Klaus

( Doctor ), hero and title of a comedy by Herr Adolph l’Arronge (1878). Dr. Klaus is a gruff, but noble-minded and kind-hearted man, whose niece (a rich jeweller’s daughter) has married a poor nobleman of such extravagant notions that the wife’s property is soon di ipated; the young spendthrift is reformed. The doctor has a coachman, who invades his master’s province, and undertakes to cure a sick peasant. Klaus ( Peter ), the prototype of Rip van Winkle. Klaus [Klows] is a goatherd of Sittendorf, who was one day accosted by a young man, who beckoned him to follow. Peter obeyed, and was led into a deep dell, where he found twelve knights playing skittles, no one of whom uttered a word. Gazing around, he noticed a can of wine, and, drinking some of its contents, was overpowered with sleep. When he awoke, he was amazed at the height of the gra , and when he entered the village everything seemed strange to him. One or two companions encountered him, but those whom he knew as boys were grown middle-aged men, and those whom he knew as middle-aged were gray-beards. After much perplexity he discovered he had been asleep for twenty years (See Sleepers ). Your Epimenidês, your somnolent Peter Klaus, since named “Rip van Winkle.”—T Carlyle.