The New Student's Reference Work/Ichabod Crane

Ich′abod Crane, the youth who in Washington Irving's Legend of Sleepy Hollow “tarried” in Sleepy Hollow for the purpose of instructing the children in the vicinity, is the hero of the famous adventure with the “headless horseman.” He was a type of many schoolmasters of the old school, stern but just, boarding in an itinerant way with the farmers, some thing of a leader in the singing in church, esteemed by the women folks and altogether “an odd mixture of small shrewdness and simple credulity.” The practical joke upon Ichabod, which led to his departure from the theater of his courtship and to ignominy, became the foundation of a superstitious legend among the old country-wives.