When the weather is fair and settled, they are
clothed in blue and purple, and print their bold outlines on the
clear evening sky; but sometimes, when the rest of the landscape
is cloudless, they will gather a hood of gray vapors about their
summits, which, in the last rays of the setting sun, will glow
and light up like a crown of glory.
At the foot of these fairy mountains, the voyager may have
descried the light smoke curling up from a Village, whose shingle
roofs gleam among the trees, just where the blue tints of the
upland melt away into the fresh green of the nearer landscape. It
is a little village of great antiquity, having been founded by
some of the Dutch colonists, in the early times of the province,
just about the beginning of the government of the good Peter
Stuyvesant (may he rest in peace!), and there were some of the
houses of the original settlers standing within a few years,
built of small yellow bricks, brought from Holland, having
latticed windows and gable fronts, surmounted with weathercocks.
In that same village, and in one of these very houses (which, to
tell the precise truth, was sadly time-worn and weather-beaten),
there lived, many years since, while the country was yet a
province of Great Britain, a simple, good-natured fellow, of the
name of Rip Van Winkle.
Pages:
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70