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“Young Goodman Brown” By Nathaniel Hawthorne

Young Goodman Brown came forth at sunset into the street at Salem village; but put his head back,

after crossing the threshold, to exchange a parting kiss with his young wife. And Faith, as the wife was

aptly named, thrust her own pretty head into the street, letting the wind play with the pink ribbons of

her cap while she called to Goodman Brown.

"Dearest heart," whispered she, softly and rather sadly, when her lips were close to his ear, "prithee put

off your journey until sunrise and sleep in your own bed to-night. A lone woman is troubled with such

dreams and such thoughts that she's afeard of herself sometimes. Pray tarry with me this night, dear

husband, of all nights in the year."

"My love and my Faith," replied young Goodman Brown, "of all nights in the year, this one night must I

tarry away from thee. My journey, as thou callest it, forth and back again, must needs be done 'twixt

now and sunrise. What, my sweet, pretty wife, dost thou doubt me already, and we but three months

married?"

"Then God bless you!" said Faith, with the pink ribbons; "and may you find all well when you come

back."

"Amen!" cried Goodman Brown. "Say thy prayers, dear Faith, and go to bed at dusk, and no harm will

come to thee."

So they parted; and the young man pursued his way until, being about to turn the corner by the

meeting-house, he looked back and saw the head of Faith still peeping after him with a melancholy air,

in spite of her pink ribbons.

"Poor little Faith!" thought he, for his heart smote him. "What a wretch am I to leave her on such an

errand! She talks of dreams, too. Methought as she spoke there was trouble in her face, as if a dream

had warned her what work is to be done tonight. But no, no; 't would kill her to think it. Well, she's a

blessed angel on earth; and after this one night I'll cling to her skirts and follow her to heaven."

With this excellent resolve for the future, Goodman Brown felt himself justified in making more haste on

his present evil purpose. He had taken a dreary road, darkened by all the gloomiest trees of the forest,

which barely stood aside to let the narrow path creep through, and closed immediately behind. It was all

as lonely as could be; and there is this peculiarity in such a solitude, that the traveller knows not who

may be concealed by the innumerable trunks and the thick boughs overhead; so that with lonely

footsteps he may yet be passing through an unseen multitude.

"There may be a devilish Indian behind every tree," said Goodman Brown to himself; and he glanced

fearfully behind him as he added, "What if the devil himself should be at my very elbow!"

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His head being turned back, he passed a crook of the road, and, looking forward again, beheld the figure

of a man, in grave and decent attire, seated at the foot of an old tree. He arose at Goodman Brown's

approach and walked onward side by side with him.

"You are late, Goodman Brown," said he. "The clock of the Old South was striking as I came through

Boston, and that is full fifteen minutes agone."

"Faith kept me back a while," replied the young man, with a tremor in his voice, caused by the sudden

appearance of his companion, though not wholly unexpected.

It was now deep dusk in the forest, and deepest in that part of it where these two were journeying. As

nearly as could be discerned, the second traveller was about fifty years old, apparently in the same rank

of life as Goodman Brown, and bearing a considerable resemblance to him, though perhaps more in

expression than features. Still they might have been taken for father and son. And yet, though the elder

person was as simply clad as the younger, and as simple in manner too, he had an indescribable air of

one who knew the world, and who would not have felt abashed at the governor's dinner table or in King

William's court, were it possible that his affairs should call him thither. But the only thing about him that

could be fixed upon as remarkable was his staff, which bore the likeness of a great black snake, so

curiously wrought that it might almost be seen to twist and wriggle itself like a living serpent. This, of

course, must have been an ocular deception, assisted by the uncertain light.

"Come, Goodman Brown," cried his fellow-traveller, "this is a dull pace for the beginning of a journey.

Take my staff, if you are so soon weary."

"Friend," said the other, exchanging his slow pace for a full stop, "having kept covenant by meeting thee

here, it is my purpose now to return whence I came. I have scruples touching the matter thou wot'st of."

"Sayest thou so?" replied he of the serpent, smiling apart. "Let us walk on, nevertheless, reasoning as

we go; and if I convince thee not thou shalt turn back. We are but a little way in the forest yet."

"Too far! too far!" exclaimed the goodman, unconsciously resuming his walk. "My father never went

into the woods on such an errand, nor his father before him. We have been a race of honest men and

good Christians since the days of the martyrs; and shall I be the first of the name of Brown that ever

took this path and kept"

"Such company, thou wouldst say," observed the elder person, interpreting his pause. "Well said,

Goodman Brown! I have been as well acquainted with your family as with ever a one among the

Puritans; and that's no trifle to say. I helped your grandfather, the constable, when he lashed the Quaker

woman so smartly through the streets of Salem; and it was I that brought your father a pitch-pine knot,

kindled at my own hearth, to set fire to an Indian village, in King Philip's war. They were my good

friends, both; and many a pleasant walk have we had along this path, and returned merrily after

midnight. I would fain be friends with you for their sake."

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"If it be as thou sayest," replied Goodman Brown, "I marvel they never spoke of these matters; or, verily,

I marvel not, seeing that the least rumor of the sort would have driven them from New England. We are

a people of prayer, and good works to boot, and abide no such wickedness."

"Wickedness or not," said the traveller with the twisted staff, "I have a very general acquaintance here

in New England. The deacons of many a church have drunk the communion wine with me; the

selectmen of divers towns make me their chairman; and a majority of the Great and General Court are

firm supporters of my interest. The governor and I, too--But these are state secrets."

"Can this be so?" cried Goodman Brown, with a stare of amazement at his undisturbed companion.

"Howbeit, I have nothing to do with the governor and council; they have their own ways, and are no rule

for a simple husbandman like me. But, were I to go on with thee, how should I meet the eye of that

good old man, our minister, at Salem village? Oh, his voice would make me tremble both Sabbath day

and lecture day."

Thus far the elder traveller had listened with due gravity; but now burst into a fit of irrepressible mirth,

shaking himself so violently that his snake-like staff actually seemed to wriggle in sympathy.

"Ha! ha! ha!" shouted he again and again; then composing himself, "Well, go on, Goodman Brown, go

on; but, prithee, don't kill me with laughing."

"Well, then, to end the matter at once," said Goodman Brown, considerably nettled, "there is my wife,

Faith. It would break her dear little heart; and I'd rather break my own."

"Nay, if that be the case," answered the other, "e'en go thy ways, Goodman Brown. I would not for

twenty old women like the one hobbling before us that Faith should come to any harm."

As he spoke he pointed his staff at a female figure on the path, in whom Goodman Brown recognized a

very pious and exemplary dame, who had taught him his catechism in youth, and was still his moral and

spiritual adviser, jointly with the minister and Deacon Gookin.

"A marvel, truly, that Goody Cloyse should be so far in the wilderness at nightfall," said he. "But with

your leave, friend, I shall take a cut through the woods until we have left this Christian woman behind.

Being a stranger to you, she might ask whom I was consorting with and whither I was going."

"Be it so," said his fellow-traveller. "Betake you to the woods, and let me keep the path."

Accordingly the young man turned aside, but took care to watch his companion, who advanced softly

along the road until he had come within a staff's length of the old dame. She, meanwhile, was making

the best of her way, with singular speed for so aged a woman, and mumbling some indistinct words--a

prayer, doubtless--as she went. The traveller put forth his staff and touched her withered neck with

what seemed the serpent's tail.

"The devil!" screamed the pious old lady.

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"Then Goody Cloyse knows her old friend?" observed the traveller, confronting her and leaning on his

writhing stick.

"Ah, forsooth, and is it your worship indeed?" cried the good dame. "Yea, truly is it, and in the very

image of my old gossip, Goodman Brown, the grandfather of the silly fellow that now is. But--would your

worship believe it?--my broomstick hath strangely disappeared, stolen, as I suspect, by that unhanged

witch, Goody Cory, and that, too, when I was all anointed with the juice of smallage, and cinquefoil, and

wolf's bane"

"Mingled with fine wheat and the fat of a new-born babe," said the shape of old Goodman Brown.

"Ah, your worship knows the recipe," cried the old lady, cackling aloud. "So, as I was saying, being all

ready for the meeting, and no horse to ride on, I made up my mind to foot it; for they tell me there is a

nice young man to be taken into communion to-night. But now your good worship will lend me your

arm, and we shall be there in a twinkling."

"That can hardly be," answered her friend. "I may not spare you my arm, Goody Cloyse; but here is my

staff, if you will."

So saying, he threw it down at her feet, where, perhaps, it assumed life, being one of the rods which its

owner had formerly lent to the Egyptian magi. Of this fact, however, Goodman Brown could not take

cognizance. He had cast up his eyes in astonishment, and, looking down again, beheld neither Goody

Cloyse nor the serpentine staff, but his fellow-traveller alone, who waited for him as calmly as if nothing

had happened.

"That old woman taught me my catechism," said the young man; and there was a world of meaning in

this simple comment.

They continued to walk onward, while the elder traveller exhorted his companion to make good speed

and persevere in the path, discoursing so aptly that his arguments seemed rather to spring up in the

bosom of his auditor than to be suggested by himself. As they went, he plucked a branch of maple to

serve for a walking stick, and began to strip it of the twigs and little boughs, which were wet with

evening dew. The moment his fingers touched them they became strangely withered and dried up as

with a week's sunshine. Thus the pair proceeded, at a good free pace, until suddenly, in a gloomy hollow

of the road, Goodman Brown sat himself down on the stump of a tree and refused to go any farther.

"Friend," said he, stubbornly, "my mind is made up. Not another step will I budge on this errand. What if

a wretched old woman do choose to go to the devil when I thought she was going to heaven: is that any

reason why I should quit my dear Faith and go after her?"

"You will think better of this by and by," said his acquaintance, composedly. "Sit here and rest yourself a

while; and when you feel like moving again, there is my staff to help you along."

Without more words, he threw his companion the maple stick, and was as speedily out of sight as if he

had vanished into the deepening gloom. The young man sat a few moments by the roadside, applauding

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himself greatly, and thinking with how clear a conscience he should meet the minister in his morning

walk, nor shrink from the eye of good old Deacon Gookin. And what calm sleep would be his that very

night, which was to have been spent so wickedly, but so purely and sweetly now, in the arms of Faith!

Amidst these pleasant and praiseworthy meditations, Goodman Brown heard the tramp of horses along

the road, and deemed it advisable to conceal himself within the verge of the forest, conscious of the

guilty purpose that had brought him thither, though now so happily turned from it.

On came the hoof tramps and the voices of the riders, two grave old voices, conversing soberly as they

drew near. These mingled sounds appeared to pass along the road, within a few yards of the young

man's hiding-place; but, owing doubtless to the depth of the gloom at that particular spot, neither the

travellers nor their steeds were visible. Though their figures brushed the small boughs by the wayside, it

could not be seen that they intercepted, even for a moment, the faint gleam from the strip of bright sky

athwart which they must have passed. Goodman Brown alternately crouched and stood on tiptoe,

pulling aside the branches and thrusting forth his head as far as he durst without discerning so much as

a shadow. It vexed him the more, because he could have sworn, were such a thing possible, that he

recognized the voices of the minister and Deacon Gookin, jogging along quietly, as they were wont to

do, when bound to some ordination or ecclesiastical council. While yet within hearing, one of the riders

stopped to pluck a switch.

"Of the two, reverend sir," said the voice like the deacon's, "I had rather miss an ordination dinner than

to-night's meeting. They tell me that some of our community are to be here from Falmouth and beyond,

and others from Connecticut and Rhode Island, besides several of the Indian powwows, who, after their

fashion, know almost as much deviltry as the best of us. Moreover, there is a goodly young woman to be

taken into communion."

"Mighty well, Deacon Gookin!" replied the solemn old tones of the minister. "Spur up, or we shall be

late. Nothing can be done, you know, until I get on the ground."

The hoofs clattered again; and the voices, talking so strangely in the empty air, passed on through the

forest, where no church had ever been gathered or solitary Christian prayed. Whither, then, could these

holy men be journeying so deep into the heathen wilderness? Young Goodman Brown caught hold of a

tree for support, being ready to sink down on the ground, faint and overburdened with the heavy

sickness of his heart. He looked up to the sky, doubting whether there really was a heaven above him.

Yet there was the blue arch, and the stars brightening in it.

"With heaven above and Faith below, I will yet stand firm against the devil!" cried Goodman Brown.

While he still gazed upward into the deep arch of the firmament and had lifted his hands to pray, a

cloud, though no wind was stirring, hurried across the zenith and hid the brightening stars. The blue sky

was still visible, except directly overhead, where this black mass of cloud was sweeping swiftly

northward. Aloft in the air, as if from the depths of the cloud, came a confused and doubtful sound of

voices. Once the listener fancied that he could distinguish the accents of towns-people of his own, men

and women, both pious and ungodly, many of whom he had met at the communion table, and had seen

others rioting at the tavern. The next moment, so indistinct were the sounds, he doubted whether he

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had heard aught but the murmur of the old forest, whispering without a wind. Then came a stronger

swell of those familiar tones, heard daily in the sunshine at Salem village, but never until now from a

cloud of night There was one voice of a young woman, uttering lamentations, yet with an uncertain

sorrow, and entreating for some favor, which, perhaps, it would grieve her to obtain; and all the unseen

multitude, both saints and sinners, seemed to encourage her onward.

"Faith!" shouted Goodman Brown, in a voice of agony and desperation; and the echoes of the forest

mocked him, crying, "Faith! Faith!" as if bewildered wretches were seeking her all through the

wilderness.

The cry of grief, rage, and terror was yet piercing the night, when the unhappy husband held his breath

for a response. There was a scream, drowned immediately in a louder murmur of voices, fading into far-

off laughter, as the dark cloud swept away, leaving the clear and silent sky above Goodman Brown. But

something fluttered lightly down through the air and caught on the branch of a tree. The young man

seized it, and beheld a pink ribbon.

"My Faith is gone!" cried he, after one stupefied moment. "There is no good on earth; and sin is but a

name. Come, devil; for to thee is this world given."

And, maddened with despair, so that he laughed loud and long, did Goodman Brown grasp his staff and

set forth again, at such a rate that he seemed to fly along the forest path rather than to walk or run. The

road grew wilder and drearier and more faintly traced, and vanished at length, leaving him in the heart

of the dark wilderness, still rushing onward with the instinct that guides mortal man to evil. The whole

forest was peopled with frightful sounds--the creaking of the trees, the howling of wild beasts, and the

yell of Indians; while sometimes the wind tolled like a distant church bell, and sometimes gave a broad

roar around the traveller, as if all Nature were laughing him to scorn. But he was himself the chief horror

of the scene, and shrank not from its other horrors.

"Ha! ha! ha!" roared Goodman Brown when the wind laughed at him.

"Let us hear which will laugh loudest. Think not to frighten me with your deviltry. Come witch, come

wizard, come Indian powwow, come devil himself, and here comes Goodman Brown. You may as well

fear him as he fear you."

In truth, all through the haunted forest there could be nothing more frightful than the figure of

Goodman Brown. On he flew among the black pines, brandishing his staff with frenzied gestures, now

giving vent to an inspiration of horrid blasphemy, and now shouting forth such laughter as set all the

echoes of the forest laughing like demons around him. The fiend in his own shape is less hideous than

when he rages in the breast of man. Thus sped the demoniac on his course, until, quivering among the

trees, he saw a red light before him, as when the felled trunks and branches of a clearing have been set

on fire, and throw up their lurid blaze against the sky, at the hour of midnight. He paused, in a lull of the

tempest that had driven him onward, and heard the swell of what seemed a hymn, rolling solemnly

from a distance with the weight of many voices. He knew the tune; it was a familiar one in the choir of

the village meeting-house. The verse died heavily away, and was lengthened by a chorus, not of human

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voices, but of all the sounds of the benighted wilderness pealing in awful harmony together. Goodman

Brown cried out, and his cry was lost to his own ear by its unison with the cry of the desert.

In the interval of silence he stole forward until the light glared full upon his eyes. At one extremity of an

open space, hemmed in by the dark wall of the forest, arose a rock, bearing some rude, natural

resemblance either to an alter or a pulpit, and surrounded by four blazing pines, their tops aflame, their

stems untouched, like candles at an evening meeting. The mass of foliage that had overgrown the

summit of the rock was all on fire, blazing high into the night and fitfully illuminating the whole field.

Each pendent twig and leafy festoon was in a blaze. As the red light arose and fell, a numerous

congregation alternately shone forth, then disappeared in shadow, and again grew, as it were, out of the

darkness, peopling the heart of the solitary woods at once.

"A grave and dark-clad company," quoth Goodman Brown.

In truth they were such. Among them, quivering to and fro between gloom and splendor, appeared

faces that would be seen next day at the council board of the province, and others which, Sabbath after

Sabbath, looked devoutly heavenward, and benignantly over the crowded pews, from the holiest pulpits

in the land. Some affirm that the lady of the governor was there. At least there were high dames well

known to her, and wives of honored husbands, and widows, a great multitude, and ancient maidens, all

of excellent repute, and fair young girls, who trembled lest their mothers should espy them. Either the

sudden gleams of light flashing over the obscure field bedazzled Goodman Brown, or he recognized a

score of the church members of Salem village famous for their especial sanctity. Good old Deacon

Gookin had arrived, and waited at the skirts of that venerable saint, his revered pastor. But, irreverently

consorting with these grave, reputable, and pious people, these elders of the church, these chaste

dames and dewy virgins, there were men of dissolute lives and women of spotted fame, wretches given

over to all mean and filthy vice, and suspected even of horrid crimes. It was strange to see that the good

shrank not from the wicked, nor were the sinners abashed by the saints. Scattered also among their

pale-faced enemies were the Indian priests, or powwows, who had often scared their native forest with

more hideous incantations than any known to English witchcraft.

"But where is Faith?" thought Goodman Brown; and, as hope came into his heart, he trembled.

Another verse of the hymn arose, a slow and mournful strain, such as the pious love, but joined to

words which expressed all that our nature can conceive of sin, and darkly hinted at far more.

Unfathomable to mere mortals is the lore of fiends. Verse after verse was sung; and still the chorus of

the desert swelled between like the deepest tone of a mighty organ; and with the final peal of that

dreadful anthem there came a sound, as if the roaring wind, the rushing streams, the howling beasts,

and every other voice of the unconcerted wilderness were mingling and according with the voice of

guilty man in homage to the prince of all. The four blazing pines threw up a loftier flame, and obscurely

discovered shapes and visages of horror on the smoke wreaths above the impious assembly. At the

same moment the fire on the rock shot redly forth and formed a glowing arch above its base, where

now appeared a figure. With reverence be it spoken, the figure bore no slight similitude, both in garb

and manner, to some grave divine of the New England churches.

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"Bring forth the converts!" cried a voice that echoed through the field and rolled into the forest.

At the word, Goodman Brown stepped forth from the shadow of the trees and approached the

congregation, with whom he felt a loathful brotherhood by the sympathy of all that was wicked in his

heart. He could have well-nigh sworn that the shape of his own dead father beckoned him to advance,

looking downward from a smoke wreath, while a woman, with dim features of despair, threw out her

hand to warn him back. Was it his mother? But he had no power to retreat one step, nor to resist, even

in thought, when the minister and good old Deacon Gookin seized his arms and led him to the blazing

rock. Thither came also the slender form of a veiled female, led between Goody Cloyse, that pious

teacher of the catechism, and Martha Carrier, who had received the devil's promise to be queen of hell.

A rampant hag was she. And there stood the proselytes beneath the canopy of fire.

"Welcome, my children," said the dark figure, "to the communion of your race. Ye have found thus

young your nature and your destiny. My children, look behind you!"

They turned; and flashing forth, as it were, in a sheet of flame, the fiend worshippers were seen; the

smile of welcome gleamed darkly on every visage.

"There," resumed the sable form, "are all whom ye have reverenced from youth. Ye deemed them holier

than yourselves, and shrank from your own sin, contrasting it with their lives of righteousness and

prayerful aspirations heavenward. Yet here are they all in my worshipping assembly. This night it shall

be granted you to know their secret deeds: how hoary-bearded elders of the church have whispered

wanton words to the young maids of their households; how many a woman, eager for widows' weeds,

has given her husband a drink at bedtime and let him sleep his last sleep in her bosom; how beardless

youths have made haste to inherit their fathers' wealth; and how fair damsels--blush not, sweet ones--

have dug little graves in the garden, and bidden me, the sole guest to an infant's funeral. By the

sympathy of your human hearts for sin ye shall scent out all the places--whether in church, bedchamber,

street, field, or forest--where crime has been committed, and shall exult to behold the whole earth one

stain of guilt, one mighty blood spot. Far more than this. It shall be yours to penetrate, in every bosom,

the deep mystery of sin, the fountain of all wicked arts, and which inexhaustibly supplies more evil

impulses than human power--than my power at its utmost--can make manifest in deeds. And now, my

children, look upon each other."

They did so; and, by the blaze of the hell-kindled torches, the wretched man beheld his Faith, and the

wife her husband, trembling before that unhallowed altar.

"Lo, there ye stand, my children," said the figure, in a deep and solemn tone, almost sad with its

despairing awfulness, as if his once angelic nature could yet mourn for our miserable race. "Depending

upon one another's hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a dream. Now are ye undeceived.

Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must be your only happiness. Welcome again, my children, to the

communion of your race."

"Welcome," repeated the fiend worshippers, in one cry of despair and triumph.

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And there they stood, the only pair, as it seemed, who were yet hesitating on the verge of wickedness in

this dark world. A basin was hollowed, naturally, in the rock. Did it contain water, reddened by the lurid

light? or was it blood? or, perchance, a liquid flame? Herein did the shape of evil dip his hand and

prepare to lay the mark of baptism upon their foreheads, that they might be partakers of the mystery of

sin, more conscious of the secret guilt of others, both in deed and thought, than they could now be of

their own. The husband cast one look at his pale wife, and Faith at him. What polluted wretches would

the next glance show them to each other, shuddering alike at what they disclosed and what they saw!

"Faith! Faith!" cried the husband, "look up to heaven, and resist the wicked one."

Whether Faith obeyed he knew not. Hardly had he spoken when he found himself amid calm night and

solitude, listening to a roar of the wind which died heavily away through the forest. He staggered against

the rock, and felt it chill and damp; while a hanging twig, that had been all on fire, besprinkled his cheek

with the coldest dew.

The next morning young Goodman Brown came slowly into the street of Salem village, staring around

him like a bewildered man. The good old minister was taking a walk along the graveyard to get an

appetite for breakfast and meditate his sermon, and bestowed a blessing, as he passed, on Goodman

Brown. He shrank from the venerable saint as if to avoid an anathema. Old Deacon Gookin was at

domestic worship, and the holy words of his prayer were heard through the open window. "What God

doth the wizard pray to?" quoth Goodman Brown. Goody Cloyse, that excellent old Christian, stood in

the early sunshine at her own lattice, catechizing a little girl who had brought her a pint of morning's

milk. Goodman Brown snatched away the child as from the grasp of the fiend himself. Turning the

corner by the meeting-house, he spied the head of Faith, with the pink ribbons, gazing anxiously forth,

and bursting into such joy at sight of him that she skipped along the street and almost kissed her

husband before the whole village. But Goodman Brown looked sternly and sadly into her face, and

passed on without a greeting.

Had Goodman Brown fallen asleep in the forest and only dreamed a wild dream of a witch-meeting?

Be it so if you will; but, alas! it was a dream of evil omen for young Goodman Brown. A stern, a sad, a

darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man did he become from the night of that fearful

dream. On the Sabbath day, when the congregation were singing a holy psalm, he could not listen

because an anthem of sin rushed loudly upon his ear and drowned all the blessed strain. When the

minister spoke from the pulpit with power and fervid eloquence, and, with his hand on the open Bible,

of the sacred truths of our religion, and of saint-like lives and triumphant deaths, and of future bliss or

misery unutterable, then did Goodman Brown turn pale, dreading lest the roof should thunder down

upon the gray blasphemer and his hearers. Often, waking suddenly at midnight, he shrank from the

bosom of Faith; and at morning or eventide, when the family knelt down at prayer, he scowled and

muttered to himself, and gazed sternly at his wife, and turned away. And when he had lived long, and

was borne to his grave a hoary corpse, followed by Faith, an aged woman, and children and

grandchildren, a goodly procession, besides neighbors not a few, they carved no hopeful verse upon his

tombstone, for his dying hour was gloom.

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The Private History of a Campaign that Failed by Mark Twain

You have heard from a great many people who did something in the war, is it not fair and right

that you listen a little moment to one who started out to do something in it but didn't?

Thousands entered the war, got just a taste of it, and then stepped out again permanently.

These, by their very numbers, are respectable and therefore entitled to a sort of voice, not a

loud one, but a modest one, not a boastful one but an apologetic one. They ought not be allowed

much space among better people, people who did something. I grant that, but they ought at

least be allowed to state why they didn't do anything and also to explain the process by which

they didn't do anything. Surely this kind of light must have some sort of value.

Out west there was a good deal of confusion in men's minds during the first months of the great

trouble, a good deal of unsettledness, of leaning first this way then that, and then the other way.

It was hard for us to get our bearings. I call to mind an example of this. I was piloting on the

Mississippi when the news came that South Carolina had gone out of the Union on the 20th of

December, 1860. My pilot mate was a New Yorker. He was strong for the Union; so was I. But he

would not listen to me with any patience, my loyalty was smirched, to his eye, because my

father had owned slaves. I said in palliation of this dark fact that I had heard my father say,

some years before he died, that slavery was a great wrong and he would free the solitary Negro

he then owned if he could think it right to give away the property of the family when he was so

straitened in means. My mate retorted that a mere impulse was nothing, anyone could pretend

to a good impulse, and went on decrying my Unionism and libelling my ancestry. A month later

the secession atmosphere had considerably thickened on the Lower Mississippi and I became a

rebel; so did he. We were together in New Orleans the 26th of January, when Louisiana went out

of the Union. He did his fair share of the rebel shouting but was opposed to letting me do mine.

He said I came of bad stock, of a father who had been willing to set slaves free. In the following

summer he was piloting a Union gunboat and shouting for the Union again and I was in the

Confederate army. I held his note for some borrowed money. He was one of the most upright

men I ever knew but he repudiated that note without hesitation because I was a rebel and the

son of a man who owned slaves.

In that summer of 1861 the first wash of the wave of war broke upon the shores of Missouri. Our

state was invaded by the Union forces. They took possession of St. Louis, Jefferson Barracks,

and some other points. The governor, Calib Jackson, issued his proclamation calling out fifty

thousand militia to repel the invader.

I was visiting in the small town where my boyhood had been spent, Hannibal, Marion County.

Several of us got together in a secret place by night and formed ourselves into a military

company. One Tom Lyman, a young fellow of a good deal of spirit but of no military experience,

was made captain; I was made second lieutenant. We had no first lieutenant, I do not know why,

it was so long ago. There were fifteen of us. By the advice of an innocent connected with the

organisation we called ourselves the Marion Rangers. I do not remember that anyone found fault

with the name. I did not, I thought it sounded quite well. The young fellow who proposed this

title was perhaps a fair sample of the kind of stuff we were made of. He was young, ignorant,

good natured, well meaning, trivial, full of romance, and given to reading chivalric novels and

singing forlorn love ditties. He had some pathetic little nickel plated aristocratic instincts and

detested his name, which was Dunlap, detested it partly because it was nearly as common in

that region as Smith but mainly because it had a plebian sound to his ears. So he tried to

ennoble it by writing it in this way; d'Unlap. That contented his eye but left his ear unsatisfied,

for people gave the new name the same old pronunciation, emphasis on the front end of it. He

then did the bravest thing that can be imagined, a thing to make one shiver when one remembers how the world is given to resenting shams and affectations, he began to write his

name so; d'Un'Lap. And he waited patiently through the long storm of mud that was flung at his

11

work of art and he had his reward at last, for he lived to see that name accepted and the

emphasis put where he wanted it put by people who had known him all his life, and to whom the

tribe of Dunlaps had been as familiar as the rain and the sunshine for forty years. So sure of

victory at last is the courage that can wait. He said he had found by consulting some ancient

French chronicles that the name was rightly and originally written d'Un'Lap and said that if it

were translated into English it would mean Peterson, Lap, Latin or Greek, he said, for stone or

rock, same as the French Pierre, that is to say, Peter, d' of or from, un, a or one, hence d'Un'Lap,

of or from a stone or a Peter, that is to say, one who is the son of a stone, the son of a Peter,

Peterson. Our militia company were not learned and the explanation confused them, so they

called him Peterson Dunlap. He proved useful to us in his way, he named our camps for us and

generally struck a name that was "no slouch" as the boys said.

That is one sample of us. Another was Ed Stevens, son of the town jeweller, trim built,

handsome, graceful, neat as a cat, bright, educated, but given over entirely to fun. There was

nothing serious in life to him. As far as he was concerned, this military expedition of ours was

simply a holiday. I should say about half of us looked upon it in much the same way, not

consciously perhaps, but unconsciously. We did not think, we were not capable of it. As for

myself, I was full of unreasoning joy to be done with turning out of bed at midnight and four in

the morning, for a while grateful to have a change, new scenes, new occupations, a new interest.

In my thoughts that was as far as I went. I did not go into the details, as a rule, one doesn't at

twenty four.

Another sample was Smith, the blacksmith's apprentice. This vast donkey had some pluck, of a

slow and sluggish nature, but a soft heart. At one time he would knock a horse down fro some

impropriety and at another he would get homesick and cry. However, he had one ultimate credit

to his account which some of us hadn't. He stuck to the war and was killed in battle at last.

Joe Bowers, another sample, was a huge, good natured, flax headed lubber, lazy, sentimental,

full of harmless brag, a grumbler by nature, an experience and industrious ambitious and often

quite picturesque liar, and yet not a successful one for he had no intelligent training but was

allowed to come up just anyways. This life was serious enough to him, and seldom satisfactory.

But he was a good fellow anyway and the boys all liked him. He was made orderly sergeant,

Stevens was made corporal.

These samples will answer and they are quite fair ones. Well, this herd of cattle started for the

war. What could you expect of them? They did as well as they knew how, but really, what was

justly expected of them? Nothing I should say. And that is what they did.

We waited for a dark night, for caution and secrecy were necessary, then toward midnight we

stole in couples and from various directions to the Griggith place beyond town. From that place

we set out together on foot. Hannibal lies at the extreme south eastern corner of Marion County,

on the Mississippi river. Our objective point was the hamlet of New London, ten miles away in

Ralls County.

The first hour was all fun, all idle nonsense and laughter. But that could not be kept up. The

steady drudging became like work, the play had somehow oozed out of it, the stillness of the

woods and the sombreness of the night began to throw a depressing influence over the spirits of

the boys and presently the talking died out and each person shut himself up in his own thoughts.

During the last half of the second hour nobody said a word.

Now we approached a log farmhouse where, according to reports, there was a guard of five

Union soldiers. Lyman called a halt, and there, in the deep gloom of the overhanging branches,

he began to whisper a plan of assault upon the house, which made the gloom more depressing than it was before. We realised with a cold suddenness that here was no jest - we were standing

face to face with actual war. We were equal to the occasion. In our response there was no

12

hesitation, no indecision. We said that if Lyman wanted to meddle with those soldiers he could go

ahead and do it, but if he waited for us to follow him he would wait a long time.

Lyman urged, pleaded, tried to shame us into it, but it had no effect. Our course was plain in our

minds, our minds were made up. We would flank the farmhouse, go out around. And that was

what we did.

We struck into the woods and entered upon a rough time, stumbling over roots, getting tangled

in vines and torn by briers. At last we reached an open place in a safe region and we sat down,

blown and hot, to cool off and nurse our scratches and bruises. Lyman was annoyed but the rest

of us were cheerful. We had flanked the farmhouse. We had made our first military movement

and it was a success. We had nothing to fret about, we were feeling just the other way. Horse

play and laughing began again. The expedition had become a holiday frolic once more.

Then we had two more hours of dull trudging and ultimate silence and depression. Then about

dawn, we straggled into New London, soiled, heel blistered, fagged with out little march, and all

of us, except Stevens, in a sour and raspy humour and privately down on the war. We stacked

our shabby old shotguns in Colonel Ralls's barn and then went in a body and breakfasted with

that veteran of the Mexican war. Afterward he took us to a distant meadow, and there, in the

shade of a tree, we listened to an old fashioned speech from him, full of gunpowder and glory,

full of that adjective piling, mixed metaphor and windy declamation which was regarded as

eloquence in that ancient time and region and then he swore on a bible to be faithful to the State

of Missouri and drive all invaders from her soil no matter whence they may come or under what

flag they might march. This mixed us considerably and we could not just make out what service

we were involved in, but Colonel Ralls, the practised politician and phrase juggler, was not

similarly in doubt. He knew quite clearly he had invested us in the cause of the Southern

Confederacy. He closed the solemnities by belting around me the sword which his neighbour,

Colonel brown, had worn at Beuna Vista and Molino del Ray and he accompanied this act with

another impressive blast.

Then we formed in line of battle and marched four hours to a shady and pleasant piece of woods

on the border of a far reaching expanse of a flowery prairie. It was an enchanting region for war,

our kind of war.

We pierced the forest about half a mile and took up a strong position with some low and rocky

hills behind us, and a purling limpid creek in front. Straightaway half the command was in

swimming and the other half fishing. The ass with the French name gave the position a romantic

title but it was too long so the boys shortened and simplified it to Camp Ralls.

We occupied an old maple sugar camp whose half rotted troughs were still propped against the

trees. A long corn crib served fro sleeping quarters fro the battalion. On our left, half a mile

away, were Mason's farm and house, and he was a friend to the cause. Shortly after noon the

farmers began to arrive from several different directions with mules and horses for our use, and

these they lent us for as long as the war might last, which, they judged, might be about three

months. The animals were of all sizes all colours and all breeds. They were mainly young and

frisky and nobody in the command could stay on them long at a time, for we were town boys and

ignorant of horsemanship. The creature that fell to my share was a very small mule, and yet so

quick and active he could throw me off without difficulty and it did this whenever I got on. Then

it would bray, stretching its neck out, laying its ears back and spreading its jaws till you could

see down to its works. If I took it by the bridle and tried to lead it off the grounds it would sit

down and brace back and no one could ever budge it. However, I was not entirely destitute of

military resources and I did presently manage to spoil this game, for I had seen many a

steamboat aground in my time and knew a trick or two which even a grounded mule would be obliged to respect. There was a well by the corn crib so I substituted thirty fathom of rope for the

bridle and fetched him home with the windlass.

13

I will anticipate here sufficiently to say that we did learn to ride after some days' practice, but

never well. We could not learn to like our animals. They were not choice ones and most of them

had annoying peculiarities of one kind or another. Stevens's horse would carry him, when he was

not noticing, under the huge excrescences which for on the trunks of oak trees and wipe him out

of the saddle this way. Stevens got several bad hurts. Sergeant Bowers' horse was very large

and tall, slim with long legs, and looked like a railroad bridge. His size enabled him to reach all

about, and as far as he wanted to go, so he was always biting Bowers' legs. On the march, in the

sun, Bowers slept a good deal and as soon as the horse recognised he was asleep he would

reach around and bite him on the leg. His legs were black and blue with bites. This was the only

thing that could make him swear, but this always did, whenever his horse bit him he swore, and

of course, Stevens, who laughed at everything, laughed at this and would get into such

convulsions over it as to lose his balance and fall off his horse, and then Bowers, already irritated

by the pain of the horse bite, would resent the laughter with hard language, and there would be

a quarrel so that horse made no end of trouble and bad blood in the command.

However, I will get back to where I was, our first afternoon in the sugar camp. The sugar

troughs came very handy as horse troughs and we had plenty of corn to fill them with. I ordered

Sergeant Bowers to feed my mule, but he said that if I reckoned he went to war to be a dry

nurse to a mule it wouldn't take me very long to find out my mistake. I believed that this was

insubordination but I was full of uncertainties about everything military so I let the matter pass

and went and ordered Smith, the blacksmith's apprentice, to feed the mule, but he merely gave

me a large, cold, sarcastic grin, such as an ostensibly seven year old horse gives you when you

lift up his lip and find he is fourteen, and turned his back on me. I then went to the captain and

asked if it were not right and proper and military for me to have an orderly. He said it was, but

as there was only one orderly in the corps, it was but right he himself should have Bowers on his

staff. Bowers said he wouldn't serve on anyone's staff and if anybody thought he could make

him, let him try. So, of course, the matter had to be dropped, there was no other way.

Next, nobody would cook. It was considered a degradation so we had no dinner. We lazed the

rest of the pleasant afternoon away, some dozing under trees, some smoking cob pipes and

talking sweethearts and war, others playing games. By late supper time all hands were famished

and to meet the difficulty, all hands turned to on an equal footing, and gathered wood, built

fires, and cooked the evening meal. Afterward everything was smooth for a while then trouble

broke out between the corporal and the sergeant, each claiming to rank the other. Nobody knew

which was the higher office so Lyman had to settle the matter by making the rank of both

officers equal. The commander of an ignorant crew like that has many troubles and vexations

which probably do not occur in the regular army at all. However, with the song singing and yarn

spinning around the campfire everything presently became serene again, and by and by we

raked the corn down one level in one end of the crib and all went to bed on it, tying a horse to

the door so he would neigh if anyone tried to get in. (it was always my impression that was

always what the horse was there for and I know it was the impression of at least one other of

the command, for we talked about it at the time and admired the military ingenuity of the

device, but when I was out west three years ago, I was told by Mr. A. G. Fuqua, a member of

our company, that the horse was his, that the tying him at the door was a mere matter of

forgetfulness and that to attribute it to intelligent invention was to give him quite too much

credit. In support of his position, he called my attention to the suggestive fact that the artifice

was not employed again. I had not thought of that before.)

We had some horsemanship drill every forenoon, then, afternoons, we rode off here and there in

squads a few miles and visited the farmer's girls and had a youthful good time and got an honest

dinner or supper, and then home again to camp, happy and content.

For a time, life was idly delicious. It was perfect. There was no war to mar it. Then came some farmers with an alarm one day. They said it was rumoured that the enemy were advancing in our

direction from over Hyde's prairie. The result was a sharp stir among us and general

14

consternation. It was a rude awakening from out pleasant trance. The rumour was but a rumour,

nothing definite about it, so in the confusion we did not know which way to retreat. Lyman was

not for retreating at all in these uncertain circumstances but he found that if he tried to maintain

that attitude he would fare badly, for the command were in no humour to put up with

insubordination. SO he yielded the point and called a council of war, to consist of himself and

three other officers, but the privates made such a fuss about being left out we had to allow them

to remain, for they were already present and doing most of the talking too. The question was,

which way to retreat; but all were so flurried that nobody even seemed to have even a guess to

offer. Except Lyman. He explained in a few calm words, that inasmuch as the enemy were

approaching from over Hyde's prairie our course was simple. All we had to do was not retreat

toward him, another direction would suit our purposes perfectly. Everybody saw in a moment

how true this was and how wise, so Lyman got a great many compliments. It was now decide

that we should fall back on Mason's farm.

It was after dark by this time and as we could not know how soon the enemy might arrive, it did

not seem best to try to take the horses and things with us, so we only took the guns and

ammunition, and started at once. The route was very rough and hilly and rocky, and presently

the night grew very black and rain began to fall, so we had a troublesome time of it, struggling

and stumbling along in the dark and soon some person slipped and fell, and then the next person

behind stumbled over him and fell, and so did the rest, one after the other, and then Bowers

came along with the keg of powder in his arms, while the command were all mixed together,

arms and legs on the muddy slope, and so he fell, of course, with the keg and this started the

whole detachment down the hill in a body and they landed in a brook at the bottom in a pile and

each that was undermost was pulling the hair, scratching and biting those that were on top of

him and those that were being scratched and bitten scratching and biting the rest in their turn,

and all saying they would die before they would ever go to war again if they ever got out of this

brook this time and the invader might rot for all they cared, and the country along with him, and

all such talk as that which was dismal to hear and take part in, in such smothered, low voices,

and such a grisly dark place and so wet, and the enemy, maybe, coming along at any moment.

The keg of powder was lost, and the guns too; so the growling and complaining continued

straight along while the brigade pawed around the pasty hill side and slopped around in the

brook hunting for these things; consequently we lost considerable time at this, and then we

heard a sound and held our breath and listened, and it seemed to be the enemy coming, though

it could have been a cow, for it had a cough like a cow, but we did not wait but left a couple of

guns behind and struck out for Mason's again as briskly as we could scramble along in the dark.

But we got lost presently in among the rugged little ravines and wasted a deal of time finding the

way again so it was after nine when we reached Mason's stile at last; and then before we could

open our mouths to give the countersign several dogs came bounding over the fence with a

great riot and noise, and each of them took a soldier by the slack of his trousers and began to

back away with him. We could not shoot the dogs without endangering the persons they were

attached to so we had to look on helpless at what was perhaps the most mortifying spectacle of

the Civil War. There was light enough and to spare, for the Mason's had now run out on the

porch with candles in tier hands. The old man and his son came and undid the dogs without

difficulty, all but Bowers'; but they couldn't undo his dog, they didn't know his combination, he

was of the bull kind and seemed to be set with a Yale time-lock, but they got him loose at last

with some scalding water, of which Bowers got his share and returned thanks. Peterson Dunlap

afterwards made up a fine name for this engagement and also for the night march which

preceded it but both have long ago faded out of my memory.

We now went into the house and they began to ask us a world of questions, whereby it presently

came out that we did not know anything concerning who or what we were running from; so the

old gentleman made himself very frank and said we were a curious breed of soldiers and guessed

we could be depended on to end up the war in time, because the no governor could afford the

expense of the shoe leather we should cost it trying to follow us around.

15

"Marion Rangers! Good name, b'gosh," said he. And wanted to why we hadn't had a picket guard

at the place where the road entered the prairie, and why we hadn't sent out a scouting party to

spy out the enemy and bring us an account of his strength, and so on, before jumping up and

stampeding out of a strong position upon a mere vague rumour, and so on and so forth, till he

made us all feel shabbier than the dogs had done, not so half enthusiastically welcome. So we

went to bed shamed and low spirited, except Stevens. Soon Stevens began to devise a garment

for Bowers which could be made to automatically display his battle scars to the grateful or

conceal them from the envious, according to his occasions, but Bowers was in no humour for

this, so there was a fight and when it was over Stevens had some battle scars of his own to think

about.

Then we got a little sleep. But after all we had gone through, our activities were not over for the

night, for about two o'clock in the morning we heard a shout of warning from down the lane,

accompanied by a chorus from all the dogs, and in a moment everybody was up and flying

around to find out what the alarm was about. The alarmist was a horseman who gave notice that

a detachment of Union soldiers was on its way from Hannibal with orders to capture and hang

any bands like our which it could find. Farmer Mason was in a flurry this time himself. He hurried

us out of the house with all haste, and sent one of his Negroes with us to show us where to hide

ourselves and our telltale guns among the ravines half a mile away,. It was raining heavily.

We struck down the lane, then across some rocky pasture land which offered good advantages

fro stumbling; consequently we were down in the mud most of the time, and every time a man

went down he black guarded the war and everybody connected with it, and gave himself the

master dose of all for being so foolish as to go into it. At last we reached the wooded mouth of a

ravine, and there we huddled ourselves under the streaming trees and sent the Negro back

home. It was a dismal and heart breaking time. We were like to e drowned with the rain,

deafened with the howling wind and the booming thunder, and blinded by the lightning. It was

indeed a wild night. The drenching we were getting was misery enough, but a deeper misery still

was the reflection that the halter might end us before we were a day older. A death of this

shameful sort had not occurred to us as being among the possibilities of war. It took the

romance all out of the campaign and turned our dreams of glory into a repulsive nightmare. As

for doubting that so barbarous an order had been given, not one of us did that.

The long night wore itself out at last, and then the Negro came to us with the news that the

alarm had manifestly been a false one and that breakfast would soon be ready. Straightaway we

were light-hearted again and the world was bright and full of life, as full of hope and promise as

ever; for we were young then. How long ago that was! Twenty four years.

The mongrel child of philology named the night's refuge Camp Devastation and no soul objected.

The Masons gave us a Missouri country breakfast in Missourian abundance, and we needed it.

Hot biscuits, hot wheat bread, prettily crossed in a lattice pattern on top, hot corn pone, fried

chicken, bacon, coffee, eggs, milk, buttermilk etc. and the world may be confidently challenged

to furnish the equal of such a breakfast, as it is cooked in the South.

We stayed several days at Mason's and after all these years the memory of the stillness and

dullness and lifelessness of that slumberous farmhouse still oppresses my spirit as with a sense

of the presence of death and mourning. There was nothing to do. Nothing to think about. There

was no interest in life. The male part of the household were away in the fields all day, the

women were busy and out of our sight. There was no sound but the plaintive wailing of a

spinning wheel forever moaning out from some distant room, the most lonesome sound in

nature, a sound steeped and sodden with homesickness and the emptiness of life. The family

went to bed about dark every night and as we were not invited to intrude any new customs we

naturally followed theirs. Those nights were a hundred years long to youths accustomed to being up till twelve. We lay awake and miserable till that hour ovariotomy and grew old and decrepit

waiting through the still eternities for the clock strikes. This was no place for town boys. So at

16

last it was with something very like joy that we received word that the enemy were on out track

again. With a new birth of the old warrior spirit, we sprang to our places in line of battle and fell

back on Camp Ralls.

Captain Lyman had taken a hint from Mason's talk, and he now gave orders that our camp

should be guarded from surprise by the posting of pickets. I was ordered to place a picket at the

forks of the road in Hyde's prairie. Night shut down black and threatening. I told Sergeant

Bowers to out to that place and stay till midnight, and, just as I was expecting, he said he

wouldn't do it. I tried to get others to go but all refused. Some excused themselves on account of

the weather, but the rest were frank enough to say they wouldn't go in any kind of weather. This

kind of thing sounds odd now, and impossible, but there was no surprise in it at the time. On the

contrary, it seemed a perfectly natural thing to do. There were scores of little camps scattered

over Missouri where the same thing was happening. These camps were composed of young men

who had been born and reared to a sturdy independence and who did not know what it meant to

be ordered around by Tom, Dick, and Harry, who they had known familiarly all their lives in the

village or the farm. It is quite within the probabilities that this same thing was happening all over

the South. James Redpath recognised the justice of this assumption and furnished the following

instance in support of it. During a short stay in East Tennessee he was in a citizen colonel' s tent

one day talking, when a big private appeared at the door and, without salute or other

circumlocution, said to the colonel;

"Say, Jim, I'm a goin' home for a few days."

"What for?"

"Well, I hain't b'en there for a right smart while and I'd like to see how things is comin' on."

"How long are you gonna be gone?"

"Bout two weeks."

"Well, don't be gone longer than that and get back sooner if you can."

That was all, and the citizen officer resumed his conversation where the private had broken it off.

This was in the first months of the war of course. The camps in our part of Missouri were under

Brigadier-General Thomas H. Harris. He was a townsman of ours, a first rate fellow and well

liked, but we had all familiarly known him as the soles and modest-salaried operator in the

telegraph office, where he had to send about one despatch a week in ordinary times and two

when there was a rush of business. Consequently, when he appeared in our midst one day on

the wing, and delivered a military command of some sort in a large military fashion, nobody was

surprised at the response which he got from the assembled soldiery.

"Oh, now what'll you take to don't, Tom Harris?"

It was quite the natural thing. One might justly imagine that we were hopeless material for the

war. And so we seemed in our ignorant state, but there were those among us who afterward

learned the grim trade, learned to obey like machines, became valuable soldiers, fought all

through the war, and came out at the end with excellent records. One of the very boys who

refused to go out on picket duty that night and called me an ass for thinking he would expose

himself to danger in such a foolhardy way, had become distinguished for intrepidity before he

was a year older.

I did secure my picket that might, not by authority but by diplomacy. I got Bowers to go by agreeing to exchange ranks with him for the time being and go along and stand the watch with

him as his subordinate. We stayed out there a couple of dreary hours in the pitchy darkness and

17

the rain, with nothing to modify the dreariness but Bower's monotonous growling at the war and

the weather, then we began to nod and presently found it next to impossible to stay in the

saddle, so we gave up the tedious job and went back to the camp without interruption or

objection from anybody and the enemy could have done the same, for there were no sentries.

Everybody was asleep, at midnight there was nobody to send out another picket so none was

sent. We never tried to establish a watch at night again, as far as I remember, but we generally

kept a picket out in the daytime.

In that camp the whole command slept on the corn in the big corn crib and there was usually a

general row before morning, for the place was full of rats and they would scramble over the

boys' bodies and faces, annoying and irritating everybody, and now and then they would bite

someone's toe, and the person who owned the toe would start up and magnify his English and

begin to throw corn in the dark. The ears were half as heavy as bricks and when they struck they

hurt. The persons struck would respond and inside of five minutes everyman would be locked in

a death grip with his neighbour. There was a grievous deal of blood shed in the corn crib but this

was all that was spilt while I was in the war. No, that is not quite true. But for one circumstance

it would have been all.

Our scares were frequent. Every few days rumours would come that the enemy were

approaching. In these cases we always fell back on some other camp of ours; we never stayed

where we were. But the rumours always turned out to be false, so at last we even began to grow

indifferent to them. One night a Negro was sent to our corn crib with the same old warning, the

enemy was hovering in our neighbourhood. We all said let him hover. We resolved to stay still

and be comfortable. It was a fine warlike resolution, and no doubt we all felt the stir of it in our

veins - for a moment. We had been having a very jolly time, that was full of horseplay and

schoolboy hilarity, but that cooled down and presently the fast waning fire of forced jokes and

forced laughs died out altogether and the company became silent. Silent and nervous. And soon

uneasy - worried and apprehensive. We had said we would stay and we were committed. We

could have been persuaded to go but there was nobody brave enough to suggest it. An almost

noiseless movement began in the dark by a general but unvoiced impulse. When the movement

was completed, each man knew that he was not the only person who had crept to the front wall

and had his eye at a crack between the logs. No, we were all there, all there with our hearts in

our throats and staring out towards the sugar-troughs where the forest footpath came through.

It was late and there was a deep woodsy stillness everywhere. There was a veiled moonlight

which was only just strong enough to enable us to mark the general shapes of objects. Presently

a muffled sound caught our ears and we recognised the hoof-beats of a horse or horses. And

right away, a figure appeared in the forest path; it could have been made of smoke, its mass had

such little sharpness of outline. It was a man on horseback, and it seemed to me that there were

others behind him. I got a hold of a gun in the dark, and pushed it through a crack between the

logs, hardly knowing what I was doing, I was so dazed with fright. Somebody said "Fire!" I pulled

the trigger, I seemed to see a hundred flashes and a hundred reports, then I saw the man fall

down out of the saddle. My first feeling was of surprised gratification; my first impulse was an

apprentice-sportsman's impulse to run and pick up his game. Somebody said, hardly audibly,

"Good, we've got him. Wait for the rest!" But the rest did not come. There was not a sound, not

the whisper of a leaf; just the perfect stillness, an uncanny kind of stillness which was all the

more uncanny on account of the damp, earthy, late night smells now rising and pervading it.

Then, wondering, we crept out stealthily and approached the man. When we got to him, the

moon revealed him distinctly. He was laying on his back with his arms abroad, his mouth was

open and his chest was heaving with long gasps, and his white shirt front was splashed with

blood. The thought shot through me that I was a murderer, that I had killed a man, a man who

had never done me any harm. That was the coldest sensation that ever went through my

marrow. I was down by him in a moment, helplessly stroking his forehead, and I would have

given anything then, my own life freely, to make him again what he had been five minutes before. And all the boys seemed to be feeling the same way; they hung over him, full of pitying

interest, and tried all they could to help him, and said all sorts of regretful things. They had

forgotten all about the enemy, they thought only of this one forlorn unit of the foe. Once my

18

imagination persuaded me that the dying man gave me a reproachful look out of the shadow of

his eyes, and it seemed to me that I could rather that he had stabbed me than he had done that.

He muttered and mumbled like a dreamer in his sleep about his wife and his child, and, I thought

with a new despair, "This thing that I have done does not end with him; it falls upon them too,

and they never did me any harm, any more than he."

In a little while the man was dead. He was killed in war, killed in fair and legitimate war, killed in

battles as you may say, and yet he was as sincerely mourned by the opposing force as if he had

been their brother. The boys stood there a half-hour sorrowing over him and recalling the details

of the tragedy, and wondering who he might be and if he was a spy, and saying if they had it to

do over again, they would not hurt him unless he attacked them first. It soon turned out that

mine was not the only shot fired; there were five others, a division of the guilt which was a great

relief to me since it in some degree lightened and diminished the burden I was carrying. There

were six shots fired at once but I was not in my right mind at the time, and my heated

imagination had magnified my one shot into a volley.

The man was not in uniform and was not armed. He was a stranger in the country, that was all

we ever found out about him. The thought of hi got to preying on me every night, I could not get

rid of it. I could not drive it away, the taking of that unoffending life seemed such a wanton

thing. And it seemed an epitome of war, that all war must just be the killing of strangers against

whom you feel no personal animosity, strangers who in other circumstances you would help if

you found them in trouble, and who would help you if you needed it. My campaign was spoiled.

It seemed to me that I was not rightly equipped for this awful business, that war was intended

for men and I for a child's nurse. I resolved to retire from this avocation of sham soldier-ship

while I could retain some remnant of my self-respect. These morbid thoughts clung to me

against reason, for at the bottom I did not believe I had touched this man. The law of

probabilities decreed me guiltless of his blood for in all my small experiences with guns, I had

not hit anything I had tried to hit, and I knew I had done my best to hit him. Yet there was no

solace in the thought. Against a diseased imagination, demonstration goes for nothing.

The rest of my war experience was of a piece with what I have already told of it. We kept

monotonously falling back upon one camp or another and eating up the farmers and their

families. They ought to have shot us; on the contrary they were as hospitably kind and courteous

to us as if we had deserved it. In one of these camps we found Ab Grimes, an upper Mississippi

pilot who afterwards became famous as a daredevil rebel spy, whose career bristled with

desperate adventures. The loom and style of his comrades suggested that they had not come

into the war to play and their deeds made good the conjecture later. They were fine horsemen

and good revolver shots, but their favourite arm was the lasso. Each had one at his pommel, and

could snatch a man out of his saddle with it ovariotomy, on a full gallop, at any reasonable

distance.

In another camp, the chief was a fierce and profane old black-smith of sixty and he had

furnished his twenty recruits with gigantic, home-made bowie-knives, to be swung with two

hands like the machetes of the Isthmus. It was a grisly spectacle to see that earnest band

practising their murderous cuts and slashes under the eye of that remorseless old fanatic.

The last camp which we fell back on was in a hollow near the village of Florida where I was born,

in Monroe County. Here we were warned one day that a Union Colonel was sweeping down on us

with a whole regiment at his heels. This looked decidedly serious. Our boys went apart and

consulted; then we went back and told the other companies present that the war was a

disappointment to us and we were going to disband. They were getting ready themselves to fall

back on some place or another, and we were only waiting for General Tom Harris, who was

expected to arrive at any moment, so they tried to persuade us to wait a little while but the majority of us said no, we were accustomed to falling back and didn't need any of Harris's help,

we could get along perfectly without him and save time too. So, about half of our fifteen men,

19

including myself, mounted, and left on the instant; the others yielded to persuasion, and stayed

- stayed through the war.

An hour later we met General Harris on the road, with two or three people in his company, his

staff probably, but we could not tell; none of them were in uniform; uniforms had not come into

vogue among us yet. Harris ordered us back, but we told him there was a Union colonel coming

with a whole regiment in his wake and it looked as if there was going to be a disturbance, so we

had concluded to go home. He raged a little bit, but it was of no use, our minds were made up.

We had done our share, killed one man, exterminated one army, such as it was; let him go and

kill the rest and that would end the war. I did not see that brisk young general again until last

year; he was wearing white hair and whiskers.

In time I came to learn that the Union colonel whose coming frightened me out of the war and

crippled the Southern cause to that extent; General Grant. I came within a few hours of seeing

him when he was as unknown as I was myself; at a time when anybody could have said, "Grant

- Ulysses S Grant? I do not remember hearing the name before." It seems difficult to realise

there was once a time when such a remark could be rationally made, but there was, I was within

a few miles of the place and the occasion too, though proceeding in the other direction.

The thoughtful will not throw this war paper of mine lightly aside as being valueless. It has this

value; it is not an unfair picture of what went on in may a militia camp in the first months of the

rebellion, when the green recruits were without discipline, without the steadying and heartening

influence of trained leaders, when all their circumstances were new and strange and charged

with exaggerated terrors, and before the invaluable experience of actual collision in the field had

turned them from rabbits into soldiers. If this side of the picture of that early day has not before

been put into history, then history has been, to that degree incomplete, for it had and has its

rightful place there. There was more Bull Run material scattered through the early camps of this

country than exhibited itself at Bull Run. And yet, it learned its trade presently and helped to

fight the great battles later. I could have become a soldier myself if I had waited. I had got part

of it learned, I knew more about retreating than the man that invented retreating.

20

IV. Rip Van Winkle

(A Posthumous Writing of Diedrich Knickerbocker) By Washington Irving

(THE FOLLOWING tale was found among the papers of the late Diedrich Knickerbocker, an

old gentleman of New York, who was very curious in the Dutch history of the province,

and the manners of the descendants from its primitive settlers. His historical researches,

however, did not lie so much among books as among men; for the former are lamentably

scanty on his favorite topics; whereas he found the old burghers, and still more their wives,

rich in that legendary lore so invaluable to true history. Whenever, therefore, he happened

upon a genuine Dutch family, snugly shut up in its low-roofed farmhouse, under a

spreading sycamore, he looked upon it as a little clasped volume of black-letter, and

studied it with the zeal of a bookworm.

1

The result of all these researches was a history of the province during the reign of the

Dutch governors, which he published some years since. There have been various opinions

as to the literary character of his work, and, to tell the truth, it is not a whit better than it

should be. Its chief merit is its scrupulous accuracy, which indeed was a little questioned

on its first appearance, but has since been completely established; and it is how admitted

into all historical collections as a book of unquestionable authority.

2

The old gentleman died shortly after the publication of his work, and now that he is dead

and gone it cannot do much harm to his memory to say that his time might have been much

better employed in weightier labors. He, however, was apt to ride his hobby in his own

way; and though it did now and then kick up the dust a little in the eyes of his neighbors

and grieve the spirit of some friends, for whom he felt the truest deference and affection,

yet his errors and follies are remembered “more in sorrow than in anger”; and it begins to

be suspected that he never intended to injure or offend. But however his memory may be

appreciated by critics, it is still held dear among many folk whose good opinion is well

worth having; particularly by certain biscuit bakers, who have gone so far as to imprint his

likeness on their New Year cakes, and have thus given him a chance for immortality

almost equal to the being stamped on a Waterloo medal or a Queen Anne’s farthing.)

3

By Woden, God of Saxons,

From whence comes Wednesday, that is Wodensday,

Truth is a thing that ever I will keep

Unto thylke day in which I creep into

My sepulchre—

CARTWRIGHT.

Whoever has made a voyage up the Hudson must remember the Catskill 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 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

4

21

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, with lattice windows, gable fronts surmounted with weathercocks, and

built of small yellow bricks brought from Holland.

5

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, henpecked 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.

6

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.

7

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 even refuse to

assist a neighbor 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, it was impossible.

8

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

9

22

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 quicker in his fields 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 patrimonial 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 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 a fine lady does her train in bad weather.

10

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 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 to produce a torrent of household eloquence. Rip had

but one 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 fain to draw

off his forces, and take to the outside of the house—the only side which, in truth, belongs

to a henpecked husband.

11

Rip’s sole domestic adherent was his dog Wolf, who was as much henpecked as his

master; for 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 so often going 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-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 would fly to the door with yelping precipitation.

12

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 by constant use. 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 rubicund portrait of his majesty George the Third. Here they used to sit in the shade,

of a long lazy 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 which 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.

13

The opinions of this junto were completely controlled by Nicholas Vedder, a patriarch of 14

23

the village, and landlord of the inn, at the door of which he took his seat from morning till

night, just moving sufficiently to avoid the sun, and keep in the shade of a large tree; so

that the neighbors could tell the hour by his movements as accurately as by a sun-dial. It is

true, he was rarely heard to speak, but smoked his pipe incessantly. His adherents, however

(for every great man has his adherents), perfectly understood him, and knew how to gather

his opinions. When anything that was read or related displeased him, he was observed to

smoke his pipe vehemently, and send forth short, frequent, and angry puffs; but when

pleased, he would inhale the smoke slowly and tranquilly, and emit it in light and placid

clouds, and sometimes taking the pipe from his mouth, and letting the fragrant vapor curl

about his nose, would gravely nod his head in token of perfect approbation.

From even this stronghold the unlucky Rip was at length routed by his termagant wife,

who would suddenly break in upon the tranquillity of the assemblage, and call the

members all to nought; nor was that august personage, Nicholas Vedder himself, sacred

from the daring tongue of this terrible virago, who charged him outright with encouraging

her husband in habits of idleness.

15

Poor Rip was at last reduced almost to despair; and his only alternative, to escape from the

labor of the farm and clamor of his wife, was to take gun in hand and stroll away into the

woods. Here he would sometimes seat himself at the foot of a tree, and share the contents

of his wallet with Wolf, with whom he sympathized as a fellow-sufferer in persecution.

“Poor Wolf,” he would say, “thy mistress leads thee a dog’s life of it; but never mind, my

lad, while I live thou shalt never want a friend to stand by thee!” Wolf would wag his tail,

look wistfully in his master’s face, and if dogs can feel pity, I verily believe he

reciprocated the sentiment with all his heart.

16

In a long ramble of the kind on a fine autumnal day, Rip had unconsciously scrambled to

one of the highest parts of the Catskill Mountains. He was after his favorite sport of

squirrel shooting, and the still solitudes had echoed and reëchoed with the reports of his

gun. Panting and fatigued, he threw himself, late in the afternoon, on a green knoll,

covered with mountain herbage, that crowned the brow of a precipice. From an opening

between the trees he could overlook all the lower country for many a mile of rich

woodland. He saw at a distance the lordly Hudson, far, far below him, moving on its silent

but majestic course, the reflection of a purple cloud, or the sail of a lagging bark, here and

there sleeping on its glassy bosom, and at last losing itself in the blue highlands.

17

On the other side he looked down into a deep mountain glen, wild, lonely, and shagged,

the bottom filled with fragments from the impending cliffs, and scarcely lighted by the

reflected rays of the setting sun. For some time Rip lay musing on this scene; evening was

gradually advancing; the mountains began to throw their long blue shadows over the

valleys; he saw that it would be dark long before he could reach the village, and he heaved

a heavy sigh when he thought of encountering the terrors of Dame Van Winkle.

18

As he was about to descend, he heard a voice from a distance, hallooing, “Rip Van

Winkle! Rip Van Winkle!” He looked around, but could see nothing but a crow winging its

solitary flight across the mountain. He thought his fancy must have deceived him, and

turned again to descend, when he heard the same cry ring through the still evening air:

“Rip Van Winkle! Rip Van Winkle!”—at the same time Wolf bristled up his back, and

giving a low growl, skulked to his master’s side, looking fearfully down into the glen. Rip

now felt a vague apprehension stealing over him; he looked anxiously in the same

direction, and perceived a strange figure slowly toiling up the rocks, and bending under the

19

24

weight of something he carried on his back. He was surprised to see any human being in

this lonely and unfrequented place, but supposing it to be some one of the neighborhood in

need of assistance, he hastened down to yield it.

On nearer approach, he was still more surprised at the singularity of the stranger’s

appearance. He was a short, square-built old fellow, with thick bushy hair, and a grizzled

beard. His dress was of the antique Dutch fashion—a cloth jerkin strapped around the

waist—several pair of breeches, the outer one of ample volume, decorated with rows of

buttons down the sides, and bunches at the knees. He bore on his shoulders a stout keg,

that seemed full of liquor, and made signs for Rip to approach and assist him with the load.

Though rather shy and distrustful of this new acquaintance, Rip complied with his usual

alacrity, and mutually relieving one another, they clambered up a narrow gully, apparently

the dry bed of a mountain torrent. As they ascended, Rip every now and then heard long

rolling peals, like distant thunder, that seemed to issue out of a deep ravine, or rather cleft

between lofty rocks, toward which their rugged path conducted. He paused for an instant,

but supposing it to be the muttering of one of those transient thunder showers which often

take place in mountain heights, he proceeded. Passing through the ravine, they came to a

hollow, like a small amphitheater, surrounded by perpendicular precipices, over the brinks

of which impending trees shot their branches, so that you only caught glimpses of the

azure sky and the bright evening cloud. During the whole time, Rip and his companion had

labored on in silence; for though the former marveled greatly what could be the object of

carrying a keg of liquor up this wild mountain, yet there was something strange and

incomprehensible about the unknown that inspired awe and checked familiarity.

20

On entering the amphitheater, new objects of wonder presented themselves. On a level

spot in the center was a company of odd-looking personages playing at ninepins. They

were dressed in a quaint, outlandish fashion: some wore short doublets, others jerkins, with

long knives in their belts, and most had enormous breeches, of similar style with that of the

guide’s. Their visages, too, were peculiar: one had a large head, broad face, and small,

piggish eyes; the face of another seemed to consist entirely of nose, and was surmounted

by a white sugar-loaf hat set off with a little red cock’s tail. They all had beards, of various

shapes and colors. There was one who seemed to be the commander. He was a stout old

gentleman, with a weather-beaten countenance; he wore a laced doublet, broad belt and

hanger, high-crowned hat and feather, red stockings, and high-heeled shoes, with roses in

them. The whole group reminded Rip of the figures in an old Flemish painting, in the

parlor of Dominie Van Schaick, the village parson, and which had been brought over from

Holland at the time of the settlement.

21

What seemed particularly odd to Rip, was that though these folks were evidently amusing

themselves, yet they maintained the gravest faces, the most mysterious silence, and were,

withal, the most melancholy party of pleasure he had ever witnessed. Nothing interrupted

the stillness of the scene but the noise of the balls, which, whenever they were rolled,

echoed along the mountains like rumbling peals of thunder.

22

As Rip and his companion approached them, they suddenly desisted from their play, and

stared at him with such fixed statue-like gaze, and such strange, uncouth, lack-luster

countenances, that his heart turned within him, and his knees smote together. His

companion now emptied the contents of the keg into large flagons, and made signs to him

to wait upon the company. He obeyed with fear and trembling; they quaffed the liquor in

profound silence, and then returned to their game.

23

25

By degrees, Rip’s awe and apprehension subsided. He even ventured, when no eye was

fixed upon him, to taste the beverage, which he found had much of the flavor of excellent

Hollands. He was naturally a thirsty soul, and was soon tempted to repeat the draught. One

taste provoked another, and he reiterated his visits to the flagon so often, that at length his

senses were overpowered, his eyes swam in his head, his head gradually declined, and he

fell into a deep sleep.

24

On awaking, he found himself on the green knoll from 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 woe-begone party at ninepins—

the flagon—“Oh! that flagon! that wicked flagon!” thought Rip—“what excuse shall I

make to Dame Van Winkle?”

25

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 roysters 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, shouted his name, but all in vain; the echoes repeated his whistle and shout, but

no dog was to be seen.

26

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

blessed 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 tripped up or entangled by the wild grape vines that twisted their coils and

tendrils from tree to tree, and spread a kind of network in his path.

27

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.

28

As he approached the village, he met a number of people, but none whom he knew, which

somewhat surprised him, for he had thought himself acquainted with every one in the

29

26

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 surprise, 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, none of which he

recognized for his old acquaintances, 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 began to misgive him; he doubted 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!”

30

It was with some difficulty he found the way to his own house, which he approached with

silent awe, expecting every moment to hear 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!”

31

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 rung for

a moment with his voice, and then all again was silence.

32

He now hurried forth, and hastened to his old resort, the little 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 which 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 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 stuck in the hand instead of a

scepter, the head was decorated with a cocked hat, and underneath was painted in large

characters, GENERAL WASHINGTON.

33

There was, as usual, a crowd of folk about the door, but none whom 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—election—members of Congress—liberty—Bunker’s Hill—heroes of ’76—and

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other words, that 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 the army of women and children that had gathered at his heels, soon attracted

the attention of the tavern politicians. They crowded around him, eying 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 raising 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 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!”

35

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.

36

“Well—who are they?—name them.” 37

Rip bethought himself a moment, and then inquired, “Where’s Nicholas Vedder?” 38

There was 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 rotted and gone, too.”

39

“Where’s Brom Dutcher?” 40

“Oh, he went off to the army in the beginning of the war; some say he was killed at the

battle 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.”

41

“Where’s Van Bummel, the schoolmaster?” 42

“He went off to the wars, too, was a great militia general, and is now in Congress.” 43

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?”

44

“Oh, Rip Van Winkle!” exclaimed two or three, “Oh, to be sure! that’s Rip Van Winkle

yonder, leaning against the tree.”

45

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?

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“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!”

47

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, likely woman pressed 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.

48

“Judith Gardenier.” 49

“And your father’s name?” 50

“Ah, poor man, his name was Rip Van Winkle; 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.”

51

Rip had but one question more to ask; but he put it with a faltering voice:— 52

“Where’s your mother?” 53

“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.”

54

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!”

55

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?”

56

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 where 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.

57

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

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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 ninepins in a hollow of the mountain; and that he himself had heard, one

summer afternoon, the sound of their balls, like long 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.

59

Rip now resumed his old walks and habits; he soon found many of his former cronies,

though all rather the worse for the wear and tear of time; and preferred making friends

among the rising generation, with whom he soon grew into great favor.

60

Having nothing to do at home, and being arrived at that happy age when a man can do

nothing with impunity, he took his place once more on the bench, at the inn door, and was

reverenced as one of the patriarchs of the village, and a chronicle of the old times “before

the war.” It was some time before he could get into the regular track of gossip, or could be

made to comprehend the strange events that had taken place during his torpor. How that

there had been a revolutionary war—that the country had thrown off the yoke of old

England—and that, instead of being a subject of his Majesty, George III., he was now a

free citizen of the United States. Rip, in fact, was no politician; the changes of states and

empires made but little impression on him; but there was one species of despotism under

which he had long groaned, and that was—petticoat government; happily, that was at an

end; he had got his neck out of the yoke of matrimony, and could go in and out whenever

he pleased, without dreading the tyranny of Dame Van Winkle. Whenever her name was

mentioned, however, he shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, and cast up his eyes;

which might pass either for an expression of resignation to his fate, or joy at his

deliverance.

61

He used to tell his story to every stranger that arrived at Dr. Doolittle’s hotel. He was

observed, at first, to vary on some points every time he told it, which was, doubtless,

owing to his having so recently awaked. It at last settled down precisely to the tale I have

related, and not a man, woman, or child in the neighborhood but knew it by heart. Some

always pretended to doubt the reality of it, and insisted that Rip had been out of his head,

and this was one point on which he always remained flighty. The old Dutch inhabitants,

however, almost universally gave it full credit. Even to this day they never hear a thunder-

storm of a summer afternoon, about the Catskills, but they say Hendrick Hudson and his

crew are at their game of ninepins; and it is a common wish of all henpecked husbands in

the neighborhood, when life hangs heavy on their hands, that they might have a quieting

draught out of Rip Van Winkle’s flagon.

62

NOTE.—The foregoing tale, one would suspect, had been suggested to Mr. Knickerbocker

by a little German superstition about the Emperor Frederick and the Kypphauser

Mountain; the subjoined note, however, which he had appended to the tale, shows that it is

an absolute fact, narrated with his usual fidelity.

63

“The story of Rip Van Winkle may seem incredible to many, but nevertheless I give it my

full belief, for I know the vicinity of our old Dutch settlements to have been very subject to

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marvelous events and appearances. Indeed, I have heard many stranger stories than this, in

the villages along the Hudson; all of which were too well authenticated to admit of a

doubt. I have even talked with Rip Van Winkle myself, who, when last I saw him, was a

very venerable old man, and so perfectly rational and consistent on every other point, that I

think no conscientious person could refuse to take this into the bargain; nay, I have seen a

certificate on the subject taken before a country justice and signed with a cross, in the

justice’s own handwriting. The story, therefore, is beyond the possibility of a doubt.

“D. K.”

POSTSCRIPT 1 .—The following are traveling notes from a memorandum book of Mr.

Knickerbocker:—

65

The Kaatsberg, or Catskill Mountains, have always been a region full of fable. The Indians

considered them the abode of spirits, who influenced the weather, spreading sunshine or

clouds over the landscape, and sending good or bad hunting seasons. They were ruled by

an old squaw spirit, said to be their mother. She dwelt on the highest peak of the Catskills,

and had charge of the doors of day and night to open and shut them at the proper hour. She

hung up the new moon in the skies, and cut up the old ones into stars. In times of drought,

if properly propitiated, she would spin light summer clouds out of cobwebs and morning

dew, and send them off from the crest of the mountain, flake after flake, like flakes of

carded cotton, to float in the air; until, dissolved by the heat of the sun, they would fall in

gentle showers, causing the grass to spring, the fruits to ripen, and the corn to grow an inch

an hour. If displeased, however, she would brew up clouds black as ink, sitting in the midst

of them like a bottle-bellied spider in the midst of its web; and when these clouds broke,

woe betide the valleys!

66

In old times, say the Indian traditions, there was a kind of Manitou or Spirit, who kept

about the wildest recesses of the Catskill Mountains, and took a mischievous pleasure in

wreaking all kinds of evils and vexations upon the red men. Sometimes he would assume

the form of a bear, a panther, or a deer, lead the bewildered hunter a weary chase through

tangled forests and among ragged rocks; and then spring off with a loud ho! ho! leaving

him aghast on the brink of a beetling precipice or raging torrent.

67

The favorite abode of this Manitou is still shown. It is a great rock or cliff on the loneliest

part of the mountains, and, from the flowering vines which clamber about it, and the wild

flowers which abound in its neighborhood, is known by the name of the Garden Rock.

Near the foot of it is a small lake, the haunt of the solitary bittern, with water snakes

basking in the sun on the leaves of the pond lilies which lie on the surface. This place was

held in great awe by the Indians, insomuch that the boldest hunter would not pursue his

game within its precincts. Once upon a time, however, a hunter who had lost his way,

penetrated to the Garden Rock, where he beheld a number of gourds placed in the crotches

of trees. One of these he seized, and made off with it, but in the hurry of his retreat he let it

fall among the rocks, when a great stream gushed forth, which washed him away and

swept him down precipices, where he was dashed to pieces, and the stream made its way to

the Hudson, and continues to flow to the present day; being the identical stream known by

the name of Kaaterskill.

68

Note 1. Not in the first edition. [back]

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