Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year Part 40

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. Summoning up, therefore, a show of courage, he demanded, in stammering tones, "_Who are you?_" He received no reply. 25

He repeated his demand in a still more agitated voice.

Still there was no answer. Once more he cudgeled 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 30 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. Ichabod, who had no relish for this 5 strange midnight companion, now quickened his steed in hopes of leaving him behind. The stranger 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 10 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 15 mounting a rising ground, which brought the figure of his fellow traveler in relief against the sky, gigantic in height and m.u.f.fled 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 20 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 specter started full jump with him. Away 25 then they dashed, through thick and thin, stones flying and sparks flas.h.i.+ng at every bound.

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 30 he was not mistaken. "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 5 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 10 his cranium with a tremendous crash. He was tumbled headlong into the dust, and Gunpowder, the black steed, and the goblin rider pa.s.sed by like a whirlwind.

The next morning the old horse was found without his saddle, and with the bridle under his feet, soberly cropping 15 the gra.s.s at his master's gate, while near the bridge, 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_!

--_A Legend of Sleepy Hollow._

1. You should read the entire "Legend" (see Irving's _Sketch Book_) and enjoy the detailed incidents leading up to this climax. Of course Ichabod leaves Sleepy Hollow, never to return. What evidence is there that Brom Bones was the ghost?

2. A ghost was supposed not to be able to cross running water. What evidence of this do you find in the story?

3. Why was Ichabod "heavy-hearted and crestfallen"?

Give two reasons.

4. Pick out the elements of the first two paragraphs that make the situation appear lonely.

5. Who was Major Andre? Why should Ichabod have especially feared the Andre tree?

6. What is there in this selection that is humorous?

SIGNING PEt.i.tIONS

"Another pet.i.tion!" exclaimed the banker. "No, I never sign them offhand--not any more. I used to do so--once to my sorrow and to the amus.e.m.e.nt of my friends. Leave yours with me till day after to-morrow and I'll consider it. I have at least four more now on the waiting 5 list, ranging in subject from the Removal of a Soap Factory to a Bridge Across the Pacific. Every business man is hounded week in and week out with pet.i.tions."

I reluctantly surrendered my long scroll with its formidable list of signatures. "But _the_ one that you once signed--what 10 of that?"

"Oh, that one? Well, there was a bright newsboy down on the square whose booth had been removed from a street corner because of a pet.i.tion to the Police Commissioner.

Of course everybody had signed the pet.i.tion; for signing 15 pet.i.tions was considered the proper thing if certain names headed the list. It came to be a roster of the best families in town. This newsboy retaliated--in kind. He drafted and circulated a pet.i.tion that was in due form. Everybody, including myself, signed it. Next day it was published in 20 full with the names of its signers, by all our city papers, and by night everybody in the state was laughing at us.

"The pet.i.tion recited that a sundial in Central Park, the gift of a wealthy citizen, was weathering badly. It should be protected. That sounded reasonable, so everybody 25 signed just below the name of everybody else. And what had we pet.i.tioned for? _A roof to cover that sundial!_

"You'll get no hasty signatures to a pet.i.tion in this city--we remember the sundial!"

_IN TIME OF WAR_

_Soldier, rest! thy warfare o'er, Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking; Dream of battled fields no more, Days of danger, nights of waking. . . .

Soldier, rest! thy warfare o'er, Dream of fighting fields no more; Sleep the sleep that knows no breaking, Morn of toil, nor night of waking._

--SIR WALTER SCOTT.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A MODERN BATTLE SCENE]

GREAT LITTLE RIVERS

BY FRAZIER HUNT

The armies of the world were contending on the battlefields of France in a death struggle, known in history as the World War. It was a mighty clash of ideas and ideals. Frazier Hunt, a war correspondent and journalist, selected the Little Rivers of France as a subject to carry his theme: that little things sometimes set apart great differences, and that littleness and greatness are not matters of physical size.

For miles along the hard white road that had helped save France a tiny river ran. But it was such a quiet race with life and time. It had no steep banks; only gentle, green, silent slopes that fell gracefully back from its edges.

Here and there fragrant woods wandered almost to its 5 drowsy waters.

A cuckoo sounded its call, and far off its mate sent back the echo. On sun-splashed mornings the thrush came, and in the moonlight the nightingale sang to this little stream. 10

It was a tiny river, and if in great America, only the countryside that knew its winding ways could have told its name. It was a brook for poets to dream by. Little islands of willows, weeping for France, slept in its heart.

One could almost whisper across it, and as a French schoolgirl 15 of fourteen wrote, "Birds could fly over it with one sweep of their wings. And on the two banks there were millions of men, the one turned towards the other, eye to eye. But the distance which separated them was greater than the stars in the sky; it was the distance which separates right from injustice."

It was a tiny river; it was the Yser.

Oxen drawing the cultivating plows that will help feed France and win the war almost splash into its shallow edges 5 as they turn the furrow. And on hot July days, the old man who prods them with his pointed stick and the st.u.r.dy woman who handles the plow let them drink their fill of its cooling waters--not plunging their noses deep like thirsty horses but gently drawing in the water with the lips, 10 after the manner of oxen.

It is a quiet stream that a child could ford without danger.

It flows slowly and sweetly from the mother hills to the embracing sea. A few arched bridges leap from one low bank to another. It has not cut deep into the land of 15 France but it has cut deep into the heart of France. It is one of the ribbons of victory and glory that France will always wear across her breast. And it is a ribbon made red by the blood of the men of France who have died for France.

And yet we of America would call it a little stream, and 20 old men would fish all day in it from a shaded velvet point, and boys swimming would hunt some favorite Devil's Hole where they might dive.

It is the Marne.

For four years now it has flowed peacefully on while 25 men have fought to scar its banks with trenches--burrowing themselves into the earth as only the muskrat had done in the forgotten days of peace. Strong, unafraid men came from the ends of the world to die by its side. And it would have gladly sung them a sweet, low lullaby, crooning a song 30 with which mothers on the sh.o.r.es of all the seven seas had once rocked them to sleep--only now the sound of heavy firing, dull booms of the cannon, and the spit and nervous drum of the machine gun, made its song as futile and indistinguishable as the whisper of a child in the roar of a mob. 5

What a story its sweet waters had to tell to all the rivers of the world when they met in the broad sea: a tale of strange men who fought and died that it might still be a part of France; a tale of deeds of glory and of valor and of sacrifice. And some of these men had come from faraway 10 America to this little river, this stream so tiny and so modest that it might have forever remained unknown and unsung.