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pressed 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 woodsmen 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 weathercock, 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 school-house was a low building of one large room, rudely constructed of logs, the windows partly glazed and partly patched with leaves of old copy-books. 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 eel-pot. The school-house 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 bee-hive, 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.

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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 time of it.

A DUTCH HEIRESS.

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.

ANTICIPATIONS.

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.

A LANDSCAPE.

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 into 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 darkgray 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.

JOHN PIERPONT.

John Pierpont was born in Litchfield, Conn., April 6, 1785. He received his education at Yale College, graduating in 1804, and then passed four years as a teacher in South Carolina. He studied law in the then famous school at Litchfield, and commenced practice at Newburyport, Mass. He had neither the means nor the inclination to wait for the slow tide of success in his laborious profession, and was induced to go into mercantile business with his brother-in-law, Mr. Lord, and John Neal. Though the firm prospered for a while, the rapid decline in prices after the war of 1812 swamped their little capita, in a few months. Mr. Pierpont then studied for the ministry, and was settled over Holis Street Church, in Boston. His ardent advocacy of the temperance and anti-slavery causes displeased a portion of his congregation, and at length, in 1845, he asked for a dismissal, and removed to Troy, N. Y. He remained in his new field of labor four years, when he accepted a call from a church in Medford, Mass. In his later years he became a spiritualist, and no longer acted with his former Unitarian brethren. He was employed for a few years in the Treasury Department at Washington, in making a digest of decisions. He died at Medford, August 27, 1866.

He was a man of great talent in many directions. He had great mechanical skill, especially in engraving and in turning delicate figures. One of his inventions, says John Neal, "the 'Pierpont or Doric Stove,' was a bit of concrete philosophy - a cast-iron syllogism of itself, so classically just in its proportions, and so eminently characteristic, as to be a type of the author." Mr. Neal thinks that his first choice, the law, would have been his true sphere, and that he would have been a leader in the profession if he had been willing to wait. His first poem, The Portrait, written at Newburyport, has some vigorous lines, though in palpable imitation of the style of Campbell. The Airs of Palestine, published in Baltimore after his mercantile failure, contains many beautiful passages. Of hymns for ordinations and dedications he wrote a great number that still hold their place in the collec tions for public worship. He wrote also a great many odes for various occasions, as well as poems upon reformatory subjects.

Few of his pieces have the completeness that belongs to enduring works; but in almost all of them there are traces of the true fire, and here and there are couplets that any poet might be proud to own.

Mr. Pierpont was tall and vigorous in person, very animated in conversation, and full of an ultra-apostolic zeal. He was thoroughly honest, fearless, and outspoken. With more suavity and more tact he would have had a pleasanter pathway through the world; but then he would not have been John Pierpont.

His life-long friend, John Neal, contributed an interesting brief memoir of him to the Atlantic Monthly, December, 1866.

PASSING AWAY.- A DREAM.

WAS it the chime of a tiny bell

That came so sweet to my dreaming ear,

Like the silvery tones of a fairy's shell

That he winds, on the beach, so mellow and clear,
When the winds and the waves lie together asleep,
And the Moon and the Fairy are watching the deep,
She dispensing her silvery light,

And he his notes as silvery quite,

While the boarman listens and ships his oar,
To catch the music that comes from the shore?
Hark! the notes, on my ear that play,

Are set to words: as they float, they say,
"Passing away! passing away!"

But no; it was not a fairy's shell,

Blown on the beach, so mellow and clear;
Nor was it the tongue of a silver bell,
Striking the hour, that filled my ear,
As I lay in my dream; yet was it a chime
That told of the flow of the stream of time.
For a beautiful clock from the ceiling hung,
And a plump little girl, for a pendulum, swung
(As you've sometimes seen, in a little ring
That hangs in his cage, a canary bird swing);
And she held to her bosom a budding bouquet,
And, as she enjoyed it, she seemed to say,

"Passing away! passing away!"

O, how bright were the wheels, that told

Of the lapse of time, as they moved round slow; And the hands, as they swept o'er the dial of gold, Seemed to point to the girl below.

And lo! she had changed: in a few short hours
Her bouquet had become a garland of flowers,
That she held in her outstretched hands, and flung
This way and that, as she, dancing, swung
In the fulness of grace and of womanly pride,
That told me she soon was to be a bride ;
Yet then, when expecting her happiest day,
In the same sweet voice I heard her say,
Passing away! passing away!"

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While I gazed at that fair one's cheek, a shade
Of thought, or care, stole softly over,
Like that by a cloud in a summer's day made,
Looking down on a field of blossoming clover.
The rose yet lay on her cheek, but its flush
Had something lost of its brilliant blush;

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