Bellows Falls times. [volume] (Bellows Falls, Vt.) 1856-1965, 1871-03-03

conversation happens to be upon the
Subject of molasses, Lyndon Union
JEFFERsoNAs RIP VAN WISKLE
If anybody has in his mind an image OF
Rip Van Wrinkle before nc went up into
the mountains and slept his long sleep,
it is, doubtless, just the good-humored,
careless, affectionate, shrewd, lettering
fellow who comes in with the children
hanging all about him and those chill
dren, with the little lovers afterwards at
his knees, gives us the key to the man.
They are his good angels. Unconciously
in the midst Of his idleness, and the
maudlin folly that exasperates his wife,
the children plead for him in our hearts.
He is not bad whom children love, Shift
less, reckless, even drunken, he may be,
but not bad. The wife orders him out
into the black night and storm, but the
little daughter clings to him. He after
all, is child, and they mutually love
with the londness Of children. The pa
thos of the play culmipatesin Rips fear
full Consciousness that his child does not
know him. Perhaps the auther was wiser
than he knew. But Rip would not be so
perpetually absolved by us as we look,
if we did not know that the children love
him.
1t is wholly study of character
There is no proper action in the play.
The plot is slight a good-natured, drunk
en- idler squanders his property, and
leaves his wife to scrub and toll HOPELESS
| ly. She loves and frets and dispairs,
and be, drunk or sober, only smiles
good-naturedly, until, stung by the
fatal discovery that his pretended af-
fectionate sympathy for her passionate
sorrow is only a trick to steal the bottle
from her pocket, she delivers in one ter
rible sentence the accumulated heart
break of life by bidding him begone
from the house which is hers, and never
to return. He obeys, although, as the
door opens into the awful tempest, she
prays him to turn back.
He disappears in the storm; reappears
upon the mountain, and among the ghost
" crew Of Hendrick Hudson, drinks,
and sleeps for twenty years then awakes
an old man, and descends to the village
to find himself forgotten, his wife mar
ried to the ursurer, who beats her, his
house itself destroyed, and even his
daughter repelling him. Then comes
the proof that it is he-that his proper
ty was never rightsully lost and with
his restored wife and daughter pressing
upon him the cup which has caused all
the sorrow, the curtain falls.
Rip is racy original, one of the men
who are everywhere and always delight
ful, from what is fondly called their pro-
fuse human nature, by which We really
mean entire simplicity and kindness-a
heart overlooking with love and spmpa-
thy, but brave as lion under all.
This character is portrayed by Mr..
Jefferson with such subtitle felicity that if
we only fancy him sometimes writing
poetry, we can imagine that we see Rob-
ert Burns. Their are always those in the
audience who feel toward Rip as many
good people in Dumfries felt toward
Burns. They were impatient with him.
They were ashamed of human nature
when they thought of him. Re was an
idle, dissolute reprobate. If death hadn't
wanted him, says Robert Collyer in his
noble lecture upon Burns, the sheriff
was waiting for him. So he died. and
the good people hurried to bury him and
all his nastiness out of sight /; but they
mightas we'll have tried to bury the sun
shine!"
Mr.. Jefferson shows us this kind of
character perfectly--the man who is be-
loved by children and the unprosperous,
by fishermen and hostlers and plow-boys,
who brings no dinner to his wife unless
he has had good luck in shooting or trap
ping, but who despite all, is kindly hui
man SOUL George " Curtis in Har-
pers Naqazine