estate.  A bird-cage swings by an open window, and, on the lawn, a group of children, in charge of their nurse, are engaged in the time-honored game of “Ring-around-a-rosy.”  Winding walks, bordered with shrubbery, disappear among fantastic mounds of rock-work, moss-grown grottoes, and tiny dells of fern; and under a ruined arch, gray with lichen and green with vines, flows a placid streamlet, spanned by a rustic bridge.  In the meadow beyond, flocks of sheep are cropping the grass, and an old negro is busily engaged in repairing a breach in the stone wall.

Hard by this stately demesne is a humbler tenement, built of wattled logs, but showing signs of comfort and thrift all about it.  The old grandsire sits in a high-backed chair, sunning himself in front of the door; on a bench, at the side of the house, stand rows of washtubs filled with soiled linen, and a woman is busy wringing out clothes; while another, with a bucket on her head, goes to the well to supply her with a fresh thimbleful of water; and still a third milks a handsome dapple-gray cow in the yard where the dairy stands.  There is a well-filled barn behind, with another cow and a horse, too, for that matter, in the stable attached, and the farmer, who is putting the last sheaf on his wheat-stack, looks contented enough with his lot.

Just beyond the stream, on whose bank the fisherman sits leisurely dropping his line, stands the village church; a fac-simile of the old Dutch Church which has stood near the entrance of Sleepy Hollow since long before the Revolution, and is hallowed now not only by the pious associations of centuries, but by the near vicinage of Irving’s grave.  In its little twelve-inch counterpart, every point of the ancient structure is preserved in exact detail.  The dull red walls, the beetling roof, the narrow pointed windows and low, arched door; the quaint Dutch weathercock, and odd-shaped tower—­aye, even the bell within, no bigger than a doll’s thimble—­and upon all a sentimental traveler in the person of a china figure perhaps three inches in height, is gazing half pensively, half curiously, as we suppose, at this relic of by-gone years!

On the other side of the stream the village school, likewise an ancient and steeple-crowned edifice, stands out in the midst of a bare and clean swept playground.  It bears its signature upon its front: 

“DISTRICT SCHOOL, NO. 2,”

and its worshipful character is otherwise indicated by the presence of the master, a venerable looking puppet in cocked hat and knee-breeches, in the doorway, and sundry china children playing rather stiffly about the stone steps.