l of romance; but
to the ordinary inhabitants the long residence of the novelist here was
not half so important as that of the very distinguished citizen who had
made a great fortune out of some patent, built here a fine house, and
adorned his native town. It 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 a 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
English-looking church-yard of the Episcopal church, in the midst of the
graves of his relations, and there is a well-worn path to his head-stone.
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
sometimes twice a 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. "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 m