The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon
or was carried away by the Indians, nobody can tell. I was then but a
little girl.”
Rip had but one more question 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 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 ninepins in the 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 any thing
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 to 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
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 henpecked 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.
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 Kypphauser mountain; the subjoined note,
however, which 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 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:
The Kaatsberg or Catskill mountains have always been a region full of
fable. The Indians considered them the abode of spirits, who influenced
the weather, spreading sunshine or clouds over the landscape, and
sending good or bad hunting seasons. They were ruled by an old squaw
spirit, said to be their mother. She dwelt on the highest peak of the
Catskills, and had charge of the doors of day and night to open and shut
them at the proper hour. She hung up the new moons in the skies, and
cut up the old ones into stars. In times of drought, if properly
propitiated, she would spin light summer clouds out of cobwebs and
morning dew, and send them off from the crest of the mountain, flake
after flake, like flakes of carded cotton, to float in the air; until,
dissolved by the heat of the sun, they would fall in gentle showers,
causing the grass to spring, the fruits to ripen, and the corn to grow
an inch an hour. If displeased, however, she would brew up clouds black
as ink, sitting in the midst of them like a bottle-bellied spider in the
midst of its web; and when these clouds broke, woe betide the valleys!
In old times, say the Indian traditions, there was a kind of Manitou or
Spirit, who kept about the wildest recesses of the Catskill mountains,
and took a mischievous pleasure in wreaking all kind of evils and
vexations upon the red men. Sometimes he would assume the form of a
bear, a panther, or a deer, lead the bewildered hunter a weary chase
through tangled forests and among ragged rocks, and then spring off with
a loud ho! ho! leaving him aghast on the brink of a beetling precipice
or raging torrent.
The favorite abode of this Manitou is still shown. It is a rock or cliff
on the loneliest port of the mountains, and, from the flowering vines
which clamber about it, and the wild flowers which abound in its
neighborhood, is known by the name of the Garden Rock. Near the foot of
it is a small lake, the haunt of the solitary bittern, with water-snakes
basking in the sun on the leaves of the pond-lilies which lie on the
surface. This place was held in great awe by the Indians, insomuch that
the boldest hunter would not pursue his game within its precincts. Once
upon a time, however, a hunter who had lost his way penetrated to the
Garden Rock, where he beheld a number of gourds placed in the crotches
of trees. One of these he seized and made off with it, but in the hurry
of his retreat he let it fall among the rocks, when a great stream
gushed forth, which washed him away and swept him down precipices, where
he was dished to pieces, and the stream made its way to the Hudson, and
continues to flow to the present day, being the identical stream known
by the name of the Kaaterskill.
ENGLISH WRITERS ON AMERICA.
Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation, rousting herself
like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks;
methinks I see her as an eagle, mewing her mighty youth, and kindling
her endazzled eyes at the full mid-day beam.--MILTON ON THE LIBERTY OF
THE PRESS.
IT is with feelings of deep regret that I observe the literary animosity
daily growing up between England and America. Great curiosity has been
awakened of late with respect to the United States, and the London press
has teemed with volumes of travels through the Republic; but they seem
intended to diffuse error rather than knowledge; and so successful have
they been, that, notwithstanding the constant intercourse between
the nations, there is no people concerning whom the great mass of the
British public have less pure information, or entertain more numerous
prejudices.
English travellers are the best and the worst in the world. Where no
motives of pride or interest intervene, none can equal them for
profound and philosophical views of society, or faithful and graphical
description of external objects; but when either the interest or
reputation of their own country comes in collision with that of another,
they go to the opposite extreme, and forget their usual probity and
candor, in the indulgence of splenetic remark, and an illiberal spirit
of ridicule.
Hence, their travels are more honest and accurate, the more remote the
country described. I would place implicit confidence in an Englishman’s
description of the regions beyond the cataracts of the Nile; of unknown
islands in the Yellow Sea; of the interior of India; or of any other
tract which other travellers might be apt to picture out with the
illusions of their fancies. But I would cautiously receive his account
of his immediate neighbors, and of those nations with which he is in
habits of most frequent intercourse. However I might be disposed to
trust his probity, I dare not trust his prejudices.
It has also been the peculiar lot of our country to be visited by the
worst kind of English travellers. While men of philosophical spirit and
cultivated minds have been sent from England to ransack the poles, to
penetrate the deserts, and to study the manners and customs of barbarous
nations, with which she can have no permanent intercourse of profit or