e tobacco, she resolved to produce
something fine, beautiful, and splendid, rather than hideous and
horrible.

"I don't want to set up a hobgoblin in my own corn-patch, and almost at
my own doorstep," said Mother Rigby to herself, puffing out a whiff of
smoke; "I could do it if I pleased, but I'm tired of doing marvellous
things, and so I'll keep within the bounds of every-day business just
for variety's sake. Besides, there is no use in scaring the little
children for a mile roundabout, though 't is true I'm a witch."

It was settled, therefore, in her own mind, that the scarecrow should
represent a fine gentleman of the period, so far as the materials at
hand would allow. Perhaps it may be as well to enumerate the chief of
the articles that went to the composition of this figure.

The most important item of all, probably, although it made so little
show, was a certain broomstick, on which Mother Rigby had taken many an
airy gallop at midnight, and which now served the scarecrow by way of a
spinal column, or, as the unlearned phrase it, a backbone. One of its
arms was a disabled flail which used to be wielded by Goodman Rigby,
before his spouse worried him out of this troublesome world; the other,
if I mistake not, was composed of the pudding stick and a broken rung
of a chair, tied loosely together at the elbow. As for its legs, the
right was a hoe handle, and the left an undistinguished and
miscellaneous stick from the woodpile. Its lungs, stomach, and other
affairs of that kind were nothing better than a meal bag stuffed with
straw. Thus we have made out the skeleton and entire corporosity of the
scarecrow, with the exception of its head; and this was admirably
supplied by a somewhat withered and shrivelled pumpkin, in which Mother
Rigby cut two holes for the eyes and a slit for the mouth, leaving a
bluish-colored knob in the middle to pass for a nose. It was really
quite a respectable face.

"I've seen worse ones on human shoulders, at any rate," said Mother
Rigby. "And many a fine gentleman has a pumpkin head, as well as my
scarecrow."

But the clothes, in this case, were to be the making of the man. So the
good old woman took down from a peg an ancient plum-colored coat of
London make, and with relics of embroidery on its seams, cuffs,
pocket-flaps, and button-holes, but lamentably worn and faded, patched
at the elbows, tattered at the skirts, and threadbare all over. On the
left breast was a round hole, wh