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. "Deer-slayer" 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, "I must write one more story, dear, about our little
lake." At that moment the "Deerslayer" 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 a moralizing vein. How vague already 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 passengers on the boat had
stopped at a lakeside tavern to dine, preferring a good dinner to the
associations which drew our sentimentalists to the spots that were
hallowed by the necromancer's imagination. And why not? One cannot live
in the past forever. The people on the boat who dwelt in Cooperstown
were not talking about Cooper, perhaps had not thought of him for a
year. The ladies, seated in the bow of the boat, were comparing notes
about their rheumatism and the measles of their children; one of them
had been to the funeral of a young girl who was to have been married
in the autumn, poor thing, and she told her companion who were at the
funeral, and how they were dressed, and how little feeling Nancy seemed
to show, and how shiftless it was not to have more flowers, and how the
bridegroom bore up-well, perhaps it's an escape, she was so weakly.

The day lent a certain pensiveness to all this; the season was visibly
waning; the soft maples showed color, the orchards were heavy with
fruit, the mountain-ash hung out its red signals, the hop-vines were
yellowing, and in all the fence corners the golden-rod flamed and made
the meanest high-road a way of glory. On Irene fell a spell of sadness
that affected her lover. Even Mrs. Bartlett-Glow seemed touched by some
regret for the fleeting of the gay season, and the top of the coach
would have been melancholy enough but for the high spirits of Marion
and the artist, whose gayety expanded in the abundance of the harvest
season. Happy natures, unrestrained by the subtle mela