dred years ago they resolved to go to try | lection now is that of Grimm. Then it

was that of Otmar, before mentioned. In this Irving would find "the little German superstition of Frederick der Rothbart and the Kypphauser Mountain." According to the story, the Emperor's chosen knights dwell with him still, and there have been at least two visits paid to the imperial court under-ground. The first was that of a pair of lovers, who went to borrow crockery for the wedding feast. They were received by the knights with courtesy, feasted with richest viands, and dismissed with a whole basketful of crock

to find they had been absent two hundred years. They were strangers in a strange world.

their fortunes at Inverness. On arriving in town they took lodgings, and, as was the custom, hired the bellman to go around announcing their arrival, their qualifications, their fame, and their terms. Soon after, they were visited by a venerablelooking gray-haired old man, who not only found no fault with their terms, but actually offered more than they asked if they would go with him a little way out of the town. To this they agreed, and he led them to a strange-looking building, which seemed more like a shed than a house, and they began to demur. How-ery-ware. Joyfully they returned home, ever, he offered them double their price, and they went in through a long hall, not noticing that it led into the hill. Their musical talents were instantly put into requisition, and the dancing was such as in their lives they had never witnessed, though it is common enough in these days even above-ground. However, they fixed their eyes on their instruments, and in the morning received not only twice but even three times their usual fee, and took their leave, highly gratified with the liberal treatment they had received. It surprised them to find that it was out of a hill, and not a house, that they issued; and when they came to the town they could not recognize any place or person. While they and the towns-people were in equal amazement there came up a very old man, who, on hearing their story, said: "You are the two men who lodged with my grandfather, and whom Thomas the Rhymer, it was supposed, decoyed into Tom-na-Hurich. Your friends were greatly grieved on your account; but it is a hundred years ago, and your names are now no longer known." It was the Sabbath-day, and the bells were ringing. The fiddlers entered the church, and sat still while the bells sounded. But when the service began, and the first words of Holy Scripture fell upon their ears, they dwindled to dust.

Soon after the visit to Scotland the legend of Rip Van Winkle was written. In this year the New York firm failed, and Irving devoted himself to the study of German, both to divert his thoughts and to prepare for his future. Hitherto he had written chiefly for amusement; henceforth literature was his profession.

The introduction of the English-speaking peoples to the German language and literature usually begins with the folk-lore of the language. The most popular col

The other visitor was Peter Klaus, a goat-herd of the adjacent village of Sittendorf. Tending his goats on the mountainside, he was accosted by a young man who silently beckoned him to follow. Obeying the direction, he was led into a deep dell inclosed by craggy precipices, where he found twelve knightly personages playing at skittles, no one of whom uttered a word. Gazing around him, he observed a can of wine which exhaled a delicious fragrance. Drinking from it, he felt inspired with new life, but at length was overpowered with sleep. When he awoke he found himself again on the plain where his goats were accustomed to rest; but, rubbing his eyes, he could see neither dog nor goats. He was astonished at the sight of trees which he had never before observed. Descending the mountain, and entering the village, he finds to his consternation that everything in the place wears an altered look. Most of the people are strangers to him; the few acquaintances he meets seem to have grown suddenly old; and only at last by mutual inquiries the truth is elicited that he had been asleep for twenty years.

It is this subordinate incident which Irving developed into the legend of Rip Van Winkle, directing attention to its source by his characteristic note.* Doubtless Irving was familiar with many narratives of supernatural sleep. In childhood he must have heard the story of the, "Sleeping Beauty." In early manhood he read The Canterbury Tales, and charged

*So in Westminster Abbey, which owes its ex

istence to Sir Thomas Brown's Urn-Burial, he is ingenuous enough to quote twice from that inimitable essay.

table Catskill "crows sporting high in air about a dry tree that overhung a sunny precipice."

The characteristically accurate local coloring gives the legend its inimitable verisimilitude, and causes it to be regarded by a well-known British writer as an autochthonous myth.*

Similar legends occur in all the mytholo

a friend going to London to be sure to visit the Tabard Inn. Recently he had been travelling for the express purpose of collecting material for such desultory literary work as he might choose. He had heard the story of "Thomas the Rhymer" from Scott, and received from him the suggestion that "it might be wrought up into a capital tale." Soon after, the legend of Tom-na-Hurich must have capti-gies-Aryan, Semitic, Turanian-and atvated his fancy. His intimate knowledge tempt has been made to show also how of the Catskill Mountains and of the hab- they came into the mythologies. A reits of the early settlers constituted an ex- cent writer (Augustus Grote) asserts that cellent background, the situation stimu- religion began with the worship of all the lated to action, Peter Klaus furnished the dead of a particular tribe, and that when immediate motif, and the legend of Rip this proved to be rather too much of a Van Winkle was written. There is no good thing, distinguished characters were thing in it, save the fact of long absence, deified, some of whom happened to be to remind one of the legend of Ercildoune. named after the sun, and so arose the sun But it is connected with that of Inverness myths, of which Rip Van Winkle is one not only by the incidents which followed that was brought from Europe by the the sleep, but also by the statement that Dutch. There seems to be a little confuthe entrance to the amphitheatre was sion in the logic as well as in the history, found to be closed with solid rock, leaving it to be inferred that it had been opened and shut again by enchantment.

In all essential parts, however, the story of Rip Van Winkle is the story of Peter Klaus.. The hero is wandering on the mountain. He hears his name called, apparently by a man who proves to be speechless, and can only make signs for him to accompany him. He is led into a broad ravine surrounded by precipices. He sees a company of men in antique garb playing nine-pins in silence. He drinks of their intoxicating liquor until sleep overpowers him. He wakes in his accustomed haunts; he rubs his eyes; he calls his dog-in vain. He sees trees that have grown there while he slept. He descends the mountain. He finds the village changed, the people mostly strangers, the few he knows grown old, and learns by inquiry that he has been asleep just twenty years.

Baring Gould, taking his cue from the frequent recurrence of the number seven, believes that the mythological core is the repose of the earth during the seven winter months. But the legend exists equally where the winter continues for eight months, and where it ends in four. Some have taught that such legends as this have a purely subjective origin, and that they originate in various localities, necessarily from the constitution of the human mind. Others believe that they have their origin in some remarkable fact. Herodotus mentions a tribe of which he heard, beyond the Ural Mountains, as sleeping regularly during half the year, though he expresses his doubts of the fact. As first told this was doubtless simply the statement of the six months' circumpolar night.

Strange stories are told of Indian fakirs lying for weeks or months in sealed sepulchres, and reviving again in the warmth of the sun, like drowned flies and hibernating bears. But these lack confirmation.

If these widely diffused legends are simply different versions of one striking fact, it must be a fact that occurred in

When Rip Van Winkle first heard his name called by the stranger "he looked around, but could see nothing but a crow winging its solitary flight across the mountain"; and when he awoke and whistled for his dog, “he was only answered by the cawing of a flock of idle crows." The crows of Rip Van Winkle are the *The same charming air of verisimilitude perravens of Friedrich der Rothbart, as these vading Mr. Knickerbocker's History of New York are simply Huginn and Muninn, the at-led Göller, the learned German editor of Thucydides, tendant ravens of Odin, the Norse god. But by the touch of Irving's feathery wand they have been changed into veri

the Greek historian, with the words: "Addo locum into quoting it in sober earnest to illustrate a point in Washingtonis Irvingii Hist. Novi Eboraci, lib. vii., cap. 5."

very ancient, if not in prehistoric times. | Certainly it must have occurred before the dispersion of the peoples. By far the larger proportion of these tales turn upon susceptibility to female influence, and many writers have maintained that the "daughters of men" who possessed such strange powers of fascination in the early day belonged to some pre-existent race, whose enchantments form the basis of the world-wide narrative. This theory also accounts for the troglodytes of the book of Job as well as for the "hill people" of these legends, that being the name by which the bewitching little folk are commonly designated everywhere, from the central seats of civilization on the Mediterranean to farthest Thule.

which he could expect no benefit. And while he spake he fell asleep, and woke again only when the tree began to bear. The sacred hymns of Greece tell us how Endymion slept for half a century in his mountain - cave, with the roses on his cheeks, loved by Selene, the moon-goddess. The Indian Puranas give information that when King Rainata presumed to visit Brahma to ask the hand of his daughter in marriage, he heard, as he approached, the sweetest song that was ever sung, and when it was ended made known his errand, to be told that the singing had continued five hundred years!

Other narratives of long sleep have only a moral lesson, though the more the literary motive predominates the more obThe evolution theory has also been ap- scurely is the moral lesson suggested. plied to this subject, and the core of the The fiddlers of Strathspey were led astray story has been found in the experience of by the love of money, Rip Van Winkle the first man. It has been suggested that was enticed by whiskey, and Peter Klaus (since the forms of the legend generally by wine. Ossian, the last and best of the turn upon man's passionate desire for wo-Fingalians, was overcome by his fondness man's love) if the creative days of the most ancient historic narrative be periods of indefinite duration, not improbably such a period of æonic sleep may have been requisite also for the evolution of his bride from Adam's longing heart. Whatever be its primeval origin, the story finds in every human heart correspondences which render it a universal favorite. Wagner's opera of Tannhäuser is based upon the most common form of the legend, and the literature is equal in antiquity, extent, and interest to that of Rip Van Winkle.

The legends to which allusion has been made constitute less than a tithe of all the stories of this kind. Some are told distinctively in the interests of religion. Sir John Mandeville informs us that St. John is not dead, but sleeping, the green grass coverlet under which he lies still rising and falling as he breathes. The Koran gives information of the seven sleepers of Ephesus, whose nap lasted more than a hundred years, to prove the doctrine of the resurrection.

The Talmud states that Chone Hamagel was both skeptical and selfish. Reading, "When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion, We were like men that dream,"

he said, did ever a man sleep and dream for seventy years! And when he saw a man planting the St.-John's-bread - tree, which does not bear until seventy years of age, he rebuked him for the labor from

for music. Too great admiration of beauty was the fault of Thomas of Ercildoune, of Jonas Soideman of the Faroe Islands, of Helgi Thorir of Norway, of Jacob Dietrich of Pomerania, of Tannhäuser the Minnesinger, of the Chinese Yu-an-Chas, the Japanese Lu-Wen, the coral grove sleeper of the Samoan archipelago, and a hundred others in various climes.

A SILHOUETTE.

T was the second day of Lucy Coyt's For years she had looked forward to the time when she should set out to earn her living in that mysterious "South" which, before the war, was like a foreign land to most Northern women. At that time families of the class to which Lucy belonged trained their clever daughters as teachers to go to the cotton States, precisely as they now fit their sons to go to Colorado or Dakota. In any case they would do better than at home, and they might open up a gold mine in the shape of a rich widower or susceptible young planter. Two or three of Miss Coyt's classmates had disappeared victoriously in this way. She fancied them as reigning over a legion of slaves, and adored by a swarthy, fiery Don Furioso; and naturally the possibility of such a fate for herself glimmered hazily in the distance. Though, of course, it was wrong to hold slaves; at least, she was feebly con

It was the second day

fident that was her belief ever since Da- | at once," thought Miss Coyt. She took vid Pettit had talked to her about it the her purse out of her bag and put it in her other evening. The Reverend David had pocket, lest there might be a thief in the brought some queer new notions back with car, and then hurried out after the men. him from the theological school. She had a very low opinion of the intelligence of men in any emergency. At home, she always had pulled the whole household of father and brothers along. She was the little steam-tug; they the heavy scows, dragged unwillingly forward.

"He'll wait a long time for a call in our Synod if they suspect he's an abolitionist," thought Lucy as the train whizzed swiftly on. "I wish I'd given him a hint; though he wouldn't have taken it. Dave was a nice sort of a girl - boy when he used to help me skim the cream. But he has grown real coarse and conceited, with his white cravat and radical talk." She drew a book from her bag which he had slipped into her hand just as the stage was starting. "Imitation of Christ ?" eying the cross on the back suspiciously. "It reads like sound doctrine enough. But Dave will have to be on his guard. If he brings any papistical notions into our Synod, his chance for a call is over.

She leaned back, uneasily feeling that if she could have staid and watched him, poor Miss Daisy (as the Fairview boys used to call him) would have had a better chance, when the train suddenly stopped. Miss Coyt had been expecting adventures ever since they started. Now they had begun. The train (she was on a railway in Lower Virginia) was rushing across a trestle bridge, when, with a shrill screech of steam, it stopped. Half of the men in the car crowded to the door, where a brakeman stood barring the way.

"Run over a cow?"

"No. Hush-h! Don't skeer the ladies!"

Jake

She reached the quivering heap on the bank. It was a woman. Miss Coyt straightened the clothes, kneeled down and lifted her head. The gray hair was clotted with blood. "Why, she's old! Her hair's white!" cried Lucy, excitedly, catching the head up to her breast. "Oh dear! oh dear!"

"It's old Mis' Crocker!" said a train man. "Yon's her cabin down on the branch. I see her on the bridge, 'n' she heerd the train comin', 'n' she jumped, 'n'—”

"Don't stand there chattering. Go for a doctor!" said Miss Coyt.

"I am a doctor," said one of the passengers, quietly, stooping to examine the woman. "She is not dead. Not much An arm broken."

hurt.

The men carried Mrs. Crocker to her cabin. She had caught Lucy's hand, and so led her along. The other women craned their necks out of the car watching her. They were just as sorry as Lucy, but they were in the habit of leaving great emergencies in the hands of men.

said. Jake

Miss Coyt laughed to herself. Carr, the brakeman on the Fairview road, would have thrust his head in and yelled, "Keep your seats, gents!" These Southerners were ridiculously gentle and soft whenever they came near a woman. This brakeman was mild-mannered enough to have kept sheep in Arcadia. It was plain that Fairview was many hundred miles back; this was a different world. Lucy's

quick eyes had noted all the differences, although she was miserably abashed by the crowd-so abashed, indeed, that she had been parched with thirst since morning, and could not summon courage to go to the water-cooler for a drink.

Looking out of the window, she saw on the bank below the bridge a hunched heap of gray flannel and yellow calico. The men from the train ran toward it. "Something's wrong. I'd better take right hold

"What can that bold gyurl do?" they said. "The gentlemen will attend to it." The men, having seen Mrs. Crocker open her eyes, straggled back to the train.

"Time's up, doctor!" shouted the conductor. "Express is due in two minutes."

The doctor was leisurely cutting away Mrs. Crocker's flannel sleeve. "I shall want bandages," he said, without looking up. Lucy looked about the bare little cabin, half drew out her handkerchief, and put it back. It was one of her half-dozen newest and best. Then she espied a pillow cover, and tore it into strips. The doctor dressed the arm as composedly as if the day was before him. Miss Coyt kept her eye on the puffing engine. All the clothes she had in the world were in her trunk on that train. What intolerable dawdlers these Southerners were! There! They were going! She could not leave the woman- But her clothes!

"I beg of you not to be alarmed," he tatively. said.