The Short-story | Page 6

to a noble height, and lording it over the surrounding
country. Every change of season, every change 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.
At the foot of these fairy mountains, the voyager may have descried the
light smoke curling up from a village whose shingle-roofs gleam
among the trees, just where the blue tints 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 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 weather-cocks.
In that same village, and in one of these very houses (which, to tell the
precise truth, was sadly time-worn and weather-beaten), 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-suffering. A termagant
wife may, therefore, in some respects, be 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, whenever 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 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.
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 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 as to doing
family duty, and keeping his farm in order, he found it impossible.
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, in spite of him. His fences
were continually