Their dress too was of a different fashion from that to which he was accustomed. They all stared at him with equal marks of surprise, and whenever they cast their eyes upon him, invariably stroked their chins. The constant recurrence of this gesture induced Rip involuntarily to do the same, when to his astonishment he found his beard had grown a foot long!

He had now entered the skirts of the village. A troop of strange children ran at his heels, hooting after him and pointing at his grey beard. The dogs too, not one of which he recognized for an old acquaintance, barked at him as he passed. The very village was altered – it was larger and more populous. There were rows of houses which he had never seen before, and those which had been his familiar haunts had disappeared. Strange names were over the doors – strange faces at the windows – every thing was strange. His mind now misgave him; he began to doubt whether both he and the world around him were not bewitched. Surely this was his native village which he had left but the day before. There stood the Kaatskill mountains – there ran the silver Hudson at a distance – there was every hill and dale precisely as it had always been – Rip was sorely perplexed – ‘That flagon last night,’ thought he, ‘has addled my poor head sadly!’

It was with some difficulty that he found the way to his own house, which he approached with silent awe, expecting every moment to hear the shrill voice of Dame Van Winkle. He found the house gone to decay – the roof fallen in, the windows shattered and the doors off the hinges. A half starved dog that looked like Wolf was skulking about it. Rip called him by name but the cur snarled, shewed his teeth and passed on. This was an unkind cut indeed – ‘My very dog,’ sighed poor Rip, ‘has forgotten me!’

He entered the house, which, to tell the truth, Dame Van Winkle had always kept in neat order. It was empty, forlorn and apparently abandoned. This desolateness overcame all his connubial fears – he called loudly for his wife and children – the lonely chambers rung for a moment with his voice, and then all again was silence.

He now hurried forth and hastened to his old resort, the village inn – but it too was gone. A large, ricketty wooden building stood in its place, with great gaping windows, some of them broken, and mended with old hats and petticoats, and over the door was printed ‘The Union Hotel, by Jonathan Doolittle.’ Instead of the great tree, that used to shelter the quiet little Dutch inn of yore, there now was reared a tall naked pole with something on top that looked like a red night cap, and from it was fluttering a flag on which was a singular assemblage of stars and stripes – all this was strange and incomprehensible. He recognized on the sign, however, the ruby face of King George under which he had smoked so many a peaceful pipe, but even this was singularly metamorphosed. The red coat was changed for one of blue and buff; a sword was held in the hand instead of a sceptre; the head was decorated with a cocked hat, and underneath was printed in large characters GENERAL WASHINGTON.

There was as usual a crowd of folk about the door; but none that Rip recollected. The very character of the people seemed changed. There was a busy, bustling disputatious tone about it, instead of the accustomed phlegm and drowsy tranquility. He looked in vain for the sage Nicholaus Vedder with his broad face, double chin and fair long pipe, uttering clouds of tobacco smoke instead of idle speeches. Or Van Bummel the schoolmaster doling forth the contents of an ancient newspaper. In place of these a lean bilious looking fellow with his pockets full of hand bills, was haranguing vehemently about rights of citizens – elections – members of Congress – liberty – Bunker’s hill – heroes of seventy six – and other words which were a perfect babylonish jargon to the bewildered Van Winkle.

The appearance of Rip with his long grizzled beard, his rusty fowling piece 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 – God 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.

‘– 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.’

‘Where’s Brom Dutcher?’

‘Oh 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.’

‘Where’s Van Bummel the schoolmaster?’

‘He 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?’

‘Oh. Rip Van Winkle?’ exclaimed two or three – ‘oh to be sure! – 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.