wing proclaiming his approach, or perked inquisitively into his face as if to get a knowledge of his physiognomy. The woodpecker tapped a tattoo on the hollow apple-tree, and then peered round the trunk, as if asking how he relished the salutation; while the squirrel scampered along the fence, whisking his tail over his head by way of a huzza.

Here reigned the golden mean extolled by poets, in which no gold was to be found and very little silver. The inhabitants of the Hollow were of the primitive stock, and had intermarried and bred in and in, from the earliest time of the province, never swarming far from the parent hive, but dividing and subdividing their paternal acres as they swarmed.

Here were small farms, each having its little portion of meadow and cornfield; its orchard of gnarled and sprawling apple-trees; its garden, in which the rose, the marigold, and hollyhock, grew sociably with the cabbage, the pea, and the pumpkin; each had its loweaved mansion redundant with white-headed children; with an old hat nailed against the wall for the housekeeping wren; the coop on the grass-plot, where the motherly hen clucked round with her vagrant brood: each had its stone well, with a moss-covered bucket suspended to the long balancing-pole, according

to antediluvian hydraulics; while within doors resounded the eternal hum of the spinningwheel.

Many were the great historical facts which the worthy Diedrich collected in these lowly mansions, and patiently would he sit by the old Dutch housewives with a child on his knee, or a purring grimalkin on his lap, listening to endless ghost stories spun forth to the humming accompaniment of the wheel.

The delighted historian pursued his explorations far into the foldings where the Pocantico winds its wizard stream among the mazes of its old Indian haunts; sometimes running darkly in pieces of woodland beneath balancing sprays of beech and chestnut; sometimes sparkling between grassy borders in fresh, green intervales; here and there receiving the tributes of silver rills which came whimpering down the hill-sides from their parent springs.

In a remote part of the Hollow, where the Pocantico forced its way down rugged rocks, stood Carl's mill, the haunted house of the neighborhood. It was indeed a goblin-looking pile shattered and time-worn, dismal with clanking wheels and rushing streams, and all kinds of uncouth noises. A horse-shoe nailed to the door to keep off witches, seemed to have lost its power; for as Diedrich approached, an

old negro thrust his head all dabbled with flour out of a hole above the water-wheel, and grinned and rolled his eyes, and appeared to be the very hobgoblin of the place. Yet this proved to be the great historic genius of the Hollow, abounding in that valuable information never to be acquired from books. Diedrich Knickerbocker soon discovered his merit. They had long talks together seated on a broken millstone, heedless of the water and the clatter of the mill; and to his conference with that African sage many attribute the surprising, though true story, of Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow. We refrain, however, from giving farther researches of the historian of the Manhattoes during his sojourn at the Roost, but may return to them in future pages.

Reader! the Roost still exists. Time, which changes all things, is slow in its operations on a Dutchman's dwelling. The stout Jacob Van Tassel, it is true, sleeps with his fathers; and his great goose-gun with him: yet his stronghold still bears the impress of its Dutch origin. Odd rumors have gathered about it, as they are apt to do about old mansions, like moss and weather-stains. The shade of Wolfert Acker still walks his unquiet rounds at night in the orchard; and a white figure has

now and then been seen seated at a window and gazing at the moon, from a room in which a young lady is said to have died of love and green apples.

Mementos of the sojourn of Diedrich Knickerbocker are still cherished at the Roost. His elbow-chair and antique writing-desk maintain their place in the room he occupied, and his old cocked-hat still hangs on a peg against the wall.

THE BIRDS OF SPRING.

M

Y quiet residence in the country, aloof from fashion, politics, and the moneymarket, leaves me rather at a loss for occupation, and drives me occasionally to the study of nature, and other low pursuits. Having few neighbors, also, on whom to keep a watch, and exercise my habits of observation, I am fain to amuse myself with prying into the domestic concerns and peculiarities of the animals around me; and during the present season have derived considerable entertainment from certain sociable little birds, almost the only visitors we have during this early part of the year.

Those who have passed the winter in the country are sensible of the delightful influences that accompany the earliest indications of spring; and of these, none are more delightful