Rip Van Winkle

Whoever has made a voyage up the Hudson must remember the   Kaatskill mountains. They are a dismembered branch of the great Appalachian   family, and are seen away to the west of the river, swelling up to a noble   height, and lording it over the surrounding country. Every change of season,   every change of weather, indeed, every hour of the day, produces some change   in the magical hues and shapes of these mountains, and they are regarded by   all the good wives, far and near, as perfect barometers. When the weather is   fair and settled, they are clothed in blue and purple, and print their bold   outlines on the clear evening sky, but, sometimes, when the rest of the   landscape is cloudless, they will gather a hood of gray vapors about their   summits, which, in the last rays of the setting sun, will glow and light up   like a crown of glory.

At the foot of these fairy mountains, the   voyager may have descried the light smoke curling up from a village, whose   shingle-roofs gleam among the trees, just where the blue tints of the upland   melt away into the fresh green of the nearer landscape. It is a little   village of great antiquity, having been founded by some of the Dutch   colonists, in the early times of the province, just about the beginning of   the government of the good Peter Stuyvesant, (may he rest in peace!) and   there were some of the houses of the original settlers standing within a few   years, built of small yellow bricks brought from Holland, having latticed   windows and gable fronts, surmounted with weather-cocks.

In that same village, and in one of these very   houses (which, to tell the precise truth, was sadly time-worn and   weather-beaten), there lived many years since, while the country was yet a   province of Great Britain, a simple good-natured fellow of the name of Rip Van   Winkle. He was a descendant of the Van Winkles who figured so gallantly in   the chivalrous days of Peter Stuyvesant, and accompanied him to the siege of   Fort Christina. He inherited, however, but little of the martial character of   his ancestors. I have observed that he was a simple good-natured man; he was,   moreover, a kind neighbor, and an obedient hen-pecked husband. Indeed, to the   latter circumstance might be owing that meekness of spirit which gained him   such universal popularity; for those men are most apt to be obsequious and   conciliating abroad, who are under the discipline of shrews at home. Their   tempers, doubtless, are rendered pliant and malleable in the fiery furnace of   domestic tribulation; and a curtain lecture is worth all the sermons in the world   for teaching the virtues of patience and long-suffering. A termagant wife   may, therefore, in some respects, be considered a tolerable blessing; and if   so, Rip Van Winkle was thrice blessed.

Certain it is, that he was a great favorite   among all the good wives of the village, who, as usual took his part in all   family squabbles; and never failed, whenever they talked those matters over   in their evening gossipings, to lay all the blame on Dame Van Winkle. The   children of the village, too, would shout with joy whenever he approached. He   assisted at their sports, made their playthings, taught them to fly kites and   shoot marbles, and told them long stories of ghosts, witches, and Indians.   Whenever he went dodging about the village, he was surrounded by a troop of   them, hanging on his skirts, clambering on his back, and playing a thousand   tricks on him with impunity; and not a dog would bark at him throughout the   neighborhood.

The great error in Rip’s composition was an insuperable   aversion to all kinds of profitable labor. It could not be from the want of   assiduity or perseverance; for he would sit on a wet rock, with a rod as long   and heavy as a Tartar’s lance, and fish all day without a murmur, even though   he should not be encouraged by a single nibble. He would carry a   fowling-piece on his shoulder for hours together, trudging through woods and   swamps, and uphill and down dale, to shoot a few squirrels or wild pigeons.   He would never refuse to assist a neighbor even in the roughest toil, and was   a foremost man at all country frolics for husking Indian corn, or building   stone-fences; the women of the village, too, used to employ him to run their   errands, and to do such little odd jobs as their less obliging husbands would   not do for them. In a word Rip was ready to attend to anybody’s business but   his own; but as to doing family duty, and keeping his farm in order, he found   it impossible.

In fact, he declared it was of no use to work   on his farm; it was the most pestilent little piece of ground in the whole   country; everything about it went wrong, and would go wrong, in spite of him.   His fences were continually falling to pieces; his cow would either go   astray, or get among the cabbages; weeds were sure to grow quicker in his   fields than anywhere else; the rain always made a point of setting in just as   he had some out-door work to do; so that though his patrimonial estate had   dwindled away under his management, acre by acre, until there was little more   left than a mere patch of Indian corn and potatoes, yet it was the worst   conditioned farm in the neighborhood.

His children, too, were as ragged and wild as   if they belonged to nobody. His son Rip, an urchin begotten in his own   likeness, promised to inherit the habits, with the old clothes of his father.   He was generally seen trooping like a colt at his mother’s heels, equipped in   a pair of his father’s cast-off galligaskins, which he had much ado to hold   up with one hand, as a fine lady does her train in bad weather.

Rip Van Winkle, however, was one of those   happy mortals, of foolish, well-oiled dispositions, who take the world easy,   eat white bread or brown, whichever can be got with least thought or trouble,   and would rather starve on a penny than work for a pound. If left to himself,   he would have whistled life away in perfect contentment; but his wife kept   continually dinning in his ears about his idleness, his carelessness, and the   ruin he was bringing on his family. Morning, noon, and night, her tongue was   incessantly going, and everything he said or did was sure to produce a   torrent of household eloquence. Rip had but one way of replying to all   lectures of the kind, and that, by frequent use, had grown into a habit. He   shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, cast up his eyes, but said nothing. This,   however, always provoked a fresh volley from his wife; so that he was fain to   draw off his forces, and take to the outside of the house—the only side   which, in truth, belongs to a hen-pecked husband.

Rip’s sole domestic adherent was his dog Wolf,   who was as much hen-pecked as his master; for Dame Van Winkle regarded them   as companions in idleness, and even looked upon Wolf with an evil eye, as the   cause of his master’s going so often astray. True it is, in all points of   spirit befitting an honorable dog, he was as courageous an animal as ever   scoured the woods—but what courage can withstand the ever-during and   all-besetting terrors of a woman’s tongue? The moment Wolf entered the house   his crest fell, his tail drooped to the ground, or curled between his legs,   he sneaked about with a gallows air, casting many a sidelong glance at Dame   Van Winkle, and at the least flourish of a broom-stick or ladle, he would fly   to the door with yelping precipitation.

Times grew worse and worse with Rip Van Winkle   as years of matrimony rolled on; a tart temper never mellows with age, and a   sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use. For   a long while he used to console himself, when driven from home, by   frequenting a kind of perpetual club of the sages, philosophers, and other   idle personages of the village; which held its sessions on a bench before a   small inn, designated by a rubicund portrait of His Majesty George the Third.   Here they used to sit in the shade through a long lazy summer’s day, talking   listlessly over village gossip, or telling endless sleepy stories about   nothing. But it would have been worth any statesman’s money to have heard the   profound discussions that sometimes took place, when by chance an old   newspaper fell into their hands from some passing traveller. How solemnly   they would listen to the contents, as drawled out by Derrick Van Bummel, the   schoolmaster, a dapper learned little man, who was not to be daunted by the   most gigantic word in the dictionary; and how sagely they would deliberate   upon public events some months after they had taken place.

The opinions of this junto were completely   controlled by Nicholas Vedder, a patriarch of the village, and landlord of   the inn, at the door of which he took his seat from morning till night, just   moving sufficiently to avoid the sun and keep in the shade of a large tree;   so that the neighbors could tell the hour by his movements as accurately as   by a sundial. It is true he was rarely heard to speak, but smoked his pipe   incessantly. His adherents, however (for every great man has his adherents),   perfectly understood him, and knew how to gather his opinions. When anything   that was read or related displeased him, he was observed to smoke his pipe   vehemently, and to send forth short, frequent and angry puffs; but when   pleased, he would inhale the smoke slowly and tranquilly, and emit it in   light and placid clouds; and sometimes, taking the pipe from his mouth, and   letting the fragrant vapor curl about his nose, would gravely nod his head in   token of perfect approbation.

From even this stronghold the unlucky Rip was   at length routed by his termagant wife, who would suddenly break in upon the   tranquillity of the assemblage and call the members all to naught; nor was   that august personage, Nicholas Vedder himself, sacred from the daring tongue   of this terrible virago, who charged him outright with encouraging her   husband in habits of idleness.

Poor Rip was at last reduced almost to   despair; and his only alternative, to escape from the labor of the farm and   clamor of his wife, was to take gun in hand and stroll away into the woods.   Here he would sometimes seat himself at the foot of a tree, and share the   contents of his wallet with Wolf, with whom he sympathized as a fellow-sufferer   in persecution. “Poor Wolf,” he would say, “thy mistress leads thee a dog’s   life of it; but never mind, my lad, whilst I live thou shalt never want a   friend to stand by thee!” Wolf would wag his tail, look wistfuly in his   master’s face, and if dogs can feel pity I verily believe he reciprocated the   sentiment with all his heart.

In a long ramble of the kind on a fine   autumnal day, Rip had unconsciously scrambled to one of the highest parts of   the Kaatskill mountains. He was after his favorite sport of squirrel   shooting, and the still solitudes had echoed and re-echoed with the reports   of his gun. Panting and fatigued, he threw himself, late in the afternoon, on   a green knoll, covered with mountain herbage, that crowned the brow of a   precipice. From an opening between the trees he could overlook all the lower   country for many a mile of rich woodland. He saw at a distance the lordly   Hudson, far, far below him, moving on its silent but majestic course, with   the reflection of a purple cloud, or the sail of a lagging bark, here and   there sleeping on its glassy bosom, and at last losing itself in the blue   highlands.

On the other side he looked down into a deep   mountain glen, wild, lonely, and shagged, the bottom filled with fragments   from the impending cliffs, and scarcely lighted by the reflected rays of the   setting sun. For some time Rip lay musing on this scene; evening was   gradually advancing; the mountains began to throw their long blue shadows   over the valleys; he saw that it would be dark long before he could reach the   village, and he heaved a heavy sigh when he thought of encountering the   terrors of Dame Van Winkle.

As he was about to descend, he heard a voice   from a distance, hallooing, “Rip Van Winkle! Rip Van Winkle!” He looked   round, but could see nothing but a crow winging its solitary flight across   the mountain. He thought his fancy must have deceived him, and turned again   to descend, when he heard the same cry ring through the still evening air:   “Rip Van Winkle! Rip Van Winkle!”—at the same time Wolf bristled up his back,   and giving a low growl, skulked to his master’s side, looking fearfully down   into the glen. Rip now felt a vague apprehension stealing over him; he looked   anxiously in the same direction, and perceived a strange figure slowly toiling   up the rocks, and bending under the weight of something he carried on his   back. He was surprised to see any human being in this lonely and unfrequented   place, but supposing it to be some one of the neighborhood in need of his   assistance, he hastened down to yield it.

On nearer approach he was still more surprised   at the singularity of the stranger’s appearance. He was a short square-built   old fellow, with thick bushy hair, and a grizzled beard. His dress was of the   antique Dutch fashion—a cloth jerkin strapped round the waist—several pair of   breeches, the outer one of ample volume, decorated with rows of buttons down   the sides, and bunches at the knees. He bore on his shoulder a stout keg,   that seemed full of liquor, and made signs for Rip to approach and assist him   with the load. Though rather shy and distrustful of this new acquaintance,   Rip complied with his usual alacrity; and mutually relieving one another,   they clambered up a narrow gully, apparently the dry bed of a mountain   torrent. As they ascended, Rip every now and then heard long rolling peals,   like distant thunder, that seemed to issue out of a deep ravine, or rather   cleft, between lofty rocks, toward which their rugged path conducted. He   paused for an instant, but supposing it to be the muttering of one of those   transient thunder-showers which often take place in mountain heights, he   proceeded. Passing through the ravine, they came to a hollow, like a small   amphitheatre, surrounded by perpendicular precipices, over the brinks of   which impending trees shot their branches, so that you only caught glimpses   of the azure sky and the bright evening cloud. During the whole time Rip and   his companion had labored on in silence; for though the former marveled   greatly what could be the object of carrying a keg of liquor up this wild   mountain, yet there was something strange and incomprehensible about the   unknown, that inspired awe and checked familiarity.

On entering the amphitheatre, new objects of wonder   presented themselves. On a level spot in the centre was a company of   odd-looking personages playing at nine-pins. They were dressed in a quaint   outlandish fashion; some wore short doublets, others jerkins, with long   knives in their belts, and most of them had enormous breeches, of similar   style with that of the guide’s. Their visages, too, were peculiar: one had a   large beard, broad face, and small piggish eyes: the face of another seemed   to consist entirely of nose, and was surmounted by a white sugar-loaf hat set   off with a little red cock’s tail. They all had beards, of various shapes and   colors. There was one who seemed to be the commander. He was a stout old   gentleman, with a weather-beaten countenance; he wore a laced doublet, broad   belt and hanger, high-crowned hat and feather, red stockings, and high-heeled   shoes, with roses in them. The whole group reminded Rip of the figures in an   old Flemish painting, in the parlor of Dominie Van Shaick, the village   parson, and which had been brought over from Holland at the time of the   settlement.

What seemed particularly odd to Rip was, that   though these folks were evidently amusing themselves, yet they maintained the   gravest faces, the most mysterious silence, and were, withal, the most   melancholy party of pleasure he had ever witnessed. Nothing interrupted the   stillness of the scene but the noise of the balls, which, whenever they were   rolled, echoed along the mountains like rumbling peals of thunder.

As Rip and his companion approached them, they   suddenly desisted from their play, and stared at him with such fixed   statue-like gaze, and such strange, uncouth, lack-lustre countenances, that   his heart turned within him, and his knees smote together. His companion now   emptied the contents of the keg into large flagons, and made signs to him to   wait upon the company. He obeyed with fear and trembling; they quaffed the   liquor in profound silence, and then returned to their game.

By degrees Rip’s awe and apprehension   subsided. He even ventured, when no eye was fixed upon him, to taste the   beverage, which he found had much of the flavor of excellent Hollands. He was   naturally a thirsty soul, and was soon tempted to repeat the draught. One   taste provoked another; and he reiterated his visits to the flagon so often   that at length his senses were overpowered, his eyes swam in his head, his   head gradually declined, and he fell into a deep sleep.

On waking, he found himself on the green knoll   whence he had first seen the old man of the glen. He rubbed his eyes—it was a   bright sunny morning. The birds were hopping and twittering among the bushes,   and the eagle was wheeling aloft, and soaring in the pure mountain breeze.   “Surely,” thought Rip, “I have not slept here all night.” He recalled the   occurrences before he fell asleep. The strange man with a keg of liquor—the   mountain ravine—the wild retreat among the rocks—the woe-begone party at   ninepins—the flagon—“Oh! that flagon! that wicked flagon!” thought Rip—“what   excuse shall I make to Dame Van Winkle!”

He looked round for his gun, but in place of   the clean well-oiled fowling-piece, he found an old firelock lying by him,   the barrel incrusted with rust, the lock falling off, and the stock   worm-eaten. He now suspected that the grave roysterers of the mountain had   put a trick upon him, and having dosed him with liquor, had robbed him of his   gun. Wolf, too, had disappeared, but he might have strayed away after a   squirrel or partridge. He whistled after him and shouted his name, but all in   vain; the echoes repeated his whistle and shout, but no dog was to be seen.

He determined to revisit the scene of the last   evening’s gambol, and if he met with any of the party, to demand his dog and   gun. As he rose to walk, he found himself stiff in the joints, and wanting in   his usual activity. “These mountain beds do not agree with me,” thought Rip;   “and if this frolic should lay me up with a fit of the rheumatism, I shall   have a blessed time with Dame Van Winkle.” With some difficulty he got down   into the glen: he found the gully up which he and his companion had ascended   the preceding evening; but to his astonishment a mountain stream was now   foaming down it, leaping from rock to rock, and filling the glen with   babbling murmurs. He, however, made shift to scramble up its sides, working   his toilsome way through thickets of birch, sassafras, and witch-hazel, and   sometimes tripped up or entangled by the wild grapevines that twisted their   coils or tendrils from tree to tree, and spread a kind of network in his   path.

At length he reached to where the ravine had   opened through the cliffs to the amphitheatre; but no traces of such opening   remained. The rocks presented a high impenetrable wall over which the torrent   came tumbling in a sheet of feathery foam, and fell into a broad deep basin,   black from the shadows of the surrounding forest. Here, then, poor Rip was   brought to a stand. He again called and whistled after his dog; he was only   answered by the cawing of a flock of idle crows, sporting high in air about a   dry tree that overhung a sunny precipice; and who, secure in their elevation,   seemed to look down and scoff at the poor man’s perplexities. What was to be   done? the morning was passing away, and Rip felt famished for want of his   breakfast. He grieved to give up his dog and gun; he dreaded to meet his   wife; but it would not do to starve among the mountains. He shook his head,   shouldered the rusty firelock, and, with a heart full of trouble and anxiety,   turned his steps homeward.

As he approached the village he met a number   of people, but none whom he knew, which somewhat surprised him, for he had   thought himself acquainted with everyone in the country round. Their dress,   too, was of a different fashion from that to which he was accustomed. They   all stared at him with equal marks of surprise, and whenever they cast their   eyes upon him, invariably stroked their chins. The constant recurrence of   this gesture induced Rip, involuntarily, to do the same, when to his   astonishment, he found his beard had grown a foot long!

He had now entered the skirts of the village.   A troop of strange children ran at his heels, hooting after him, and pointing   at his gray beard. The dogs, too, not one of which he recognized for an old   acquaintance, barked at him as he passed. The very village was altered; it   was larger and more populous. There were rows of houses which he had never   seen before, and those which had been his familiar haunts had disappeared.   Strange names were over the doors—strange faces at the windows—everything was   strange. His mind now misgave him; he began to doubt whether both he and the   world around him were not bewitched. Surely this was his native village,   which he had left but the day before. There stood the Kaatskill   mountains—there ran the silver Hudson at a distance—there was every hill and   dale precisely as it had always been—Rip was sorely perplexed—“That flagon   last night,” thought he, “has addled my poor head sadly!”

It was with some difficulty that he found the   way to his own house, which he approached with silent awe, expecting every   moment to hear the shrill voice of Dame Van Winkle. He found the house gone   to decay—the roof fallen in, the windows shattered, and the doors off the   hinges. A half-starved dog that looked like Wolf was skulking about it. Rip   called him by name, but the cur snarled, showed his teeth, and passed on.   This was an unkind cut indeed—“My very dog,” sighed poor Rip, “has forgotten   me!”

He entered the house, which, to tell the   truth, Dame Van Winkle had always kept in neat order. It was empty, forlorn,   and apparently abandoned. This desolateness overcame all his connubial   fears—he called loudly for his wife and children—the lonely chambers rang for   a moment with his voice, and then all again was silence.

He now hurried forth, and hastened to his old   resort, the village inn—but it too was gone. A large rickety wooden building   stood in its place, with great gaping windows, some of them broken and mended   with old hats and petticoats, and over the door was painted, “the Union   Hotel, by Jonathan Doolittle.” Instead of the great tree that used to shelter   the quiet little Dutch inn of yore, there now was reared a tall naked pole,   with something on the top that looked like a red night-cap, and from it was   fluttering a flag, on which was a singular assemblage of stars and   stripes—all this was strange and incomprehensible. He recognized on the sign,   however, the ruby face of King George, under which he had smoked so many a   peaceful pipe; but even this was singularly metamorphosed. The red coat was   changed for one of blue and buff, a sword was held in the hand instead of a   scepter, the head was decorated with a cocked hat, and underneath was painted   in large characters, GENERAL WASHINGTON.

There was, as usual, a crowd of folk about the   door, but none that Rip recollected. The very character of the people seemed   changed. There was a busy, bustling, disputatious tone about it, instead of   the accustomed phlegm and drowsy tranquility. He looked in vain for the sage   Nicholas Vedder, with his broad face, double chin, and fair long pipe,   uttering clouds of tobacco-smoke instead of idle speeches; or Van Bummel, the   schoolmaster, doling forth the contents of an ancient newspaper. In place of   these, a lean, bilious-looking fellow, with his pockets full of handbills,   was haranguing vehemently about rights of citizens—elections—members of   congress—liberty—Bunker’s Hill—heroes of seventy-six—and other words, which   were a perfect Babylonish jargon to the bewildered Van Winkle.

The appearance of Rip, with his long grizzled   beard, his rusty fowling-piece, his uncouth dress, and an army of women and   children at his heels, soon attracted the attention of the tavern   politicians. They crowded round him, eyeing him from head to foot with great   curiosity. The orator bustled up to him, and, drawing him partly aside, inquired   “on which side he voted?” Rip stared in vacant stupidity. Another short but   busy little fellow pulled him by the arm, and, rising on tiptoe, inquired in   his ear, “Whether he was Federal or Democrat?” Rip was equally at a loss to   comprehend the question; when a knowing, self-important old gentleman, in a   sharp cocked hat, made his way through the crowd, putting them to the right   and left with his elbows as he passed, and planting himself before Van   Winkle, with one arm akimbo, the other resting on his cane, his keen eyes and   sharp hat penetrating, as it were, into his very soul, demanded in an austere   tone, “what brought him to the election with a gun on his shoulder, and a mob   at his heels, and whether he meant to breed a riot in the village?”—“Alas! gentlemen,”   cried Rip, somewhat dismayed, “I am a poor quiet man, a native of the place,   and a loyal subject of the king, God bless him!”

Here a general shout burst from the   by-standers—“A tory! a tory! a spy! a refugee! hustle him! away with him!” It   was with great difficulty that the self-important man in the cocked hat   restored order; and, having assumed a tenfold austerity of brow, demanded   again of the unknown culprit, what he came there for, and whom he was   seeking? The poor man humbly assured him that he meant no harm, but merely   came there in search of some of his neighbors, who used to keep about the   tavern.

“Well—who are they?—name them.”

Rip bethought himself a moment, and inquired,   “Where’s Nicholas Vedder?”

There was a silence for a little while, when   an old man replied, in a thin piping voice, “Nicholas Vedder! why, he is dead   and gone these eighteen years! There was a wooden tombstone in the   church-yard that used to tell all about him, but that’s rotten and gone too.”

“Where’s Brom Dutcher?”

“Oh, he went off to the army in the beginning   of the war; some say he was killed at the storming of Stony Point—others say   he was drowned in a squall at the foot of Antony’s Nose. I don’t know—he   never came back again.”

“Where’s Van Bummel, the schoolmaster?”

“He went off to the wars too, was a great   militia general, and is now in congress.”

Rip’s heart died away at hearing of these sad   changes in his home and friends, and finding himself thus alone in the world.   Every answer puzzled him too, by treating of such enormous lapses of time,   and of matters which he could not understand: war—congress—Stony Point;—he   had no courage to ask after any more friends, but cried out in despair, “Does   nobody here know Rip Van Winkle?”

“Oh, Rip Van Winkle!” exclaimed two or three,   “Oh, to be sure! that’s Rip Van Winkle yonder, leaning against the tree.”

Rip looked, and beheld a precise counterpart   of himself, as he went up the mountain: apparently as lazy, and certainly as   ragged. The poor fellow was now completely confounded. He doubted his own   identity, and whether he was himself or another man. In the midst of his   bewilderment, the man in the cocked hat demanded who he was, and what was his   name?

“God knows,” exclaimed he, at his wit’s end;   “I’m not myself—I’m somebody else—that’s me yonder—no—that’s somebody else   got into my shoes—I was myself last night, but I fell asleep on the mountain,   and they’ve changed my gun, and every thing’s changed, and I’m changed, and I   can’t tell what’s my name, or who I am!”

The by-standers began now to look at each   other, nod, wink significantly, and tap their fingers against their   foreheads. There was a whisper also, about securing the gun, and keeping the   old fellow from doing mischief, at the very suggestion of which the   self-important man in the cocked hat retired with some precipitation. At this   critical moment a fresh comely woman pressed through the throng to get a peep   at the gray-bearded man. She had a chubby child in her arms, which, frightened   at his looks, began to cry. “Hush, Rip,” cried she, “hush, you little fool;   the old man won’t hurt you.” The name of the child, the air of the mother,   the tone of her voice, all awakened a train of recollections in his mind.   “What is your name, my good woman?” asked he.

“Judith Gardenier.”

“And your father’s name?”

“Ah, poor man, Rip Van Winkle was his name,   but it’s twenty years since he went away from home with his gun, and never   has been heard of since—his dog came home without him; but whether he shot   himself, or was carried away by the Indians, nobody can tell. I was then but   a little girl.”

Rip had but one question more to ask; but he   put it with a faltering voice:

“Where’s your mother?”

“Oh, she too had died but a short time since;   she broke a blood-vessel in a fit of passion at a New-England peddler.”

There was a drop of comfort, at least, in this   intelligence. The honest man could contain himself no longer. He caught his   daughter and her child in his arms. “I am your father!” cried he—“Young Rip   Van Winkle once—old Rip Van Winkle now!—Does nobody know poor Rip Van   Winkle?”

All stood amazed, until an old woman,   tottering out from among the crowd, put her hand to her brow, and peering   under it in his face for a moment, exclaimed, “Sure enough! it is Rip Van   Winkle—it is himself! Welcome home again, old neighbor—Why, where have you   been these twenty long years?”

Rip’s story was soon told, for the whole   twenty years had been to him but as one night. The neighbors stared when they   heard it; some were seen to wink at each other, and put their tongues in   their cheeks: and the self-important man in the cocked hat, who, when the   alarm was over, had returned to the field, screwed down the corners of his   mouth, and shook his head—upon which there was a general shaking of the head   throughout the assemblage.

It was determined, however, to take the   opinion of old Peter Vanderdonk, who was seen slowly advancing up the road.   He was a descendant of the historian of that name, who wrote one of the   earliest accounts of the province. Peter was the most ancient inhabitant of   the village, and well versed in all the wonderful events and traditions of   the neighborhood. He recollected Rip at once, and corroborated his story in   the most satisfactory manner. He assured the company that it was a fact,   handed down from his ancestor the historian, that the Kaatskill mountains had   always been haunted by strange beings. That it was affirmed that the great   Hendrick Hudson, the first discoverer of the river and country, kept a kind   of vigil there every twenty years, with his crew of the Half-moon; being   permitted in this way to revisit the scenes of his enterprise, and keep a   guardian eye upon the river, and the great city called by his name. That his   father had once seen them in their old Dutch dresses playing at nine-pins in   a hollow of the mountain; and that he himself had heard, one summer   afternoon, the sound of their balls, like distant peals of thunder.

To make a long story short, the company broke up,   and returned to the more important concerns of the election. Rip’s daughter   took him home to live with her; she had a snug, well-furnished house, and a   stout cheery farmer for a husband, whom Rip recollected for one of the   urchins that used to climb upon his back. As to Rip’s son and heir, who was   the ditto of himself, seen leaning against the tree, he was employed to work   on the farm; but evinced an hereditary disposition to attend to anything else   but his business.

Rip now resumed his old walks and habits; he   soon found many of his former cronies, though all rather the worse for the   wear and tear of time; and preferred making friends among the rising   generation, with whom he soon grew into great favor.

Having nothing to do at home, and being arrived   at that happy age when a man can be idle with impunity, he took his place   once more on the bench at the inn door, and was reverenced as one of the   patriarchs of the village, and a chronicle of the old times “before the war.”   It was some time before he could get into the regular track of gossip, or   could be made to comprehend the strange events that had taken place during   his torpor. How that there had been a revolutionary war—that the country had   thrown off the yoke of old England—and that, instead of being a subject of   his Majesty George the Third, he was now a free citizen of the United States.   Rip, in fact, was no politician; the changes of states and empires made but   little impression on him; but there was one species of despotism under which   he had long groaned, and that was—petticoat government. Happily that was at an end; he had got his neck out of the yoke of matrimony, and could go in and   out whenever he pleased, without dreading the tyranny of Dame Van Winkle.   Whenever her name was mentioned, however, he shook his head, shrugged his   shoulders, and cast up his eyes; which might pass either for an expression of   resignation to his fate, or joy at his deliverance.

He used to tell his story to every stranger   that arrived at Mr. Doolittle’s hotel. He was observed, at first, to vary on   some points every time he told it, which was, doubtless, owing to his having   so recently awaked. It at last settled down precisely to the tale I have   related, and not a man, woman, or child in the neighborhood, but knew it by   heart. Some always pretended to doubt the reality of it, and insisted that   Rip had been out of his head, and that this was one point on which he always   remained flighty. The old Dutch inhabitants, however, almost universally gave   it full credit. Even to this day they never hear a thunderstorm of a summer   afternoon about the Kaatskill, but they say Hendrick Hudson and his crew are   at their game of nine-pins; and it is a common wish of all hen-pecked   husbands in the neighborhood, when life hangs heavy on their hands, that they   might have a quieting draught out of Rip Van Winkle’s flagon.   By Washington Irving