Salmagundi; or, The whim-whams and opinions of Launcelot Langstaff, esq. [pseud.] and others. By William Irving, James Kirke Paulding and Washington Irving. Printed from the original ed., with a preface and notes by Evert A. Duyckinck.

354 SALMAGUNDT.
sermon, at the door of the village church, and the character of
the unknown fully investigated. The schoolmaster gave it as
his opinion, that he was the wandering Jew; the sexton was
certain that he must be a freemason, from his silence; a third
maintained, with great obstinacy, that he was a high German doctor; and that the book which he carried about with him contained
the secrets of the black art; but the most prevailing opinion
seemed to be that he was a witch; a race of beings at that time
abounding in those parts; and a sagacious old matron, from
Connecticut, proposed to ascertain the fact by sousing him into
a kettle of hot water.
Suspicion, when once afloat, goes with wind and tide, and soon
becomes certainty. Many a stormy night was the little man in
black seen by the flashes of lightning, frisking and curveting in
the air upon a broomstick; and it was always observed, that at
those times the storm did more mischief than at any other. The
old lady, in particular, who suggested the humane ordeal of the
boiling kettle, lost on one of these occasions a fine brindle cow;
which accident was entirely ascribed to the vengeance of the little man in black. If ever a mischievous hireling rode his master's favorite horse to a distant frolic, and the animal was observed to be lame and jaded in the morning-the little man in
black was sure to be at the bottom of the affair; nor could a
high wind howl through the village at night but the old women
shrugged up their shoulders, and observed, "the little man in
black was in his tantrums." In short, he became the bugbear
of every house; and was as effectual in frightening little children into obedience and hysterics, as the redoutable Raw-headand-bloody-bones himself; nor could a housewife of the village
sleep in peace except under the guardianship of a horse-shoe
nailed to the door.