"Hawthorne, Nathaniel - Feathertop A Morlalized Legend" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hawthorne Nathaniel)

this figure.

The most important item of all, probably, although it made so
little show, was a certain broomstick, on which Mother Rigby had taken
many an airy gallop at midnight, and which now served the scarecrow by
way of a spinal column, or, as the unlearned phrase it, a backbone.
One of its arms was a disabled flail which used to be wielded by
Goodman Rigby, before his spouse worried him out of this troublesome
world; the other, if I mistake not, was composed of the pudding
stick and a broken rung of a chair, tied loosely together at the
elbow. As for its legs, the right was a hoe handle, and the left an
undistinguished and miscellaneous stick from the woodpile. Its
lungs, stomach, and other affairs of that kind were nothing better
than a meal bag stuffed with straw. Thus we have made out the skeleton
and entire corporosity of the scarecrow, with the exception of its
head; and this was admirably supplied by a somewhat withered and
shrivelled pumpkin, in which Mother Rigby cut two holes for the
eyes, and a slit for the mouth, leaving a bluish-colored knob in the
middle to pass for a nose. It was really quite a respectable face.

"I've seen worse ones on human shoulders, at any rate," said Mother
Rigby. "And many a fine gentleman has a pumpkin head, as well as my
scarecrow."

But the clothes, in this case, were to be the making of the man. So
the good old woman took down from a peg an ancient plum-colored coat
of London make, and with relics of embroidery on its seams, cuffs,
pocket-flaps, and button-holes, but lamentably worn and faded, patched
at the elbows, tattered at the skirts, and threadbare all over. On the
left breast was a round hole, whence either a star of nobility had
been rent away, or else the hot heart of some former wearer had
scorched it through and through. The neighbors said that this rich
garment belonged to the Black Man's wardrobe, and that he kept it at
Mother Rigby's cottage for the convenience of slipping it on
whenever he wished to make a grand appearance at the governor's table.
To match the coat there was a velvet waistcoat of very ample size, and
formerly embroidered with foliage that had been as brightly golden
as the maple leaves in October, but which had now quite vanished out
of the substance of the velvet. Next came a pair of scarlet
breeches, once worn by the French governor of Louisbourg, and the
knees of which had touched the lower step of the throne of Louis le
Grand. The Frenchman had given these small-clothes to an Indian
powwow, who parted with them to the old witch for a gill of strong
waters, at one of their dances in the forest. Furthermore, Mother
Rigby produced a pair of silk stockings and put them on the figure's
legs, where they showed as unsubstantial as a dream, with the wooden
reality of the two sticks making itself miserably apparent through the
holes. Lastly, she put her dead husband's wig on the bare scalp of the
pumpkin, and surmounted the whole with a dusty three-cornered hat,
in which was stuck the longest tail feather of a rooster.