Gabriel and the "Farmer's Daughter" slept in peace. Two steamboats now
splashed and paddled up daily to the little rural port of Tarrytown. The
spirit of speculation and improvement had seized even upon that once
quiet and unambitious little dorp. The whole neighborhood was laid out
into town lots. Instead of the little tavern below the hill, where
the farmers used to loiter on market days and indulge in cider and
gingerbread, an ambitious hotel, with cupola and verandas, now crested
the summit, among churches built in the Grecian and Gothic styles,
showing the great increase of piety and polite taste in the
neighborhood. As to Dutch dresses and sun-bonnets, they were no longer
tolerated, or even thought of; not a farmer's daughter but now went to
town for the fashions; nay, a city milliner had recently set up in the
village, who threatened to reform the heads of the whole neighborhood.

I had heard enough! I thanked my old playmate for his intelligence, and
departed from the Sleepy Hollow church with the sad conviction that I
had beheld the last lingerings of the good old Dutch times in this once
favored region. If any thing were wanting to confirm this impression,
it would be the intelligence which has just reached me, that a bank is
about to be established in the aspiring little port just mentioned. The
fate of the neighborhood is therefore sealed. I see no hope of averting
it. The golden mean is at an end, The country is suddenly to be deluged
with wealth. The late simple farmers are to become bank directors and
drink claret and champagne; and their wives and daughters to figure in
French hats and feathers; for French wines and French fashions commonly
keep pace with paper money. How can I hope that even Sleepy Hollow can
escape the general inundation? In a little while, I fear the slumber of
ages will be at end--the strum of the piano will succeed to the hum of
the spinning-wheel; the trill of the Italian opera to the nasal quaver
of Ichabod Crane; and the antiquarian visitor to the Hollow, in the