“They had been looking out of the coach-windows for the last few miles, recognizing every tree and cottage as they approached home, and now there was a general burst of joy.  ’There’s John! and there’s old Carlo! and there’s Bantam!’ cried the happy little rogues, clapping their hands.  At the end of a lane there was an old, sober-looking servant in livery waiting for them; he was accompanied by a superannuated pointer, and by the redoubtable Bantam, a little old rat of a pony, with a shaggy mane and long, rusty tail, who stood dozing quietly by the roadside, little dreaming of the bustling times that awaited him.  Off they set at last, one on the pony, with the dog bounding and barking before him, and the others holding John’s hands, both talking at once. * * * We stopped a few moments afterward to water the horses, and on resuming our route a turn of the road brought us in sight of a neat country-seat.  I could just distinguish the forms of a lady and two young girls in the portico, and I saw my little comrades with Bantam, Carlo, and old John trooping along the carriage-road.  I leaned out of the coach window in hopes of witnessing the happy meeting, but a grove of trees shut it from my sight.”

“If ever love, as poets sing, delights to visit a cottage, it must be the cottage of an English peasant,” Irving thinks, and goes on to write in his own pleasant fashion of many pleasant things in English country life, saying:  “Those who see the Englishman only in town are apt to form an unfavorable opinion of his social character. * * * Wherever he happens to be, he is on the point of going somewhere else; at the moment when he is talking on one subject, his mind is wandering to another; and while he is paying a friendly visit, he is calculating how he shall economize time so as to pay the other visits allotted in the morning.”

The “Legend of Sleepy Hollow” is a genuine ghost story.  It is not very startling, but very, very funny, when you know what scared poor Ichabod Crane on his midnight ride that last time he went courting Governor Wouter Van Twiller’s only daughter.

You must read for yourselves the famous story of Rip Van Winkle and the nap he took.  It is too long for me to give in Irving’s words, and “Rip Van Winkle” is just such a story as no one but Irving knows how to tell.

In another of his interesting stories in the “Sketch Book,” told, he says, by a queer old traveler to as queer a company gathered in a great inn-kitchen, Irving describes the busy making-ready for a wedding.  The bride’s father, he says, “had in truth nothing exactly to do.”

Do you suppose he was content to do nothing “when all the world was in a hurry?”