KidLit Quote of the Week #5: Halloween Edition

I thought about quoting the full tale (it's in the public domain, after all) because the entire thing is such a gorgeous example of the art of atmospheric writing — but time- and space-saving heads prevailed. So now I give you the final paragraph in Washington Irving's supernatural masterpiece The Legend of Sleepy Hollow:

 "The old country wives, however, who are the best judges of these matters, maintain to this day that Ichabod was spirited away by supernatural means; and it is a favorite story often told about the neighborhood round the winter evening fire. The bridge became more than ever an object of superstitious awe; and that may be the reason why the road has been altered of late years, so as to approach the church by the border of the millpond. The schoolhouse being deserted soon fell to decay, and was reported to be haunted by the ghost of the unfortunate pedagogue — and the plowboy, loitering homeward of a still summer evening, has often fancied his voice at a distance, chanting a melancholy psalm tune among the tranquil solitudes of Sleepy Hollow."