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 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 a keg of liquor--the mountain ravine--the wild retreat among
the rocks--the wo-begone party at nine-pins--the flagon--"Oh! that
flagon! that wicked flagon!" thought Rip--"what excuse shall I make to
Dame Van Winkle!"
[Footnote 52: From the "Sketch Book," originally published in parts in
1819-20, "Rip Van Winkle" being included in the first number. Irving's
story has furnished the material for eight or ten plays, the most
successful of which was written by Dion Boucicault. Boucicault's work
was materially altered by Joseph Jefferson into the play now closely
associated with Jefferson's fame.]
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 blest 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 tript up
or entangled by the wild grape-vines 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 amphitheater; 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 surprized 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 surprize, 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 Catskill 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 bear
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 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 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 right and left with his
elbows as he passed, and planting himself before Van Winkle, with arms
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 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 prest 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 Catskill 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.