The basic idea of “Rip Van Winkle” would lend itself admirably to Broadway treatment, for Mr. MacKaye has taken liberties, with the legend and introduced the topical idea of a Magic Flask, containing home-made hootch.  Hendrick Hudson, the Captain of the Catskill Bowling Team, is the lucky possessor of the doctor’s prescription and formula, and it is in order to take a trial spin with the brew that Rip first goes up to the mountain.  Here are Hendrick’s very words of invitation: 

You’ll be right welcome.  I will let you taste A wonder drink we brew aboard the Half Moon.  Whoever drinks the Magic Flask thereof Forgets all lapse of time And wanders ever in the fairy season Of youth and spring.  Come join me in the mountains At mid of night And there I promise you the Magic Flask.

And so at mid of night Rip fell for the promise of wandering “in the fairy season,” as so many have done at the invitation of a man who has “made a little something at home which you couldn’t tell from the real stuff.”  Rip got out of it easily.  He simply went to sleep for twenty years.  You ought to see a man I know.

There is a note in the front of the volume saying that no public reading of “Rip Van Winkle” may be given without first getting the author’s permission.  It ought to be made much more difficult to do than that.

XXXIX

LITERARY LOST AND FOUND DEPARTMENT

With Scant Apology to the Book Section of the New York Times.

“OLD BLACK TILLIE”

H.G.L.—­When I was a little girl, my nurse, used to recite a poem something like the following (as near as I can remember).  I wonder if anyone can give me the missing lines?

“Old Black Tillie lived in the dell, Heigh-ho with a rum-tum-tum!  Something, something, something like a lot of hell, Heigh-ho with a rum-tum-tum!  She wasn’t very something and she wasn’t very fat But—­”

“VICTOR HUGO’S DEATH”

M.K.C.—­Is it true that Victor Hugo did not die but is still living in a little shack in Colorado?

“I’M SORRY THAT I SPELT THE WORD”

J.R.A.—­Can anyone help me out by furnishing the last three words to the following stanza which I learned in school and of which I have forgotten the last three words, thereby driving myself crazy?

“’I’m sorry that I spelt the word, I hate to go above you, Because—­’ the brown eyes lower fell, ’Because, you see, ——­ ——­ ——.’”

“GOD’S IN HIS HEAVEN”

J.A.E.—­Where did Mark Twain write the following?

  “God’s in his heaven: 
  All’s right with the world.”

“SHE DWELT BESIDE”

N.K.Y.—­Can someone locate this for me and tell the author?

“She dwelt among untrodden ways, Beside the springs of Dove, To me she gave sweet Charity, But greater far is Love.”

“THE GOLDEN WEDDING”