too, used to employ him to run their errands, and to do such
little odd jobs as their less obliging husbands would not do for
them. In a word, Rip was ready to attend to anybody's business
but his own; but as to doing family duty, and keeping his
farm in order, he found it impossible.

In fact, he declared it was of no use to work on his farm; it was
the most pestilent little piece of ground in the whole country;
everything about it went wrong, in spite of him. His fences were
continually falling to pieces; his cow would either go astray, or
get among the cabbages; weeds were sure to grow quicker in his
fields than anywhere else; the rain always made a point of
setting in just as he had some out-door work to do; so that
though his patrimonial estate had dwindled away under his
management, acre by acre, until there was little more left than a
mere patch of Indian corn and potatoes, yet it was the
worst-conditioned farm in the neighborhood.

His children, too, were as ragged and wild as if they belonged to
nobody. His son Rip, an urchin begotten in his own likeness,
promised to inherit the habits, with the old clothes, of his
father. He was generally seen trooping like a colt at his
mother's heels, equipped in a pair of his father's cast-off
galligaskins, which he had much ado to hold up with one hand, as
a fine lady does her train in bad weather.

Rip Van Winkle, however, was one of those happy mortals, of
foolish, well-oiled dispositions, who take the world easy, eat
white bread or brown, whichever can be got with least thought or
trouble, and would rather starve on a penny than work for a