Rip Van winkle

Rip Van Winkle

If you have ever gone to Catskill Mountains,you must have heard of a mysterious tale about an old man named Rip Van Winkle,who is ever a villager of that small hamlet.Though he became famous when he was old,his story was still attractive.The tale shall begin from his youth.

Rip was a typical good man in the village,he was always helpful and accommodating.If you lived in that village,you would see him always traipsed back and forth across the hamlet in order to offer favors to his neighbors in need.That made him welcomed in the whole village,however,also put him under the anger of his wife.

Although Rip was such he was, moreover, a kind neighbor and an obedient, husband., it seemed that his wife didn’t take it.She always quarreled with Mr.Winkle,because he never cared about their own farm,yet take good care of neighbors’ as his own possession.Rip didn’t care about her anger,because all the villagers always thought he was right when the Winkles had a row.Rip had a son who behaved just like a mold carved out of the same pattern of his father.

Rip’s good friend

was his dog Wolf, who was as much henpecked as his master; for Dame Van Winkle looked upon Wolf with an evil eye, as the cause of his master’s so often going astray.

Times grew worse and worse with Rip Van Winkle as years of marriage rolled on. For a long while he used to console himself, when driven from home, by frequenting a kind of club of many interestingpersons 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.

From even this stronghold the unlucky Rip was at length routed by his wife, who would suddenly break in upon the club, and call the members all to dismiss.

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.

Then one day,he heard someone was calling him,yet he didn’t know the sound.He could not see anything,but when he intended to leave,the calling started again.He decided to find out the truth.At that time,he saw a man ,he felt surprised because it was out of possibility that would a man sitting on the huge at such a desolate place.As he went closer,he found that it was a strange old man with a wood on his shoulder.Rip considered that this eccentric man may need help from his eyes,so he helped him with the big wood,they walked along the pathway in the mountain,Rip was curious about the new friend but he wasn’t brave enough to ask him any question.Finally they stopped in front of a carve.Rip was interrogative when he found that there were several old man in the same eccentric dress playing the nine pillars of the game.They looked odd,and a man with a long white beard seemed to be their leader.They were playing a game,Rip could tell certainly,however,the expressions on their face are all serious and earnest,which made this party really boring,Rip thought. Everything was in silence except the thunder kept clapping when these men were rolling the pillars.When Rip came close with his company,these strange men stopped to looked at him directly and in a strange eyesight,which made Rip feel nervous and terrified.

The man together with Rip suggested him to hand over wine in the vat to them,Rip did so,and gradually felt comfortable.While they don’t pay attention to him,he took a bite of the wine, then he began to drink over and over again.Imperceptibly,he fell into sleep.And when he woke up,he found himself at the place where he met the first odd man,there was no one around him,only a

rusty gun was beside him instead of his shiny lovely gun.”Did I sleep here for he whole night?”he thought,”so,those men are thieves,they made me drunk and took away my gun,that’s it.”

He stood up and went downhill,thought about excuses for his night out to his wife.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 country round. Their dress, too, was of a different fashion from that to which he was accustomed.”What

happened?”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. A half-starved dog, that looked like Wolf, was skulking about it. Rip called him , but it barked, showed his teeth, and passed on. This was an unkind cut indeed—“My very dog,” sighed poor Rip, “has forgotten me!”

He entered the house. It was empty, forlorn, and apparently abandoned. Then he rushed to the small village inn,Instead of the great tree which used to shelter the quiet little Dutch inn of yore, there now was reared a tall naked pole, and from it was fluttering a flag, on which was a singular assemblage of stars and stripes—all this was strange and incomprehensible. There Rip knew that he had slept for nearly 20 years after drinking the wine from those odd men,now the regime changed and America got his independence,no one could recognize him and some of his old friends were dead. Everything was changed a lot .The only thing made him comforting was that he saw his daughter and his grandchild,and his wife had gone. He lived with his daughter’s family from then on and he had a happy life with his alive old friends.Meanwhile,he had made many new friends as he did ages ago.