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Page 14
I sought the ancient church on the following Sunday. There it stood, on
its green bank, among the trees; the Pocantico swept by it in a deep
dark stream, where I had so often angled; there expanded the mill-pond,
as of old, with the cows under the willows on its margin, knee-deep in
water, chewing the cud, and lashing the flies from their sides with
their tails. The hand of improvement, however, had been busy with the
venerable pile. The pulpit, fabricated in Holland, had been superseded
by one of modern construction, and the front of the semi-Gothic
edifice was decorated by a semi-Grecian portico. Fortunately, the two
weather-cocks remained undisturbed on their perches at each end of the
church, and still kept up a diametrical opposition to each other on all
points of windy doctrine.
On entering the church the changes of time continued to be apparent. The
elders round the pulpit were men whom I had left in the gamesome frolic
of their youth, but who had succeeded to the sanctity of station of
which they once had stood so much in awe. What most struck my eye was
the change in the female part of the congregation. Instead of the
primitive garbs of homespun manufacture and antique Dutch fashion,
I beheld French sleeves, French capes, and French collars, and a
fearful-fluttering of French ribbands.
When the service was ended I sought the church-yard, in which I had
sported in my unthinking days of boyhood. Several of the modest brown
stones, on which were recorded in Dutch the names and virtues of the
patriarchs, had disappeared, and had been succeeded by others of white
marble, with urns and wreaths, and scraps of English tomb-stone poetry,
marking the intrusion of taste and literature and the English language
in this once unsophisticated Dutch neighborhood.
As I was stumbling about among these silent yet eloquent memorials of
the dead, I came upon names familiar to me; of those who had paid
the debt of nature during the long interval of my absence. Some, I
remembered, my companions in boyhood, who had sported with me on the
very sod under which they were now mouldering; others who in those days
had been the flower of the yeomanry, figuring in Sunday finery on the
church green; others, the white-haired elders of the sanctuary, once
arrayed in awful sanctity around the pulpit, and ever ready to rebuke
the ill-timed mirth of the wanton stripling who, now a man, sobered by
years and schooled by vicissitudes, looked down pensively upon their
graves. "Our fathers," thought I, "where are they!--and the prophets,
can they live for ever!"
I was disturbed in my meditations by the noise of a troop of idle
urchins, who came gambolling about the place where I had so often
gambolled. They were checked, as I and my playmates had often been, by
the voice of the sexton, a man staid in years and demeanor. I looked
wistfully in his face; had I met him any where else, I should probably
have passed him by without remark; but here I was alive to the traces of
former times, and detected in the demure features of this guardian of
the sanctuary the lurking lineaments of one of the very playmates I have
alluded to. We renewed our acquaintance. He sat down beside me, on one
of the tomb-stones over which we had leaped in our juvenile sports, and
we talked together about our boyish days, and held edifying discourse
on the instability of all sublunary things, as instanced in the scene
around us. He was rich in historic lore, as to the events of the last
thirty years and the circumference of thirty miles, and from him I
learned the appalling revolution that was taking place throughout the
neighborhood. All this I clearly perceived he attributed to the boasted
march of intellect, or rather to the all-pervading influence of steam.
He bewailed the times when the only communication with town was by the
weekly market-boat, the "Farmers' Daughter," which, under the pilotage
of the worthy Gabriel Requa, braved the perils of the Tappan Sea. Alas!
Gabriel and the "Farmer's Daughter" slept in peace. Two steamboats now
splashed and paddled up daily to the little rural port of Tarrytown. The
spirit of speculation and improvement had seized even upon that once
quiet and unambitious little dorp. The whole neighborhood was laid out
into town lots. Instead of the little tavern below the hill, where
the farmers used to loiter on market days and indulge in cider and
gingerbread, an ambitious hotel, with cupola and verandas, now crested
the summit, among churches built in the Grecian and Gothic styles,
showing the great increase of piety and polite taste in the
neighborhood. As to Dutch dresses and sun-bonnets, they were no longer
tolerated, or even thought of; not a farmer's daughter but now went to
town for the fashions; nay, a city milliner had recently set up in the
village, who threatened to reform the heads of the whole neighborhood.
I had heard enough! I thanked my old playmate for his intelligence, and
departed from the Sleepy Hollow church with the sad conviction that I
had beheld the last lingerings of the good old Dutch times in this once
favored region. If any thing were wanting to confirm this impression,
it would be the intelligence which has just reached me, that a bank is
about to be established in the aspiring little port just mentioned. The
fate of the neighborhood is therefore sealed. I see no hope of averting
it. The golden mean is at an end, The country is suddenly to be deluged
with wealth. The late simple farmers are to become bank directors and
drink claret and champagne; and their wives and daughters to figure in
French hats and feathers; for French wines and French fashions commonly
keep pace with paper money. How can I hope that even Sleepy Hollow can
escape the general inundation? In a little while, I fear the slumber of
ages will be at end--the strum of the piano will succeed to the hum of
the spinning-wheel; the trill of the Italian opera to the nasal quaver
of Ichabod Crane; and the antiquarian visitor to the Hollow, in the
petulance of his disappointment, may pronounce all that I have recorded
of that once favored region a fable.
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