ges, too, were peculiar: one had a large head, broad face, and
small piggish eyes; the face of another seemed to consist entirely of
nose, and was surmounted by a white sugar-loaf hat, set off with a
little red cock's tail. They all had beards of various shapes and
colors. There was one who seemed to be the commander. He was a stout
old gentleman, with a weather-beaten countenance; he wore a laced
doublet, broad belt and hanger, high-crowned hat and feather, red
stockings, and high-heeled shoes, with roses in them.... What seemed
particularly odd to Rip was, that though these folks were evidently
amusing themselves, yet they maintained the gravest faces, the most
mysterious silence, and were, withal, the most melancholy party of
pleasure he had ever witnessed. Nothing interrupted the stillness of
the scene but the noise of the balls, which, whenever they were
rolled, echoed along the mountains like rumbling peals of thunder."

But now comes a surprise. Rip indulges too freely in the contents of
the keg and falls asleep. When he wakes he finds a rusty old gun
beside him, and he whistles in vain for his dog. He goes back to the
village; but every thing and everybody is strange and changed. Putting
his hand to his chin he finds that his beard has grown a foot. He has
been sleeping twenty years.

But you must read the story for yourselves. It will bear reading many
times, and each time you will find in it something to smile at and
enjoy.

CHAPTER XI

LITERARY SUCCESS IN ENGLAND

"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" also purports to be written by Diedrich
Knickerbocker, and it is only less famous than "Rip Van Winkle." When
he was a boy, Irving had gone hunting in Sleepy Hollow, which is not
far from New York city; and in the latter part of his life he bought a
low stone house there of Mr. Van Tassel and fitted it up for his
bachelor home.

"The outline of this story," says his nephew Pierre Irving, "had been
sketched more than a year before[+] at Birmingham, after a
conversation with his brother-in-law, Van Wart, who had been dwelling
on some recollections of his early years at Tarrytown, and had touched
upon a waggish fiction of one Brom Bones, a wild blade, who professed
to fear nothing, and boasted of his having once met the devil on a
return from a nocturnal frolic, and run a race with him for a bowl of
milk punch. The imagination of the author suddenly kindled over the
recital, and in a few hours he had scribb