WHAT WAS ICHABOD CRANE LIKE?
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 (5) of instructing the children of the vicinity. . . .The [name] 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. . . . To (10) [have seen] 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 [spirit] of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped from the cornfield. His school house was a low building of one large room, rudely (15) constructed of logs; the windows partly glazed, and partly patched with leaves of old copy books. I
