Getting to Be That Time Again . . .

Every year about this time, we read Washington Irving's marvelous classic, The  Legend of Sleepy Hollow. What a fabulous story and author!  I always loved the Walt Disney animated version when I was growing up--it seemed to capture Ichabod Crane just as Irving imagined him.
And my goodness. could Irving turn a phrase!
 It was the very witching time of night that Ichabod, heavy-hearted and crestfallen, pursued his travel homewards, along the sides of the lofty hills which rise above Tarry Town, and which he had traversed  so cheerily in the afternoon . . . All the stories of ghosts and goblins that he had heard in the afternoon now came crowding upon his recollection. . .