الوصف
Rip Van Winkle is Dutch-American villager living in the Catskill Mountains in the era before the Revolutionary War in the story of the same name. Beloved by all, he shirks hard work, and is harangued by a nagging wife.He takes to the mountains for some peace and quiet and meets a group of silent,bearded men playing nine-pins and drinking moonshine. He joins in a falls asleep. When he awakes, everything is his musket is rusty, his beard is a foot long, his dog is gone, his wife is dead, his son is grown, and America has become a country. He has been asleep for at least twenty years. The story was the first in The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, Gentleman. It was an immediate hit when first published and has remained a staple of children’s literature ever since.