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I . The Sleepiest Place in the World On the eastern shore of the Hudson River in New York , there is a small market town called Tarry Town . People say that the farmers ’ wives gave it this name long ago . On market days their husbands liked to tarry , or stay too long , at the village inn . I cannot promise that this is true . I only mention it because I like to be exact . About two miles from the town there is a little valley between high hills . It is one of the quietest places in the whole world . A small stream runs through it , and its soft sound makes you want to sleep . Sometimes a bird whistles or a woodpecker knocks on a tree . Apart from that , everything is still . The people of the valley came from the first Dutch farmers in America . They were so quiet and dreamy that the place got the name Sleepy Hollow . A hollow is a small valley . A dreamy feeling seems to hang over the whole land . Some say that a German doctor put a spell on it in the early days . Others say that an old Native American chief held his meetings there before the Europeans came . One thing is certain : the valley is still under some kind of magic . The good people there walk about as if they are dreaming . They see strange sights , and they hear music and voices in the air . Every field , stream and bridge has its own ghost story . But the most famous ghost in the valley is a rider without a head . Some people say that he was once a Hessian soldier . The Hessians were German soldiers who fought for the British king in the American War of Independence . In some battle a cannon ball took off this soldier’s head . Now the country people often see him at night . He rides through the darkness as fast as the wind . The wisest local historians have studied the matter carefully . They say that his body lies in the churchyard . Every night his ghost rides out to the old battlefield to look for his head . That is why he rides so fast . He is late , and he must get back to the churchyard before morning . People call him the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow . There is one more strange thing about the valley . Its dreamy air changes everyone who lives there , even newcomers . Soon they too dream dreams and see ghosts . II . The Schoolmaster About thirty years ago , a man called Ichabod Crane lived in Sleepy Hollow . He came from Connecticut , and he was the schoolmaster of the valley . His name suited him well , because a crane is a tall bird with long thin legs . Ichabod was very tall and very thin . His hands hung a mile out of his sleeves . His feet were as big as shovels . His head was small and flat on top . He had huge ears , large green eyes and a long nose like a beak . On a windy day he walked along the hills with his clothes flying round him . You could easily think he was a scarecrow on the run from a cornfield .
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