in his seat.
This startling interruption of the lecture remained unexplained for many
years, until Elihu Phinney, the young friend and neighbor of Fenimore
Cooper, confessed to being responsible for it. It seems that, during the
course of the lectures, Phinney had had an argument with Harvey Perkins
concerning the possibility of a truly hypnotic state, which Perkins
affirmed and Phinney denied. Perkins finally said:

"So, you won't admit that the negro is rendered insensible to pain?"

"Never, no, not for a moment," was the reply.

"Well," said Perkins, "here is a darning needle four inches long. Take
this with you to the lecture to-night, and at the first opportunity
thrust it slyly for a full inch into his thigh. If he flinches, I will
give up; if not, you will believe."

"Most assuredly," said Phinney, and it was this test which caused the
interruption of Fenimore Cooper's lecture on hypnotism.[114]

In the summer of 1843, at about eleven o'clock every morning, Fenimore
Cooper was seen coming forth from the gates of Otsego Hall escorting a
strange-looking companion. The figures of the two men offered a singular
contrast. Cooper, tall and portly, with the ruddy glow of health upon
his countenance, was swinging a light whip of a cane more ornamental
than useful, and stepped forward with a firm and elastic tread. The man
by his side was a shriveled and weather-beaten hulk, hobbling, and with
halting step pressing heavily upon a crooked stick that served for his
support. Sometimes they walked the village streets together. At other
times they came down upon the border of the lake for a sail upon its
waters in a skiff which Cooper had rigged with a lug-sail in
recollection of early Mediterranean days. Here the stranger was more at
home, for the man was Ned Myers, an old sailor who had been Cooper's
messmate on board the _Sterling_ nearly forty years before. The old
salt, who had passed a lifetime on many seas, developed a great respect
for Otsego Lake, which he found to be "a slippery place to navigate." "I
thought I had seen all sorts of winds before I saw the Otsego," he
afterward declared, "but on this lake it sometimes blew two or three
different ways at the same time."

It was a strange chance which renewed the acquaintance between Fenimore
Cooper and Ned Myers. Their ways were long separated. Myers had
continued to follow the sea, and became at last a derelict at the
"Sailor's Snug Harbor" at the port of New Y