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 near landscape. This is Tarrytown, a village of great antiquity, having been founded by some of the Dutch colonists in the early times of the province. Some of the houses of the original settlers were standing within a few years, built of small yellow bricks brought from Holland, having latticed windows and gabled fronts, surmounted with weathercocks.

In that same village and in one of these very houses, which, to tell the exact truth, was sadly timeworn and weatherbeaten, there lived, many years since, while the country was yet a province of Great Britain, a simple, good-natured fellow by the name of Rip Van Winkle. He was a descendant of the Van Winkles who figured so gallantly in the old warlike days, but he inherited very 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 a great favorite among all the villagers. The children would even shout for joy whenever he approached. He assisted at their sports, made their playthings, taught them to fly kites and to play 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.

The great error in Rip Van Winkle's composition was a strong aversion to all kinds of profitable labor. It could not be from the want of perseverance, for he would sit on a wet rock with a long heavy rod in his hand and fish all day without a murmur even though he should not be encouraged by a single nibble. He would carry a gun on his shoulder for hours together, trudging through woods and swamps, 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 used to employ him to run their errands and to do many little odd jobs. 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 poorest 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 falling to pieces; his cow would either go astray or get among the cabbages; weeds were sure to grow more quickly in his field than anywhere else; the rain always made a point of setting in just as he had some outdoor work to do so that, though his 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.

II. Rip's Children, his Dog and his Friends

His children, too, were as ragged and as wild as if they belonged to nobody. His son Rip, an urchin born 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, in a pair of his father's cast-off trousers, which he had much ado to hold up with one hand, as a fine lady does her train in bad weather.

Rip Van Winkle, however, was one of those happy mortals who take the world easy, eat white bread or brown, whichever can be got with least thought or trouble, and who would rather starve on a penny than work for a pound. If left to himself, he would have whistled life away in perfect contentment; but his wife, Dame Winkle, 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 to produce a torrent of household eloquence.

Rip had but one way of replying to all lectures of this 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 fain to draw off his forces and take to the outside of the house the only way in truth which was left for him.

Rip's sole domestic adherent was his dog Wolf; Dame

Van Winkle regarded them as companions in idleness, and even looked upon Wolf with an evil eye, as the cause of his master's going so much astray. True it is, in all points of spirit befitting an honorable dog, Wolf was as courageous an animal as ever scoured the woods; but the moment he 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 door with yelping precipitation.

Times grew worse and worse with Rip Van Winkle as years rolled on. For a long while he used to console himself, 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 portrait of his Majesty, George the Third.

Here they used to sit in the shade through a long summer's day, talking listlessly over the 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 traveler. How solemnly they would listen to the contents, as drawled out by Derrick Van Bummel, the schoolmaster, a dapper, learned little man, who was not to be daunted by the most gigantic word in the dictionary; and how sagely they would deliberate upon public events some months after they had taken place.