29, Charles B. Parsons was playing "Rip" in Cincinnati, Ohio, but no
authorship is mentioned in connection with it, so it must be inferred that
it was probably one of those stock products so characteristic of the early
American theatre. Ludlow, in his "Dramatic Life," records "Rip" in
Louisville, Kentucky, November 21, 1831, and says that the Cincinnati
performance occurred three years before, making it, therefore, in the
dramatic season of 1828-29, this being Rip's "first representation West of
the Alleghany Mountains, and, I believe, the first time on any stage."
Ludlow proceeds to state that, while in New York, in the summer of 1828,
an old stage friend of his offered to sell him a manuscript version of
"Rip," which, on his recommendation, he proceeded to purchase "without
reading it." And then the manager indicates how a character part is built
to catch the interest of the audience, by the following bit of anecdote:

It passed off there [in Cincinnati] without appearing to create
any interest more than a drama on any ordinary subject, with the
exception of one speech, which was not the author's, but
introduced without my previous knowledge by one of the actors in
the piece. This actor was a young gentleman of education, who was
performing on the stage under the name of Barry; but that was not
his real name, and he was acting the part of _Nicholas Vedder_ in
this drama. In the scene where _Rip_ returns to his native village
after the twenty years of sleep that he had passed through, and
finds the objects changed from what he remembered them,--among
other things the sign over the door of the tavern where he used to
take his drinks,--he enquires of _Vedder_, whom he had recognized,
and to whom he had made himself known, who that sign was intended
to represent, saying at the same time that the head of King George
III used to hang there. In reply to him, instead of speaking the
words of the author, Mr. Barry said, "Don't you know who that is?
That's George Washington." Then _Rip_ said, "Who is George
Vashingdoner?" To which Barry replied, using the language of
General Henry (see his "Eulogy on Washington," December 26, 1799),
"He was first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of
his countrymen!" This woke the Cincinnatians up.

Joseph Jefferson rejected this emendation later on, giving as his reason
that, once an audience i