As in the days long since gone by, The ancient timepiece makes reply, "Forever-never! Never-forever!" 9. Never here, forever there, Where all parting, pain and care, Sayeth this incessantly, "Forever-never! Never-forever!" XII-RIP VAN WINKLE. IRVING. The following extract is from "Rip Van Winkle," one of the papers in "The Sketch Book." Rip is an indolent, good-humored fellow, living in a village on the Hudson River. While shooting among the Catskill Mountains, he meets with a mysterious party engaged in roll. ing ninepins, drinks deeply of the liquor they furnish him, and falls into a sleep which lasts twenty years, during which our Revolutionary War takes place. After waking, he returns to the village, which he finds busied with an election. 1. He now hurried forth, and hastened to his old resort, the village iun--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 nightcap, and from it was fluttering a flag, on which was a singular assemblage of stars and stripesall this was strange and incomprehensible. 2. 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. 3. There was, as usual, a crowd 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. 4. 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's hill-heroes of seventy-six — and other words, which were a perfect Babylonish jargon to the bewildered Van Winkle. 5. 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?" 6. 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 the right and left with his elbows as he passed, and planting himself before Van Winkle, with one arm 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 ineant to breed a riot in the village?" 7. "Alas! gentlemen," cried Rip, somewhat dismayel, "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 by-standers- "A tory! a tory! a spy! a refugee! hustle him! away with him!" It was with great difficulty that the selfimportant 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. 8. 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? 9. There was a silence for a little while, when an old man replied, in a thin, piping voice, "Nicholas Vedder! why, he's dead and gone these eighteen years! There was a wooden tombstone in the church-yard that used to tell all about him, but that's rotten and gone too." 10. "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 generai, and is now in Congress.' 11. 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: warCongress-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." 12. 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? 13. "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!" 14. The by-standers began now to look at each other, nod, wink significantly, and tap their fingers against their foreheads. There was a whisper, also, about se |