Returning to the United States in the autumn of 1867, Mr. Jefferson appeared at the Olympic Theater, in New York, in the play of “Rip Van Winkle.”  Since then he has traveled extensively throughout the United States, and has devoted himself exclusively to the character of Rip Van Winkle; so exclusively, indeed, that many persons are ignorant of his great merits in other roles.  By adopting this as his specialty, he has rendered himself so perfect in it that he has almost made the improvident, light-hearted Rip a living creature.  A writer in a popular periodical draws the following graphic sketch of his performance of this character: 

If there is something especially charming in the ideal of Rip Van Winkle that Irving has drawn, there is something even more human, sympathetic and attractive in the character reproduced by Jefferson.  A smile that reflects the generous impulses of the man; a face that is the mirror of character; great, luminous eyes that are rich wells of expression; a grace that is statuesque without being studied; an inherent laziness which commands the respect of no one, but a gentle nature that wins the affections of all; poor as he is honest, jolly as he is poor, unfortunate as he is jolly, yet possessed of a spontaneity of nature that springs up and flows along like a rivulet after a rain; the man who can not forget the faults of the character which Jefferson pictures, nor feel like taking good-natured young Rip Van Winkle by the hand and offering a support to tottering old Rip Van Winkle, must have become hardened to all natural as well as artistic influences.  It is scarcely necessary to enter into the details of Mr. Jefferson’s acting of the Dutch Tam O’Shanter.  Notwithstanding the fact that the performance is made up of admirable points that might he enumerated and described, the picture is complete as a whole and in its connections.  Always before the public; preserving the interest during two acts of the play after a telling climax; sustaining the realities of his character in a scene of old superstition, and in which no one speaks but himself,—­the impersonation requires a greater evenness of merit and dramatic effect than any other that could have been chosen.  Rip Van Winkle is imbued with the most marked individuality, and the identity is so conscientiously preserved that nothing is overlooked or neglected.  Mr. Jefferson’s analysis penetrates even into the minutiae of the part, but there is a perfect unity in the conception and its embodiment.  Strong and irresistible in its emotion, and sly and insinuating in its humor, Mr. Jefferson’s Rip Van Winkle is marked by great vigor, as well as by an almost pre-Raphaelite finish.

The bibulous Rip is always present by the ever-recurring and favorite toast of “Here’s your goot healt’ and your family’s, and may dey live long and prosper.”  The meditative and philosophic Rip is signaled by the abstract “Ja,” which sometimes means