Ed Wynn, by the way, might do wonders by the opera if he could get the rights to produce it in his own way. Let Mr. MacKaye’s name stay on the programme, but give Ed Wynn the white card to do as he might see fit with the book. For instance, one of Mr. MacKaye’s characters is named “Dirck Spuytenduyvil.” Let him stand as he is, but give him two cousins, “Mynheer Yonkers” and “Jan One Hundred and Eighty-third Street.” The three of them could do a comedy tumbling act. There is practically no end to the features that could be introduced to tone the thing up.
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?
