Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories by Washington Irving Page A

his uncouth dress and an army of women and children 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, enquired “on which side he voted?”—Rip stared in vacant stupidity. Another short but busy little fellow, pulled him by the arm and rising on tiptoe, enquired 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—Cod bless him!”
    Here a general shout burst from the byestanders—“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 ten fold 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 neighbours, who used to keep about the tavern.
    â€œâ€”Well—who are they?—name them.”
    Rip bethought himself a moment and enquired, “Where’s Nicholaus Vedder?”
    There was a silence for a little while, when an old man replied, in a thin, piping voice, “Nicholaus Vedder? why he is dead and gone these eighteen years! There was a wooden tombstone in the church yard that used to tell all about him, but that’s rotted and gone too.”
    â€œWhere’s Brom Dutcher?”
    â€œOh he went off to the army in the beginning of the war; some say he was killed at the storming of Stoney 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.”
    â€œWhere’s Van Bummel the schoolmaster?”
    â€œHe went off to the wars too—was a great militia general, and is now in Congress.”
    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, Stoney Point-he had no courage to ask after any more friends, but cried out in despair, “Does nobody here know Rip Van Winkle?”
    â€œOh. Rip Van Winkle?” exclaimed two or three—“oh to be surel—that’s Rip Van Winkle—yonder—leaning against the tree.”
    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,—what was his name?
    â€œGod 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—1 was myself last night; but I fell asleep on the mountain—and they’ve changed my gun—and every thing’s changed—and I’m changed—and I can’t tell what’s my name, or who I am!”
    The byestanders