Some years before the American Revolution, a farmer named Rip van Winkle was in the Catskill Mountains one evening, when a strange man asked him to help carry a keg of ale. Rip obliged, only to fall in with a gloomy company playing ninepins, and drinking ale; and when Rip tried some, he fell into a deep sleep.

When Rip woke, he found his gun rusted, his dog gone, and the landscape strangely changed. His village seemed different too, from the people, who did not recognise him, to the very atmosphere. Eventually he realised he had slept for twenty years, and even missed the American Revolution. Fortunately, his grown-up daughter took him in, and Rip was content.

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