The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
by Washington Irving

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow: Frame Story 1 key example

Postscript
Explanation and Analysis—The Corporation Meeting:

The main story in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” is the eponymous legend: Ichabod Crane’s race against the Headless Horseman, as narrated by Diedrich Knickerbocker. In the postscript, however, Washington Irving introduces the frame story, which takes place years later at a business meeting. The postscript opens with the following passage:

The preceding Tale is given, almost in the precise words in which I heard it related at a Corporation meeting of the ancient city of Manhattoes […] When [the narrator’s] story was concluded, there was much laughter and approbation, particularly from two or three deputy aldermen, who had been asleep a greater part of the time.