RIP VAN WINKLE. A POSTHUMOUS WRITING OF DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER. 66 By Woden, God of Saxons, From whence comes Wensday, that is Wodensday, Truth is a thing that ever I will keep Unto thylke day in which I creep into CARTWRIGHT. WHOEVER has made a voyage up the Hudson, must remember the Kaatskill Mountains. They are a dismembered branch of the great Appalachian family, and are seen away to the west of the river, swelling up to a noble height, and lording it over the surrounding country. Every change of season, every change 5 of weather, indeed every hour of the day, produces some change in the magical hues and shapes of these mountains, and they are regarded by all the good wives, far and near, as perfect barometers. When the weather is fair and settled, they are clothed in blue and purple, and print their bold outlines on the clear evening sky; but sometimes, when the rest of the landscape is cloudless, they will gather a hood of gray vapors about their summits, which, in the last rays of the setting sun, will glow and light up like a crown of glory. 10 At the foot of these fairy mountains the voyager may have 15 descried the light smoke curling up from a village, whose shingle-roofs gleam among the trees, just where the blue tints Posthumous (Lat. post, after, posterus later, postumus or posthumus, latest, last), born after the death of a father; published after the death of an author; coming after one's death. Thylke (Old Eng. compound of thus and like), that same. Cartwright. William Cartwright (1611-1643) studied sixteen hours a day, wrote plays and lyrics, preached able sermons, and gave excellent lectures at Oxford on metaphysics. 2. Kaatskill, usually written Catskill. of the upland melt away into the fresh green of the nearer landscape. It is a little village of great antiquity, having been founded by some of the Dutch colonists in the early times of 20 the province, just about the beginning of the government of the good Peter Stuyvesant, (may he rest in peace!) and there were some of the houses of the original settlers standing within a few years, built of small yellow bricks brought from Holland, having latticed windows and gable fronts, surmounted with weathercocks. In that same village, and in one of these very houses, (which, to tell the precise truth, was sadly time-worn and weatherbeaten,) there lived many years since, while the country was yet a province of Great Britain, a simple good-natured fellow, of the name of Rip Van Winkle. He was a descendant of the Van Winkles who figured so gallantly in the chivalrous days of Peter Stuyvesant, and accompanied him to the siege of Fort Christina. He inherited, however, but little of the martial character of his ancestors. I have observed that he was a simple good-natured man; he was, moreover, a kind neighbor, and an obedient hen-pecked husband. Indeed, to the latter circumstance might be owing that meekness of spirit which gained him such universal popularity; for those men are most apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad, who are under the discipline of shrews at home. Their tempers, doubtless, are rendered pliant and malleable in the fiery furnace of domestic tribulation, and a curtain lecture is worth all the sermons in the world for teaching the virtues of patience and long-suffer 33. Peter Stuyvesant, the fourth and last, as well as the ablest and most noted, governor of New Netherlands, afterwards New York. He conquered the Swedes on the Delaware. Their settlement, near the present site of Wilmington, was called Fort Christina. 40. Obsequious, meanly conciliatory and submissive. 41. Shrews, scolding, vixenish, vexatious women. 42. Malleable (Lat. malleus, a hammer), capable of being hammered into plates, or beaten into any desired shape. 43. Curtain lecture, a scolding administered by a wife to her husband after they have gone to bed. 25 ጸር 40 ing. A termagant wife may, therefore, in some respects, be 45 considered a tolerable blessing; and if so, Rip Van Winkle was thrice blessed. Certain it is, that he was a great favorite 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, when- 50 ever 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 55 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 neighborhood. 60 65 The great error in Rip's composition was an insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable labor. It could not be from the 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 neighbor even in the roughest toil, and was a foremost man at all 70 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 75 as to doing family duty, and keeping his farm in order, he found it impossible. 45. Termagant (or Tervagant, one of the supposed deities of the Saracens, who was represented in our old dramas as a most boisterous and violent character), tumultuous, boisterous, furious, violently quarrelsome and scolding. 64. Tartar's. See note on Tartar, p. 44. 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, and would go wrong, 80 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 out-door work to do; so that though his patrimonial 85 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 neighborhood. His children, too, were as ragged and wild as if they belonged 90 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 95 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 100 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 105 to produce a torrent of household eloquence. Rip had but one 79. Pestilent, troublesome, plaguing. 91. Urchin. See note on this word, p. 34. 94. Galligaskins, large open hose, or loose wide breeches, formerly used by the inhabitants of Gascony in France. (This word is not now used, except in humorous language. It is said to be a corruption of the French word Greguesqu, Greek; Lat. græcus.) 95. Ado (said to be from a and do; like the French à, to [from Lat. ad, to] and faire, to do), trouble. 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 110 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 115 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 honorable dog, he was as courageous an animal as ever scoured the woods; but what courage can withstand the ever-during and all- 120 besetting terrors of a woman's tongue? The moment Wolf entered the house his crest 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 125 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, 180 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 135 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. 140 How solemnly they would listen to the contents, as drawled out 134. Rubicund, reddish. |