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,
built of small yellow bricks, brought from Holland, having
latticed windows and gable fronts, surmounted with weathercocks.

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 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