The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon
the eagle was wheeling aloft, and breasting 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 the 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
encrusted with rust, the lock falling off, and the stock worm-eaten. He
now suspected that the grave roysterers of the mountains 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 grape vines that twisted their coils and 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 the 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 new, which somewhat surprised him, for he had thought himself
acquainted with every one 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 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 a 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 had 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 nightcap,
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 sceptre, 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 tranquillity. 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 the army of women and children at
his heels, soon attracted the attention of the tavern politicians. They
crowded round him, eying 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 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 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 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’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
with 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 Cardenier.”
“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,