The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1886-09-29

evoked by the fresh morning air and
the elevation on top of the coaches
give the start an air of jolly adventure.
Away they go, the big red and yellow
arks, swinging over the hills and along
the wellwatered valleys, past the twin
lakes to Otsego, over which hangs the
romance of Cooper's tales, where
steamer waits This is one of the most
charming of the little lakes that dot
the interior of New York; without
bold shores or anything sensational in
its scenery, it is poetic element in
refined and lovely landscape. There
are few fishing lodges and summer
cottages on its banks Zone of them
distinguished as Sinners Rest ~,
and hotel or two famous for dinners;
but the traveller would be repaid if
there were nothing except the lovely
village of Cooperstown, empowered in
naples at the foot. The town rises
gently from the lake, and is very pic
turesque with its church spires and
trees and handsome mansions, and
nothing could be prettier than the fore
ground, the gardens, the dllees of will
lows, the long boat wharves, with hum
dreds of row-boats and sail-boats, and
the exit of the Susquehanna river,
which here swirls away under dropping
foliage and begins its long journey to
the sea. The whole village has an air
of leisure and refinement. For our
tourists the place was pervaded by the
spirit of the necromancer who has
woven about it the spell of romance;
but to the ordinary inhabitants the long
residence of the novelist here was not
half so important as that of the very dis
tinguished citizen who had made great
fortune out of some patent, built here
fine house, and adorned his native
town. 1t is not so very many years
since Cooper died, and yet the boatmen
and loungers about the lake had only
the faintest impression of the man
there was writer by that name, one
of them said, and some of his family
lived near the house of the great man
already referred to. The magician who
created Cooperstown sleeps in the old
nglish-looking church-yard of the
Episcopal church, in the midst of the
graves of his relations, and there is a
wel-worn path to his headstone.
Whatever the common people of the
town may think, it is that grave that
draws most pilgrims to the village.
Where the hillside cemetery now is,
on the bank of the lake, was his farm,
which he visited always once, and some
times twice, day. He commonly wrote
only from ten to twelve in the morning,
giving the rest of the time to his farm
and the society of his family. During
the period of his libel suits, when the
newspapers represented him as morose
, and sullen in his retirement, he was, on
the contrary, in the highest spirits and
, the most genial mood. DeerSlayer was
written while this contest was at its
! height. Driving one day from his farm
with his daughter, he stopped and looked
long over his favorite prospect on the
lake, and said, must write one more
story, dear, about our little lake" AT
that moment the DeerSloyer was born
He was silent the rest of the way home
, and went Immediately to his library and
began the story. The party returned
! in moralizing vein. How vague al.
| ready in the village which his genius
+ has made known over the civilized
' world is the fame of Cooper! To our
= tourists the place was saturated with
his presence, but the new generation
cares more for its smart prosperity than
! for all his romance. Many of the pas
;. sengers on the boat had stopped at {
, lakeside tavern to dine, preferring g
;. good dinner to the associations which
! drew our sentimentalists to the spots
that were hallowed by the NEGRO
I mancer's imagination. And why not
] One cannot live in the past forever
: Charles Dudley Warner, IN Harper'S
> Magazine for October.