Rip Van Winkle
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 bystanders--“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 neighbours, 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 churchyard 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 everything’s changed, and I can’t tell
what’s my name, or who I am!”
The bystanders 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 grey-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 pedler.”
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 neighbour. Why, where have you been these
twenty long years?”
Rip’s story was soon told, for the whole twenty years had seemed to
him as but one night. The neighbours 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 neighbourhood. 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 ninepins 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 favour.
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 neighbourhood 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 thunder-storm of a summer afternoon about the Kaatskill,
but they say Hendrick Hudson and his crew are at their game of
ninepins; and it is a common wish of all hen-pecked husbands in the
neighbourhood, when life hangs heavy on their hands, that they might
have a quieting draught out of Rip Van Winkle’s flagon.
NOTE
The foregoing tale, one would suspect, had been suggested to Mr.
Knickerbocker by a little German superstition about the Emperor
Frederick _der Rothbart_, and the Kypphäuser mountain; the subjoined
note, however, which he had appended to the tale, shows that it is an
absolute fact, narrated with his usual fidelity.
“The story of Rip Van Winkle may seem incredible to many, but
nevertheless I give it my full belief, for I know the vicinity of
our old Dutch settlements to have been very subject to marvellous
events and appearances. Indeed, I have heard many stranger stories
than this, in the villages along the Hudson, all of which were too
well authenticated to admit of a doubt. I have even talked with Rip
Van Winkle myself, who, when last I saw him, was a very venerable old
man, and so perfectly rational and consistent on every other point,
that I think no conscientious person could refuse to take this into
the bargain; nay, I have seen a certificate on the subject taken
before a country justice and signed with a cross, in the justice’s own
handwriting. The story, therefore, is beyond the possibility of doubt.
“D. K.”
POSTSCRIPT
The following are travelling notes from a memorandum-book of Mr.
Knickerbocker.