Rip Van Winkle
tolerable blessing; and if so, Rip Van Winkle was thrice blessed.
Certain it is that he was a great favourite among all the good wives of
the village, who, as usual with the amiable sex, 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 neighbourhood.
The great error in Rip’s composition was an insuperable aversion to
all kinds of profitable labour. It could not be for 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 up hill and down dale, to shoot a few squirrels
or wild pigeons. He would never refuse to assist a neighbour even
in the roughest toil, and was a foremost man in 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, 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
outdoor 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 neighbourhood.
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 honourable dog, he was as courageous an
animal as ever scoured the woods--but what courage can withstand the
evil-doing and all-besetting terrors of a woman’s tongue? The moment
Wolf entered the house his chest 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 broomstick 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 neighbours could tell the hour by his movements as accurately
as by a sun-dial. 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
vapour 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 labour of the farm and clamour 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 sympathised 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 wistfully 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 favourite 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 neighbourhood 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 his 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 ragged path conducted.
He paused for an instant, but supposing it to be the muttering of