the interval between 1855 and 1875, when slavery was abolished, when the
old plantation system was changed, when the names of new heroes emerged,
and when new social and political and industrial problems had to be
grappled with.

_Plot_. The plot is divided into two almost equal parts, which we may
call "before and after taking." A recent critic has said: "The actual
forward movement of the plot does not begin until the sentence, 'In a
long ramble of the kind on a fine autumnal day, Rip had unconsciously
scrambled to one of the highest parts of the Kaatskill Mountains.'" The
critic has missed, I think, the main structural excellence of the story.
Dame Van Winkle, the children who hung around Rip, his own children, his
dog, the social club at the inn with the portrait of George the Third,
Van Bummel, and Nicholas Vedder, all had to be mentioned before Rip
began the ascent of the mountain. Otherwise, when he returned, we should
have had no means of measuring the swift passage of time during his
sleep. Each is a skillfully set timepiece or milepost which, on Rip's
return, misleads the poor fellow at every turn and thus produces the
exact kind of "totality of effect" that Irving intended. The forward
movement of the plot begins with this careful planning of the route that
Rip is to take on his return trip, when twenty years shall have done
their work. Cut out these _points de repère_ and see how effectively the
forward movement of the plot is retarded.

_Characters_. Rip was the first character in American fiction to be
known far beyond our own borders, and he remains one of the best known.
In the class with him belong James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking (or
Natty Bumppo), Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom, Joel Chandler Harris's
Uncle Remus, and Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. He has
been called un-American, and so he is, and so Irving plainly intended