at a distance, chanting a
melancholy psalm tune among the tranquil solitudes of Sleepy Hollow.

POSTSCRIPT

FOUND IN THE HANDWRITING OF MR. KNICKERBOCKER

The preceding Tale is given, almost in the precise words in which I
heard it related at a Corporation meeting of the ancient city of the
Manhattoes,[2] at which were present many of its sagest and most
illustrious burghers. The narrator was a pleasant, shabby, gentlemanly
old fellow in pepper-and-salt clothes, with a sadly humorous face; and
one whom I strongly suspected of being poor--he made such efforts to be
entertaining. When his story was concluded there was much laughter and
approbation, particularly from two or three deputy aldermen, who had
been asleep the greater part of the time. There was, however, one
tall, dry-looking old gentleman, with beetling eyebrows, who maintained
a grave and rather severe face throughout; now and then folding his
arms, inclining his head, and looking down upon the floor, as if
turning a doubt over in his mind. He was one of your wary men, who
never laugh but upon good grounds--when they have reason and the law on
their side. When the mirth of the rest of the company had subsided,
and silence was restored, he leaned one arm on the elbow of his chair,
and sticking the other a-kimbo, demanded, with a slight but exceedingly
sage motion of the head and contraction of the brow, what was the moral
of the story, and what it went to prove.

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

"That there is no situation in life but has its advantages and
pleasures--provided we will but take a joke as we find it;

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

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

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