e middle of her corn-patch. It was now the latter week of
May, and the crows and blackbirds had already discovered the little
green, rolled-up leaf of the Indian corn just peeping out of the soil.
She was determined, therefore, to contrive as lifelike a scarecrow as
ever was seen, and to finish it immediately from top to toe, so that it
should begin its sentinel's duty that very morning. Now Mother Rigby
(as everybody must have heard) was one of the most cunning and potent
witches in New England, and might with very little trouble have made a
scarecrow ugly enough to frighten the minister himself. But on this
occasion, as she had awakened in an uncommonly pleasant humor, and was
further dulcified by her pipe of tobacco, she resolved to produce
something fine, beautiful, and splendid rather than hideous and
horrible.

"I don't want to set up a hobgoblin in my own corn-patch, and almost at
my own doorstep," said Mother Rigby to herself, puffing out a whiff of
smoke. "I could do it if I pleased, but I'm tired of doing marvelous
things, and so I'll keep within the bounds of everyday business just
for variety's sake. Besides, there is no use in scaring the little
children for a mile roundabout, though 'tis true I'm a witch." It was
settled, therefore, in her own mind that the scarecrow should represent
a fine gentleman of the period so far as the materials at hand would
allow.

Perhaps it may be as well to enumerate the chief of the articles that
went to the composition of this figure. The most important item of all,
probably, although it made so little show, was a certain broomstick on
which Mother Rigby had taken many an airy gallop at mid-night, and
which now served the scarecrow by way of a spinal column or, as the
unlearned phrase it, a backbone. One of its arms was a disabled flail
which used to be wielded by Goodman Rigby before his spouse worried him
out of this troublesome world; the other, if I mistake not, was
composed of the pudding-stick and a broken rung of a chair, tied
loosely together at the elbow. As for its legs, the right was a
hoe-handle, and the left an undistinguished and miscellaneous stick
from the wood-pile. Its lungs, stomach, and other affairs of that kind,
were nothing better than a meal-bag stuffed with straw. Thus we have
made out the skeleton and entire corporosity of the scarecrow, with the
exception of its head, and this was admirably supplied by a somewhat
withered and shriveled pumpkin,