kind to him, after I am gone,

for the love you bear his master."

 

"The words of my father are in my ears," returned the young partisan,

making a grave and respectful gesture of assent.

 

"Do you hear, what the chief has promised, dog?" demanded the trapper,

making an effort to attract the notice of the insensible effigy of his

hound. Receiving no answering look, nor hearing any friendly whine,

the old man felt for the mouth and endeavoured to force his hand

between the cold lips. The truth then flashed upon him, although he

was far from perceiving the whole extent of the deception. Falling

back in his seat, he hung his head, like one who felt a severe and

unexpected shock. Profiting by this momentary forgetfulness, two young

Indians removed the skin with the same delicacy of feeling, that had

induced them to attempt the pious fraud.

 

"The dog is dead!" muttered the trapper, after a pause of many

minutes; "a hound has his time as well as a man and well has he filled

his days! Captain," he added, making an effort to wave his hand for

Middleton, "I am glad you have come; for though kind, and well meaning

according to the gifts of their colour, these Indians are not the men,

to lay the head of a white man in his grave. I have been thinking too,

of this dog at my feet; it will not do to set forth the opinion, that

a Christian can expect to meet his hound again; still there can be

little harm in placing what is left of so faithful a servant nigh the

bones of his master."

 

"It shall be as you desire."

 

"I'm glad, you think with me in this matter. In order then to save

labour, lay the pup at my feet, or for that matter put him, side by

side. A hunter need never be ashamed to be found in company with his

dog!"

 

"I charge myself with your wish."

 

The old man made a long, and apparently a musing pause. At times he

raised his eyes wistfully, as if he would again address Middleton, but

some innate feeling appeared always to suppress his words. The other,

who observed his hesitation, enquired in a way most likely to

encourage him to proceed, whether there was aught else that he could

wish to have done.

 

"I am without kith or kin in the wide world!" the trapper answered:

"when I am gone, there will be an end of my race. We have never been

chiefs; but honest and useful in our way, I hope it cannot be denied,

we have always proved ourselves. My father lies buried near the sea,

and the bones of his son will whiten on the prairies--"

 

"Name the spot, and your remains shall be placed by the side of your

father," interrupted Middleton.

 

"Not so, not so, Captain. Let me sleep, where I have lived, beyond the

din of the settlements! Still I see no need, why the grave of an

honest man should be hid, like a Red-skin in his ambushment. I paid a

man in the settlements to make and put a graven stone at the head of

my father's resting place. It was of the value of twelve beaver-skins,

and cunningly and curiously was it carved! Then it told to all comers

that the body of such a Christian lay beneath; and it spoke of his

manner of life, of his years, and of his honesty. When we had done

with the Frenchers in the old war, I made a journey to the spot, in

order to see that all was rightly performed, and glad I am to say, the

workman had not forgotten his faith."

 

"And such a stone you would have at your grave?"

 

"I! no, no, I have no son, but Hard-Heart, and it is little that an

Indian knows of White fashions and usages. Besides I am his debtor,

already, seeing it is so little I have done, since I have lived in his

tribe. The rifle might bring the value of such a thing--but then I

know, it will give the boy pleasure to hang the piece in his hall, for

many is the deer and the bird that he has seen it destroy. No, no, the

gun must be sent to him, whose name is graven on the lock!"

 

"But there is one, who would gladly prove his affection in the way you

wish; he, who owes you not only his own deliverance from so many

dangers, but who inherits a heavy debt of gratitude from his

ancestors. The stone shall be put at the head of your grave"

 

The old man extended his emaciated hand, and gave the other a squeeze

of thanks.

 

"I thought, you might be willing to do it, but I was backward in

asking the favour," he said, "seeing that you are not of my kin. Put

no boastful words on the same, but just the name, the age, and the

time of the death, with something from the holy book; no more no more.

My name will then not be altogether lost on 'arth; I need no more."

 

Middleton intimated his assent, and then followed a pause, that was

only broken by distant and broken sentences from the dying man. He

appeared now to have closed his accounts with the world, and to await

merely for the final summons to quit it. Middleton and Hard-Heart

placed themselves on the opposite sides of his seat, and watched with

melancholy solicitude, the variations of his countenance. For two

hours there was no very sensible alteration. The expression of his

faded and time-worn features was that of a calm and dignified repose.

From time to time he spoke, uttering some brief sentence in the way of

advice, or asking some simple questions concerning those in whose

fortunes he still took a friendly interest. During the whole of that

solemn and anxious period each individual of the tribe kept his place,

in the most self-restrained patience. When the old man spoke, all bent

their heads to listen; and when his words were uttered, they seemed to

ponder on their wisdom and usefulness.

 

As the flame drew nigher to the socket, his voice was hushed, and

there were moments, when his attendants doubted whether he still

belonged to the living. Middleton, who watched each wavering

expression of his weather-beaten visage, with the interest of a keen

observer of human nature, softened by the tenderness of personal

regard, fancied he could read the workings of the old man's soul in

the strong lineaments of his countenance. Perhaps what the enlightened

soldier took for the delusion of mistaken opinion did actually occur,

for who has returned from that unknown world to explain by what forms,

and in what manner, he was introduced into its awful precincts?

Without pretending to explain what must ever be a mystery to the

quick, we shall simply relate facts as they occurred.

 

The trapper had remained nearly motionless for an hour. His eyes,

alone, had occasionally opened and shut. When opened, his gaze seemed

fastened on the clouds, which hung around the western horizon,

reflecting the bright colours, and giving form and loveliness to the

glorious tints of an American sunset. The hour--the calm beauty of the

season--the occasion, all conspired to fill the spectators with solemn

awe. Suddenly, while musing on the remarkable position, in which he

was placed, Middleton felt the hand, which he held, grasp his own with

incredible power, and the old man, supported on either side by his

friends, rose upright to his feet. For a moment, he looked about him,

as if to invite all in presence to listen (the lingering remnant of

human frailty), and then, with a fine military elevation of the head,

and with a voice, that might be heard in every part of that numerous

assembly the word--

 

"Here!"

 

A movement so entirely unexpected, and the air of grandeur and

humility, which were so remarkably united in the mien of the trapper,

together with the clear and uncommon force of his utterance, produced

a short period of confusion in the faculties of all present. When

Middleton and Hard-Heart, each of whom had involuntarily extended a

hand to support the form of the old man, turned to him again, they

found, that the subject of their interest was removed for ever beyond

the necessity of their care. They mournfully placed the body in its

seat, and Le Balafre arose to announce the termination of the scene,

to the tribe. The voice of the old Indian seemed a sort of echo from

that invisible world, to which the meek spirit of the trapper had just

departed.

 

"A valiant, a just, and a wise warrior has gone on the path, which

will lead him to the blessed grounds of his people!" he said. "When

the voice of the Wahcondah called him, he was ready to answer. Go, my

children; remember the just chief of the Pale-faces, and clear your

own tracks from briars."

 

The grave was made beneath the shade of some noble oaks. It has been

carefully watched to the present hour by the Pawnees of the Loop, and

is often shown to the traveller and the trader as a spot where a just

Whiteman sleeps. In due time the stone was placed at its head, with

the simple inscription, which the trapper had himself requested. The

only liberty, taken by Middleton, was to add--"May no wanton hand ever

disturb his remains!"

 

 

 The Prairie by James Fennimore Cooper  This culminating work in the five books of The Leatherstocking Tales exemplifies the formation of a unique American personality.

Use specific text from the story to fill in the following.

Examples that support The Prairie is a Romantic piece of literature. Give quote and how it ties in	Examples that support The Prairie reflects the traditional Protestant views that America carried over from England	Examples that support The Prairie reflects the native peoples’ perspectives on spirituality.
1
2
3
4

 

The Fall of the House of Usher

by Edgar Allan Poe

(1839)    for Monday, December 3

 

 

  Son coeur est un luth suspendu;

  Sitôt qu'on le touche il résonne.

De Béranger.

 

DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was -- but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me -- upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain -- upon the bleak walls -- upon the vacant eye-like windows -- upon a few rank sedges -- and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees -- with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium -- the bitter lapse into everyday life -- the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart -- an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it -- I paused to think -- what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down -- but with a shudder even more thrilling than before -- upon the remodelled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.

 

Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to myself a sojourn of some weeks. Its proprietor, Roderick Usher, had been one of my boon companions in boyhood; but many years had elapsed since our last meeting. A letter, however, had lately reached me in a distant part of the country -- a letter from him -- which, in its wildly importunate nature, had admitted of no other than a personal reply. The MS. gave evidence of nervous agitation. The writer spoke of acute bodily illness -- of a mental disorder which oppressed him -- and of an earnest desire to see me, as his best, and indeed his only personal friend, with a view of attempting, by the cheerfulness of my society, some alleviation of his malady. It was the manner in which all this, and much more, was said -- it the apparent heart that went with his request --which allowed me no room for hesitation; and I accordingly obeyed forthwith what I still considered a very singular summons.

 

Although, as boys, we had been even intimate associates, yet I really knew little of my friend. His reserve had been always excessive and habitual. I was aware, however, that his very ancient family had been noted, time out of mind, for a peculiar sensibility of temperament, displaying itself, through long ages, in many works of exalted art, and manifested, of late, in repeated deeds of munificent yet unobtrusive charity, as well as in a passionate devotion to the intricacies, perhaps even more than to the orthodox and easily recognisable beauties, of musical science. I had learned, too, the very remarkable fact, that the stem of the Usher race, all time-honoured as it was, had put forth, at no period, any enduring branch; in other words, that the entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had always, with very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain. It was this deficiency, I considered, while running over in thought the perfect keeping of the character of the premises with the accredited character of the people, and while speculating upon the possible influence which the one, in the long lapse of centuries, might have exercised upon the other -- it was this deficiency, perhaps, of collateral issue, and the consequent undeviating transmission, from sire to son, of the patrimony with the name, which had, at length, so identified the two as to merge the original title of the estate in the quaint and equivocal appellation of the "House of Usher" -- an appellation which seemed to include, in the minds of the peasantry who used it, both the family and the family mansion.

 

I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish experiment --that of looking down within the tarn --had been to deepen the first singular impression. There can be no doubt that the consciousness of the rapid increase of my superstition -- for why should I not so term it? -- served mainly to accelerate the increase itself. Such, I have long known, is the paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror as a basis. And it might have been for this reason only, that, when I again uplifted my eyes to the house itself, from its image in the pool, there grew in my mind a strange fancy -- a fancy so ridiculous, indeed, that I but mention it to show the vivid force of the sensations which oppressed me. I had so worked upon my imagination as really to believe that about the whole mansion and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and their immediate vicinity -- an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the gray wall, and the silent tarn -- a pestilent and mystic vapour, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hued.

 

Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a dream, I scanned more narrowly the real aspect of the building. Its principal feature seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages had been great. Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves. Yet all this was apart from any extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen; and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the individual stones. In this there was much that reminded me of the specious totality of old wood-work which has rotted for long years in some neglected vault, with no disturbance from the breath of the external air. Beyond this indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little token of instability. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinising observer might have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn.

 

Noticing these things, I rode over a short causeway to the house. A servant in waiting took my horse, and I entered the Gothic archway of the hall. A valet, of stealthy step, thence conducted me, in silence, through many dark and intricate passages in my progress to the studio of his master. Much that I encountered on the way contributed, I know not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which I have already spoken. While the objects around me -- while the carvings of the ceilings, the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as I strode, were but matters to which, or to such as which, I had been accustomed from my infancy -- while I hesitated not to acknowledge how familiar was all this -- I still wondered to find how unfamiliar were the fancies which ordinary images were stirring up. On one of the staircases, I met the physician of the family. His countenance, I thought, wore a mingled expression of low cunning and perplexity. He accosted me with trepidation and passed on. The valet now threw open a door and ushered me into the presence of his master.

 

The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty. The windows were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from the black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within. Feeble gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through the trellised panes, and served to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects around; the eye, however, struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling. Dark draperies hung upon the walls. The general furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered. Many books and musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality to the scene. I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all.

 

Upon my entrance, Usher arose from a sofa on which he had been lying at full length, and greeted me with a vivacious warmth which had much in it, I at first thought, of an overdone cordiality -- of the constrained effort of the ennuyé man of the world. A glance, however, at his countenance, convinced me of his perfect sincerity. We sat down; and for some moments, while he spoke not, I gazed upon him with a feeling half of pity, half of awe. Surely, man had never before so terribly altered, in so brief a period, as had Roderick Usher! It was with difficulty that I could bring myself to admit the identity of the wan being before me with the companion of my early boyhood. Yet the character of his face had been at all times remarkable. A cadaverousness of complexion; an eye large, liquid, and luminous beyond comparison; lips somewhat thin and very pallid, but of a surpassingly beautiful curve; a nose of a delicate Hebrew model, but with a breadth of nostril unusual in similar formations; a finely moulded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want of moral energy; hair of a more than web-like softness and tenuity; these features, with an inordinate expansion above the regions of the temple, made up altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten. And now in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing character of these features, and of the expression they were wont to convey, lay so much of change that I doubted to whom I spoke. The now ghastly pallor of the skin, and the now miraculous lustre of the eye, above all things startled and even awed me. The silken hair, too, had been suffered to grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell about the face, I could not, even with effort, connect its Arabesque expression with any idea of simple humanity.

 

In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an incoherence -- an inconsistency; and I soon found this to arise from a series of feeble and futile struggles to overcome an habitual trepidancy -- an excessive nervous agitation. For something of this nature I had indeed been prepared, no less by his letter, than by reminiscences of certain boyish traits, and by conclusions deduced from his peculiar physical conformation and temperament. His action was alternately vivacious and sullen. His voice varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision (when the animal spirits seemed utterly in abeyance) to that species of energetic concision -- that abrupt, weighty, unhurried, and hollow-sounding enunciation -- that leaden, self-balanced and perfectly modulated guttural utterance, which may be observed in the lost drunkard, or the irreclaimable eater of opium, during the periods of his most intense excitement.

 

It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his earnest desire to see me, and of the solace he expected me to afford him. He entered, at some length, into what he conceived to be the nature of his malady. It was, he said, a constitutional and a family evil, and one for which he despaired to find a remedy -- a mere nervous affection, he immediately added, which would undoubtedly soon pass. It displayed itself in a host of unnatural sensations. Some of these, as he detailed them, interested and bewildered me; although, perhaps, the terms, and the general manner of the narration had their weight. He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses; the most insipid food was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture; the odours of all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even a faint light; and there were but peculiar sounds, and these from stringed instruments, which did not inspire him with horror.

 

To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden slave. "I shall perish," said he, "I must perish in this deplorable folly. Thus, thus, and not otherwise, shall I be lost. I dread the events of the future, not in themselves, but in their results. I shudder at the thought of any, even the most trivial, incident, which may operate upon this intolerable agitation of soul. I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect -- in terror. In this unnerved -- in this pitiable condition --I feel that the period will sooner or later arrive when I must abandon life and reason together, in some struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR."

 

I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and equivocal hints, another singular feature of his mental condition. He was enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling which he tenanted, and whence, for many years, he had never ventured forth -- in regard to an influence whose supposititious force was conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be re-stated -- an influence which some peculiarities in the mere form and substance of his family mansion, had, by dint of long sufferance, he said, obtained over his spirit -- an effect which the physique of the gray walls and turrets, and of the dim tarn into which they all looked down, had, at length, brought about upon the morale of his existence.

 

He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of the peculiar gloom which thus afflicted him could be traced to a more natural and far more palpable origin -- to the severe and long-continued illness -- indeed to the evidently approaching dissolution -- of a tenderly beloved sister -- his sole companion for long years -- his last and only relative on earth. "Her decease," he said, with a bitterness which I can never forget, "would leave him (him the hopeless and the frail) the last of the ancient race of the Ushers." While he spoke, the lady Madeline (for so was she called) passed slowly through a remote portion of the apartment, and, without having noticed my presence, disappeared. I regarded her with an utter astonishment not unmingled with dread -- and yet I found it impossible to account for such feelings. A sensation of stupor oppressed me, as my eyes followed her retreating steps. When a door, at length, closed upon her, my glance sought instinctively and eagerly the countenance of the brother -- but he had buried his face in his hands, and I could only perceive that a far more than ordinary wanness had overspread the emaciated fingers through which trickled many passionate tears.

 

The disease of the lady Madeline had long baffled the skill of her physicians. A settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person, and frequent although transient affections of a partially cataleptical character, were the unusual diagnosis. Hitherto she had steadily borne up against the pressure of her malady, and had not betaken herself finally to bed; but, on the closing in of the evening of my arrival at the house, she succumbed (as her brother told me at night with inexpressible agitation) to the prostrating power of the destroyer; and I learned that the glimpse I had obtained of her person would thus probably be the last I should obtain -- that the lady, at least while living, would be seen by me no more.

 

For several days ensuing, her name was unmentioned by either Usher or myself: and during this period I was busied in earnest endeavours to alleviate the melancholy of my friend. We painted and read together; or I listened, as if in a dream, to the wild improvisations of his speaking guitar. And thus, as a closer and still closer intimacy admitted me more unreservedly into the recesses of his spirit, the more bitterly did I perceive the futility of all attempt at cheering a mind from which darkness, as if an inherent positive quality, poured forth upon all objects of the moral and physical universe, in one unceasing radiation of gloom.

 

I shall ever bear about me a memory of the many solemn hours I thus spent alone with the master of the House of Usher. Yet I should fail in any attempt to convey an idea of the exact character of the studies, or of the occupations, in which he involved me, or led me the way. An excited and highly distempered ideality threw a sulphureous lustre over all. His long improvised dirges will ring forever in my cars. Among other things, I hold painfully in mind a certain singular perversion and amplification of the wild air of the last waltz of Von Weber. From the paintings over which his elaborate fancy brooded, and which grew, touch by touch, into vaguenesses at which I shuddered the more thrillingly, because I shuddered knowing not why; -- from these paintings (vivid as their images now are before me) I would in vain endeavour to educe more than a small portion which should lie within the compass of merely written words. By the utter simplicity, by the nakedness of his designs, he arrested and overawed attention. If ever mortal painted an idea, that mortal was Roderick Usher. For me at least -- in the circumstances then surrounding me -- there arose out of the pure abstractions which the hypochondriac contrived to throw upon his canvas, an intensity of intolerable awe, no shadow of which felt I ever yet in the contemplation of the certainly glowing yet too concrete reveries of Fuseli.

 

One of the phantasmagoric conceptions of my friend, partaking not so rigidly of the spirit of abstraction, may be shadowed forth, although feebly, in words. A small picture presented the interior of an immensely long and rectangular vault or tunnel, with low walls, smooth, white, and without interruption or device. Certain accessory points of the design served well to convey the idea that this excavation lay at an exceeding depth below the surface of the earth. No outlet was observed in any portion of its vast extent, and no torch, or other artificial source of light was discernible; yet a flood of intense rays rolled throughout, and bathed the whole in a ghastly and inappropriate splendour.

 

I have just spoken of that morbid condition of the auditory nerve which rendered all music intolerable to the sufferer, with the exception of certain effects of stringed instruments. It was, perhaps, the narrow limits to which he thus confined himself upon the guitar, which gave birth, in great measure, to the fantastic character of his performances. But the fervid facility of his impromptus could not be so accounted for. They must have been, and were, in the notes, as well as in the words of his wild fantasias (for he not unfrequently accompanied himself with rhymed verbal improvisations), the result of that intense mental collectedness and concentration to which I have previously alluded as observable only in particular moments of the highest artificial excitement. The words of one of these rhapsodies I have easily remembered. I was, perhaps, the more forcibly impressed with it, as he gave it, because, in the under or mystic current of its meaning, I fancied that I perceived, and for the first time, a full consciousness on the part of Usher, of the tottering of his lofty reason upon her throne. The verses, which were entitled "The Haunted Palace," ran very nearly, if not accurately, thus:

 

 

I.

 

 

In the greenest of our valleys,

   By good angels tenanted,

Once a fair and stately palace --

   Radiant palace -- reared its head.

In the monarch Thought's dominion --

   It stood there!

Never seraph spread a pinion

   Over fabric half so fair.

 

II.

 

 

Banners yellow, glorious, golden,

   On its roof did float and flow;

(This -- all this -- was in the olden

   Time long ago)

And every gentle air that dallied,

   In that sweet day,

Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,

   A winged odour went away.

 

III.

 

 

Wanderers in that happy valley

   Through two luminous windows saw

Spirits moving musically

    To a lute's well-tunèd law,

Round about a throne, where sitting

   (Porphyrogene!)

In state his glory well befitting,

    The ruler of the realm was seen.

 

IV.

 

 

And all with pearl and ruby glowing

   Was the fair palace door,

Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,

   And sparkling evermore,

A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty

   Was but to sing,

In voices of surpassing beauty,

   The wit and wisdom of their king.

 

V.

 

 

But evil things, in robes of sorrow,

   Assailed the monarch's high estate;

(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow

   Shall dawn upon him, desolate!)

And, round about his home, the glory

    That blushed and bloomed

Is but a dim-remembered story

    Of the old time entombed.

 

VI.

 

 

And travellers now within that valley,

   Through the red-litten windows, see

Vast forms that move fantastically

   To a discordant melody;

While, like a rapid ghastly river,

   Through the pale door,

A hideous throng rush out forever,

    And laugh -- but smile no more.

 

I well remember that suggestions arising from this ballad led us into a train of thought wherein there became manifest an opinion of Usher's which I mention not so much on account of its novelty, (for other men have thought thus,) as on account of the pertinacity with which he maintained it. This opinion, in its general form, was that of the sentience of all vegetable things. But, in his disordered fancy, the idea had assumed a more daring character, and trespassed, under certain conditions, upon the kingdom of inorganization. I lack words to express the full extent, or the earnest abandon of his persuasion. The belief, however, was connected (as I have previously hinted) with the gray stones of the home of his forefathers. The conditions of the sentience had been here, he imagined, fulfilled in the method of collocation of these stones -- in the order of their arrangement, as well as in that of the many fungi which overspread them, and of the decayed trees which stood around -- above all, in the long undisturbed endurance of this arrangement, and in its reduplication in the still waters of the tarn. Its evidence --the evidence of the sentience --was to be seen, he said, (and I here started as he spoke,) in the gradual yet certain condensation of an atmosphere of their own about the waters and the walls. The result was discoverable, he added, in that silent, yet importunate and terrible influence which for centuries had moulded the destinies of his family, and which made him what I now saw him -- what he was. Such opinions need no comment, and I will make none.

 

Our books -- the books which, for years, had formed no small portion of the mental existence of the invalid -- were, as might be supposed, in strict keeping with this character of phantasm. We pored together over such works as the Ververt et Chartreuse of Gresset; the Belphegor of Machiavelli; the Heaven and Hell of Swedenborg; the Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm by Holberg; the Chiromancy of Robert Flud, of Jean D'Indaginé, and of De la Chambre; the Journey into the Blue Distance of Tieck; and the City of the Sun of Campanella. One favourite volume was a small octavo edition of the Directorium Inquisitorum, by the Dominican Eymeric de Gironne; and there were passages in Pomponius Mela, about the old African Satyrs and OEgipans, over which Usher would sit dreaming for hours. His chief delight, however, was found in the perusal of an exceedingly rare and curious book in quarto Gothic -- the manual of a forgotten church --the Vigilae Mortuorum secundum Chorum Ecclesiae Maguntinae.

 

I could not help thinking of the wild ritual of this work, and of its probable influence upon the hypochondriac, when, one evening, having informed me abruptly that the lady Madeline was no more, he stated his intention of preserving her corpse for a fortnight, (previously to its final interment,) in one of the numerous vaults within the main walls of the building. The worldly reason, however, assigned for this singular proceeding, was one which I did not feel at liberty to dispute. The brother had been led to his resolution (so he told me) by consideration of the unusual character of the malady of the deceased, of certain obtrusive and eager inquiries on the part of her medical men, and of the remote and exposed situation of the burial-ground of the family. I will not deny that when I called to mind the sinister countenance of the person whom I met upon the staircase, on the day of my arrival at the house, I had no desire to oppose what I regarded as at best but a harmless, and by no means an unnatural, precaution.

 

At the request of Usher, I personally aided him in the arrangements for the temporary entombment. The body having been encoffined, we two alone bore it to its rest. The vault in which we placed it (and which had been so long unopened that our torches, half smothered in its oppressive atmosphere, gave us little opportunity for investigation) was small, damp, and entirely without means of admission for light; lying, at great depth, immediately beneath that portion of the building in which was my own sleeping apartment. It had been used, apparently, in remote feudal times, for the worst purposes of a donjon-keep, and, in later days, as a place of deposit for powder, or some other highly combustible substance, as a portion of its floor, and the whole interior of a long archway through which we reached it, were carefully sheathed with copper. The door, of massive iron, had been, also, similarly protected. Its immense weight caused an unusually sharp grating sound, as it moved upon its hinges.

 

Having deposited our mournful burden upon tressels within this region of horror, we partially turned aside the yet unscrewed lid of the coffin, and looked upon the face of the tenant. A striking similitude between the brother and sister now first arrested my attention; and Usher, divining, perhaps, my thoughts, murmured out some few words from which I learned that the deceased and himself had been twins, and that sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature had always existed between them. Our glances, however, rested not long upon the dead -- for we could not regard her unawed. The disease which had thus entombed the lady in the maturity of youth, had left, as usual in all maladies of a strictly cataleptical character, the mockery of a faint blush upon the bosom and the face, and that suspiciously lingering smile upon the lip which is so terrible in death. We replaced and screwed down the lid, and, having secured the door of iron, made our way, with toil, into the scarcely less gloomy apartments of the upper portion of the house.

 

And now, some days of bitter grief having elapsed, an observable change came over the features of the mental disorder of my friend. His ordinary manner had vanished. His ordinary occupations were neglected or forgotten. He roamed from chamber to chamber with hurried, unequal, and objectless step. The pallor of his countenance had assumed, if possible, a more ghastly hue --but the luminousness of his eye had utterly gone out. The once occasional huskiness of his tone was heard no more; and a tremulous quaver, as if of extreme terror, habitually characterized his utterance. There were times, indeed, when I thought his unceasingly agitated mind was labouring with some oppressive secret, to divulge which he struggled for the necessary courage. At times, again, I was obliged to resolve all into the mere inexplicable vagaries of madness, for I beheld him gazing upon vacancy for long hours, in an attitude of the profoundest attention, as if listening to some imaginary sound. It was no wonder that his condition terrified -- that it infected me. I felt creeping upon me, by slow yet certain degrees, the wild influences of his own fantastic yet impressive superstitions.

 

It was, especially, upon retiring to bed late in the night of the seventh or eighth day after the placing of the lady Madeline within the donjon, that I experienced the full power of such feelings. Sleep came not near my couch -- while the hours waned and waned away. I struggled to reason off the nervousness which had dominion over me. I endeavoured to believe that much, if not all of what I felt, was due to the bewildering influence of the gloomy furniture of the room -- of the dark and tattered draperies, which, tortured into motion by the breath of a rising tempest, swayed fitfully to and fro upon the walls, and rustled uneasily about the decorations of the bed. But my efforts were fruitless. An irrepressible tremour gradually pervaded my frame; and, at length, there sat upon my very heart an incubus of utterly causeless alarm. Shaking this off with a gasp and a struggle, I uplifted myself upon the pillows, and, peering earnestly within the intense darkness of the chamber, hearkened -- I know not why, except that an instinctive spirit prompted me -- to certain low and indefinite sounds which came, through the pauses of the storm, at long intervals, I knew not whence. Overpowered by an intense sentiment of horror, unaccountable yet unendurable, I threw on my clothes with haste (for I felt that I should sleep no more during the night), and endeavoured to arouse myself from the pitiable condition into which I had fallen, by pacing rapidly to and fro through the apartment.

 

I had taken but few turns in this manner, when a light step on an adjoining staircase arrested my attention. I presently recognised it as that of Usher. In an instant afterward he rapped, with a gentle touch, at my door, and entered, bearing a lamp. His countenance was, as usual, cadaverously wan -- but, moreover, there was a species of mad hilarity in his eyes -- an evidently restrained hysteria in his whole demeanour. His air appalled me -- but anything was preferable to the solitude which I had so long endured, and I even welcomed his presence as a relief.

 

"And you have not seen it?" he said abruptly, after having stared about him for some moments in silence -- "you have not then seen it? -- but, stay! you shall." Thus speaking, and having carefully shaded his lamp, he hurried to one of the casements, and threw it freely open to the storm.

 

The impetuous fury of the entering gust nearly lifted us from our feet. It was, indeed, a tempestuous yet sternly beautiful night, and one wildly singular in its terror and its beauty. A whirlwind had apparently collected its force in our vicinity; for there were frequent and violent alterations in the direction of the wind; and the exceeding density of the clouds (which hung so low as to press upon the turrets of the house) did not prevent our perceiving the life-like velocity with which they flew careering from all points against each other, without passing away into the distance. I say that even their exceeding density did not prevent our perceiving this -- yet we had no glimpse of the moon or stars -- nor was there any flashing forth of the lightning. But the under surfaces of the huge masses of agitated vapour, as well as all terrestrial objects immediately around us, were glowing in the unnatural light of a faintly luminous and distinctly visible gaseous exhalation which hung about and enshrouded the mansion.

 

"You must not -- you shall not behold this!" said I, shudderingly, to Usher, as I led him, with a gentle violence, from the window to a seat. "These appearances, which bewilder you, are merely electrical phenomena not uncommon -- or it may be that they have their ghastly origin in the rank miasma of the tarn. Let us close this casement; -- the air is chilling and dangerous to your frame. Here is one of your favourite romances. I will read, and you shall listen; -- and so we will pass away this terrible night together."

 

The antique volume which I had taken up was the "Mad Trist" of Sir Launcelot Canning; but I had called it a favourite of Usher's more in sad jest than in earnest; for, in truth, there is little in its uncouth and unimaginative prolixity which could have had interest for the lofty and spiritual ideality of my friend. It was, however, the only book immediately at hand; and I indulged a vague hope that the excitement which now agitated the hypochondriac, might find relief (for the history of mental disorder is full of similar anomalies) even in the extremeness of the folly which I should read. Could I have judged, indeed, by the wild over-strained air of vivacity with which he hearkened, or apparently hearkened, to the words of the tale, I might well have congratulated myself upon the success of my design.

 

I had arrived at that well-known portion of the story where Ethelred, the hero of the Trist, having sought in vain for peaceable admission into the dwelling of the hermit, proceeds to make good an entrance by force. Here, it will be remembered, the words of the narrative run thus:

 

"And Ethelred, who was by nature of a doughty heart, and who was now mighty withal, on account of the powerfulness of the wine which he had drunken, waited no longer to hold parley with the hermit, who, in sooth, was of an obstinate and maliceful turn, but, feeling the rain upon his shoulders, and fearing the rising of the tempest, uplifted his mace outright, and, with blows, made quickly room in the plankings of the door for his gauntleted hand; and now pulling therewith sturdily, he so cracked, and ripped, and tore all asunder, that the noise of the dry and hollow-sounding wood alarummed and reverberated throughout the forest."

 

At the termination of this sentence I started, and for a moment, paused; for it appeared to me (although I at once concluded that my excited fancy had deceived me) -- it appeared to me that, from some very remote portion of the mansion, there came, indistinctly, to my ears, what might have been, in its exact similarity of character, the echo (but a stifled and dull one certainly) of the very cracking and ripping sound which Sir Launcelot had so particularly described. It was, beyond doubt, the coincidence alone which had arrested my attention; for, amid the rattling of the sashes of the casements, and the ordinary commingled noises of the still increasing storm, the sound, in itself, had nothing, surely, which should have interested or disturbed me. I continued the story:

 

"But the good champion Ethelred, now entering within the door, was sore enraged and amazed to perceive no signal of the maliceful hermit; but, in the stead thereof, a dragon of a scaly and prodigious demeanour, and of a fiery tongue, which sate in guard before a palace of gold, with a floor of silver; and upon the wall there hung a shield of shining brass with this legend enwritten --

 

 

           Who entereth herein, a conqueror hath bin;

           Who slayeth the dragon, the shield he shall win;

 

And Ethelred uplifted his mace, and struck upon the head of the dragon, which fell before him, and gave up his pesty breath, with a shriek so horrid and harsh, and withal so piercing, that Ethelred had fain to close his ears with his hands against the dreadful noise of it, the like whereof was never before heard."

 

Here again I paused abruptly, and now with a feeling of wild amazement -- for there could be no doubt whatever that, in this instance, I did actually hear (although from what direction it proceeded I found it impossible to say) a low and apparently distant, but harsh, protracted, and most unusual screaming or grating sound -- the exact counterpart of what my fancy had already conjured up for the dragon's unnatural shriek as described by the romancer.

 

Oppressed, as I certainly was, upon the occurrence of the second and most extraordinary coincidence, by a thousand conflicting sensations, in which wonder and extreme terror were predominant, I still retained sufficient presence of mind to avoid exciting, by any observation, the sensitive nervousness of my companion. I was by no means certain that he had noticed the sounds in question; although, assuredly, a strange alteration had, during the last few minutes, taken place in his demeanour. From a position fronting my own, he had gradually brought round his chair, so as to sit with his face to the door of the chamber; and thus I could but partially perceive his features, although I saw that his lips trembled as if he were murmuring inaudibly. His head had dropped upon his breast -- yet I knew that he was not asleep, from the wide and rigid opening of the eye as I caught a glance of it in profile. The motion of his body, too, was at variance with this idea -- for he rocked from side to side with a gentle yet constant and uniform sway. Having rapidly taken notice of all this, I resumed the narrative of Sir Launcelot, which thus proceeded:

 

"And now, the champion, having escaped from the terrible fury of the dragon, bethinking himself of the brazen shield, and of the breaking up of the enchantment which was upon it, removed the carcass from out of the way before him, and approached valorously over the silver pavement of the castle to where the shield was upon the wall; which in sooth tarried not for his full coming, but fell down at his feet upon the silver floor, with a mighty great and terrible ringing sound."

 

No sooner had these syllables passed my lips, than -- as if a shield of brass had indeed, at the moment, fallen heavily upon a floor of silver -- I became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic, and clangorous, yet apparently muffled reverberation. Completely unnerved, I leaped to my feet; but the measured rocking movement of Usher was undisturbed. I rushed to the chair in which he sat. His eyes were bent fixedly before him, and throughout his whole countenance there reigned a stony rigidity. But, as I placed my hand upon his shoulder, there came a strong shudder over his whole person; a sickly smile quivered about his lips; and I saw that he spoke in a low, hurried, and gibbering murmur, as if unconscious of my presence. Bending closely over him, I at length drank in the hideous import of his words.

 

"Not hear it? -- yes, I hear it, and have heard it. Long -- long -- long -- many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it -- yet I dared not -- oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am! -- I dared not -- I dared not speak! We have put her living in the tomb! Said I not that my senses were acute? I now tell you that I heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I heard them -- many, many days ago -- yet I dared not -- I dared not speak! And now -- to-night -- Ethelred -- ha! ha! -- the breaking of the hermit's door, and the death-cry of the dragon, and the clangour of the shield! -- say, rather, the rending of her coffin, and the grating of the iron hinges of her prison, and her struggles within the coppered archway of the vault! Oh whither shall I fly? Will she not be here anon? Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for my haste? Have I not heard her footstep on the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her heart? Madman!" -- here he sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked out his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up his soul -- "Madman! I tell you that she now stands without the door!"

 

As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found the potency of a spell -- the huge antique pannels to which the speaker pointed, threw slowly back, upon the instant, their ponderous and ebony jaws. It was the work of the rushing gust -- but then without those doors there did stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline of Usher. There was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame. For a moment she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold -- then, with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother, and in her violent and now final death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated.

 

From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast. The storm was still abroad in all its wrath as I found myself crossing the old causeway. Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and I turned to see whence a gleam so unusual could wi have issued; for the vast house and its shadows were alone behind me. The radiance was that of the full, setting, and blood-red moon which now shone vividly through that once barely-discernible fissure, of which I have before spoken as extending from the roof of the building, in a zigzag direction, to the base. While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened -- there came a fierce breath of the whirlwind -- the entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my sight -- my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder -- there was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand waters -- and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the "House of Usher."

 

The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe

Each class member has been assigned a question for a detailed presentation next Monday. (some folks have the same one, but note that everyone is working / presenting individually.) You should make yourself an authority on this aspect of the story.On your jump drive, which in the original criteria sheet back in September you were to have, create one or two slides with textual information that supports your response. You may, as well, use visuals.)

 

Assigned responses: Joe (1); Aaron (2); Jamichael (3); Ashli (4) Allison; (5) Ariana; (6) Katherine; (7) Tamia; (8) Austin; (9) Tianna; (1) Chrishell; (2) Nalia; (3) Miranda; (4) Kathy; (5) Tarek; (6) Chris; (7) Sierra; (8) Heidi; (9) Nick; (10) Zadejah

  

1.      How is the physical appearance of the interior of the House of Usher related to the condition of Usher’s mind?  How is it related to his physical appearance?

 

 

2.      What details early in the story foreshadow the ending?

 

 

 

3.      Critics have argued that Madeline and Roderick are not only twins but are physical and metal components of the same being.  What evidence is there in the story to support this claim?

 

 

4.      In what way is the ending of the story ambiguous?  What do you think has happened?

 

 

       How does the following contribute to the growing sense of terror in “The Fall of the House of Usher”?

 

5.      The description of the House of Usher.  The description of Usher’s painting.

 

 

6.      The entombment of Madeleine.   Storms and other natural phenomena.

 

 

      Find evidence in the story to support the following:

 

7.      In the absence of contact with the real world, the human imagination an produce distorted perception of reality.

 

8.      When isolated from the real world, a person an be infected by another person’s fears and false perceptions of reality.

 

9.      If artists (many believe that Roderick Usher represents a typical creative artist) completely turn away from the external world and become drawn into the internal world of their imaginations, they ultimately destroy their capacity to create and may ultimately destroy themselves.