Plot

Rip's story is too well known to need repetition. How he came home drunk one night during a terrible storm and was driven away from the house by his wife, Gretchen. How he wandered up into the mountains and met Hendrick Hudson and his demons who urged him to drink with them. How he fell asleep after drinking and slept for twenty years, awakening finally to find himself an old man. How his false friend, Derrick Von Beekman, claimed his houses and lands while he was away, by pretending to have a document from Rip turning them all over to him. How Derrick married Gretchen and made her very unhappy. How Rip arrived home after twenty years, just in time to save his wife and his home by producing an old, faded document from his game bag, which proved conclusively that nothing belonged to Derrick. The pretty love story between Rip's daughter Meenie and young Heinrich Vedderm, sweethearts since childhood, carries the same interest that it always did.—Moving Picture World synopsis

Rip Van Winkle, a lazy American man, wanders off one day with his dog Wolf into the Kaatskill mountains where he runs into an odd group of men drinking and playing bowls. He drinks some of their mysterious brew and passes out. When he wakes up under a tree he is astonished to find that 20 years have passed and things are a lot different. This is a charming story about how America changed due to the cival war, only in a different and smore subtle way than ever told before.—Shane Rothery