midnight
Besides , there is no use in scaring the little children for a mile roundabout , though ' t is true I 'm a witch . '' It was settled , therefore , in her own mind , that the scarecrow should represent a fine gentleman of the period , so far as the materials at hand would allow . Perhaps it may be as well to enumerate the chief of the articles that went to the composition of 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 .