صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

the very suggestion of which, the self-important man with the cocked hat retired with some precipitation. At this critical moment a fresh, comely woman passed 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.

2. "What is your name, my good woman?" asked he. "Judith Gardenier."

"And your father's name?"

"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."

3. Rip had but one question more to ask; but he put it with a faltering voice.

"Where's your mother?"

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.

"I am

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. your father!" cried he-"Young Rip Van Winkle onceold Rip Van Winkle now! Does nobody know poor Rip Van Winkle?"

4. 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. Wel

come home again, old neighbor. Why, where have you been these twenty long years?"

5. 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 were 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.

6. 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 Kaatskill 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 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 distant peals of thunder.

7. 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 a hereditary disposition to attend to anything else but his business.

8. 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.

WASHINGTON IRVING.

Washington Irving, the first to win European respect for American literature, was born at New York in 1783. His graceful style, his sense of humor, and the graphic power shown in his more serious works, will long retain the popularity which his early writings obtained. He died at Sunnyside, on the Hudson, in 1859.

[blocks in formation]

1. I live for those who love me,

Whose hearts are kind and true;
For the heaven that smiles above me,

And awaits my spirit, too;

For all human ties that bind me,

For the task by God assigned me,
For the hopes not left behind me,

And the good that I can do.

2. I live to learn their story

Who've suffered for my sake;

To emulate their glory,

And follow in their wake;

Bards, patriots, martyrs, sages,

The noble of all ages,

Whose deeds crown history's pages,
And time's great volume make.

3. I live to hold communion

With all that is divine;

To feel there is a union

"Twixt nature's heart and mine;

To profit by affliction,

Reap truths from fields of fiction,
Grow wiser from conviction,

And fulfill each grand design.

4. I live to hail that season
By gifted minds foretold,
When men shall live by reason,
And not alone by gold;
When man to man united,
And every wrong thing righted,
The whole world shall be lighted
As Eden was of old.

5. I live for those who love me,

For those who know me true;

For the heaven that smiles above me,
And awaits my spirit, too;

For the cause that lacks assistance,
For the wrong that needs resistance,
For the future in the distance,

And the good that I can do.

G. LINNEUS Banks,

Try to give the sense of the poem in prose form, making a separate paragraph of each stanza.

[blocks in formation]

1. Books are resources and consolation; study is a resource and consolation. Both are strong factors in the best home-life; and the man who can look back with gratitude to the time when, around the home-lamp, he made one of the circle about his father's table, has much to be thankful for; and we venture to assert that the coming man whose father will give him such a remembrance to be thankful for can never be an outcast, or grow cold, bitter, or cynical.

or

2. But the taste for books does not come always by nature it must be cultivated. And everything between covers is not a book; and a taste for books cannot be cultivated in a bookless house. It may be said that there is no Catholic literature, or that it is very expensive to buy books, or that it is difficult to get a small number of the best books, or to be sure that one has the best in a small compass.

« السابقةمتابعة »