The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving: sway over the heart of a coquette is indeed a hero. Certain it
is, this was not the case with the redoubtable Brom Bones; and
from the moment Ichabod Crane made his advances, the interests of
the former evidently declined: his horse was no longer seen tied
to the palings on Sunday nights, and a deadly feud gradually
arose between him and the preceptor of Sleepy Hollow.
Brom, who had a degree of rough chivalry in his nature,
would fain have carried matters to open warfare and have settled
their pretensions to the lady, according to the mode of those
most concise and simple reasoners, the knights-errant of yore, --
by single combat; but lchabod was too conscious of the superior
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow |