Free Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories by Washington Irving Page A

into moody silence, I resumed the subject gently, and urged him to break his situation at once to his wife. He shook his head mournfully, but positively.
    â€œBut how are you to keep it from her? It is necessary she should know it, that you may take the steps proper to the alteration of your circumstances. You must change your style of living—nay,” observing a pang to pass across his countenance—“don’t let that afflict you. I am sure you have never placed your happiness in outward shew—you have yet friends, warm friends, who will not think the worse of you for being less splendidly lodged;—and surely it does not require a palace to be happy with Mary—”
    â€œI could be happy with her,” cried he convulsively, “in a hovel!—I could go down with her into poverty and the dust!—I could—I could —God bless her!—God bless her!—” cried he, bursting into a transport of grief and tenderness.
    â€œAnd believe me my friend,” said I stepping up and grasping him warmly by the hand—“believe me, she can be the same with you. Aye, more—it will be a source of pride and triumph to her—it will call forth all the latent energies and fervent sympathies of her nature; for she will rejoice to prove that she loves you for yourself. There is in every true woman’s heart a spark of heavenly fire which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity; but which kindles up, and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity. No man knows what the wife of his bosom is—no man knows what a ministering angel she is—until he has gone with her through the fiery trials of this world.”
    There was something in the earnestness of my manner, and the figurative style of my language that caught the excited imagination of Leslie. I knew the auditor I had to deal with; and following up the impression I had made, I finished by persuading him to go home and unburthen his sad heart to his wife.
    I must confess, notwithstanding all I had said, I felt some little solicitude for the result. Who can calculate on the fortitude of one whose whole life has been a round of pleasures?—Her gay spirits might revolt at the dark downward path of low humility suddenly pointed out before her, and might cling to the sunny regions in which they had hitherto revelled. Besides, ruin in fashionable life is accompanied by so many galling mortifications to which in other ranks it is a stranger—in short, I could not meet Leslie the next morning without trepidation. He had made the disclosure.
    â€”“And how did she bear it?”
    â€œLike an angel! It seemed rather to be a relief to her mind, for she threw her arms round my neck, and asked if this was all that had lately made me unhappy—but, poor girl,”—added he, “she cannot realize the change we must undergo. She has no idea of poverty but in the abstract—she has only read of it in poetry, where it is allied to love. She feels as yet no privation—she suffers no loss of accustomed conveniences nor elegancies. When we come practically to experience its sordid cares, its paltry wants, its petty humiliations—then will be the real trial.”
    â€œBut,” said I, “now that you have got over the severest task, that of breaking it to her, the sooner you let the world into the secret the better. The disclosure may be mortifying, but then it is a single misery and soon over, whereas you otherwise suffer it in anticipation, every hour in the day. It is not poverty so much as pretence, that harrasses a ruined man. The struggle between a proud mind and an empty purse—the keeping up a hollow shew that must soon come to an end. Have the courage to appear poor and you disarm poverty of its sharpest sting.”—On this point I found Leslie perfectly prepared. He had no false pride himself, and as to his wife she was only anxious to conform to their