(lass £i^ Book -£00-^41- I'RKSKSTIID IIY CA ^ '/., A r / AVi Ilium Cooper at the ajje of 50. Cooperstown. The Founder of To Commemorate the Foundation of the Village of Cooperstown and its Corporate Existence of One hundred years^ this Memorial Celebration was held August 4th-I0th, J907. . . - . PRINTBD BT TELB OTSSGO REPUBLilOXN. OOOPBRSTOWN, M^. 7. Record of the Memorial Cele* bration held in Gooperstown, August 4th-10th, 1907. ♦•HISTORIC COOPERSTOWN," was the key-note of the re- cent celebration held in the Village during- the week of August 4th,— 10th, 1907. To commemorate its foundation, to keep in remembrance the self-denying struggles of its hardy pioneers who sowed the seed •which we now reap, and to honor the memory of one whose genius has given to Cooperstown and Otsego Lake a world-wide fame, was the object of the recent festival. To this intent a general invitation was issued to all the de- scendants of the first settlers, as well as to those to whom the charm of natural scenery, the beauties of the lake and woods ever appeals and lastly to the successors in literature of the first of American novelists to unite in celebrating an occasion which had a rare combination of attractions. The result is believed to have been most satisfactory to all participating — the weather was an ideal summer week; the programme varied and complete and it was carried out without delay or failure. It is given entire on another page. The first meeting to effect an organization was held on the evening April 5th, 1907, at which the general plan of the^cele- bration was outlined and a series of resolutions offered by the Rev. Ralph Birdsall and unanimously adopted as follows: Resolved, That a centennial of the village of Cooperstown be marked by a special celebration during the first week in Au- gust, 1907; Sunday, August 4th to Saturday, August 10th in- clusive. Resolved, That for the preparation and carrying out of plans for such centennial, the Village President appoint a committee of fifteen representative citizens, himself to be in addition, a member and the chairman; the committee to act in co-operation ■with the permanent civic and social organizations of the village. Resolved, That the Village President, in consultation with 6 THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. the general committee, shall appoint sub-committee?, either ■within the membership of the general committee or otherwise, which sub-committees, severally, shall secure to the centennial celebration elements that may be loosely defined as: First, ar- tistic and decorative; second, literary; third, historical; fourth, religious; the first to include some general scheme of decoration, parades, tableaux and pageantry; the second to signalize the unique position of Cooperstown in the development of American literature; the third to make prominent the historical element which necessarily belongs to a centennial; the fourth to provide for a special religious observance on the first day of the centen- nial week, through the various Christian congregations, either separately or collectively. Resolved, That the general committee shall have authority by majority vote, to amend or enlarge the outline here pre- sented. In accordance with the foregoing resolutions, the following general committee was appointed. The first meeting was held in the Village Hall on Thursday evening, at which sub- committees and more definite plans of action were taken up: Charles A. Francis, Village President. M. E. Lippitt, President of the Board of Trade. E. D. Stocker, Chief of the Cooperstown Fire Department. Lynn J. Arnold, President of the Board of Education. Harris L Cooke, President of the Mohican Club. John K. Doan, Commodore of the Otsego Lake Boat Club. Henry D. Sill, President of the Young Men's Christian Asso- ciation. Dr. E. L. Pitcher, Master of Otsego Lodge, No. 138, F. & A. M. J. C. Peaslee, Commander of Cooper Tent, K. O. T. M. L. N. Wood, President of the Otsego Lake Transit Company. A. H. Crist, Editor of the Otsego Farmer. Clarence W. Davidson, Editor of the Otsego Republican. George H. Carley, Editor of the Freeman's Journal. The Rev. Ralph Birdsall, Edward S. Clark, Edwin S. Bundy, the Rev. S. S. Conger, John F. Brady, J. A. M. Johnston, G. Pomeroy Keese, W. Festus Morgan, Frank Mulkins, A. S. Phinney, Russel Warren, George H. White. The week following more definite action was taken and THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. S. L. Warrin, Frank Waller, Clarence G. Cook, J. A. M. Johnston, organization perfected bj the appointment of the various work* ing committees, viz: EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. Rkv. Rai,ph Birdsall, Chairman. M. E. Lippitt, E. S. Bundy, Frank Mulkins, Harris L. Cooke, Sec'y. A. S. Phinnej, General Secretary. L. N. Wood, General Treasurer. DECORATION. R. G. White, Chairman. Walter C. Stokes, Orange L.VanHorne, Bert G. Tracy, Herman Reisman, Frank Lettis, M. Hanlon, Edwards S. Newell. DEPARTMENT OF PARADE. E. D. Stocker, Chairman. Hugh G. Lynch, John S. Byard, M. E. Lippitt, C. W. Davidson, J. C. Peaslee, W. A. Grover, E. L. Pitcher, M. J. Multer. DEPARTMENT OF TABLEAUX. Lou Sherwood, Chairman. LeGrand Brainard, C. W. G. Ross, LITERARY. John Worthington, Chairman. James Fenimore Cooper, Rev. P. A. H. Brown, R. M. Bush, W. Henry Merchant, VV. Scott Root, Albert Lane, S. L. Warrin, W. D. Johnson, L. E. Walrath, Charles T. Brewer, Rev. W. W. Lord, S. S. Bowne. HISTORICAL. G. P. Keese, Chairman. Waldo Cory, R. H. White, A. J. Butler, B. S. Morgan, G. P. Keese, G. Hyde Clarke, Horace M. Pierce, A. J. Butler, Rev. T. A. Early, Harold T. Basinger, Frank Hale. John M. Bowers, John Worthington, D. J. McGown, George Brooks. THE CCMDPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. A. S. Phinney, Theo. Ernst, 1/. A. Carter, vj. Hjde Clarke, Lee B. Cruttenden, John McCabc Rev. E. A. Perry, Theo. C.Turner, N. W. Cole. LOAN EXHIBIT. Joel G. White, Dr. A. N. Beach, E. D. BoDEN, Chairman. Fred G. Lee, W. H. Collins, Harvey K. Murdock, Rev. T. B. Roberts, DEPARTMENT OF SOUVENIRS. E. S. Brockham, Chairman. S. Campbell, G. Tennant. W. J. Ashton, G. M. Jarvis, Rev. W. P. Doubleday, J. H. Mood, RELIGIOUS. S. S. Conger, Chairman. Rev. Ralph Birdsall, Rev. T. B. Roberts, Rev. Thos. A. Early, Henry D. Sill. Rev. E. A.Perry, Rev. C. W. Negus, John K. Doan, A. P. Alffer. J. A. M. Johnston, L. N. Wood, Edward S. Clark, James Burton, Geoge H. White, Geoge H. Carley, C. W. Davidson, James Austin, C.W. Davidson, George H. Carley, C. B. Cooley. nNANCE. E. S. BuNDY, Chairman. E. L. Pitcher. M. E. Lippitt, Frank Mulkins, John F. Brady, Allen Gallup. PUBLICITY. Walter Littell, Chairman. F. L. Quaif, Clarence Fay, Fred Fuller. PRINTING. H. Crist, Chairman. B. W. Dewar, Dewitt Delong, F. P. Tanner, L. A. Cossaart. W. C. Fowler, E. A. Rounds, C. W. G. Ros^ J. B. Conklingf, W. D. Burditt, W. W. Hovey, W. H. Michaels, George R. Hall, L. E. Saxtod, Gerald Ellsworth, W. F. Wagner, THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. W. H. Martin, J. K. Doao, L. B. Cruttenden, N. P. Willis, Datus K. Siver, J. E. Derrick. Henry HofiFman, Justin Lange, John Cronauer, J. H. King, George W. Lang, E. A. Potter. PROGRAMME A. J. BuTLEK, Chairman. W. H. Doubleday, Jr., William Fay, D. Clyde Rose. TRANSPORTATION. Edward Martin, Chairman, Charles H. Mason, Fred Lettis, Frank Hale, Ralph Ellsworth, Li. M. Barnum, LaVern In galls, C. R. Hartson, George Strachan, HOTEL ACCOMMODATIONS. M. HanIwON, Chairman. George Groat, L. H. Spencer, M. H. Wedderspoon. BUILDINGS AND BOOTHS. B. G. Johnson, Chairman. J. W. Shaw, Harold T. Basinger, Edward Jackson, Geo. Farquharson, CENTENNIAL BALL. A. — Daughters of American Revolution. B. — Knights of the Maccabees. MUSIC. F. V. Schenk, W. M, Bronner, C. S. Derrick, D. H. Gregory, E. S. Clark, L. A. Kaple, A. C. Shipman, A dbJ. Allez, Chairman. E. D. Stocker, C. A. Francis, Chas. A. Scott, Henry Schneider, Geo. L. Gould. HOSPITALITY. L. J. Arnold, Chairman. Harris L. Cooke, Chas. A. Francis, H. K. Murdock, D. A. Avery, J. A, M. Johnston, Fred G. Lee, A. S. Potts, N. P. Willis. 10 THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. James J. Byard, Jr., R. H. White, M. F. Augur, DeWitt Kckler, W. H. Bundy, Herman Reisman, F. M. Hotaling, Michael P. Kraham, Chatfield Leonard, H. I. Russell, John C. Smith, Frank Lettis, M. H. Brenner, D. J. McGown, F. L. Quaif, Erastus Ray, R. I. Bolton, Geo. L. Gould, Thos. W. Kelsey, Geo. W. Morris, D. E. Siver, Harry Farquharson, Frank Murdock, H. L. Brazee, W. L. McEwad, E. J. Arnold, E. A. Potter, Irwin Bailey, Loren Knapp, W. D. Burditt, Peter Parshall, M. R. Stocker, George Misson. L. J. Arnold, Chas. T. Brewer, A. J. Telfer, W. H. Yates. F. Ambrose Clark, A. S. Potts, Wm. Beattie, SCHOOL EXHIBIT. M. J. MuLTER, Chairman. W. F. Morgan, Lee B. Cruttenden, PHOTOGRAPHS. J. "W. Tucker, Chairman. J. B. Slote, FIREWORKS. Geo. H. White, Chairman, Waldo Johnston, John Pank, Wilson McGown. ATHLETICS. W. H. Martin, Chairman. J. K. Doan, W. F. Morgan, Henry D. Sill. R. R. Converse, Harold T. Basinger, Henry Schneider. REGATTA. John K. Doan, Chairman. Wm. Constable, L. N. Wood, F. B. Shipman, Stephen C. Clark, Dr. A. N. Beach, F. W. Spraker, S. S. Conger, J. H. Moon. C. F. Zabriskie, H. T. Basinger, D. R. Dorn, W. P. K. Fuller, Carey Jackson, A. H. Gazlej, R. Warren, James Burton. THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. » INFORiULATION. E. S. Brockham, Chairman. Geo. L. Gould, F. M. Shumway, Geo. N. Smith, I. E. Sylvester, A. C. Shipman, William Cobbett. These committees held meetings from time to time, reporting weekly to the executive board, which held stated sessions on Thursday evenings. The final arrangements having been com- pleted the following programme was issued by the committee in charge which was carried out in full and without change. PROGRAMME. SUNDAY Christ Church. 7:30 a. m., Holy Communion. 10:15 a. m., Morning Prayer. 10:45 a. m., Holy Communion: Eyre service in E flat, and ser- mon by the Rector. 7:30 p. m.. Choral Evensong; Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis, Stainer in B flat; Anthem, Great and Marvelous, from Gaul's "Holy City." Organ Recital by Mr. Andrew deJ. Allez at the conclusion of evening service: Toccata and Fugue in D minor, Bach Cantilene Salome Festival Fantasia, H. Jul. Tschirch Andantino m D flat, Lemare March in D, H. Smart Methodist Church. 10:45 a. m.— Public Worship. Sermon by the pastor, "Remem- ber the Daysot Old." 12 m.— Bible School. 7:30 p. m. — The congregation will unite with the Presbyterian and Baptist Churches in a Union Service at the Baptist Church. Presbyterian Church. Service at 10:45 a. m., with sermon by the pastor, Rev. S. S. 12 THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. Conger. Subject, "Things that have lasted 100 years.'' Appropriate music Universalist Church. Rev. E. A. Perry will preach Sunday morning at the Univer- salist Church at Cooperstown and at 3:20 p. m. in the Universalist Church at Fly Creek upon the topic. "Some Sig- nificant Changes in the Faith, Practice and Spirit of Chris- tians during the Century." Baptist Church. Usual services in the morning. Historical sermon by the pastor, Rev. Cyrus W. Negus. Union service in the evening, in which the PresbyteriaOi Methodist and Baptist Churches join. Sermon by the Rev. W. B. Wallace, D. D., pastor of the Tabernacle Baptist Church, Utica, N. Y. Church of Our Lady of the Lake. (Catholic) Rev. Thomas A. Early, Pastor; Rev. D. Schane, acting pastor; Mass at 7 a. ra. ; Mass, Sermon, Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, 11:30 a. m. Centennial Exercises 3 p. m. — Cooper Grounds, Concert of Sacred Music by the Tenth Regiment Band of Albany. 4 p. m. — Cooper Grounds, Religious Exercises. Anthem, Stainer's "Lord, Thou art God," by a chorus of SO voices, under the direction of Mr. Andrew deJ. Allez. Hymn, "America," sung by the congregation, accompanied by the Tenth Regiment Band. Invocation, Rev. C. W. Negus. Address of Welcome, Mr. Charles A. Francis, Village President. Introduction of Chairman, Rev. Ralph Birdsall, Chairman of Centennial Committee. Introduction of Speakers, Rev. Sidney S. Conger, Chairman of Religious Exercises Address, "The Religion of the Last Century," Rev. W. B. Wallace, D. D., pastor of the Tabernacle Baptist Church, Utica. Anthem, Sydenham's "Great is the Lord, and Marvelous." THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. iZ Address, "The Religious Outlook of the Future," Rt. Rev. Henry C. Potter, D. D., Bishop of New York. Hymn, "Coronation," sung by the congregation, accompanied by the band. Benediction, Rev. E. A. Perry. 7:30 p. m. — Baptist Church, Union Service, sermon by Rev. W. B. Wallace, D. D., of Utica. MONDAY 7 a. m. — Salute and Ringing of bells. 9 a. m. — Young Men's Christian Association Building, Opening of Loan Exhibition. 10 a. m. to 12 — At the band stand. Concert by Tenth Regiment Band. 2 p. m. — Athletic Field, Baseball, Cooperstown vs. Olympias of Utica. 4 p. m. — Court House Grounds, Historical Exercises. Overture, Tenth Regiment Band. Introduction of Chairman, Rev. Ralph Birdsall, for Centennial Committee. Introduction of Speakers, Mr. G. Pomeroy Keese, Chairman of Historical Exercises. Address, "The Upper Susquehanna in the Border Wars," Mr. Francis W. Halsey Selection, Tenth Regiment Band. Address, "Early Days of Cooperstown," Mr. G. Pomeroy Keese. Selection, Tenth Regiment Band. Address, "Noted Men of Otsego during its Early Years," Hon. Walter H. Bunn. Selection, Tenth Regiment Band. 8 p. m. — On Otsego Lake, Illuminated Launch Parade. Band. Concert at Lake front. 9 p. m. — Exhibition of Moving Pictures on Main street. TUESDAY Annual OtKgo Lake Regatta 9 a.'m. — Sailing Race. 9:30 to 11 a. m. — Single Scull Races for Women, Men and Boys under sixteen. 11 a. m. — Launch Parade. H THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. 2 p. m. — Double Scull Races for Women, Men, Boys and Mixed Teams. 3 p. m. — Launch Races in Three Classes. Concerts at Lake front by Tenth Regiment Band. 4:30 p. tn. — Athletic Grounds, Baseball, Cooperstown vs. Olym- pias of Utica. 9 p. m. — Village Hall, Centennial Ball under the auspices of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Tickets, two dollars. Exhibition of Moving Pictures on Main street. WEDNESDAY 10-11 a. m.— Band Stand, Concert by Tenth Regiment Band. 11 a. m. to 12 — Cooper Grounds; Basket Ball, Cooperstown vs. Oneonta. 2-4 p. m. — Main Street, Athletic Contests and Track Events: 100 yards dash; 220 yards dash; 440 yards dash, one-half mile run; 220 yards hurdles; relay race; running high jump. 5 p. m. — Exercises at Cooper's grave. The public is requested to assemble in the driveway before Christ Church. Processional and singing by 'Chorus of 50 village girls of Lyric, composed by Mr. Andrew B. Saxton of Oneonta, and set to music by Mr. Andrew deJ. Allez, Choirmaster of Christ Church. Tribute of flowers at Cooper's grave. ": Address of Welcome, Rev. Ralph Birdsall, rector of Christ Church Reading by Rt. Rev. Henry C. Potter, D. D., of a poem composed for the occasion by Mrs. Julia Ward Howe. "Battle Hymn of the Republic," Tenth Regiment Band. The Poem of the Day, read by its author. Rev. Walton W. Battershail, D. D., rector of St. Peter's Church, Albany. 8 p. m. — Band Stand, Concert by Tenth Regiment Band. Exhibition of Moving Pictures on Main street. 9 p. m. — Village Hall, Centennial Ball, under the auspices of the Ladies of the Maccabees. Tickets one dollar. THURSDAY 10 a. m. to 12— Band Stand, Concert by Tenth Regiment Band. 2 p. m. — Parade of Local Organizations, with Historical Floats. THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. iS Firemen's Inspection Grand Marshal Morgan R. Stocker Aides, Lynn J. Arnold, Stephen C. Clark, Waldo Johnston, R. Grant White, Walter W. Stokes, W. Perry Chrisler, J. Pier Mason. FORMATION Line will form on Main street opposite the Court House. Cooperstown Police Grand Marshal and Staff Tenih Regiment Band of Albany Cooperstown Fire Department James J. Byard, Jr., Chief Neptune Steamer Company Steamer Hose Company Iroquois Hose Company Mechanics Hook & Ladder Company Edward S. Clark Hose Company Drill Corps of the Orphan House of the Holy Saviour. HISTORICAL FLOATS AND EXHIBITS I. Before the white man came. The red man in his canoe. II. General George Washington at Otsego Lake in 1783. III. The early white settlers. Log Cabin. Living representa- ^^ tion of Natty Bumppo, the hero of the Leatherstocking Tales. IV. Slow motion. Old ox-cart and team. ^^ V. Early method of travel. Original old four-horse stage, with quaint passengers. VI. Fire fighting. The engine, "Neptune," of many years ago, accompanied by firemen in the costume of the same period." VII. "From '61 to '65, and forty years after." Civil war memories of Levi C. Turner Post No. 26, Grand Army of the Republic, assisted by James F. Clark Camp No. 27, Sons of Veterans. VIII. Hoppicking, when Otsego controlled the hop market of the world. IX. "Modern Industry," an allegorical group. H THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. Line of March. Down Main street, to River street, to Church, to Pioneer, to Elm, to Chestnut, to Leatherstocking, to Court, to Main, to Pine, to Lake, to River, to Main, to the Court House. 4 p. m. — Court House Grounds, Literary Exercises. Overture, Tenth Regiment Band. Introduction of Chairman Rev. Ralph Birdsall, for the Centennial Committee. Introduction of Speaker and Poet, Hon. John Worthington, Chairman of Literary Committee. Address Commemorative of James Fenimore Cooper by Prof. Brander Matthews, of Columbia University, New York. Selection, Tenth Regiment Band. Poem, Mr. Clinton Scollard. Selection, Tenth Regiment Band. 8 p. m. — On Otsego Lake, Exhibition of Paine's Fireworks. Band Concert at Lake front. 9:30 p. m. — Exhibition of Moving Pictures on Main street. FRIDAY 10 a. m. to 12 — Athletic Grounds; Baseball, Cooperstown vs. Norwich. ^ Tenth Regiment Band. 11 a. m. — "Camp Nelson," Military Encampment, on Fair Grounds of the Second Battalion, Tenth Regiment, Infan- try, N. G., N. Y. 2-4 p. m. — Military Parade, Second Battalion of Tenth Regi- ment, Albany. Military Baid. Third Separate Company of Oneonta. Line of March same as Thursday. 6:35 p. m.— Guard Mounting at Polo Grounds, Iroquois Farm. Sunset — Battalion parade, on Polo Grounds, Iroquois Farm. 7:30 r- m.— Retreat. 8 p. m. — At Band Stand, Concert by Tenth Regiment Band. Exhibition of Moving Pictures on Main street. 10 p. m.— Tattoo. 10:45 p. m. — Call to quarters. 11 p. m. — Taps. SATURDAY At "Camp NeUoo'* 5 a. m. — Reveille. 5:15 a. m.— Sick Call. The Indian Hunt«r, Cooper Park, Site of Otseco Hall. D. A. R. Marker at Oiitlet ot Otsego Lake, Site ol the Clinton Dam, 1779. THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL, J7 5:45 a. m.— Drill Call. 7 a. m. — Recall from Drill. 7:30 a. m.— Mess Call. 8:15 a. m. — Guard Mounting. 10 a. m.-12— At Band Stand, Concert by Tenth Regiment Band. 2 p. m. — Parade and drill of Second Battalion on Main street. 3 p. m. — At Athletic Grounds, Baseball, Cooperstown vs. Nor- wich. 6:35 p. m. — Guard Mounting at Polo Grounds, Iroquois Farm. Sunset — Battalion Parade on Polo Grounds, Iroquois Farm. 7:30 p. m. —Retreat. 8 p. m. — Exhibition of Moving Pictures on Main street. 10 p. m.— Tattoo. 10:45 p. m. — Call to quarters. 11 p. m.— Taps. Centennial Exercises Sunday, August 4th, 1907, at The Cooper Grounds. The celebration began Sunday morning in the different churches where the exercises were appropriate to the occasion and of unusual excellence. Rev. Ralph Birdsall gave an excellent address on "Village Life " Rev. T. B. Roberts took as his subject "Remember the DavsofOld." Rev. Cryus W. Negus oulHued the changes in the history of the Baptist church in the village and the vicinity for the past century- Rev. ^. A. Perry mentioned "Some Significant Changes in the Faith, Practise and Spirit of Chris- tians during the Century." Rev. Dr. Schane conducted the service in St. Mary's Catholic church. Rev. S. S. Conger took as his topic, "Things that have endured,'' and made a brief reference to the fact that seven years ago the Presbyterian church celebrated its hundredth anniversary; the edifice in wuich he preaches is one hundred and five years old. It was the first church erected in the village and IS the only public building standing that was here a cen- tury ago, the building being substantially the same in it pres- ent exterior form, the tower being the only exception. In the evening union services were held in the Baptist Church, at which Rev. Dr. Wallace of Utica preached. In Christ Church there was an evensong service under the direction of Choirmaster Andrew deJ. Allez. The exercises of Sunday afternoon opened with a band concert by Collins' Tenth Retriraent Band, of Albany, from the platform in Cooper Park. This platform was erected on the THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. J9 ■west side with tbe trees bordering the park as a background, and the audience filled the open space in front and to the sides, and well under the trees to the north and south. Seats were provided for a thousacd people, while as many more found seats upon the rising ground to the south of the seats, and many hundreds more stood. The concert was of much excel- lence. At the close of the concert the speakers of the afternoon "were escorted to the platform by the local clergy. The exercises were opened with an anthem, Stainer's "Lord, Thou art God," by a chorus of fifty voices, under the direction of Andrew deJ. Allez. This was followed by the singing of "America," by the audience. At the conclusion of the singing all remained standing while Rev. Cyrus W. Negus, pastor of the Baptist church, said this invocation: Almighty God, our Father, Thou who art from everlasting to everlasting, we invoke Thy presence at this time, as we are gathered in Thy name. We thank Thee for Jesus Christ, in whom we are one. We thank Thee for the godly men and women who in the past laid the foundations upon which the superstructures of later years have been reared. We thank Thee for the Christian influence of these various churches that has prevaded this community through all the years. May Thy blessing rest upon Thv servants who shall address us. Grant that the messages brought to us at this time may be owned of Thee, and that we may honor Thee with our hearts and lives as ■well as with our lips. We ask all in the name of Christ, Thy son, our Saviour. Amen. Charles A. Francis, president of the village, then delivered an address of welcome, formally opening the Centennial and bidding all welcome to the village. Mr. Francis said: Fellow Citizens and Lovers of Cooperstown: Having the Honor to be the President of this historic and romantic village, it gives me great pleasure to speak the first words of welcome here and to touch, if I may, the key note of this Centennial week, which we begin to celebrate today. No other village than ours so happily blends the elements of history and romance which conspire to add to this commem- oration qualities that are both timely and picturesque. For it 20 SUNDAY, AUGUST 4, 1907. IS here, at Otseofo Lake, we may say, that George Washington, the first hero of American history, stands upon common ground ■with Natty Bumppo, the first hero of American romance. Careful readers of history will tell you that George Washington was here. All lovers of Leatherstocking Tales are sure that Natty Bumppo was here. That both belong together here typifies more than might be expressed in many words. To the celebration of all that Cooperstown thus gathers from history and romance, 1 welcome you. With so much preface it is my duty and pleasure to introduce the Chairman of the Cooperstown Centennial, the Rev. Ralph Birdsall. Rev. Mr. Birdsall then introduced the chairman of the afternoon, Rev. Sidney S. Conger, pastor of the Presbyterian Church saying: The duty which the Village President has assigned to me is easily fulfilled, for this occasion, by introducing one whose especial fitness to preside at these religious exercises of the Cooperstown Centeanial is obvious. It gives me great pleasure to introduce the modern representative of the rtjligious organi- zation earliest established in this village, the Pastor of the Pres- byterian Church, the Rev. Sidney Seabury Conger. Rev. Mr. Conger then introduced Rev. Dr. Wallace and in doing so said: We have hoped to make this celebration a height from which we may look both backward and forward, and catch whatever of encouragement or warning there may be either in the past or in the future. We have sought for clear eyes to see, the clear voices to interpret the vision. I am glad to introduce to you the Rev. William B. Wallace, D. D., of Utica, who will speak to us on "The Religious Progress, of the Past Century in America." Rev. Dr. Wallace Speaking. Rishop Potter Speaking. THE RELIGION OF THE LAST CENTURY/' By Rev. W. B. Wallace^ D. D. The story is told of a ccuntryman who, being asked to ride in a merry-go-round, replied, "No, thank you. When I rides I want to be going somewhere." That illustrates the spirit of the men of the 19th century. They wanted to be going some- where. Kipling, in his "Explorer" splendidly described them: "A voice as bad as conszience rang interminable changes on one everlasting whisper, day and night repeated so, some- thing hidden, go and find it; something lost and waiting for you; Go." This summons to go and find was heard by many men in many fields. Astronomy, geology, travel, labor, politics, medi- cine, invention, electricity, all had their explorers who were willing to cross hostile mountains and burning deserts until they came to the "white man's country" of better things. Alfred Russell Wallace, the eminent scientist, speaks of the 19th century as the "wonderful century,'' and wonderful indeed it was, as we think over the achievements of those years. He tells us that among the great discoveries and inventions there were thirteen in the 19th century as over and against seven of all the preceding centuries; that the discoveries of theoretic principles numbered twelve in the 19th century as over against eight of all preceding time. Of course it is not my task today to speak of any one of these, but rather to endeavor to show to you some progress which has been made, not in the world, but here in America, religiously, in the past one hundred years. Let me say at once that progress has been made. As truly as J. Fenimore Cooper put his stamp upon this town, upon her parks, her streets, her homes, her citizens, so truly did Christ put His stamp upon that century so lately dawned. We have been thinking, this summer, suggested by the Jamestown Exposition, of that first settlement of Englishmen in America. Dr. Bacon in his "American Christianity" tells us that in that first settlement there were signs of religious 22 SUNDAY, AUGUST 4, 1907. worship. There were those who used an old sail for covering, and sat on logs for seats, with a rail nailed to two trees for a Pulpit; there were those who gathered in those far da^'s to give worship to Almighty God. As we contrast the scenes of ttiat early time with modern religious conditions, we must indeed recognize that progress has been made. Of course the 17th and the 18th centuries contributed largely to that progress, but the 19th century made the greatest contribution. How shall I endeavor to set before you the religious prog- ress in America in the 19th century? I might speak of that progress by decades; I might speak of it bv denominations, and show how the various denominations have grown in knowledge and power. But I choose, rather, to show how progress has been gained in certain Christian directions. I am spending my summer vacation among the Adiron- dacks. I have a topographical map, prepared by the Geolog- ical Survey of the United States, which tells me in detail its mountains, hills, caves; its valleys, its rivers, its streams, its ponds, and its trails. Time would not permit me to give you, so to speak, a topographical map of a hundred yeais of time. The other day I climbed Bald Mountain and gained a general view of the Fulton Chain country and the great sea of forest rolling away to the horizon. Up the very modest hill of ray limited knowledge of the past century I invite you for a few moments, while I point out to you certain signs that I believe suggest Christian progress in the 19th century. And, first of all, let me call your attention to the fact that progress has been gained in the direction of Christian Concord. Professor Allen has likened the Christian organization of the country to an orchestra of the religious life of our land, whose dissonance adds to the universal harmony. Not always was that figure fitting. In the 18th century, to quote the same writer, the Calvanists had a God that to the Armenian seemed but a devil; while the God of the Armenian was to the Calvanists a weak nonentity. Dr. Bacon tells us that that decade 1835 to 1845 was a decade of schism. There was strife between the Presbyterians of the old and new school; strife between the Baptists and Methodists of the North and South over the question of slavery; strife in the Episcopal Church over the high church and the church evan- THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. 23 g-elical, while^with our Roman Catbolic friends troubles were fierce without and within, especially without. There were those who, as Americans, regarded the foreign importing of them dangerous as a threatening element to this country's lib- erty, and there were also those who called themselves Chris- tians who thought that the Roman Catholic Church was "the Scarlet Woman." The past has seen strife among the denominations. To- day the various churches stand closer together than ever before. Thank God, there is peace in the various denominations among themselves, and better still, peace among their neighbors. Piotestants have learned to understand that Roman Catholics, though they may teach some things in which they can not believe, are doing God's work in the world and, on the other hand, Roman Catholics are coming to understand that Protestants are Christians, to quote the words of Cardinal Ryan, "The Protes- tant loves his Saviour." In the Parliament of Religions in 1893, there were representatives of the various denominations, the Roman Catholic included, and though they had a multitude of differences, they presented a united front to the heathen faiths. And in the Ecumenical Conference which was held in New York City, representatives of the various denominations, fighting under many denominational banners, sat together as one in Christ Jesus. On that memorable occasion Bishop Doane of Albany said that all baptized believers belong to the mys- tical Body of Christ, and also stated that it was not the busi- ness of Christians today to be beggars hunting in the street for differences, but rather to emphasize points of agreement. And I doubt not but when he made that statement, all hearts in that gathering said. Amen. One great achievement of the 19th century has been mak- ing the words of Charles Cuthbert Hall true: "Polemic sectar- ianism is a waning interest, an expiring fire." Recently in Ridgefield, Connecticut, Dr. Lyman Abbott, before the University Club gathered there, made a speech re- ferring to the contribution which Lyman Beecher and Henry "Ward Beecher have made to theology, and in the course of that discourse he showed that the preaching of Henry Ward Beecher had produced a clearer view of the immanent Christ. 24 SUNDAY, AUGUST 4, J907. I believe it is the vision of^ the present day Christ, which wc have been getting- more and more during the 19th century, that accounts for what I have chosen to term Christian Concord. God hasten the day when we all shall see Him more clearly, and that prayer ot our Lord shall be answered and we shall be one even as He and the Father are One. "All things grow sweet in Him, In Him all things are reconciled, All fierce extremes that beat along time's shore, Like chidden waves girow mild, And creep to kiss His feet." Will you allow me to point out another direction in which I see signs of Christian progress during the 19th century? I refer to Christian Culture. When Peter urged his readers to add to virtue, knowledge, he uttered Christian teachings. Jesus Christ is the truth, and all Christians are truth seekers. Education was a big word in the past century. In a review of the 19th centuiy printed in the Outlook, shortly after the com- mencing of this century the statement was made that education in general had made tremendous strides as to the aim of educa- tion, the content of education and the basis of education. That same thing might well he said of Christian Culture. The aim has been enlarged, the aim today of Christian Culture is culture for service. The content has also been enlarged, many branches of knowledge used that we may be better equipped to further the .cause of Jesus Christ; and the basis of religious education is a broader basis than ever before — culture for all. In 1810 there were some dozen colleges in our land. Think of the denominational colleges in our land today, and the great universities, which may be well regarded as children of those same denominational colleges. In 1805 there was one theological chair in the country — that at Har-'-ard. In the fol- lowing twenty years there were born seventeen new theological seminaries. Mr. Bacon, in his "American Christianity," tells us that in 1880 there were 142 theological seminaries with five hundred twenty-nine professors. The 19th century recognized not only the importance ot a cultured pulpit, but also of a cul- tured pew. It was in 1825 that the Bible School was organized in America. Who can see the thousands upon thou^ands of young people gathered from Sabbath to Sabbath in our land THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. 25 today and doubt its progress. The great Chautauqua move- ment — and by the way only recently Bishop Potter uttered a message to the Church of God at Chautauqua — the Chautauqua movement born in the heart and brain of Bishop Vincent, has also been evidence of Christian Culture in the 19th century. Now East, and West, and North, and South, are gathered thousands of people seeking to learn more about God, His word and His work. I ought to refer also to the religious press as a sign of Christian Culture in the 19th century and also to that great movement which has been known as the Critical Study of the Bible. There has been, especially during the last few decades of the 19th century, a turning toward the Bible, and toward the land of Christ, and toward the Christ Himself, seeking greater knowledge. As the result, there has come a larger vision of the face of Jesus and a larger knowledge and respect for the Book of God. In 1903 out there in Chicago there was organized the Christian Educational Association. As that association does more and more for the culture of our people in these coming- years, the helpfulness of that association may be traced to those educational conditions which were engendered by the 19th century. Speaking of Christian Culture, I must certainly if I am true to my theme, speak a word of commendation of the Young Men's Christian Association. The labors of that institution have been devoted to the culture of man — physically, mentally and spiritually. To sum up, in the 19th century there has been gained religious progress, the product of which has been an increasingly intelligent Christian ministry, and increasingly intelligent Church membership, and increasingly worthy wor- ship, an increasingly saner creed and an increasingly exalted Christ. Will you kindly bear with me while I point out one other direction in which I believe religious progress may be observed, namely in the direction of Christian Conquest. "Th< Son of God goes forth to War, A Kingly crown to gain, His blood-red banner streams afar: Who follows in His train?" 26 SUNDAY, AUGUST 4, 1907. Many there were in the 19th century who saw that blood- stained banner and followed it as loyally as did the Crusaders their Cross in the days of Bernard of Clairvaux. They followed an 1 they won victories, too, for the Son of God. A great victory that might be named was the freeing of the slave. Only the other day I stood in Faneuil Hall, Boston, and I could hear agaii the silvery voice of Wendell Phillips denouncing the doctrine of slavery. I could hear him lift his melodious voice in championship of freedom. The 19tli cen- tury recalls that memorable victory, and makes one think of Whittier, and Lowell, and the great Emancipator, Lincoln, and to think of Lincoln calling for men to help the cause, and to think of men responding "We're coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand strong," and doing that work which made it possible for "Mighty West to bless the East, and sea to answer sea. And mountain unto mountain call. Bless God for we are free." As the result of the breaking of the shackles of slavery, increasing emphasis was given to man's physical condition. Sociology in the 19th century has become more and more a study to those who are interested in their fellow men. More aad more men are coming to seek to better the conditions of men here as well as for the world to come. Many institutions have been fighting on the side of Him who came to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, and nurse the sick, and set the prisoner free. It is true that some of these institutions do not bear the Christian name, and yet, if the words of Jesus Christ be true that "Those which are not against Me are for Me," we may regard them as on the side of the Christian and as proofs of Christian progress. You remember that little song of Tenny- son's: "Once in a golden hour I cast to earth a seed. Up there came a flower. The people said, a weed. "To and fro they went Thro' ray garden bower. And rauttering discontent. Cursed me and my flower. THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. 27 "Then it grew so tall It wore a crown of ligbt, But thieves from o'er the wall Stole the seed by night. "Sow'd it far and wide In every town and tower, Till all the people cried 'Splendid is the flower.' "Read my little fable: He that runs may read. Most can raise the flowers now, For all have got the seed. "And some are pretty enough, And some are poor indeed, Aiid now again the people Call it but a weed." I claim that many of the philanthropic institutions of the age which are not non-Christian have gotten the seed from the Christian, and we may claim them as signs of Christian ad- vancement. As you turn the pages of the photograph album of the 19th century you will see many of the faces of God's heroes there. I would like to tell you a little of John B. Gough, hero for tem. perance; or that splendid heroine, Frances E. Willard. I would like to have the time to speak of that splendid hero of battles for the uplift of the negro, General Armstrong. I would like to speak of triumphs in mission fields at home and abroad, by men like David Brainard and Adam Judson. I would like to be able to speak of pulpit triumphs won by Horace Bushnell, and Beecher, and Phillips Brooks. In literature there also have been heroes of the Christian faith, and among them stands the name of him whom we honor to-day — James Fenimore Cooper. He was, to quote Julian Hawthorne, "A man who believed in God and won an honorable popularity." He wrote books that we can safely put into the hands of our children without fear of their characters being stained. Speaking of the triumphs of the 19th century, those great triumphs were won, not only by individuals, but by organiza- tions. The Home Mission Societies wrote a story of "The win- 28 SUNDAY, AUGUST 4, 1907. iiing- of the West," quite as thrilling as that other tale by Theodore Roosevelt. You remember that last year was cele- brated the "hay stack" meetincr, the txatheridg of that little handful of students at Williams College, under the leadership of Samuel J. Williams. You remember how, as the result of those young men's pravers pleading for the coming of the King- dom of Christ in other lands, in 1812 the firtt five missionaries sailed for foreign shores. And do you remember the great suc- ceeding missionary movements when the money, and prayers, and life, especially, of the young students' volunteer movement, all went to make a record that has been said to bring more honor to our land and to our Lord than any achievements in diplomacy or war. At that Ecumenical Conference to which I have referred, and which really summed up the achievements in missionary fields in the 191 h century. President Harrison sat as Presiding Officer and gave in his speech praise for the Missionary and his deeds. And our honored President, then Governor, spoke his word of appreciation of what has been done in missionary fields, and made a strenuous appeal for the continuation of the mission- ary spirit. Speaking of Christian Conquest in the 19th century, I must not forget to mention the Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor, which, in a little over twenty-five years, has brought honor to the name of its founder, Frances E. Clark, and better still, honor to that Name which is above every name. As we look out upon the last two or three decades of the century we are reviewing, we see thousands of young people in our land following Christ with glad hearts and willing feet and shining faces. Yes, for them the words of Sam Walter Foss are true: "They play a grander music than the anthem of the mills, And they waft an ampler commerce than our bales of golden fleece, And like morning is the coming of their feet upon the hills, With their brotherhood of blessing and their sisterhood of peace." I believe that as we scan, briefly enough and superficially enough, the 19th century, to seek signs of religious progress, THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. 29 that we cannot do so without certain impressions coming back upon our lives. I think that what we see ought to produce a spirit of consecration. Men of the 20th century, there were Elijahs in the 19th century: Let there be Elishas in the 20th century! There was many a Moses in the 19th century: Let there be many a Joshua in the 20th century! "Look around! How much there has been won! The watches of the night are done. Look up! How much there is to win! The watches of the day begin." Men of the 20th century, show yourself worthy by deeds of love, and sacrifice, and service, of the men of the 19th century. And I want to say that a review of the 19th century ought to produce the spirit of courage. Surely we can feel something of the optimism of Robert Browning and sing "God's in His Heaven, all's right with the world." I recognize, and you recognize, that we have before us as working men and working women in God's world, tremendous tasks. There are great social problems. The immigrant must be cared for; the "cry of children" must be soothed; the strife in labor's world must be stilled; that grim giant, Greed, must be overcome. Yes, the tasks are tremendous. But listen ! The God of the 19th ceniury is our God. Let us go forward to our task trusting in Him and He will help us win ! The chorus then sang the anthem by Sydenham, "Great is the Lord, and Marvelous." Rev. Mr. Conger then introduced Bishop Potter, saying in doing so: There are two kinds of prophets, the true and the false. And of true prophets there are also at least two kinds. There are those who, sitting apart, not much in contact with men of affairs, rapt in contemplation of the eternal foundations, hear the Great Voice, and come forth to utter its message to the world. Such was Elijah, and such John the Baptist. The other sort of prophet is in the midst of men and affairs, seeing, doing, feeling, thinking, close to the people about him: "Ejes, ears take in their dole. Brain treasures up the whole," and out of the abundance of observation and experience and 30 SUNDAY, AUGUST 4, 1907. judgment comes at last a whisper which means vision and prophesy. Such prophets, if I read the Book aright, were Dan- iel and Isaiah. Now, a prophet of the first sort is hard to find, and even when one comes claiming to have a message of that kind, it is hard for us ordinary folk to distinguish him who has really heard the still, small voice which made Elijah cover his face, from one who has heard the echo of some hope or desire of his own. But the second kind of prophet we may look for and some times find, and have confidence in. And so to-day we have called for one who for more than half the century that is past has been living among men and afiairs, feeing, judging, weighing, look- ing at men, thinking about them in their relations to God, and in their relations under God to one another, and w^hose iudg- ment we have come to trust, and we have bidden him prophesy. I suppose there is no American audience to which Bishop Potter would need an introduction. He will speak to us on "The Re- ligion of the Future." 'THE RELIGIOUS OUTLOOK OF THE FUTURE/ By Bishop Henry C. Potter of New York. Men, Brethren, and Fathers: Any observance such as that which we begin today would have been singularly unmeaning if it had left out this Religious feature. We are to commemorate here, in Cooperstown, the past one hundred years; for those cover the corporate existence of this community; and we shall be reminded in many ways and by various voices of the evems and the personalities that have been memorable in the past. The historian will tell us of those political,, agricultural and industrial forces, which have entered into the making of our commercial life. The man of science will indicate to us those natural conditions, geograph- ical, and climatic, which have determined the form and sub- stance of those forces of mother earth, with which we have builded; ard the man of letters will touch, with his magic wand, that world of primitive romatce, to which a great genius has given immortal life and form. But underneath all these, there lie? the story c f that inmost life which is deepest and most potential; — the life that is not material, nor intellectual, but spiritual. And so, this afternoon, my Rev. Brother, with painstaking precision, and with large vision, has led you to look backward over that story of these past hundred years, which is not political, nor scientific, nor literary, so much as it is religious. Let me thank him in your names, as I am sure you will wish me to do, for the scrupulous fidelity and impartial temper with which he has performed his task; and let us thank him, most of all, for having set before us with so much force and directness, the influence of those su- preme truths which can alone make a people great! For it belongs to us today pre-eminently to remember that whatever may have been the political or social, or economic discontents which made our fathers seek these shores, there were none which went so deep and wrought so mightily as those spiritual dissatisfactions which moved men to come hither, out of religious bondage and spiritual apathy, to ficd in this 32 SUNDAY, AUGUST 4, J907. free land, a place to worship God in simplicitj and in truth; — ■with scant ceremonial— or indeed as in the case of our Quaker ancestry, with no ceremonial at all, — but "in spirit and in truth." It is impossible to recall the earlier religious history of the Republic without an emotion of profound admiration for those heroic men who, coming- to this untrodden wilderness, — untrodden, that is to say, save by savage feet,— did not build great houses for themselves, until, first, they had built a house for God. The story of the first settlers, here, has in this aspect of it, a note of high faith They were God's people, this was God's land; and in simple and childlike dependence upon Him, their day and their hopes, must begin, and continue, and end. Well, we have completed a hundred years, enriched by memories which I have here this afternoon rehearsed, of that simpler age of faith. What shall we say of its continuance, and what is the outlook for Religion in this land this after- noon? If any words of mine concerning "The Religious Outlook of the Future," can be at all worthy of this occasion, they must deal frankly with that question. And so, in the few moments during which I am to tax your patience, let me speak first of the "Portents of Alarm" that, as I view it, seem to menace our future; and then of its "Portents of Promise." There are, as I look out toward our Religious Future, three notes of menace. The first of these is to be found in the "growth of wealth, and the love of pleasure." The life of our forefathers was, compared with our modern habits, indulgences and demands, an austere life. There was little to get and little to spend; and the conditions of lite in the homes that first cov- ered these hilis, and in the lives that were lived in them, were fuil of what we should call hardship and privation. I am not saying that hardship and privation necessarily make men and women devout and God-fearing; but it must be owned that, ■where life had little to give to pleasure or self indulgence, men learned to look beyond, with equal confidence and eagerness, for a realization of the longings and hungers that they at least believed to be somehow shadows and prophecies of better things to come. I am not saying, either, that our modern conditions of life, which, as we all know are, even in the humblest home, incomparably more easy and convenient than those of our THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. 33 fathers, are, necessarily, enervating, not only, but Godless. But it must be plain to even the least reflecting person among" ws that, if we go on making the world more convenient, and comfortable not only, but more luxurious, we are not likely — do I say to be unwilling to stay here? No; but I do say that we are not likely to possess that "purged vision" of which John Milton speaks, and which makes us competent to see the higher things. My quarrel with modern life, so far as it makes us selfish and self-indulgent, is not merely that it develops, out of all just proportions, lower and meaner hungers, but that it makes us insensible to higher onesl The note of our modern religious life that I think ought most to perturb us, is what I would call its "smugness;"-its keen sense of religious decorums and conventions; and its extremely feeble sense of religious hunger or perplexities. Said a friend to me, not long ago, "Nobody reads the book of Job anv more, — I suppose because we have so happily outgrown poor Job's perplexities about God, and sin, and sufferingl" And I felt tempted to cry out "Poor Job," Do you call him? Go home and ask God to fill you with the same perplexities, and then perhaps you will find out how really contemptible what somebody has called your "hair-mat- tress religion" is! Ah yes, my brother, we have managed to make life a great deal more comfortable than our fathers could make it. Let us beware, lest, with the growth of wealth, and the love of ease, there di^'s within us the hunger for light! 2. Again: Another portent of alarm in our time, as one looks out toward the future, is in the growth of what some men, — and some churches — to-day call godless knowledge. The whole realm of that which may be known by man, has in the last hundred years, been transformed: and many cherished beliefs which, with most of us, have been intertwined with our earliest conceptions of material, intellectual, and spiritual truth, have been ruthlessly shattered, or utterly swept away. There was a time, for example, when men took the Bible, as the su- preme authority, not only for spiritual but for scientific truth, and when, with that colored brother in Virginia, we were wont to say that "the sun do move,'' because he had read in our Bible "from the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same," 34 SUNDAY, AUGUST 4, J907. and the rest. There was a time, when, with entire equanimity, we dismissed all pag-an peoples to what we called the "uncoven- anted mercies of God;" which meant that they would all, "without be damned everlastingly." There was a time when the words of Jesus to the penitent thief on the cross "This night shalt thou be with me in Paradise, " were wholly inex- plicable words; and because many men of Christian parentag-e and ancestry have parted company with these earlier misappre- hensions of the sacred Book they have parted company with that Book itself, and with that, that it supremely stands for, forever! In a word, iu the realm of what may be called dogmatic truth it is idle to deny that thete have been tremendous changes; and the endeavors of honest men to square their con- victions with inherited formularies have produced mental con- tortions which would often be comic, if it were not for their moral aspects. That passion for ascribing infallibility, first to a human person, or council, or decree, and then, to a formula, has provoked in many earnest minds that vehement reiteration of inherited symbols of our beliefs which has brought about, in them, its inevitable reaction of doubt or of downright denial. If we could go through the Churches, this afternoon, of whatever name or fellowship, we should find, among the most earnest and devout of those who worshipped in them, a profound and wide- spread apprehension that Religion was a decaying Force in our modern life; and that its hold upon multitudes of men and women was steadily declining and diminishing. And in much that salutes us in the speech, and in the liter- ature of our generation there is dramatic confirmation for this. We are not a reverent people, and we are often willing to find food for mirth in themes and words that must have, for many of us, the most sacred associations. But would this be possible unless, first of all, our earlier and devouter associations with these things had been somehow loosened and — most signifi:ant of all — our substantial faith in what they stood for, largely destroyed. When we quote, for ex- ample, Jonathan Edward's picture of the redeemed looking down, with complacent satisfaction, from the battlements of heaven, upon the torments of the damned in hell, does it^ever occar to us that the contemptuous disavowal with which^we^repu- THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. 35 ■diate, to-day, ~any such beliefs, is but a distorted projection of our repudiation of all beliefs? "Kven the devils," says Jesus, "be- lieve and tremble." But the modern man is careful, often, to assure you that he neither believes nor trembles. He does not believe, at any rate, — not as his fathers believed, and he wishes you to realize that there are things which the modern intellect has outgrown — like its faith in ghosts, and fairy tales, and divers familiar superstitions, and that one of these things is religion. Do you tell him that it still has a place in the world? — he will » not dispute with you as to that. But he wishes you to under- stand that that place is not its old place; and no book, no teacher, no system, nor "credo," can any more speak to him with a voice of commanding authority. We will take our beliefs, says the modern, much as we take our salad or our ginger ale. It must be an appetizing and stimulating com- pound, or a pungent and refreshing draught. It may persuade us to certain reverent and devout customs, but it shall not com- pel us. It may display before us a standard of conduct and an ensample of blameless living. But it must not venture, any longer to say "This do, and thou shak live"; or, "That renounce, or thou shalt die." What one does, or refrains from doing, must necessarily be determined by a great many considerations, sanitary, social, or personal; and there can be no hard-and-fast rule, any more in Religion than in hygenics, which can, before- hand determine for me what I must do! That something like this is the attitude of a great many minds today, it is quite idle to deny. And that it involves, inevitably, moral if not mental inertia, in the case of vast multitudes of people, it is no less impossible to deny. "Our fathers," says the modern student of superannuated religious beliefs, "were often the slaves of a blind superstition or of an almost savage intolerance!" Well, my brother, sometimes, at any rate, we must needs own that they were. But, in an age of such easy-going tolerance as our own, can we match their often splendid heroisms or their often- er heroic self-sacrifice? We may well be thankful for the com- ing of an era when departures from accepted religous traditions are no longer punished with dungeon or the stake. But, in ex- ulting in our freedom, let us take care that we are not boasting vainly of a godless indifference! 36 SUNDAY, AUGUST 4, J907. 3. For alas; with all our vaunted emancipaton from earlier intolerance, there is one note in our modern life which ought to make a Christian people profoundly ashamed. And that is our bondage to the spirit of "caste." We compare ourselves, com- placently, here in America, with races and lands in which, as in China or India, such civilization as they possess is imperious- ly dominated by the spirit of "caste." In some cities in India, not a great while ago, the Pariah caste was driven from the town, at three o'clock in the afternoon, and the gates of the city closed, lest the shadow of a Pariah might fall upon a Brah- man. "Monstrous and grotesque custom," we cry, "with its inhuman dishonor of some of God's children!" Yes, my broth- er, — but will you tell me how it differs, in essence, from that mental attitude or that wonted manner with which most of us bear ourselves toward a negro or a Chinaman! Are most of us able to find ourslves beside one of these, or any of their like, of whatever alien race or land, without betraying our repugnance, and, too often, our downright antagonism? In fact, ihe only difference between our conception, for our estimate of "caste", and that of out forefathers consists in its narrowness and its ignorance. Does anvone ask me if I expect to see a state of human society from which all reserves, and distinctions, and isolations shall disappear, I answer "Most surely, no!" Or, does any one ask me if I have forgotten or am icnorant of, those earlier separations and classifications of individuals in which long ago the "caste" system took its rise? Again Ianswer,"No." But as little need we forget that "caste," as it has existed all over the world for centuries and as it still exists in many lands today, has been the product of ideas and institutions which honored birth and distinguished lineage, and which knew no lordship among men, without binding on the noble a duty and a service for the vassal, as real and exacting as the duty and ser- vice ot the vassal for his lord. Well, we say, we have done with all that to-day. Ours is a land in which there are no more any lords nor any vassals. "All men," says the Declaration of Independence, "are boru free and equal,'' and "I am as good as my neighbor — if not a lit- tle better !" So be it, my brother, but if that be true, are you care- ful, always, to remember that the converse of your proposition. THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL 37 trust also be true, and that "your neighbor is as good as you?" Are there none upon -whom you allow yourself to bear hardly? Is there no man, or woman, to whom you behave insolently? And, if at all you cringe or yield, is it to virtue, or weakness, or defencelessness that you yield? Our shame in this land con- sists in this — that, while we profess to have no "castes", nor class-distinctions to tyrannij:e over us, we are too often in bon- dage to a cowardice which worships coarse power — or baser still, I think, cringes to mere wealth. I was entering a railway car, not long ago in the doorway of which stood a huge and over fed creature who refused to yield the way. In front of me advanced a youth who hustled him aside with what I confess as scant, but well-deserved want of ceremony. But alas, as I was rejoicing in this merited rebuke of bad manners, I heard, behind me, a voice rebuking him who had administered it, and ex- claiming in dismay, "Good heavensl You must not hustle a man like that. Why, he is worth two hundred and fifty thousand dollars!" It is along this line, men and brethren, that our foremost danger lies! Mere wealth, by itself considered, has no more moral quality than mere water. But, great accumula- tions of wealth like dammed-up floods of water, may become a menace; and when wealth, no matter how it may have been ac- quired, or accumulated, shall become the dominant note in our modern civilization, so that men shall cringe to that, as of old the slave cringed to his master, then we shall have enthroned a rule of "caste" worse, because more degrading, than any that has gone before it! II. You will own now, that, in what I have said thus far I have not ignored those dangers which most gravely menace the Republic in the century that is before us, nor their intimate re- lations to our Religious life and progress. But the whole hori- zon is not a bank of dark and menacing clouds; and looking^ forward there is much to inspire a Christian disciple with re- newed courage and hope. 1. And, first of all, in the wide emancipation of religious communions and devout and earnest minds from the demon of theological intolerance. It was inevitable, I suppose, that when, with the Reformation, there came emancipation from the domination of an infallible man, that old tyranny should be 38 SUNDAY, AUGUST 4, 1907. supplanted by the no less imperious domination of an infallible Book. And the misfortune with our fathers was that, while they insisted upon tbe authority of an infallible Book, each fellowship, communion, society, or brotherhood, by whatever name it called itself, insisted upon its own interpretation of the Book which it accepted as equally infallible wi':h the book it- self. In other words, the Reformation Communions too often passed under the rule of formularies, confessions, standards of belief and practice, which, each one, claimed for itself an unerring- in- terpretation of the inspired words on which it claimed to rest. Nothing, in this connection, has been more inspiring than the gradual weakening of the hold of these formularies over the minds which they had once terrorized and intimidated. Is it said that I am here apostrophizing as praise-worthy that decay of faith which has been the dark stain upon the religion of our time? I am doing- nothing of the sortl There is indeed a de- cay of faith which is the sad distinction, in some of its aspects, of much ot the religion of our time and one may well bewail it. But no exaggeration of a great mental and spiritual reaction, even though it may run out into the extravagances of actual dis- belief, need be confounded with that happy recoil from the impe- rious exactions of "credenda", both monstrous and cruel, from •which, thank God, our age has happily shaken itself free! Men read, e. g-. such a book as M^zley's "Ruling Ideas of Early Ages", and as such a volume gives back the Bible into their hands with the priceless discovery that it is the story of a pro- gressive revelation, the Christian student discovers at last that no single formulary can hope completely to summarize and fi- nally to declare what is the whole doctrine of Christ; and so consents to go to school anew, to the Master who has redeemed him! And then, along with this enlarged conception of the Religion of the New Testament, there has broken upon multitudes of minds, thank God, a conception of Religion as something inev- itably larger and nobler than any merely Sectarian boundaries can contain. There was a time, my brother, when men hon- estly held that if one were outside the fellowship in which we worshipped — they could only be dismissed to the "uncovenanted THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL, 39 mercies of God". I trust that we know better than that to-day and that our judgments of men whose theological opinions and whose traditions of worship most widely differ from our own, are at once more gentle and more charitable. I met on the step of an inn, here, in Cooperstown, last summer, a Hebrew gentle- man who said to me,"I am glad to see you and I do not suppose you can guess why. But this is the reason; I do not believe you will say to me as did a Christian minister whom I met this morning: 'How are you. Sir? Do you know? — I am very sorry that you are going to hell !' " I could not help asking ray He- brew brother how the preacher who greeted him knew so cer- tainly his destination and I begged him to believe that no such cry of dispair as that was any just portrait of the Christian Religion. 2. For that Religion has a right, to-day, as it looks out upon the coming century, to rejoice in a far wider and more compre- hensive conception of human brotherhood than has ever pos- sessed it before. We, who are living this afternoon, are wit- nesses of a spectacle which on this globe of ours has never been matched before. For centuries, nations and continents have been marked off from one another by customs and scepters, and, most of all, by religions, which (some of them) taught men not to love but hate, and distrust, and separation from their fellow- men. To our times it is given to see these ancient walls fall down, and to find even China, which, a little while ago, called you and me "white devils," and "outside barbarians," willin^c to learn American civilization from American teachers. All round the world, this afternoon, there is breaking tnrough the darkness which has, hitherto, enveloped what we have been wont to call heathen lands, a new conception of the essential oneness of the Race — which, whether men as yet realize it or not, is the fruit of the incarnation of Jesus Christ! You will hear men who are impatient of what they call the sentimental- ism of Foreign Missions ask us if we are insensible to the fact_ that the people to whom we are sending teachers and evangel-^ fsts, and Bibles, have, each one of them, a religion of its own, — fn most cases much older and more widely believed than our own; and that Buddhism and Brahmanism, and Confucianism were faiths in Oriental lands before Christ was born? Nc, my 40 SUNDAY, AUGUST 4, J907. brother, I am not ignorant of that fact, — nor of another which it will be pertinent, here, to recall. And that is that these an- cient faiths, after having done their utmost for the lands in which they have prevailed have, one after the other, confessed the failure of those pagan civilizations, of which they have claimed to be the supreme inspirations. In a volume which I de- sire to commend to every one within the sound of my voice this afternoon, entitled "Contrasts in Social Progress'' by E. P. Tennv, you may find the history of what the religion of the New Testament has done for nations that have long groped in darkness. The story of the young Neesima, the founder of the Japanese "Doshisha'' has much that is common to pagan expe- rience all round the world. By chance he read two papers writ- ten by an American Missionary, the one a brief history of the United States, and the other the story of the Bible, and then ran away to America praying, as he journeyed, all the way "O, God, if Thou hast eyes, see me; if Thou hast ears, bear me. I want to be civilized by the Bible!" 3. And this brings to me the end. As I look out from the close of the century that we commemorate to-day, there are three supreme notes of promise, the growth of tolerance, the growth of brotherhood; and finally I think the growth of a di- vine discontent. Has it as yet occurred to you to recognize the significance of what is coming to pass with that race whose civ- ilization is the oldest, and whose people are the most numerous of all the nations of the world, to-day? For hundreds of cen- turies, during which they have attained a culture and reared a State, in many aspects of both of them, of matchless excel- lence, the Chinese have spoken of the rest of the world, and especially of the Christians nations, as "outside barbarians." I do not say that, as yet the great majority of that ancient people think of us in any other way. It will be a vast and slow-moving progress thai the Religion of Jesus Christ will have to make, befcre faith and worship, in China, will become yours and mine. But one thing has come to pass in China, in India, in Asia Minor and Major, which is a prophecy of the end. The old religions still survive. But, all round the world the attitude of man is one of tense and barkening expectancy I And, if among ourselves there moves the doubter who has THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. 4J lost his earlier faith, thank God, his face, and voice, and speech, betray that stifled and unsatisfied hunger of the soul which only Jesus Christ can satisfy ! Men tell us that these hours are hours of great [re^stlessness and impatience and a surrender of old forms of faith. My brother, I more than partly believe it. The religious history of mankind is inevitably the renunciation of misconceptions, or half or false conceptions, of the Truth for that clearer vision and that simpler faith which are the gift of the Holy Spirit! Step by step, and often, losing its feeble foot- ing, and sliding backwards in its path, the soul climbs up to God. But out of failure comes a surer progress, and out of struggle the final and glorious triumph! At the close of the Bishop's address the audience rose and sang "Coronation," remaining standing while the benediction was pronounced by Rev. Edward A. Perry, pastor of the CJni- versalist Church: "Upon us, O'LotdGod, our Heavenly Father, Upon us, rev- erent in attitude, devout in spirit, grateful in heart; upon our loved ones wherever in the wide world they be; upon the stranger and old friend within our gates; upon those not per- mitted to be present, whose hearts are turning fondly home; upon those detained whether by service, sickness, sorrow, suffering, or even selfishness; upon our community and its business in- terests that integrity may be the keynote of all; upon our citi- zens that they be patriotic, faithful, sacrificing, in the piping times of peace as well as the bitter hours of battle; upon our educational institutions that righteousness may be learned as well as knowledge; upon our churches and all religious institutions that all members may know that the Gospel is neither formal- ism, nor dogmatism, but Christ at the center of being, "the Way, the Truth, and the Life" to the end that there shall be that unity of spirit which is not only the bond of peace but the promise and potency of the conquest of the world for Christ; upon all these rest, O, Lord God, our Holy, Heavenly Father! Thy Gracious Blessing, that we, Thy Children, may live nobly, love worthily, die trustfuly. Amen." Historical Exercises Monday, August 3th, 1907, at the Court House Lawn. Monday the celebration was ushered in by the bring of a sa- lute at 7 o'clock accompanied by the ringing of the church bells and the blowing of steam whistles. ^T-" From 10 a. m. until 12 m. the Tenth Regiment Band gave a concert from the band stand at the corner of Main and Pio- neer streets. At 2 o'clock was scheduled a ball game with the ^Olmypias of Utica, but owing to delay in their arrival it was after 3 o'clock before the game was started. There was a large crowd present to witness the game and they had their patience in waiting rewarded by a closely contested game. '^•"^ At four o'clock the Historical Exercises were opened on the Court House Grounds, where a stand had been erected. On this were displayed portraits of J. Fenimore Cooper, Judge Nelson, Judge Bowen, and Judge Edick. After an overture by the band, Rev. Ralph Birdsall called the meeting to order, and introduced G. Pomeroy Keese, the chairman of the Historical Committee. Mr. Birdsall said: "It is fitting that at the fore-part of this Centennial week should stand an historical commemoration. It is more fitting that as President of this historical commemoration we should name one who for nearly half a century has been, and is, the representative citizen of Cooperstown, more intimately than any other associated with the history and traditions of the place; most of all in touch with the past, and first of all in the activi- THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL, 43 ties of the present, the Taraenund of our tribe, Mr. George Pomeroj Keese." In introducing the first speaker Mr. Francis W. Halsey, Mr. Keese said: "It is with great pleasure that we have with us this after- noon, for the opening Address of our Historical Programme one, who, if not Cooperstown born, has been identified from earliest years with the events of all this region and who has done more to preserve them from loss than any writer known to fame. In his work 'The Old New York Frontier' he has rescued from oblivion much otherwise unknown, and has arrayed pro- saic facts in most charming drapery. He will give us the bene- fit of his researches in a paper entitled 'The Upper Susque- hanna in th6 Border Wars.' I have the honor to present Mr. Francis Whiting Halsey." **THE UPPER SUSQUEHANNA IN THE BORDER WARS/^ By Mr. Francis "W. Hakcy. It is a rare privilege and one attended by much honor — the privilege of speaking to this audience, in this place, on this joyous occasion. Stranger though I am to almost all of you, being neither a native of this village, nor a citizen of it, the village in ■which I was born and reared is also a village watered by the Sus- quehanna. Not very far distant from this spot it lies, still high up among the hills of New York, forty miles only from this Ot- sego Lake in which the Susquehanna takes its source, and over which the genius of Cooper has thrown the unrivalled spell of his romances. '", How wonderful a thing a river is. Most other objects in nature under the influence of man are modified or altogether changed. Towns and cities spread across the fields and creep up hillsides. Railways make new lines in the landscape. For- ests are cut away from the mountains, and in their places arc seen fields of grain and happy homes. But the river flows on from age to age, the same yesterday, today and forever. The Susquehanna flows today as when the forest crept down to its borders, when the only sounds above it were made by the cries of birds, and when over its shining surface the Indian's bark canoe pursued its silent way. The Susquehanna here in Coop- erstown is like the river I knew in Undailla in childhood. It is only changed in Unadilla by being broader, many creeks and one small river, the Charlotte, having swollen its waters. Oth- erwise it is the same winding, shallow, island-studded stream, that gladdens every eve which once has known it, and then comes back to look upon its face again. There are weighty reasons why on this occasion the his- toric memories of the headwaters of this river may properly be called to mind in Cooperstown. White men had explored this ▼alley contemporaneously with the first settlements in the THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. 45 State — those on Manhattan Island and in Albany, while here in Cooperstown, and elsewhere in Otsego County, some of the ear- liest settlements in the State, outside of the Hudson and Mo- hawk Valleys, were made. In that war between England and France for mastery of the American Continent, which ended in surrender of Quebec, men from these settlements had some share, while in the Revolution they bore a notable part in the defense of the New York frontier against the merciless assaults of Indians and Tories. All through that frontier warfare the Susquehanna from Tioga Point, (the place where the Chemung flows into the Sus- quehanna,) was employed as the main highway along which the Indians a-ad Tories marched for the desolation of the fron- tier. Having obliterated every vestige of civilization along these waters by the massacre of Cherry Valley, the burning of Springfield, and the expulsion of settlers from Unadilla, Otego, Oneonta. Milford, and Cooperstown, the valley thenceforth, ex- cept for the expedition of General Clinton in 1779, remained in possession of the Indians and Tories down to the close of the war, — a period of about five years. The valley, meanwhile, had been reduced to a land of complete desolation — log houses being turned into heaps of ashes and blackened logs, cultivated fields being converted back to the wild state, and Cherry Valley becomng "an abandoned slaughter-field". These border wars give to New York State a revolutionary distinction possessed by no other state. Massachusetts had her Concord, her Lexington, her Bunker Hill; New Jersey her Princeton and Trenton; Pennslyvania her Brandywine and Ger- raantown; the Southern states their many battlefields; but New York, in addition to her battles of Long Island, Harlem Heights and Saratoga, contendel with the stealthiest and most danger- ous of all the foes of that time — the red man of the forest, who attacked old men, women, and children and barbarously slaugh- tered them. Foremost as she is today among the States, New York a century and a quarter ago, bore almost alone this burden of border foray and massacre. It is altogether fitting that we should seek to understand why this was the case. Causes there certainy were, and they may be easily understood. Not to mere accident were due these bor- 46 MONDAY, AUGUST 5, J907. der wars. Other frontiers had their Indians, and yet, except for the Massacre of Wyoming (which in part was due to ancient local feuds, independent ot the Revolution) they escaped their attacks. Even the frontier of New York escaped them until the Revolution was well on its way. The war had been more than three years in pi ogress when massacre overwhelmed the set- tlement at Cherry Valley. The center of conflict had passed away from New England; it had passed away from New York; New Jersey had been saved and Pennsylvania saved; Burgoyne had surredered at Saratoga, and George III., in a hopeless effort to save something from the impending ruin of his cause, had transferred the conflict to the South, where the remainder of it was to be fought out — in Virginia, Georgia and South Carolina. Why, then, these border wars on the New York frontier? In one short sentence the essential fact may be disclosed: the minis- ters of George III, now at last had won over the Indians to their caure. For three years they tried in vain to win them over. Again and again had councils been held on both sides — the Indians with the English, the Indians with the Americans — but the re- sult had been an essentially neutral stand by the Indians. In this war the wisest course for the Indians would unquestionably have been the maintenace of the state of permanent neutrality. They had nothing to gain by the war, but everything to lose and in its results did, indeed, lose everything. But strict neu- trality to these Iroquois Indians was impossible. Of all things they loved war the most. It was their trade, their accomplish- ment, their delight— in their eyes the fountain of all things honorable and glorious in man. Their long alliance with the English against the French of Canada had made their course, once the issue with the colonies was nearly forced npon their sympathies, only too obvious. This war of the child of America with its mother England they could not comprehend. Taxation without representation was quite beyond their understanding. They saw nothing patriotic in white men who disguised themselves as Indians and cast tea into Boston Harbor. Patriots who defied British sol- diers in the streets of New York and Boston reminded them of the French of Canada, who in the older wars had stormed Eng- lish furts on the northern frontier; they engaged in war with THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. 47 the King of England, and tbe king was the red man's powerful friend, who lived across "the great lake" — their name for the Atlantic Ocean. It must be said that when finally the great bodj' of the In- dians cast their lot definitelj with George III. they pursued no honorable course because they kept an ancient covenant chain. As the war closed and their wide domain, among whose streams and forests for ages their race had found a home, passed forever from their control, they might have said with a pride quite as just as the pride of Francis I. after the battle of Pavia: "All is lost, save honor''. No doubt longer exists as to where responsibility lies for the employment of the Indians in this war. It was the English ministry that employed them. Joseph Brant, going to England in 1776, on other business — to secure redress for the wrongs of the Mohawk Indians, who had been defrauded of lands on the Susquehanna — was personally urged to aid the king's cause. The Mohawks were to have justice done them with their lands after the war; meanwhile, they were to fight for the king. Brant's negotiations were held with Lord George Ger- maine, the member of Lord North's cabinet who was direct- ly charged with the conduct of the war in America. On Ger- maine's shoulders, more than on the shoulders of any other En- glishman, more on him than on any American Tory, rests the indelible stain of the employment of the Indians in this war. Only in late years were the full details of those negotiations pub- lished, but they were fully understood in England a century and a quarter ago. Lord Chatham, in the House of Lords, gave mem- orable voice to them, in that famous speech in which he rose to the full height of his unrivaled eloquence, when he cried: "Who is the man, my lords, who, in addition to the disgrace and mischief of this war, has dared to authorize and associate to our arms the tomahawk and the scalping knife of the savage; to call into civilized alliance the wild and inhuman inhabitant of the woods; to delegate to the merciless Indian the defense of disputed rights and to wage the horrors of his barbarous warfare against our brethren? My lords, these enormities cry aloud for redress and punishment." On his return from England Brant joined the English forces, 48 MONDAY, AUGUST 5, J907. but for a time all that he and the Tories could do failed to pro- duce armed Indian conflict. Not until the summer of 1777 was anything accomplished to organize the Indians in actual war- fare against the settlers. In that year a council was held in Oswego, where the Indians were assured that the king would never see them want for food and clothing; they were lavishly supplied with presents; were promised a bounty on every scalp they could take, and were told that rum would be as plentiful for them as water in Lake Ontario — an awful temptation to an Indian. When Burgoyne was preparing his descent from the north, they were invited to Fort Schuyler, now Rome, Oneida county, where they would have an opportunity to sit bv and smoke their pipes while they saw the British "whip the rebels." In an evil hour the Indians yielded, and the result was that, under Brant's leadership, they joined the Tories and pressed on to the field of Oriskany, where they met Gen. Herkimer and his frontier militia. One of the fiercest and most savage of all bat- tles was Oriskany. In a dark ravine old neighbors, now be- come deadly enemies, fought with Indians on slippery, marshy ground, knives and bayonets in hand, 1,500 men in a wild strug- gle, and great was the slaughter. The Indians retired from this battle completely overthrown. Returning to their villages with doleful shrieks and yells at their losses, their one ambition now was to attack the frontier settlements. Forward for the next five years they went every summer to devastate the settle- ments in the Susquehanna, Mohawk and Schoharie valleys. As I read the history of those times we have in this battle of Oriskany— one of the decisive conflicts of the Revolution, leading as it did to the surrender of Burgoyne — the primary cause of the massacre of Cherry Valley, and all the lengthened trail of blood which converted a smiling and prosperous frontier into a land of barren desolation. Nowhere in all the American colonies was greater misery wrought than in that territory of which Cooperstown lies somewhere near the center. Tryon county, then a large section of New York State, counted twelve thousand farms which ceased to be cultivated; two-thirds of its population died or fled, and among those who lemained were three hundred widows and two thousand orphans. It is a record of battles in the open, battles in ambush, robbery and arson. THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. 49 Massacre and child-murder, extending from Unadilla on the south to the north and east along and beyond the Mohawk val- lej. When the war was over the history of the Indians virtually closed. Their losses had, in truth, been far greater than those of the frontiers-men. The Indians practically lost everything. Their homes were destroyed, their altars obliterated. Among the streams and forests where for hundreds of vears had dwelt their fathers, were never again to burn their council fires. England virtually abandoned them to the mercy of the men whom they had fought as rebels, but who were now victorious patriots, the complete masters of an imperial domain. Nothing lor them was enacted in the treaty of peace; not even their names were mentioned. It was a pitiful state, for men who had given their lives and fortunes, everything in the world that they had, for a cause, not their own, the cause of an ally across the great waters, with whom they were keeping an ancient cov- enant chain. All, indeed, had been lost save honor. Here I will ask you to listen to a few words in support of the name of that extraordinary Indian, Joseph Brant. A man is known by his friends, and by this test we may understand something of Brant. Some years after the war he went to Lon- don for the second time. He was cordially received every- where, and especially by English officers whom he had known in America. One of these was Gen. Stewart, son of the Earl of Bute, and another. Lord Percy, who afterwards became Duke of Northumberland. Brant made himself quite at home in London drawing- rooms, clad sometimes in the dress of an English gentlemen, sometimes in a half military, half savage costume. Ladies re- marked upon his mild disposition and the manly intelligence of his face. He paid a formal visit to George III., when he de- clined to kiss that sovereign's hand, on the good American ground that he, too, was a sovereign; but he had the grace to kiss the hand of Queen Charlotte, — a more agreeable occupation for a red man, as well as for a white one. Romney painted Brant's portrait; Boswell sought his acquaintance. He dined in houses where at the same time were seated Burke, Fox and Sheridan. From Fox he received a silvei snuffbox. At a great 50 MONDAY, AUGUST 5, (907. ball given in his honor he appeared in war costume, his features } orribly painted. When the Turkish ambassador approached him in a too familiar way, he feigned anger, flashing his toma- hawk in the air and sounding the war-whoop, until the gentle- man from Constantinople is said to have turned very pale. In his own country, until the close of his life, Brant main- tained friendly relations with more than one man against whom he had waged battle. He corresponded with some of them down almost to his death. In Philadelphia he had an interview with Washington and met Aaron Burr, Volney and Talleyrand, afterward the great war minister of Napoleon. Burr intro- duced him to bis daughter, Theodosia Burr, who, at her home in New York, gave a dinner in his honor, at which were present Benjamin Moore, the bishop of New York, and other eminent men. In Albany he met officers against whom he had fought, and talked with them on friendly teims of the old and stormy times. During this visit he was told one day that John Wellt — the sole survivor of the family who had been murdered in Cherry Valley, and afterward a distinguished lawyer and asso- cfate of Alexander Hamilton — had called to see him, determined to take his life. Brant calmly remarked: "Let the young man come in." But Wells in the meantime had been induced to forego his purpose. The friendship with the Duke of Northumberland was main- tained long after Brant's return from London. Chesterfield has remarked that letters disclose not only the character of those who write them, but of those to whom they are addressed. This Duke of Northumberland, who was then at the head of the British peerage, addressed Brant as "My Dear Joseph." He desired hiiii to accept a brace of pistols and to keep them for his sake; told hira his portrait was preserved with great care in his wife's own room; asked for the prolongation of their friend- ship, and closed with these words: "Believe me ever to be, with the greatest truth, vour affectionate friend and brother, Northumberland." No man, white or red, wanting in good character, would ever have received words like these from such a source. Brant died seven years after the new century began. Dur- ing his last illness he addressed to his adoptod nephew these THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. 5J words: "Have pity on the poor Indians. If you can get any influence with the great, endeavor to do them all the good you can." He lies buried in the Mohawk churchyard at Brantford. in Canada, a town named after him. There an imposing monu- ment has been raised to the memory of this, the most distin- guished of all the red men who, in that eventful eighteenth century, linked their names forever with the history of the headwaters of the Susquehanna. For many years Brant's name was a name of obloquy. No terms applied to him were more familiar than the words "cruel Brant." But we are to remember that the story of the border wars has never yet been written by a Mohawk Indian. We have had only one side of that story told to us — the white man's side. Even from this we know that Brant was better than the Tories under whose guidance he tough t, and far better than most Indian chiefs of his time. He had much kindness and real humanity in his nature, and the potent charm of an open personality. If he loved war, it was because he loved his friends and his home still more. If he fought in battle with the vigor and skill of a savage, he fought where honor called him, and he was glad when the war was over. No white man in all this valley looked back with more pain than he to "The old, unhappy, far-off things And battles long ago." Out of history passed the Iroquois when the Revolutionary conflict closed. In the more than a hundred years that have since elapsed — although they still remain as numerous as they ever were — the Iroquois have made no history on this continent. Scattered about on various reservations they have remained silent witnesses of the progress of civilization on our soil. A vast territory has been peopled with more than 80,000,000 of men; stores of wealth, unknown to any former times, have been wrested from the soil, and from treasure chambers beneath the soil; but the Iroquois have silently lived on, stolid, unimpas- sioned, unimpressed witnesses of these vast accomplishments by a race of pale faces from across the sea. That Oneida warrior chieftain who was called Honeyost knew not the melancholy fate in store for his own people when he said, at the close of the war — said in words whose eloquence 52 MONDAY, AUGUST 5, J907. surpasses the eloquence of many white men — "The Great Spirit spoke to the whirlwind — and it was still." But it is well to remember here that this once powerful race had made history on this continent long before the white men came to make another kind of history. Of all American In- dians, the Iroquois were the greatest. They have rightly been called the Romans among red men. They were statesmen as well as warriors, and when they formed their famous League, they accomplished a work in statecraft, the laudation of which can scarcely go too far. Those unlettered savages formed a federation of States. Centuries before Hamilton and Jay, Mad- ison and Washington, they gave expression on American soil to the federal idea. In 1754, under Benjamin Franklin, the white men first attempted to take up that federal idea, when in the Albany Congress of that year, he sought to unite the several colonies in one, Franklin having warned his countrymen with that wonderful gift of prophecy which he seemed always to have been endowed with, that they must "unite or die." That Albany meeting took place on a spot wonderfully fit for feder- ation to gain new inspiration from. Here the Iroquois again and again had met in council — on that very hill where now rises the imposing edifice reared by a great State as its capitol. In the history of the Iroquois, we see what were the force and efiSciency of organized genius for war when it was made to act in a land that had been built for empire. It is beyond ques- tion that a ereat source of their strength lay in the lands they lived upon. Between the Atlantic and the Mississippi no lands were so high as theirs. Here were the headwaters of great riveis — the Hudson, the St. Lawrence, the Susquehanna, the Ohio — marking the highways along which the Indians descend- ed to the conquest of inferior races, far to the South, far to the "West. Long before the white man had made these lands his own, before he had built his highways, had reared his towns and cities, and had planted here in New York a population of 7,000,000 of souls — ages before this era of the white man, this dusky warrior race that never numbered more than 25,000 in- dividuals — about one half the present population of Otsego county — had already marked out this territory as a land of em- pire. .THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL 53 A word more before we part. Id the presence of this audi- ence, and in a neighborhood hallowed by so many evil memories of Indian warfare, may I not say a word in behalf of the ser- vices which that masterful race rendered to Anglo-Saxon civiliza- tion on this continent? The savage men who did such awful slaughter among the people of this valley, a generation after- ward, in that older war we call the French War, arrayed them- selves on the side of the beneficent and enduring forces in hu- man affairs, and these were then in sore peril. That older con- flict of the eighteenth century, in which the first blow was struck on Pennsylvania soil — on that field on her southern bor- ders called Great Meadows, where George Washington won his spurs as a soldier — a field distant one hundred miles west- ward from that other and far greater Pennsylvania battlefield, where was fought out one of the decisive conflicts in world-his- tory, where 150,000 men engaged in mortal strife to determine that "government of the people, by the people, for the people should not perish from the earth" — that older conflict was a conflict between masterful, opposing forces for supremacy in the new world. When Wolfe dies at Quebec, destiny and human progress had decreed that the future civilization of North America should be Anglo-Saxon and not Latin. And it was the fathers of the men who did massacre in Cherry Valley and laid desolate every settlement on the Susquehanna, who helped forward the Anglo-Saxon side in that conflict, if indeed they did not definitely turn the scale for that side. Here in Cooperstown, distant onljr a few miles from the shadow of that sacred monument in Cherry Valley, let us give the Iroquois all the honor that is rightly theirs. Need I remind this audience what that victory over France has meant for your land and mine? Need I say that in place of Roman law it has given us all that we owe to Magna Charta, to the Bill of Rights, and to trial by jury; that instead of an inquisition we have had religious liberty; instead of centraliza- tion of power and tyranny in office, the town meetings; instead of an ignorant populace such as darkens every hamlet in Spain, the little red school house; instead of a Louis XV, a Thomas Jefferson; instead of a Duke of Alva, that finest type of an 54 MONDAY, AUGUST 5, 1907. American citizen, that man born in a cabin, scarcely better than the cabin of an Iroquois Indian and yet who rose to be the second saviour of his country, Abraham Lincoln? Thus by the help of the Iroquois, was forever established on the American Continent this empire of stable democracy- something far better than "The glory that was Greece, The grandeur that was Rome." Music by the band followed Mr. Halsey's address, after which Mr. Keese read a paper on "The Early Days of Coopers- town." 1. Mr. Halsey Speaking. 2. Mr. Keese Speaking. Mr. Bunn Speaking. ^'EARLY DAYS OF COOPERSTOWN/' By G. Pomeroy Keese. ''■' It was the fortune of the writer some years ago to stop for a day in a town which was about to celebrate its 1000th anni- yersary. It is needless to add that this was a city of the old world. To-day, we Americans think ourselves fortunate if we can find a locality which has an antiquity of even 300 years, and, when found, we devote six months, or more, to the cele- Ifcration. So rapid are the changes, however, in this rapidly changing country that the Jamestown we honor to-day for its advanced age has lived and died and become a ruin with noth- ing more to show than an ivy-mantled tower. Cooperstown, if only a modest country village, situated among the green clad hills of Otsego, and reflected in the caltn waters of the Glimmerglass, has both a charm and a history of which few rural towns can boasi — the junior of its sister hamlet of Cherry Valley by 30 years, it has not even a Revolutionary •xistence and but a single event of that period to disturb its wooded shores, while Brant waved his tomahawk and Butler butchered the ill-fated inhabitants of the little village over the kills. The only historic record of the war of Independence to be found upon the site of Cooperstown consists in the remains of the famous dam, constructed by General Jamas Clinton in 1779, by which the swollen waters of Otsego lake were made to con- tribute power to waft his boats to join forces with General Sul- liyan at Tioga Point. The rocks composing the foundations of this dam fwere long in sight at the outlet of the lake until blown up by Capt. Cooper some 30 years ago as an obstruction to navigation. A'more enduring rock is still to be seen in the immediate yicinity and long may it remain with both its historic and ro- mantic traditions as a rendezvous and "place of friendly meet- ing" of the Indian warriors, as the name Otsego signifies, and 56 MONDAY, AUGUST 5, 1907. made famous to the readers of the Deerslayer in the openings scene in that first of the Leatherstocking tales. The Indian and the native beasts of the forest had undii- puted sway over all this region until the latter half of the 18tk century. While occasional attempts were made to establish trading posts with the Indians, and letters patent were obtained from them for large tracts of land in this part of the county, which subsequently changed hands several times, until thej finally became vested in William Cooper and Andrew Craig of Burlington, N. J., and not long after solely in William Cooper who, at the time of his death in 1809, was said to be the largest owner of improved lands in the state, saving only the Wads- worth family in the valley of the Genesee. Mr. Cooper first visited his property in the autumn of 178S, and we may judge of the denseness of the forest, and that the region was still almost a wilderness, in the fact that he waa compelled to climb a tree in order to get a view of the lake, and while in this position, in the silence and solitude, he saw a deer come down, and undisturbed, drink of its waters near Otsego rock. Two years earlier than this, George Washington in a tour, made at the time with a view of inspecting the capabil- ities of the inland waters of the state for navigation purposes, came over from the Mohawk Valley to the headwaters of the Susquehanna and thence returned by the Continental roads to Canajobarie. Doubtless the fame of Clinton's successful nari- gation of the river induced him to do so. The actual date of the commencement of the village i« somewhat uncertain as there was no formal settlement. Mr. Fenimore Cooper gives it as 1788, when the first map was made and a' few streets laid out. There were two or three log' houses on the site previous to this time. Two years ear- lier, viz.: in 1786, a man bv the name of John Miller, accom- panied by his father, came upon the present grounds of Lake- lands and, being unable to cross the river, felled a pine tree and climbing over, reached the site of Cooperstown. Mr. Cooper, in later years, marked the stump of this tree with white paint, giving it the name of "bridge tree". The writer has a piece of this stump, which has since disappeared, in his possession and also well remembers John Miller who was living in the year THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. 57 1838 in the brick house built by^hira at the corner of Lake and Pine streets and on the ground cleared from the original forest. Judge Cooper's account of his first visit to his future pos- sessions is interesting, as proving how much of a wilderness the present village of Cooperstown was in 1785. He says: "In 1785, I visited the rough and hilly country of Otsego, where there existed not an inhabitant, nor any trace of a road; I waa alone, three hundred miles from home, without bread, meat or food of any kind; fire and fishing tackle were my only means of subsistence. I caught trout in the brook and roasted them in the ashes. My horse fed on the grass that grew in the edge of the waters. I laid me down to sleep in my watch-coat, nothing but the melancholv wilderness about me. In this way I ex- plored the country, formed my plans of future settlements, and meditated upon the site where a place of trade or a village should afterward be established. In May, 1786, I opened the sale of 40,000 acres of land which in sixteen days were all taken up by the poorest order of men. I soon after established a store, and went to live among them, and continued to do so un- til 1790, when I brought on my family" The question has often been asked and much discussion has arisen as to how many of the characters and incidents in the Leatherstocking tales, especially those that have to do with Cooperstown and Otsego lake, have foundation in fact. The Glimmerglass of the Deerslayer is of course Otsego lake, and the Templeton of the Pioneers is a close description of the ear- ly days and life of Cooperstown with Judge Temple as William Cooper. The incidents in both novels are purely fiction. The arrival of Judge Cooper and his family, for instance, took place in October, 1790, and as thev were numerous and accompanied by many of the belongings of a change of residence, became somewhat of the nature of a caravan. Judge Temple came over Mount Vision in"^a sleigh on a frosty December evening. The incidents as narrated in the novel might well have happened for the date was but a few years after the appearance of the first settlers. The "Leatherstocking" of the tale, familiarly known a* "Natty Bumppo", is undoubtedly a fictitious personage, yet Mr. Cooper himself admits that the old hunter by the name of 58 MONDAY, AUGUST 5, J907. Sbipman, whom he knew in his infancy, vaguely sugt^ested the character. The writer of this paper, who can recall the Coop- •rstown of 70 years ago, has in mind two persons who combined the occupations of hunter and fisherman and might well hare stood as models for Cooper's Leatherstocking. That William Cooper, when he laid the foundations of his future town, had also visions of a commercial emporium, Is more than likely. It must be remembered that in 1790, there were no means of transportation west of Albany, aside from the farmer's wagon. The Erie canal was not then thought of. The idea of railroad had not dawned upon the most progressive inventor of the day. James Watts' tea kettle had not even sug- gested the steamboat. Consequently the situation of Coopers- town at the head waters of the Susquthanna, which was then believed to be navigable, certainly by means of what was known as slack water navigation, and in the midst of a promis- ing agricultural region had as good a right to be a commercial center as any other point in the state, and as such it proved un- til the opening of the Erie canal in 1825, when the tide tuned — the Mohawk valley became the great highway of business and travel, and prediction of James White that "he expected to live to see Coopeistown become a seaport," was forever laid at rest. The knowledge, however, came too late to save the rural and picturesque character of the village, as witnessed by many even of the earlier residences being built directly on the street as though land was thought to be too valuable to allow the luxury of a dooryard. ,_.. „ There are other evidences to prove the early expectations of Judge Cooper that Cooperstown was likely to be an impor- tant business and residential center. Coming as Mr. Cooper did from Burlington, N. J., and having intimate relations with Philadelphia, he naturally attracted many who were seeking the advantages of fresh fields and pastures new which the pict- nresque region of central New York afforded. A number of persons of foreign birth, especially of French descent, aie found to have visited or settled in Cooperstown. The name of Mons. Le Quoi, a former governor of Martinique, is mentioned in the early chronicles. The celebrated diplomat Talleyrand, one of the most noted names in the history of France, was for several THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. 59 dajs a member of Judge Cooper's family. The acrostic verses written by him in honor of the Judge's daughter, Ann Cooper, are well known. Id addition to these a number of West Indian families found their way into this region, as numerous tomb- stones in the Episcopal churchyard testify. The descendants of these families are still to be found in Western New York. Coming with these immigrants, mostly at that day as slaves, were quite a large number of southern negroes at one time add- ing to the pooulation 70 or 80 souls. They were on the whole an industrious and respectable class of citizens, numbering among them many of intelligence and capability. "Joe Tom" is still remembered by many now living as the village fac-totem, while Harris Mann, as a cake maker, has had no successor — a wedding was hot a wadding unless she made the cake. The early dwellings of Cooperstown were no doubt some- what rude and primitive. Even the Manor house, as it was called, the first residence of the Cooper family was of wood with the exterior boarding unplaned. This building stood fac- ing Main street and the lake and directly in front of the subse- quent Otsego Hail, now marked by the Indian Hunter. Otsego Hall was undoubtedly an imposing structure of its day and was said to have been the first building of brick west of Schenecta- dy: sixty-four by forty-four feet in dimensions, two stories with attic and basement, it had the air and capacity of a mansion, and a history of hospitality well deserve 1. The carpenter's contract for that part of the building is still in existence, and calls for the payment of $1,350. When it is considered that in those days ornamental woodwork was quite a feature in the construction of the better class of houses, and that all the carv- ing was done by hand the amount named seems ridiculously small. A similar contract for the carpenter work in the stone house now standing at the corner of Main and River streets which Judge Cooper built as a wedding gift to his oldest daughter who had married George Pomeroy, was for $500, and the specifica- tions say that "it shall be finished in all respects in like man- ner as is the house in which the said William Cooper now re- sides." Among the old time dwellings of the town this house has always attracted attention, not only from the peculiar her- ring-bone manner of laying the stone but also from the ini- 60 MONDAY, AUGUST 5, J907. tials in stone in the eastern gable. G. A. P. C. George Pomeroy, Ann Cooper, and the date of completion, 1804. This is very conspicuous but the spread eagle in the apex requires some effort of the imagination to detect the Nation- al bird. The house known as Edgewater, built by the Judge's oldest son Isaac Cooper, eight years later has the acknowledged finest situation in the village and is perhapi the best specimen of Colonial architecture in the place. Our metropolitan friends of to-day are willing to give the palm to Cooperstown and Otsego lake for beauty of situation and surroundings, with a side qualification, "but vou are so far from New York!" Six and a half hours seem an embargo to many. Let us take the journey fifty years after the foundation of Cooperstown. The day boat Champlain leaves the foot of Barclay street at 7 o'clock for Albany. It is evening when she arrives. The right is passed at the American hotel or Con- gress Hall. At six o'clock the following morning a four-horse coach is at the door for the 66 mile drive westward. Unless in the longest days breakfast has been taken by candle light. The road is sandy and heavy for 15 miles out of Albany, and usually dusty or muddy, as the case may be. A midday stop at Mother Huntington's, near Esperance, for dinner and change of horses. Thence onward through Carlisle and Sharon to Cherry Valley. Here another stop for supper, and if reason- ably early and the road good, the postman's horn, as we come down Mount Vision, announces our arrival as the shades of night were falling fast, or about 9 p. m. If on the other hand the roads were heavy and the days short, Story's tavern at Cherry Valley opened its doors for the night. An early start on the third morning and, if all goes well, our destination is reached before noon. Ten years later and sixteen miles of railroad from Albany to Schenectady is in operation. An hour is consumed and then we take a canal packet boat for Fort Plain. We do not gain any time by this route over the 66 miles of coach travel, but simply substitute an easier mode of transit with one-third of the distance by coach. That 22 miles once took the writer, in the month of April, ten hours to accomplish, walking much of the way in front of the "Prairie Schooner", which was the only THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. 6i rehicle capable of making the passage right side up. The road at that day was on the east side of the lake with the prudent provision of a public house about every three miles, as a house of refuge for stranded travelers. It may be added that the taverns of that day, although humble in style, gave the way- farer quite as good bed and board as many more pretentious of the present day. Coming down 12 or 15 years later and we have the plank road on the western shore of the lake. In its palmy days this was an improvement, but its reign was short and the route was soon after changed to Colliers on the opening of the Albany & Susquehanna R. R. So great a change has taken place in Cooperstown since early days, both as to its business and position which it occu- pies in the state, that a brief comparison between then and now may be interesting. As has already been stated, William Cooper conceived the idea that he had founded a town which would become a great commercial center. It continued to maintain a prominence long after Judge Cooper's death, at one time rivaling Utica in popu- lation. As the country filled up, every available stream con- tributed its power for manufacturing purposes — the larger ones carrying cotton and woolen mills and the smaller saw and grist mills. The steeper hills were wooded to the summit and im- mense quantities of valuable lumber were cut from the forests. Such a thing as lumber imported for building purposes was un- known. The best of pine shingles were shaved by hand in the woods and with the result of a durability far exceeding the ma- chine made of the present day. The cattle roamed upon a thousand hills, and wool and mutton became so profitable that Otsego county at one time ranked third in the state in the num- ber of sheep. Fifty years ago the population of the county was greater than it is to-day, notwithstanding the railroad town of Oneonta with its 8,000 inhabitants. A large part of this prosperity was due to the energy and wise foresight of Judge William Cooper and the hardy pioneers whom he induced to follow him. If he did set himself up as the lord of the manor and kept open house on a somewhat lib- €1 MONDAY, AUGUST 5, 1907. eral scale bis host of tenantry no doubt justified it. Some oth- ers who will address or write for this occasion will perhaps give a more extended notice of the verj- interesting scenes and series of letters written by William Cooper and entitled "A guide to the wilderness" and which were published in Dublin, Ireland, with a view to induce emigration to this country and section. In this pamphlet which is exhaustive of the subject, the Judge enters into every particular which would interest the settler, viz: as to "soil and climate", "timber", "wild beasts and birds", "taxes", and "markets". In those days very little money was in circulation and ex- change of commodities was the rule rather than the exception. The tenant paid his rent from the produce of the land. So many pounds of butter, so many bushels of wheat, or corn, or oats, or pounds of maple sugar or of pork. In later days it finally settled down to pork as a standard of value and the rent was made payable in this product. Hence came the source of income known as "pork leases", and these were bought and sold much the same as farms. It is within the memory of the writer that on certain days of November or December farmers would come to town with deceased hogs in the wagon with which to pay their rent. For some reason, not al 'ogether clear, in earl}' days the northern part of the state attracted considerable attention ai offering attractions in land speculation not only to natives but to many foreigners who were induced to make investments. Judge Cooper carried on considerable correspondence to this effect, Necker and Madame de Stael were among the number. At one time Judge Cooper organized a party which made an ex- ploring expedition to St. Lawrence county, and lands were bought in a township named in honor of Baron de Kalb of Rev- olutionary fame, some of which are held by his descendants to this day. The prices paid for these and Adirondack lands over 100 years ago were mote than some of them would bring to-day. It was on one of these expeditions that the Judge and his party were subjected to an experience in a public house which induced him to enter the following couplet upon the register at the time of departure. THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. 63 "Here soverign dirt erects her sable throne, The house, the host, the hostess all her own". That there was some connection between Otsego county and St. Lawrence in those days is farther proven by the fact that the work of Father Nash, one of the greatest American missionaries and first rector of Christ Church, Cooperstowc, can be traced in the record of Trinity Church, Potsdam. There, as here, he was ever the self-denying follower of his Master and was pictured as making his pilgrimages on horse-back, his wife riding on a pillion behind and the iron kettle in which was cooked their humble fare swung by the side. We have frequently spoken of William Cooper as "the Judge". He was such being the first elected judge of the coun- ty in 1791. Later he twice represented his district in Congress being elected in 1795 and 1797. Politics and party feeling ruled high in those early days and Judge Cooper, being in prominent positions, did not escape the animosity of his oppo- ents. He met his death from the effects of a blow on the head as he was coming down the steps of the capitol at Albany. In this connection my attention has recently been called to £ most interesting collection of letters which were gathered and published in a small volume by E. Phinney, in 1796, which go to show the bitterness of party feeling that existed at that time. The book is entitled "The Political Wars of Otsego or the Downfall of Jacobinism and Despotism, in a collection of pieces lately published in the Otsego Herald. To which is ad- tied an address to the citizens of the United States, and extracts from Jack Tar's Journals, kept on board the ship Liberty, con- taining a summary account of her Origin, Builders, Material. Use — and her dangerous voyage from the lowlands of Cape Monarchy to the Port of Free Representatve Government, by the author of the Plough Jogger." Time does not admit of quotations from this most spicy col- lection of addresses to one another by political opponents, but the quaint allusion to the retirement of Washington from the presidency might serve as a model for future Fourth of July or- ations. One sailor says to another, "Hark Tom, do you hear our Boatswain pipe all hands on the deck; what does this mean? M MONDAY, AUGUST 5, J907. My sorrow, Tom, our glorious chief Pilot, that ornament to the world, is going- to resign. See him on the binnacle speaking to the people; hear his words, they are enongh to melt the most obdurate heait, how he reflects all the honor which our ship Liberty obtained on the people, he attributes nothing to him- self; but I think the people ought to reflect all the honor back on him, for he (under a kind Providence) hath been the means of bringing our ship Liberty to all this honor and flourishing condition she now is in. Hear his sweet words, how like Moses, he declares the true path to prosperity and the contrary to de- struction. O America! if tbou wilt hear the good advice of thy bright example, patron and guide and perform the duties he hath displayed in his sweet exhortation, thou shalt be blessed indeed, if not, destruction shall ensue." The political wars were waged with unabated fury in Ot- sego county at the close of the 18th century and there seems to have been great hostility between the villages of Cherry Valley and Cooperstown. The former having a number of years the advantage in age, and perhaps pluming itself upon its Revolu- tionary record with a first-class Indian massacre to its credit, assumed to look down somewhat upon its more youthful rival. At the time of the organization of Otsego county in 1791, when Tryon county was dissolved and several new counties were erected, Cherry Valley made a bold bid for the county seat. It would undoubtedly have been successful had it not been for its situation on the extreme northeast border. It must have been about this time that it attempted to steal the name of our lake, for we are told that for a while in the remote parts of the coun- ty the Otsego was known as "Cherry Valley Lake". We might forgive Cherry Valley some sins and acknowledge that she had at this time a number of distingushed citizens, who were fight- ing Cooperstown for the mastery, but they can not have our lake. The lake has a history all its own from the day when the first white man gazed upon its mirrored surface to the present it has had few rivals for any nine miles of inland water here or abroad. The fame of the Otsego bass is world wide. Thousands of epicures have tested its luscious flavor. Naturalists, from Prof. THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL 65 Agazziz at the head have discussed and dissected it, while Gov. Dewitt Clinton made a special study of its peculiarities, and in a letter to George Pomeroy under date of May 21st, 1822, he re- fers to previous correspondence on the subject, and withdraws the opinion previously expressed, that the fish is the whitefish of the western lakes, and says that it is a non-descript peculiar to the waters of Otsego. While we claim this to be the fact there is no doubt that all fish which have their home in its pure and crystal waters show a firmness of flesh and delicacy of flavor peculiar to this lake — notably in salmon trout, the bass and the pickerel. Ojr lake also has tne reputation for picnics, in early days called "Lake parties," which no waters can rival — from the first recorded one in August, 1799, when Judge Cooper enter- tained a party from Philadelphia at Point Judith, to the days of Gov. Marcy and Gov. Seward, when the whole village turned out to welcome them to the Three-Mile Point, and subsequently to the notable occasion when Secretary of State Seward brought the whole diplomatic corps from Washington, during the Civil War, to show its members the reserved strength of the northern states and came to Cooperstown as one of the points of interest. The dinner at Five-Mile Point and night spent among the resi- dences of Cooperstown is not forgotten. As sixty yeais approached after the first lake party it was the intention of the survivors to celebrate the event on the same point, but when the day arrived Mrs. Ann Pomeroy, Judge Cooper's daughter, was the only one living. When the one hundredth anniversary was reached, however, viz: in 1899, the descendants of the first party, to the third and fourth genera- tion, assembled at Point Judith to do the occasion honor. The after dinner speeches at that time were so far retrospective that I venture to conclude this paper with the ode then delivered, slightly altered to meet the events which we this day honor. Oh, for the touch of a painter's brush, Or the pen of a Kipling bold. To tell a tale of the lake and woods In the century long grown old. Our fathers came from the distant east, And they followed the Indian trail, 66 MONDAY, AUGUST 5, J907. To the waters blue of the Glimmerglass, To their home in the leafy dale. They planted a village beneath the hills, They cleared the woods, they sowed the grain; With hunter's rifle they killed the deer, For bass in the lake they drew the seine. Those were the days of struggle and toil, And the pleasures of life were few; "Let's seek in a picnic a rest from care; Let's paddle our own canoe." So few, but merrily, then they go To a point on the eastern shore — In ashes hot they roasted the corn. And cheer from the old. jug pour. A jolly set were our grandsires then, "When they sought their hours of ease, And smoked their pipes while spinning their yarns Beneath the old oak trees. But canoe and scow have gone to dust, And the fire on the beach is dead, And we today of their kith and kin Have come hither in their stead; And an hundred years have come and gone Since our country then was new, And now we keep in memory dear Our love for the good and true. To one who came to his forest home And gave our village its name; To the son, the touch of whose magic pen Has lifted to world-wide fame. Beneath the pines in the churchyard old Their bodies at rest are laid, And pilgrims' feet o'er the turf above Honor lives that never can fade. Mr. G. Pomeroy Keese introducing the Hon. Walter H. Bunn, said: Few towns of the size of Cooperstown in this country have THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL 67 had more names of note connected with their history than has Cooperstown. I know of no one who can present these names to you in a clearer, more eloquent and more satisfying manner than our former fellow townsman whom I now have the pleas- ure to greet again and to present to you, the Hon. Walter H. Bunn. 'NOTED MEN OF OTSEGO DURING THE EARLY YEARS/^ By Hon. "VTaltcr H. Bann. Mr. Chairman : Ladies and Gentlemen.— I gratefully appreciate the unmer- ited distinction and honor which your partiality has conferred upon me. You have bad the pleasure of listening to a Son of Otsego, who has won for himself high professional distinction and literary fame, by adding to the volume of trustworthy his* torical knowledge, the results of years of patient, unremitting and laborous study, and research, to the acquirement of which he devoted the fruits of a ripe scholarship inspired by an enthu- siastic devotion to and love for his work. It was my good fortune to be honored by the friendship of his father a cultured and scholarly man, an eminent and be- loved physician, and a highly respected citizen of Unadilla, and it is a great pleasure to me to recognize in the son the characteristics, ability and virtues of the father. Your committee was equally fortunate in securing as the historian of Cooperstown's completed century of settlement and growth, one of her own -.ons, whose tamily history runs back to the settlement of the village, whose boyhood, youth and man- hood, even unto advanced age, have been spent here, who has kept fresh and clear in his loyal heart and mind the countless associations, recollections and memories of his early life and has treasured and preserved the traditions which have come down to him as a part of the family history, all imbued, strengthened and colored by his passionate devotion to and affection for this beautiful village, in whose behalf and in whose service, his voice, his pen, and his influence have been ceaselessly employed for over half a century. I am asked to speak to you of the noted men of Otsego during its earlier years, 1791-1841. Manifestly I am not ex- THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL 68 pected to refer to Judge Cooper, nor his distinguished son, nor to good old Father Nash, as the previous speaker has told of their lives and services. Otsego h\s not been prolific of great men as the world judges greatness. No son of Otsego nor res- ident of the Ccuntj has ever been elected by the people to a State administrative office except Levi S. Chatfield, then ot Laurens, who was elected Attorney General in 1849, and as I recollect resigned before his term expired. (Resigned Nov. 23d, 1853.) Otsego has had representatives in subordinate places in the State departments; Tribunes of the people in National and State legislative hills; and Great Jurists upon the bench, State and National; and if but few of these men have won excep- tional fame or honor, let this be said, that in all Otsego's history there has jiever been an official defalcation, a betrayal of public trust, or use of the money or the property of the people fcr ])rivate profit, but to each and every of her represent- atives in official Hie "Public office has been a public trust," and the credit, the dignity, and the honor of the public service has been at all times conserved and inviolate. I am convinced that we cannot justly measure the acts ard services of the pioneers of the County, without considering their educatioal, social and political situation, and their facili- ties for moral, business or political advancement. We must consider the diversity of the people, their varying habits, tastes, activities, characteristics mental and physical, their struggles intense and earnest with nature and with each other, their changing conditions, the means by which the same were sought or wrought; even their reverses or their successes become necessarily part of the history of the times, to be taken into account in determining and measuring the value of their services to their fellowmen. Neither the time allotted me nor your patience will allow me to depict even briefly the manifold social, industrial, and educational disadvantages under which the pioneer of 1791 lived. They were many and grievous, but he was earnest, en- thusiastic, brimming over with life, energy and confidence. The pioneer settlers of this County appear to have come mainly from New England, more largely from Connecticut than 70 MONDAY, AUGUST 5, 1907. from any other State, and from Columbia and Westchester Counties. Montgomery, Oneida, Herkimer and even as far west as Ontario were being' rapidly peopled with these hardy and thrifty pioneers, who left the comparatively sterile soil of New England for the cheaper and far more fertile lands avail- able in the Mohawk Valley and in this County, Lands were offered cheaper here and upon better terms than they could be obtained upon the Mohawk, and here there was room for all in Nature's primeval wilderness. A capable and industrious farmer could obt;nn hundreds of acres at a nominal cost if he could by settlement draw a colon> after him. Here was the new El Dorado, the soil was fertile, springs a bundant, timber of first quality, and the Charlotte, Schenevus, and Susquehanna wo'.ild float rafts to the lower Susquehanna and the seaboard. The humble cabin built and home established, granted health and industrious habits, the way was clear. It was indeed for the early years a lonely and rough life, with little of social com- fort and relaxiaton beyond what the secluded family might find in the society of each other; but the pioneer fathers had strong arras, hard hands, iron frames, tbey were devoted to their fam- ilies, their homes, their work; there was little of elegance or polish in life, work or manners. They were contented yet am- bitious, they looked for the rising of the sun on the morrow, they sought comforts rather than luxury. Their wives were equally brave hearted, industrious and hopeful, and were de- voted to their dt mestic duties, working with hand, heart and brain for the comfort of husband and bairns — the source of the sterling virtues of both was their devotion to their homes. This made them earnest in business, and family affection and pride was a powerful incentive to individual virtue, and to hon- orable success. Every man had a reputation to make or keep. There were no drones nor idlers. The pioneer had unbounded confidence in the future of the Republic he had assisted in estab- lishing'. He was proud of his own people, of the marvelous im- migration already setting in to our shores, of our expansive area, the immensity of which he did not realize, even imagine. National pride and patriotic fervor made him boastful. He was aggressive and "our country, right or wrong", was his motto. He was courageous and hopeful, he had but little learning of THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL 7t the schools, but he had good sound sense, was direct and prac- tical, and could express himself clearly, fluently and forcibly upon all matters within the range of personal experience, and could prove his doctrine Orthodox by "Apostolic blows and knocks, " if occasion demanded. He was not quarrelsome, but was tenacious of his rights and not afraid to assert or defend them; he had no reverence for eld titles, estates or homes; he was ready for any trade which would better the condition of his family; he was hospitable, a good neighbor, a helpful, sympa- thetic, open hearted and generous friend in the hour of sickness and trouble. He looked ahead, planned for the morrow, for next Year. Each succeeding season more acres were cleared and planted; the crop of Indian corn was supplemented with rye, wheat, oats and tobacco. Orchards were started, aid kitchen gardens establishe ': the stock of cattle and herds in- creased. He no longer feels anxiety for the future of his rap- idly increasing family. The success of the colony brings others hither, neighbors draw more closely, grist and saw-mills are set up, farm houses built, with plastered walls, and windows of glass; taverns multiply, blacksmiths and artisans 6nd here a field for remunerative labor; stores are established and the com- forts of the home increased. Religious socities are organized and stated preaching secured; school houses are rau'tiplied al- though no system of public instruction was adopted by the State until as late as 1795, and then only for a term of five years, at the expiration of which the appropriation or mainte- nance therefor was not renewed for several years, so that the expense of education fell mainly upon the communities in which schools were maintained. It seems to me that the pioneers whose hardships and pri- vations, whose toils and hazardous achievements, whose unfail- ing faith and unabated ardor wrought for themselves and for their families individual success, and assisted in the upbuilding of the several townships, and of the county with which their fortunes were identified, are each entitled to be classified as men of note. Time will not permit me to enumerate the men who by vir- tue of ability, honesty and force of character became leaders in the varied activities and life of the several towns. I am per- 72 MONDAY, AUGUST 5, 1907. mitted to briefly refer to a few who won especial distinction, either because of unusual abilities or because of valuable ser- vices rendered unto their fellowmen. And of ihese I recall none entitled to greater distinction than one, whose name and possi- bly whose services are unfamiliar to the great bodv of our peo- ple. Jedediah Peck. Born at Lyme, Conn , January 28. 1748, served in the Kevo- lutionary Army 1775 — 79, removed to Otsego county (tlien Mont- gomery) in 1790, settling at what is now the town of Burlington. He had early married a sister of Dr. Sumner Ely, who later be- came one of the early settlers of Middlefield, an eminent physician, Member of Assembly and Senator of Otsego County. Mr. Peck's education was very limited, but he was a man of great natural abil- ity, strong intellectual powers, coarse and uncultivated, yet shrewd, tactful, quick to grasp a situation, business or political, and full of expedients. He had no natural gifts as an orator, nor in conversation or debate, yet was a preacher of local notoriety, and upon his journeyings about the county distributed tracts and papers and addressed religious meetings on Sundays and week day evenings wherever and whenever a congregation could be assembled to hear him. He was a worthy citizen, of exemplary habits, and of undoubted honesty; he was an aggressive sup- porter of the political views and administrative policies of Thomas Jefferson, and violently antagonized the Federalists of the county, then led by Judge Cooper, General Morris and Dr. "White. This opposition culminated during the administration of President Adams in 1798, in his arrest under the Alien and Sedition Act for circulating petitions against that Act; he was indicted and taken under guard and in irons to New York City for trial, but was never tried, and upon the repeal of the act was discharged. His indictment and arrest, his undaunted courage thereunder, and continued denunciation of the Federal Administration, drew to him the attention, admiration and sup- port of a large majority of the citizens of this county, and he at once became the recognized leader of the Republican (Jeffer- sonian) party of the county, dictating its jjolicy and nomina- tion3 for many years thereafter. Indeed the overthrow of the Federal party in this State and the consequent success of Jeflfer- THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL 73 son in the Presidential canvass is attributed to the excitement and indignation aroused by the spectacle of the venerable and kindly faced old man being transported through the State in the custody of Federal officials and manacled, the latter an un- necessary and outrageous indignity. He was a member of the Assembly from 1798 to 1804, State Senator and Member of the Council of Appointment, 1804-8. His legislative service was characterized by an intelligent and unselfish devotion to the in- terests of the people, and by such a profound, almost prophetic appreciation and knowledge of their needs, present and future, presented and urged in such an homely, untutored, yet earnest and persuasive speech, as to win for him favorable recognition and honorable place and give to him command- ing influence among his legislative associates. In 1799 he introduced a bill for the abolition of imprisonment for debt, then and for many years thereafter unsuccessfully urged, but later adopted upon demand of an enlightened and humane pub- lic sentiment On February 21, 1803, and again in 1804 Mr. Peck introduced bills for the re-organization of the State Com- mon School System and made strong speeches in their favor, but they severally failed of enactment. In 1811 an act was passed authorizing the appointment by the Governor of five commis- sioners to report a system for the organization and establish ment of Common Schools, and Gov. Tompki;is appointed Mr. Peck as one of the commissioners and h. was v lected the chair- man thereof. The plan prepared mainly by Mr. Peck, reported by such commission, was submitted February 14, 1812, was promptly enacted into law and became the Common School Sys- tem of this State, remaining essentially the same until 1838, the main features of which were embodied in the present system. Far seeing, broad minded, and prophetic of ken as was Mr. Peck, he could scarcely have anticipated that the number of pu- pils in the public schools of this State would have increased from 60,000 in 1800 to 1,335,554 during the past year, and the expense of maintenance from about $100,000 in 1800 to over $52,000,000. Mr. Peck was a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas (known as the County Judges) from 1791 for many years, in which position his native common sense, good judgment and 74 MONDAY, AUGUST 5, 1907. latuitive perception of right and justice, enabled him to make a creditable record. Revo]utionar3' Patriot. Soldier of the War of 1812, enlisting when nearly 70 years of age under Col. Stranahan, under fire at the battle of Queens- town, and receiving honorable mention in the oEBcial report of the battle. Preacher. Legislator. County Judge. Party Leader. Founder of the State Common School System of this State. Surely Jedediah Peck was a man of note. Joseph White, M. D. The early history of this county and of the men of promi- nence of that day would be incomplete without reference to Dr. Joseph White of Cherry Valley. Born in Chatham, Conn., September, 1763, he served in the Revolutionary navy and was in two engagements. His educa- tion was meagre, and was more largely acquired through the individual effort, iadu?try and perseverance of the young and ambitious student than from teachers and school. Early deter- mininp; to fit himself for the medical profession he taught school to gain funds enabling him to prosecute his studies and fortu- nately attracted the attention of a famous surgeon of his day, one Dr. Percival, under whom he commenced his studies. He labored so assiducusly and worked with such diligence that he was admitted to practice before he was 21 years of age. Deter- mining to settle in New York, after a brief term of residence at other pionts, he settled in Cherry Valley in 1787, and the record of his long, useful and eventful life was thenceforth, and until his death, in 1832 identified with the social, business, educa- tional and religious history of his town and county- He became one of the most noted Surgeons of the State, and beyond ques- tion the ablest outside of New York City, with a practice ex- tending from Albany to BulTulo, and was vested in popular esti- mation with miraculous powers both in medicine and surgery. THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL 75 He was the first President of the Otsego Medical Society. Was at one time President of the State Medical Society. Was Senator from this district from 1796 to 1800. Member of the Council of Appoittraent. County Judge of Otsego county from 1800 to 1823. He left surviving him a son, Delos White, who in a minor degree inherited the professional skill of his distinguished father. William Yates, M. D. In this connection, mention must be made of Dr. William Yates, who was born at Sapperton near Burton-on-Trent, Eng- land, in 1767, studied medicine in London under Sir James Earle (Medical Director St. Bartholmew's Hospital.) Court Physician to George IIL and President of Royal Col- lege Physicians and Surgeons. He inherited an ample fortune, and never consented to re- ceive any fee for professional services. He took a deep interest in the question of insanity and the methods of treating the in- sane, a^d from his private fortune built, and for a considerable time, and to a very lar^ e expense, maintained an asylum for the development of the best and most rational treatment of this unfortunate class. He made the acquaintance of Sir Wm. J- n- ner and became deeply inierested in the subject of vaccination and in the discoveries and experiments which had been made by that eminent physician, and obtaining a large supply of virus from Jenner, came to Philadelphia in 1799 and introduced the practice of vaccination there and for the first time in this coun- try. The claim that he was the first to introduce vaccination in the Ucited States has been disputed, but so far as I can learn he IS entitled to precedence in that regard. In any event, he caused its intrrduction here, he gave liberally of his means to enable it to be thoroughly tested and its successful results dem- onstrated, asking ao fee nor reward, seekinz only in that regard as in all the other acts of his life, to further the interest of and be of benefit to mankind. He became acquainted with Jucge Cooper, came to Otsego county upon his invitation, bought a large tract of land in the Butternut Valley (now a part of the town of Morris), built for himself a substantial residence there, r6 MONDAY, AUGUST 5, 1907. and lived the life of an English gentleman, aboundinij in works of benevolence and charity, giving- the benefit of his wise coun- sel and experience as a physician when o:casion called therefor, finally dyinj: as the result of cisease contracted while making one of these professional and charitable visits. Learned, benevolent, unostentatious, a churchman with the broadest Christian charity for all classes and denominations, it seems clear to me that his life and the record of his services entitle him to be classed as one of Otsego's men of note. Drs. Thomas Fuller of Cooperstown, Sumner Ely of Mid- dlefield, Halsey Spencer of Edmestcn, G. W. P. Wheeler of New Lisbon, Samuel H. Case of Oneonta, Gains L Halsey of Unadilla, Wm. T. Bassett of Laurens, Jenks S. Sprague of Cooperstown, were old fashioned physicians, devoted to and em- inent in their profession and were especially skilled as surgeons. They were honorable and honored men, respected and loved by the people they unselfishly ministered unto and will long be gratefully remembered. Dr. bpencer was Member of Assembly in 1828 and Sheriff of the county in 1840, I think, and Dr. Ely was Memb?r of As- sembly in 1836 and Senator 1840-43. Farrand Stranahan, Was a lawyer in active practice and of good repute at and prior to the War of 1812, although attaining no marked prom- inence in his profession. He was conspicuous in advocacy and support of all measures for the vigorous prosecution of the War of 1812 and commanded a regiment throughout that struggle, participating in several engagements, notably the battle of Queenstown and receiving official commendation for his sol- dierly and gallant service. He was a man deservedly popular and his military service increased the esteem of the people for him, which was evi- denced by his nomination and election from what was th2n known as the Western District as Senator 1814-16. He became for the time the recognized leader of the Otsego Democracy and was again sent to the Senate 1823-24. He was poor, and his official service was rendered at the sacrifice of his law practice, and at the time Cooperstown cele- THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL 77 brated the 50th anniversary of our National Independence Col. Stranahan was imprisoned in the County Jail for debt. The sheriff was induced to attend the celebration and bring- Stran- ahan with him, and under the stimulus, presumably of patrio- tism and good feeling following the dinner, the drinking of toasts and the fervid oratory usual up >n such occasions, Stran- ahan's debt was paid by a few of his friends and he was re- leased from custody. Alvan Stewart. One of the most notable of the lawyers of this county in its early years was Alvan Stewart. Born in Washington, N. Y., in 1790, he, after receiving a common school education, taught school and studied medicine and anatomy at Westfield, Vt., entered Burlington College in 1809, went to Canada in 1811 and became one of the professors at the Royal School at St. Armand, Province of Quebec. He gave up this position in September, 1812, presumably on ac- count of the War, returned to New York, going to Cherry Val- ley and having as he has stated but one dollar, he engaged as a teacher in the academy, reading law when net engaged in school. In fall of 1815 he seems to have had no local hebitatioti, taught an Academic School in Kentucky for a time, made a little money, later returned to New York, was admitted to prac- tice, came to Cherry Valley, paid up his debts and formed a law partnership with James O. Morse, continuing in practice in this county until about 1832. The struggle for supremacy was keen when he came to the bar and continued so for many years thereafter. The trial law- yer skilled in the arts of oratory commanded the attention of the public and trial of suits at law drew large crowds of inter- ested spectators and were subjects of public interest and discus- sion. Such trials and trial practice of that day between men of the type of Stewart, Jordan, Williams, Sam'l Starkweather, was a keen encounter of the wits between men of high native talent who perfectly understood each other's motives and showed infi- nite dexterity in twisting facts and arguments to serve their purposes. 78 MONDAY, AUGUST 5, J907. The speeches of counsel abounded in wit and humor, in sar- casm, in cutting invective, in insinuations, in fervid argumen- tation, wherein principles and decisions, analogies and facts which made for their clients were marshaled, and persuasion and conviction, intellect and feeling all were united in their ap. peals to jurors. Here Stewart was in his element. His ap- pearance, manners and actions were peculiar, almost ludicrous. He was not a profound lawyer and seems never to have studied the arrangement of his cases nor to have bestowed any care in preparation for the presentation thereof, but his mind was richly furnished with thoughts upon every subject which came up for discussion in the progress of a trial, and his illustra- tions, if sometimes unique in expression, were strikingly appro- riate. His greatest power lay in that he could be humorous or pathetic, acrimonious or conciliating, denouncing the theories, testimony and pleas of the opposition in lofty declamation, and almost in the same breath convulsing his audience, the court and jury included, by the most laughable exhibitions of ridicule or burlesque. In Procter's "Bench and Bar" he is referred to as "One of the most powerful adversaries that ever stood before a Jury". He had no personal enmities and no enemies. Later in lite he became an anti-slavery agitator and temperance lecturer pledged to total abstinence, the latter a much needed measure of reform in his case. In 1842 and again in 1844, he was the Prohibition and Anti-slavery candidate for Governor in this State, receiving in 1844 15,136 votes. Ambrose L. Jordan. Born at Hillsdale, Columbia county. New York, in 1791, endowed by nature with a strong constitution and the industry, perseverance and energy that belong to Scotch-Irish stock, with limited education and still more limited finance, he taught school, studied law, was admitted to practice in 1813 at age of 22 years, and forming a partnership with Col. Stranahan, entered upon the practice of his profession at Cooperstown. He had a commanding figure, fine mobile features, with keen kindly eyes, dignified courtly manners, and was as bril- liant in conversation as he was impressive and powerful as an orator. THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL 79 He was a better lawyer and a closer student than Stewart and prepared his cases with far more care, the matter or argu- ment he presented being always thoroughly matured. Good sense, good humor, ready wit, a lively fancy, un- bounded self reliance, shrewdness in detecting the weak points of an adversary and infinite powers of ridicule and raillery in exposing them characterized him in trial practice and before juries. It will be conceded I think that he held first place at our bar as an advocate until his removal to Hudson in 1820. Jabez D. Hammond, Born at New Bedford, Mass., 1778, taught school at IS, studied and practiced medicine in Reading, Vt., 1799, admitted to the bar 1805, settling in Otsego county. He was a man of extensive reading, cultivated tastes, had sound, practical common sense, great industry, was an accurate judge of men and profound in his knowledge of the political acts and measures ot his time. He was not a fluent speaker, had none of the arts or graces of oratory. He came to Cherry Valley poor and by industry and thrift acquired a competence, being always esteemed an honest, up- right, kind-hearted citizen and both as a lawyer and a citizen, he had great influence and was deservedly popular. He became a powerful political leader and his sagacity was recognized by Gov. Clinton, +o whom he was friend and advisor and whose political fortunes he contributed greatly to advance. He was Member of Congress 1815-17. State Senator and Member of Council of Appointment 1815-21. County Judge 1838 to 1843. He was an author of recognized ability, writing "The Po- litial History of New York" and "Life of Silas Wright", and a book upon the "Immortality of the Soul''. He received the degree of LL. D. from Hamilton College 1845. Levi Beardsley Was born at Hoosac, N. Y., Nov. 13, 1785. His iather ^0 MONDAY, AUGUST 5, J907. removed to this county in 1790, settling near the foot of Schuy- ler Lake, was admitted to the bar in 1812, and commenced the practice of his profession in Cherry Valley in 1826 and Sen- ator 1830 to 1838. President of the Senate 1838. He removed from the county in 1839 and died in New York City in 1857. He was a self educated man, strong physically and men- tally, v'ith great executive ability and business sagacity, studi- ous and industrious, and was a well read, capable and success- ful lawyer. He was one of the founders of the Cherry Valley Bank. Early identified with the Democratic party, he became one of its recognized State leaders. His service in the Assembly and Senate was during a period when matters of great oublic interest were under discus- sion, and the legislature in both branches was composed of very able, practical and influential men. Dewitt Clinton was Governor, and was greatly interested in and had previously strongly urged the construction of a rail- road from Lake Erie through the Southern tier of counties to the Hudson substanially upon the lines of the Erie road later chartered. A commission to make exploration and survey had been authorized, Jabez D. Hammond of this county being one of the commissioners. Such commission reported favorably, and the adoption of the report became the leading and absorb- ing topic of the session, but the measure was defeated by the vote of the Canal and Northern counties. The first railroad charter in this State was granted at this session to the Albany and Schenectady Road. Very little was known cf railroads at that day, and great apprehension was felt, even by men ot the highest intelligence, as to their practi- cal usefulness. Even so learned a man as Chancellor Living- ston in 1811 expressed fear "that it was impracticalle to run the carriages at the rate of four miles an hour," and that "the expense would be much greater than that of Canals, without being so convenient." Mr. Beardsley was an active supporter of all measures in favor of a liberal system of canal and other public improve- mentv, and heartily supported Governor Clinton. I think many of you may not know that in 1826 and for a THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL, at «liort time prior thereto, the people of Otsego county, and of the Susquehanna Valley and interior Pennsylvania, were greatly interested in a scheme whereby a canal was to be built from the ^rie Canal to Otsego Lake, thence by lake and slackwater down ihe Susquehanna to tide water. A hasty survey somewhat dampened the ardor of the pro moters of this scheme as it showed a fall of 30 feet at Milford, ISO at Unadilla, and 350 at a distance of 110 miles from Otsego Lake. The enterprise was not, however, abandoned, another survey was made in 1830, and thereunder it was claimed that 144 out of 153 miles were navigable, only 19 requiring a canal, that 70 locks would be needed and 65 dams. This scheme con° tinned to be agitated until nearly 1840. Sherman Page of Unadilla, then an active lawyer and prominent business man, was our Member of Congress 1833-37 and he introduced a bill which failed of enactment "to aid Slack water Navigation from Cooperstown to tide water". In the election of 1794 out of 2,961 votes polled in our Con- gressional District, Otsego cast 1.487, Onondaga county 101, Ontario county then in the extreme West, 32. The Erie Canal caused the building of mighty cities and thriving villages along its line. Had Otsego become a canal county under this scheme, Cooperstown would have become a city of an half million inhab- itants, and the business fortunes and prosperity of the county would have been immeasurablv promoted. But: — Could author have immortalized or poet have glorified the "Glimmerglass" if it had become a canal feeder? My Friends: — There are scores of others entitled to honora- ble mention here but the limit of my time is nearly reached. The bar of this county of about 1820 was the ablest in the State west of the Hudson. It must needs be to contest such famous lawyers as Joshua C. Spencer of Utica, Elisha Williams of Hudson, Nicholas Hill of Albany, Clapp of Chenango and others of that class who were wont to attend our Circuits. I have spoken of some of the men of note. You will recall 82 MONDAY, AUGUST 5, J907. others perhaps equally distinguished equally noteworthy. More than brief mention ought to be made: Of Rev. Eiiphalet Nott, who settled in Cherry Valley in 1796, commencing there his sacred ministrations, going from thence to Union College, over which he presided with marked suc- cess and honor during all the remaining years of his life. Of Johannes Christopher Hartwig. Born in the Province of Saxe Gotha, Germany, in 1720, he came to America as a Missionary in 1750; May 29th, 1752, he received from the In- dians a conveyance of 21,500 acres of land which was confirmed by the English Government April 22d, 1761, being nearly all the territory included within the bounds of the town of Hart- wick. Hartwig paid $500.00 for this tract. Eccentric in man- ners, dress and speech, an inveterate hater of women and sub- ject to "brain-storms'' at siuht or presence of the sex. He gave his name to a patent and a township, and his es- tate to found an institution of learning in your county, which still survives, being the oldest Lutheran Theological Seminary in the United States, its beneficent work and yearly increasing influence keeping clear and ever discernible "the foot prints on the sands of time," made by its founder and benefactor in 1796. Of Martin Grover. Born in Hartwick, receiving a very limited education, not considered in his boyhood nor in early manhood gifted with more than ordinary intelligence, he taught school, studied law at Burlington in the office of Wm. G. Angel and later removed with him to the wilds of the extreme West, in the county of Chautauqua. The quiet, stolid, reticent boy, of slow, careful speech, and deliberate thought and action, became a successful lawyer, was elected Nov. 5th, 1867, a Supreme Court Justice, and his opin- ions are models of condensed thought, cogent reasoning, and sound judicial interpretation, construction, and decision. Of Wm. G. Angel, whose family were among the early set- tlers of Burlington, who practiced law there (Martin Grover and Geo. S. Gorham being students in his office), who was sur- rogate under appointment of Feb. 13th, 1820, and a Member. of Congress, 19th, 21st and 22d Congresses, who later removed THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. 83 to Chautauqua county, then in the wilderness, and founded the village of Angelica. Of Robert Campbell, James O. Morse and William W. Campbell. All college graduates, men of culture and high character, capable, honorable and successful business men and lawyers of Cherry Valley, Robert Campbell, District Attorney in 1820, James O. Morse, County Judge in 1832 and William W. Campbell, Member of Congress, Judge of the Superior Court and Justice of the Supreme Court, adding to his well earned fame as a jurist, that of an historian by his "Annals of Tryon county." Of Horace Lathrop. The quiet, reticent, studious lawyer mainly devoted to oflSce practice, honest and honorable in all things, with a rare and subtle wit, a keen appreciation of the humorous happenings of every dav life, qualities which he transmitted to his son Horace, the well beloved physician, whose memory is perennially fresh and green in all our hearts. Of John A. Dix, who after a brief army service resigned and commenced practice as a lawyer in this village, residing at "Apple Hill." His residence here was brief and uneventful. In 1833 he was elected by the Democrats as Secretary of State and United States Senator in 1845. In the early days of 1861 he was Secretary of the Treasury under Buchanan. He issued the order which made him famous, "If any man attempts to haul down the American flag shoot him on the spot." He was later made a Major General, Minister to France under Grant (1867-68) and was elected Governor of this State in 1872. Of Samuel Starkweather, powerful, physically and men- tally, the chief antagonist of Stewart and Jordan, concise and logical in speech, convincing in argument, who held a leading place at our bar down to 1831. Of George A. Starkweather, graduate of Union, admitted to practice about 1823, Surrogate in 1833, who was prominent in professional life and active in the political affairs of the county for more than 30 years. Of Eben B. Morehouse, admitted in 1818, who early won exceptional rank in his profession. District Attorney in 1829, and member of Assembly in 1831, whose legal acquirements ad- 84 MONDAY, AUGUST 5, J907. mirably 5tted him for the position of Justice of the Supreme Court, to which he was elected in 1847, and whose charming personality made him well beloved by all classes of people in this village. Of John Cox Morris of Revolutionary ancestry, scholarly, digni6ed, courtly, learned in the law, who succeeded Dr. White as Judge of the Court of Common Pleas about 1823. Of Schuyler Crippen, whose legal erudition and extensive practice, supplemented by service as District Attorney in 1837 and as Surrogate in 1845, as well as public and private charac- ter commended him to his brethren of the bar and to the people of this judicial district as Justice of the Supreme Court. Of Lyman J. Walworth, acquiring by force of industry, perseveracce and dogged determination, a lucrative practice, and overcoming fearful odds, for who that ever heard Wal- worth address an audience, can forget his personal appearance, attitudes and manner, as he bent his body almost to the ground, springing up suddenly and standing upon tiptoe as he swung his arms over his head, adding to the grotesqueness of his physical attitudes and actions, an hesitating tone, and drawling empha- sis. Of Samuel S. Bowne, who never attained eminence as a great lawyer, but was undeniably the finest and most effective political speaker, and powerful advocate, before a jury, the county has produced, few men enjoying a mere enviable popularity. He was Member of Congress from this district in 27th Congress. He inherited bis oratorical gifts from his father, Joseph Bowne, who had a national reputation as a Quaker Preacher. Ot John H Prentiss, Editor for over 40 years of the Free- man's Journal, establishing it firmly as a party organ of recog- nized power and influence in the State and Nation. He was succeeded by Mr. Samuel M. Shaw, whose unselfish devotion to this village, its people and its interests; whose all embracing charity and active benevolence; whose Christian life, worth and work and whose private virtues, no less than his marked abilities as an Editor and party leader caused him to be respected, honored and loved by men of all parties, classes and creeds. He honored me with his friendship and I count it as one of my most precious recollections. .THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL 85 Under Col. Prentiss and graduates from the Journal office were Thurlow Weed, later to become an Editor of commanding influence, a political leader of recognized sagacity, a Warwick of Republican politics, dictating platforms, policies and candidates, for nearly forty years of a remarkably useful and eventful life; and William L. Stone, later Editor, publisher, historian, au- thor, as Editor of the Commercial Advertiser from and after 1821, making that paper the representative organ of conserva- tive business and commercial interests, in the city of New York, You would not forgive me if I failed to speak of the noblest old Roman of them all, whose broad shouldered and magnificent figure, massive head, crowned with its wealth of grev hair, was so familiar to the people of this village and is so lovingly remembered now. Samuel Nelson, born in Hebron, N. Y., Nov. 11, 1792, of Scotch-Irish ancestry, inherited the traits of industry, persever- ance, firmness and courage which characterized him in after life. His parents intended him for the Ministry and gave him tc that end a collegiate education, but he preferred the law to the church, and after four years of study, at age of 25, was in 1817 admitted to practice. In 1821 he was a member of the Constitutional Conventioiii Martin Van Buren being one of Otsego's delegates in that con- vention, and 25 years later Judge Nelson was again chosen tc the Constitutional Convention of 1846. Upon the reorganization of the Supreme Court perfected by the Constitution of 1821, Governor Yates appointed Judge Nel- son as Judge of the Sixth Circuit and in 1823 he entered upon that remarkable judicial career, which continued for nearly fifty years. He served eight years as Circuit Judge and Vice- Chancellor, then six years as Justice of the Supreme Court, un- der appointment by Governor Throop, and in 1837 Governor Marcy appointed Judge Nelson as Chief Justice and he ccntin* ued in that position for nearly eight years and until President Tyler in 1845, without solicitation or expectation, nominated him as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. The Senate which had rejected the nominations of John C. 56 MONDAY, AUGUST 5, J907. Spencer, of Silas Wright and of Chancellor Reuben H. Wal- worth, immediately and unanimously confirmed the nomination of Judge Nelson. He had at this time reached the culmination of his powers. He had pre-eminentlv a legal intellect, his experience upon the bench had familiarized him with all the intricacies of practice, he was a tireless student with a profound knowledge of juris- prudence, he had sound judgment, great clearness of thought and strength of reasoning, was dignified, yet graciously couite- ous, and had and held the respect, admiration and love of the bar as was so fully evidenced upon his retirement. In 1871 President Grant appointed him as one of the five members on the part of the United States of the Joint High Commission, and the Treaty of Washington bears witness to the wisdom ot his counsel and the inestimable value of his set- Tice. He was a Great Jurist. The Man was infinitely greater than the Judge. He was Cooperstown's First Citizen. Thus I close the record of Otsego's Men of Note. *'Time rolls his ceaseless course. The race of yore, Who danced our infancy upon their knee, And told our marvelling boyhood legend's store Of their strange ventures happ'd by land or sea; How they are blotted from the things that be; How few, all weak, and withered of their force. Wait on the verge of dark eternity. Like stranded wrecks, the tide returning hoarse, To sweep them from our sight; Time rolls his ceaseless course." Centennial Exercises Tuesday, August 6th, 1907, Regatta on the Lake. The regatta on Otsego Lake, on Tuesday the 6th, was, under the admirable management of the Committee on Athletics, entirely successful, as indeed were all the events in charge of that committee, of which Professor W. H. Martin was the very efficient chairman. The lake with its circling amphitheatre of green hills and its surface of dancing waves formed a perfect Betting for the spirited scene of splashing oars, speeding launches, and white-winged sailboats. The shores were lined with spectators who while watching the races were at the same time regaled with the excellent music of the Tenth Regiment Band. The races resulted as follows: Class A— Winkie Wee (W. C. Stokes) 27:58; Helen (Dr. Garlinghouse) 34:15. Class B — Dixie (Spraker) 45:28; Townsends (Townsend). 45:47; Lvdia (C.ark), 46:51; Iris (Couirer), 44:49. Marguerite (Burton, Butler and Cooke), 44:61; Class C — Chiqui- ta (Lippitt), 58:51; Judas M. (Eldred), 52:11; Topsy (Johnson), 49:12. ^X Sailing race — Constitution, owned by John M. Bowers, and sailed by Arthur Coppel, won; Nettie, owned by A. Gazley, ■ailed by Charles Keese, second. Time — One hour, forty-nine minutes forty-eight seconds. Single scull, ladies — Miss Carol Chrisler won, time five sinutes, ten seconds. Miss Gladys Mason second. V Single scull, men — Joseph Willsey won, time four minutes, tkree seconds. W. P. Chrisler, second. Double sculls, boys under 16 — Lynn J. Arnold, Jr., and Arthur Cobbett won, time, four minutes, twelve seconds. Cbarles Root and Mr. Donaldson second. 88 TUESDAY. AUGUST 6. J907. Double sculls, men — Joseph Willsev and W. P. Chrisler womw time three minutes, forty-five seconds. ::>tepnen jonnson and Mr. Myers seconu. Ladies' doubles — Miss Carol Chrisler and Miss Mary Glc- £exi| first; Miss Gladys Mason and Miss Nan Chrisler, second. Mixed doubles — J. Pier Mason and Miss Chrisler won, Mr. Willsey and Miss Mason, second. ihe reg"atta was in charge ot the following-: Commodore, L. N. Wood; vice commodore, Rev. S. S. Con- ger; starter, W. H. Martin; judges. Dr. J. B. Conkling, John K. Kirby; timers. Prof. M. J. Multer, E. D. Stocker; clerk of course, R. Grant White. 1. Christ Church Yard. 3. Dr. Battershall Speaking. 3. Children Singing at Cooper's Grave. Centennial Exercises Wednesday, August 7, 1907t Athletics. The Athletic games of Wednesday the 7th, took place on «bore. They were well managed and promptly played. Of these games Chairman Martin reported: At the play-grounds of the Cooper Park, between the One- ©uta Independents and the A. C. C. Gym. team, took place in the morning a spirited game of basket ball. The splendid .enth Regiment Band made the air melodious before and dur« ing the rest between halves, and the large audience assembled voder the trees and lying on the grass hugely enjoyed the game from beginning to end. The result was in favor ot the Oneonta hoys, who bore away the honors with a score of 12 hard earned points against 11 for the home team. OflBcers of the game— Referee — Lee Van Woert. Umpire— A. O. Blowers. Timekeeper and scorer — W. H. Martin. One- onta Independents — J. J. Carson, captain and forward; Frank Huntington, L. forward; Leslie Hanford, center; B. Hoye, R, guard, Albert Getman, L. guard; H. Gord, substitute. A. C. C. ^.— Chas. Rdubacher, captain and R. forward; Charles Schnei- der, L. forward; John Wedderspoon, center; John Raubacher, JR. guard; Allen Brisack, L. guard. The athletic events which were originally scheduled to take place on the fair grounds, were changed, during the forenoon, to Main street, and as a consequence, they were witnessed by many more people than they otherwise would have been. They occurred between 2 and 4 p. m. The results were as follows: Running high jump — First, John Raubacher; second, %^liarles Raubacher. 90 WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 7, J907. Hurdles — First, John Raubacher, second, C. D. White. Hundred yard dash — First, C. D. White; second, John Rau- bacher. 220 yards — First, C. D. White; second, John Raubacher. Quarter mile — First, C. D. White; second, N. Gross. One-half mile — First, Harry Fowler; second, N. Gross. The half-mile relay race, each man running an eighth of a mile, was won by a team consisting of John Raubacher, Hugh Lippitt, Allen Brisack, Harry Fowler. The opposing team consisted of C D. White, Nelson Butcher, George Raubacher, George Eckler. For these events and on account of the change from the fair grounds to the street, the distances had to be all meaiured off, and hurdles and jumping stands put in place. Everything passed off satisfactorily and with very little complaint. The prizes gave general satisfaction, the plan of having their value from our own merchants was appreciated. Exercises at Cooper's Grave. A very large assemblage gathered in Christ Churchyard on the afternoon ot Wednesday at five o'clock to take part in the ■olemn services around the grave of the great author. ::::iJ|The excercises were opened with a procesaioa of young girls, dressed in white, who surrounded the tomb and were un- der the direction of Mr. A. deJ. Allez, Choir master of Christ Church. Miss Florence Wilkinson, the poetess then recited the following graceful tribute: How well we loved our forest friends of yore, Charles Cap, the swarthy runner, Alice fair, How wise we were those days in Indian lore, The Tuscarora and the Delaware! THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. 9i We laughed when David Gamut droned his hymn, We envied Uncas his green hunting-shirt; We wept when Dew-of-June's bright hopes grew dim, And oh, the beauteous Cora's deadly hurt! How brave it was in childish days of old, To lurk like wild beast in some cavern nook, Or range the woods as Hurry-Harry the bold, Or thrill all hearts like noble Chingachgook. Redskin and pale-face, dogs of Iroquois, Windrow, canoe and trail — Ay, steeped we were in woodcraft, girl and boy. How personal the glamour of each tale! Such tender females were the women then, The Indian stately as an English lord, And wondrous Hawk-Eye was the king of men, His Carbine famed as Arthur's mystic sword. Psychology and folk-lore, let them go. Mumbling dry criticism turn and pass. While Cooper, kindling young hearts to a glow, Stretches his magic wand o'er Glimmerglass. The children then sang the following lyric composed tor the occasion by Mr. Andrew B. Saxton: O, thou above whose hallowed bed The pine each year its tribute showers, Although the passing summer brings Its harvest of familiar things, How far thy lifetime seems from ours! And yet how near, for day by day The silver clouds are in the sky. And when the slanting sunbeams make A path of glory on the lake. Just as of old the shadows lie ! And where the evening hearthstone glowed Before there fell this slumber deep, The hunter lifts his head in air, To gaze across the valley where His buried kindred also sleep. .^ 'Z 92 WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 7, J907. Born to a world which fails to keep The simpler life of yester-year, We come when summer days are long, To make an offering of song And strew the flowers of memory here. For one whose fingers, years ago, Their work well finished, dropped the pen; Whose master mind from land and sea Drew forms heroic, long to be The living types of vanished men; For one whose genius manifold Had many fields of labor claimed; Who, when the angel's pointing hand, Was guidance to a better land, Left naught whereof to be ashamed. O, great magician, may the life We lead be such an one as thine — A simple life, transcending art, A spirit close to Nature's heart, A soul as strong and clear, and fine! And when for us the final word Is spoken o'er the pulseless clay, May there, for those who love, endure, The memory of a life as pure As thine, of whom we sing to-day! After singing the children gathered around the grave and covered the marble slab with the flowers of the season. The remaining exercises took place upon the temporary platform erected in front of the church door on which were seated those who were to take part in the same; the band being stationed in front. The Reverend Ralph Birdsall opened with the following address: The privilege is mine, as Rector here, to welcome you who come to honor the world-famed son of this village church, and to freshen the laurel upon his grave, which this church guards^ The grave of Cooper has become in fifty years a shrine of literary pilgrimage. No other famous tomb is quite like this in the quality of surprise which it excites in every visitor. Tht THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. 93 stranger, entering the churchyard gate, looks about him for some conspicuous signal of Cooper's resting place. He antici- pates some boastful monument, commensurate with the author's fame, standing high above all else, flaunting its claim for hom- age. But this he seeks in vain. Highest of the monuments is that of the rugged missionary priest and pioneer of a century ago. Everywhere are grave stones inscribed with names long forgotten and unknown. Truly, the expectation is disap- pointed. But when the stranger chances upon th** path well- worn by the feet of pilgrims, and stands at last by Cooper's grave, he divines that the expectation is rightly disappointed. It is far more impressive and affecting to find it so. It is not the simple tomb which is at fault, but the expectancy of its be- ing otherwise. No proudly glittering monument marks the grave of Cooper, but a plain, unpolished slab of stone. It is a marble that bears upon its surface no praise for the fame or virtues of the dead; only his name with the dates of birth and death. None of the insignia of the au'hor's craft are carved thereon, nor Indian emblems suggestive of his famous tales; only a small and simple cross, the symbol of the faith in which he lived and died, and upon which he based his hope of immor- tality. It is a grave that claims for its charge no higher place than any among the dead. He lies with the lowest of the low. He does not eclipse the soldier, lying near, who died for his country upon the field of war. The tomb of the aged slave, be- neath the same sod asleep, is not less notable. Old neighbors who exchanged the friendly nod with him in life are not less honored now. Hands lie still beneath the sward that were cal- lous from the axe and shovel. The hand that wrought pen pictures for the world is there at rest, surmounted by no higher landmark. Nothing could be finer than the significant simplicity which thus commemorates Cooper as a Christian. But the time has come when Cooper the author requires a monument more elo- quent of his genius and repute. Cooper's fame demands such a monument in Cooper's town. One can picture in the mind's eye the effect of a living statue of Cooper wrought by the artistry of a great sculptor. Such a statue should find its place not in the churchyard which contains the grave, not in the cemetery 94 WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 7, J907. which contains the Leatherstocking Monument , but at the life center of the village which Cooper loved, and where he lived, and wrote, and died. Let it stand on the Main Street, amid the square that fronts the old site of Otsego Hall and northward commands the lake in sweeping view. Let the statue represent the author seated, pen in hand, gazing dreamily for inspiration upon Glimmerglass where the phantom creatures of his genius brood. The pageantry of this Centennial will be soon forgot. A monument as the fruit of this commemoration would give it the value of timeless permanence. Let there be continued, when this celebration has concluded, a Committee devoted to the erec- tion of a Memorial Statue of James Fenimore Cooper. Let there be added to this Committee, or rather superimposed with their consent and cordial support, the names of men illusstrious in literature to-day. Let lovers of Cooper throughout the world share the privilege of erecting to the founder of American ro- mance a monument worthy ot his imperishable fame. The "Rt. Rev. Henry C. Potter, D. D., then spoke as fol- lows: Ladies and Gentlemen; I have been asVed to read some verses written for this occa- sion by a woman of illustrious genius and exceptional fame, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe. And after I have read them arrange- ments have been made that "The Battle Hymn of the Repub- lic", by which Mrs. Howe is known throughout this broad land, will be sung. "What village of the western wild Lifts its far challenge of romance From forests by the axe unspoiled, From where the skin-clad sachems dance? Whose W3S the note? A bard of old Held Nature subject to his sotig, Whose ringing strophes, clear and bold. The echoes of the world prolong. So, kindled with poetic fire. Aspiring from the virgin sod Came he who, to our heart's desire The measure of the Muses trod. THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL, 95 "What voice like his the legend taught The story of our pilgrim days, The march with deadly danger fraught, The heroes ignorant of praise: The hunter bold, the savage dark, The breath of regions unprofaned, The rover with his phantom bark, The valiant spirits, rudely trained? Be dear to us this sylvan ground That holds his ashes in its breast, While songs of love and praise resound Above the beauty of his rest. JULIA WARD HOWE. Bishop Potter: Introducing the Rev. Dr. Battershall: Ladies and Gentlemen: — The Chairman has assigned to me the delightful duty of introducing the poet of the occasion, the Rev. Dr. Walton W. Battershall, Rector of St. Peter's Church in Albany. Dr. Bat- tershall is Rector of the Church, the Bishop cf which before this diocese was set apart from its mother, was himself a Rector of St. Peter's Church and a kinsman of mine. Dr. Battershall was born in Troy. (I am not prepared to say, my dear brother, as thev say in Boston, that anybody who is born in Troy does not need to be born again!) but, as a Rector of Troy who had the privilege of knowing Dr. Battershall in his youth when he was a Curate of mine in St. John's Church, it was my great privilege early to recognize those altogether exceptional gifts which he will illustrate here to-day. Our poet has but one infirmity. He sometimes forgets! I congratulate myself and you that he has not forgotten to come here to-day. The Rev. Dr. Battershall: Ladies and Gentlemen: I appreciate the honor of being permitted to say a word of appreciation on this significant occasion; and I appreciate the honor of being introduced oy the Metropolitan Prelate, my old friend and chieftain in the Trov davs. 96 WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 5, J907. Around the marble, sculptured with the name That gave long echoes from the mantled hills Which frame the glittering mirror of the lake, Throng presences of olden time and type, Plastic with life, shot through with mortal blood, Living forever in that vast hall Of imagery, beyond the toucn of death. Above the grave of Cooper, stalwart soul And clean, that fought his fight with trenchant blade For faith and truth, and died, marked with the Cross, No fairy footfalls twinkle in the grass, As in the great Magician's summer-night Of impish frolic and bewitched sleep The creatures of his brain that haunt the spot, And hail the wizard of the tangled wood And fretted wave, were men, carved in their flesh, Borne on or underneath the wheel of life, With love or guile or dedicated vow, Sweeping their spirit like a harper's hand. Of^those who told the stories of the world. There are who pushed their caravels across Forgotten or uncharted seas of time, Discovering new continents of thought And phantasy. Of such are thou the seer And recreator of the vanished life Of the primeval forest of the West, Where in the brooding silence and the shades Pierced by uncertain glimmers thou didst see. Or seem to see with visionary eye, Ulysses in high council with the chiefs, Or Hector flying from Achilles' spear. The world thou didst discover is thine own, No footprints didst thou find except thine own. And those whose form and thought and vital breath Move in thy epic story, like that throng, Impassicnate, wrought on the Grecian urn, Of which the poet caught the immortal rhythm. What chance, or trick of brain, or subtle law THE CCXDPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. W That links things by their contrast, brings the grave Of him with dreamful eyes, whose name is writ In the warm marble of his chiseled verse, And not in water, as he dying, moaned Beside the grave of him, who put his own Unquenched fire in virile shapes of life, Peopling the wilderness, and who now lies In the sun's laughter rippling o'er the lake? The old world and the newl The same old play Of manhood, greed and stress of circumstance, Whate'er the setting and the pageantry 1 He gave new accents to the ancient tale, And deftly wrought the assemblage and the march, And staged the drama of creative days, In which the Empire of the West had birth. And men, shaped in the clash of wild frontiers, Whose moulds are broken, fought for a continent. Fair GlimmerglassI He hath enchanted thee, And filled with dreams thy sleep amid the hills. The footprints of that fateful fight are on Thy marge and, in the moonlight silvering Thy face, guide spectral shapes. The Muskrat's ark Creeps in the faint breath of the silent night. Big Serpent, son of Uncas, holds his tryst Sharp at the appointed sunset on the rock. Hard by the serpent river's leafy source; And Hist, the Honeysuckle of the Hills, Hears in the Huron camp his squirrel-note. Still, in the twilight of soft summer eyes, Sweet hymns and orisons float on the air From the canoe of Hetty, as she prays Over her mother's grave beneath the lake. And now, as in those storied days, Judith, The Splendid, queens it in her tragedy, With warm, brave eyes, facing the Nemesis Of her inheritance and fatal dower. As the night deepens and the stars burn clear Like beacon-fires, we catch tbe quiet voice n WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 7, (907. Of Deerslayer, him of the straight tongue, white In thought and deed, the moccasined Parsifal^ Making his argument lor tortured death To keep the word he pledged the torturers. Hpre, in the mystic beauty of the lake, To which he gave life's pathos and its might, Which crept into his youth and haunted him Across the seas, nor played him false, but breathed When he brought back to it his crowned life, Its gracious balm on his unbroken force, He sleeps, in shadow of the shrine in which He read the riddle of that mystic sleep. WALTON W. BATTERSHALL. James Fenliuore Cooper, at the age of CO. Centennial Exercises Thursday, August 8, 1907, Parade and Literary Exercises. The events of Thursday drew together the largest crowd seen in Cooperstown in many a year. It is safe to say that it numbered at least 15,000. From the band concert, which opened at 10 o'clock until the conclusion of the fireworks at 10 P. M., there was hardly a cessation of the entertainment. It is to the credit of both the village and its visitors that no disturbance or disorder occurred at anytime nor was there anything to mar the pleasure of the assembled throng. At 2 o'clock in the afternoon occurred the big local parade. It was very fine and pleased everyone. The parade was in charge of Morgan R. Stocker as Grand Marshal, with staff com- posed of Hon. Lynn J. Arnold, R. Grant White, Morgan John- ston, Robert Arnold, Arthur Coppell, Walter W. Stokes, Ste- phen C. Clark, W. Perry Chrisler, J. Pier Mason. The parade was formed in the following order: Platoon of Police, Grand Marshal and Staff, Tenth Regiment Band, Coop- erstown Fire Department, James" J. Byard, Jr., chief, David Willsey and William C. Tabor, assistants; Neptune Engine Co., 24 men and officers; Steamer Hose Co., 22 men and officers; Iro- quois Hose Co., 16 men and officers; Mechanics Hook and Ladder Co., 16 men and officers; Edward Clark Hose Company, 20 men and officers; Drill Corps of 24 Orphanage boys. The second section was composed of historic floats and ex- hibits and was very interesting. Float No. 1, represented the Indian before the coming of the white man. It showed an In- iOO THURSDAY, AUGUST 8, J907. dian in full costume representing Cooper's Chingachgook, seat- ed in his canoe. Float No. 2, represented George Washington in costume of his time, seated in front of his tent near a forest of pines. Float No. 3, was an ox cart drawn by two oxen in which were riding the grandmother, grandfather, father, mother and some children. Float No. 4, represented the early white settlers and in this Natty Bumpo appeared with his rifle at the door of his little log hut in the forest. Float No. 5. was the historic stage coach which used to run between Cooperstown and Catskill before the advent ot the steam railroad to the Susquehanna Valley. Float No. 6, was modern coaching as represented by the smart foui-in-hand of F. Ambrose Clark, driven bv Waldo John- ston, accompanied by a lady. Float No. 7, was the family coach of Gen. John A. Dix used here in 1830, in which were riding Cuyler E. Carr and Miss Gladys Mason. The cairiage was driven by Darius Salisbury. Float No. 8, was the old hand fire engine, Neptune, used m 1840, with three of the veteran firemen on it. Float No. 9, veterans of the L- C. Turner Post, with old fifer and drummer, ail dressed in Civil War costume. Float No. 10, Sons of Veterans of J. F. Clark Camp in pres- ent-day military dress. Float No .11, twenty girls from the Orphanage, founded in 1870 by Miss Susan Fenimore Cooper. Float No. 12, representing a modern hoppicking scene with pickers, box tenders, etc. Float No. 13, the ambulance from Thanksgiving Hospital. Float No. 14, A modern industry — Francis Wagon Works. The parade passed over the principal streets of the village, to the Court House grounds where it was dismissed and the liter- ary exercises began at 4 o'clock. After an overture by the band, Rev. Ralph Birdsall intro- duced the chairman of the Literary Committee, saying: Religion and history have had their rightful place in this THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. 101 Centennial Commemoration. But, in the eyes of the world the largfer interest of htis Celebration has to do with that splendid literary reputation which associates the history of this village with the glowing pages of romance. We celebrate James Feni- more Cooper. The Chairman of this occasion, whom it is my privilege to introduce, is one who, as a child, sat at the feet of the great novelist, and as a man, having traversed many lands and seas, dwells again in the village of his early love, where he has rescued from oblivion "Natty Bumppo's Diary", and ever charms us with his gift of verse, the Hon. John VVorthington. Hon, John Worthington introducing Prof. Brander Mat- thews, said: The Significance of this celebration is manifestly local but gains a peculiar dignity by gathering to itself the world-wide sweep of Cooper's pen. No place, either in distance or in atmosphere, seems more remote from our Glimmerglass than the palace of an Oriental Potentate. And yet, it was in such a palace that I heard from the lips of Tewfik Pasha Mohammed, the then Khedive of Egypt, an expression of admiration for Cooper that could not be excelled in earnestness and ardor by any utterance of his most enthusiastic American appreciator. The environments of a man often influence his intellectual sensibilities; so that the Khedive's relish for Cooper's writings appears extraordinary in one whose local horizon included the gray deserts, the man-built pyramids and the enigmatical sphynx, the rock-hewed tombs with their millions of mummies, and with all the land of Egypt's stately Pharoahic and Patri- archial traditions and florid Arabian embellishments. What contrast could be greater — the green hills of Otsego and the sterile sands of the Lybian desert! Yet, this native Egyptian, Tewfik Pasha, the hereditary ruler of millions of Mohammedans, whose Bible was the Koran, and whose instincts and impulses were of Egyptian birth and growth, knew his Cooper as an Englishman knows his Shakes- peare! In 1883 I had an audience with His Highness, in his palace on the Nile. He was polite and^courteous, and our conversation 102 THURSDAY, AUGUST 8, 1907. ■was formal and perfunctory, until, in reply to an amiable in- quiry, I stated that my American home was in a village in New York State, named Cooperstown. At the mention of the word "Cooperstown'" the Khedive to my surprise, exhibited an inter- est that clearly was genuine. "Cooperstown," he repeated, "Is not Cooperstown the home of Fenimore Cooper, the great author?" It was my turn to exhibit interest, and I asked it His High- ness was acquainted with the writings of the novelist. His re- ply was to the effect that when a student in Paris he had come upon Cooper's "Spy" which (strangely enough) had interested him greatly. Then he read the "Leatherstocking Tales," and they opened up a New World to him — and na was charmed. Tne sublime and shadowy forests, the silent lakes high up in evergreen hills, the cool rivers — how they captivated his imag- ination ! how they invited his soull He would, he exclaimed, give a year of his life if he might view the Glimmerglass — if he could tread a forest trail. He had read all, every one, of Cooper's books. Some of them he cared little for, but those he did care for he loved. He »'adored" the "Deerslayer," and when he read of Hetty's burial in the lake, he said tears filled his eyes at the mournful narra- tion. "How beautiful — how exquisitely sadi" His Highness asked me if Leatherstocking was not more than a creature of the Author's briin, was he not flesh and blood? He asked many questions about Cooper himself: had the Americans not erected a grand mausoleum over the place of his grave? Did any other American write as Cooper wrote? In his fine library of books the Khedive showed me, with ▼ery evident satisfaction, his three magnificent sets of Cooper's works, in French, German and English. On that occasion I spent an hour with Tewfik Pasha Mo- hammed, and nearly all his talk related to the literary achieve- ments of the man in whose honored memory these exercises are held. : I venture to think that the incident is not an inappropriate one to recall at this time and place. The banks of the Nile are a far-cry from the banks of the Susquehanna, but the genius of Mr. "Worthington Introducing Speakers. 2. Mr. IVlatthews Speaking. 3. Mr. iscollard Speaking. THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. J©3 €«oper brought the viceroyal palace of Abidan very close to the Unskrat Castle of the sunken islands, and by the same token it kssened the distance between the ornate minaret of the Mosque cf Sultan Hasan and the simple cross-crowned steeple of the lit- ile church in Cooperstown. Thus Cooper, with his literary grasp of the primeval in America has struck a note so universal as to sound an echo in ike heart of the man farthest removed from Cooper's scenes and subjects. This is an achievement in letters which gives Cooper a lasting fame and accords to America an eminent place in the literature of the world. Americans perhaps have been slowest ©f all to recognize this peculiar value of Cooper's work. It is fitting that, upon this occasion, the address commemO' fative of James Fenimore Cooper should be delivered by that American man of letters who is most distinguished for the in- tight and the courage with which he has always championed ike distinctively American in the literature of our land. I take pleasure in introducing Prof. Brander Matthews of Columbia University. "FENIMORE COOPER.' By Brander Matthews. It is with keen pleasure that an American man of letter* accepts the privilege of commemorating again the genius of Fenimore Cooper, — the earliest of our authors to be widely read beyond the boundaries of our own language, as Irving, his elder contemporary, was the earliest to win attention outside the bor- ders of our own land. It is well for us that the first American nor- elist to reveal American character to the nations of Europe was himself stalwart in his own Americanism, full of the faith that sustains us all. As Parkman has declared, "Cooper's geniui drew aliment from the soil where God had planted it, and rose to a vigorous growth, rough and gnarled, but strong as a moun- tain cedar." And as Lowell has finely phrased it, Cooper "looked about him to recognize in the New Man of the New World an unhackneyed and unconventional subject for art;" he "studied from the life, and it was the homo Americanus, with our own limestone in his bones, and our own iron in his blood, that sat to him." The American whom Cooper painted in his pages is the American in the making; and it is the earlier makers of Amer- ica that he has depicted with sympathetic sincerity, — the sol- dier, the sailor, the settler, the backwoodsman, sturdy types all of them, that gave no false impression of us to the rest of the world. And in thus portraying the men who made possible the nation as we know it to-day, he performed a splendid service to the country he loved devotedly. And his service to our litera- ture is equally obvious. He wrote the first American historical novel, which remains to this day one of the best. He was the first to venture a storv of the sea; and no one of the writers who have followed in his wake has yet equalled his earlier attempt. He was the first to tell tales of the frontier, of the backwoods, and of the prairie. He stands forth even now the foremost rep- resentative in fiction of the United States as a whole, — for Haw- thorne, a more delicate artist in romance, was of his section a THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. (05 compact, and his genius lacked fit nourishment when its tenta- cles did not clingf to the stony New England of his birth. Well might Bryant assert that the glory which Cooper "justly won was reflected on his country, of whose literary independence he ■was the pioneer." "There is no life of a man faithfully recoided, " so Carlyle has declared, "but is a heroic poem of its sort, rhymed or un- rhymed." The life of Cooper has been faithfully recordel by Professor Lounsbury, in the best biography yet devoted to any American man of letters. Cooper was born in New Jersey in 1789, juft after the United States had adopted the constitution which has given stability to our government. When he was only a year old be was brought to Cooperstown, where he was to die three score years later. His far-seeing and open-minded father had settled more acres than any other man in America; and forty thousand souls held under him, directly or indirectly, most of them along the shores ot the Susquehanna, the crooked river, "to which,'' as Cooper tells us, "the Atlantic herself had extended an arm in welcome." It was at Cooperstown that the future novelist passed his childhood, "with the vast forest around him," so Bryant has recorded, "stretching up the moun- tains that overlook the lake, and far beyond, in a region where the Indian yet roamed, and the white hunter, half Indian in his dress and mode of life, sought his game. — a region in which the bear and the wolf were yet hucted, and the oanther, more for- midable than either, lurked in the thickets, and tales of wander- ings in the wildernes;*, and encounters with these fierce animals, beguiled the length of the winter nights." In due season he was sent to school at Albany; and then he entered Yale, only to be expelled before he had completed his course. Thus it was that he lacked the chastening influenece of the prescribed programme of studies, narrow enough in those days and yet broadening to all who knew how to profit by it. His own college never made up to him for what may have been her mistake or his own: but a score of years later Columbia hon- ored herself by granting him the degree of master of arts. As a preparation for the navy, Cooper made a long voyage to Eu- rope before the mast; and on his return he was appointed a mid- shipman. He remained in the service only three years. He was 106 THURSDAY, AUGUST 8, 1907. on the Vesuvius for a season; he was one of a party that went to Oswego to build a brig on Lake Ontario, then girt in by the primeval forest; and he was, for a while, left in command of the gunboats on Lake Champlain; and all these posts gave him a knowledge of his native land and of its conditions which was to stand him in good stead later, when he turned novelist. Afterward he was ordered to the Wasp, where he served under the heroic Lawrence, — who was to die a few years later, crying "Don't give up the ship!" But there seemed then little likeli- hood of war; so Cooper resigned his commission, and mairied Miss de Lancey, with whom he was to live most happily for the rest of his life, and who was to survive him only a few months. His father and his wife's father were both well-to-do; and for nearly ten years Cooper was content to live the placid life of a country gentleman, sometimes at Cooperstown, and sometimes in Westchester, near New York. He reached the age of thirty, not only without having written anything, but even without any special interest in literature; and when at last he did take a first step into authorship, it was in the most casual fashion. Throwing down a contemporary British novel of slight value, he expressed the belief that he could write a better book him- self. Encouraged by his wife, he completed a story of British manners and customs, about which he knew little or nothing from personal observation. But so complete was our American subservience to the British branch of our literature that this did not seem strange then, even to Cooper, an American of the Americans. This firstnovel, "Precaution," was published with- out his name; it was even reprinted in England, where it was reviewed with no suspicion that it had not been written by an Englishman. However insignificant in itself, this first book revealed to its author that he could tell a story. It is a commonplace of criticism that novelists flower late. Fielding and Scott, Thackeray and Hawthorne, had spent at least the half of the allotted three score 'years and ten before the? blossomed forth as novelists, — as though to exemplify the Arab proverb that no man is called of God until he is forty. But Fielding and Scott, Thackeray and .Hawthorne, had* been writing abundantly] from their i'youth 'up, plays^'and poems, sketches and short stories, whereas Cooper had served no such THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. J07 apprenticeship to literature. But when he bad once tasted ink, he enjojed it; and in the remaining half of his life he revealed the ample productivity of a rich and abundant genius. Toward the end of the next year, 1821, he published the "Spy," followed, swiftly by the "Pioneers," and by the "Pilot;" and by these three books his fame was firmly established, in his own country, in Great Britain, and all over Europe, where he was hailed as a worthy rival of Scott. In these three books he made good his triple claim to remembrance, as a teller of tales, as a creator of character and as a poet (in the larger sense of the word). The "Spy'' was followed in time by another tale of the Amer- ican revolution, "Lionel Lincoln," wherein, soBancroft has testi- fied, "he has described the Battle of Bunker Hill better than it is described in any other work." It was accompanied later by other historical novels, some of them dealing with themes in European history,the "Bravo," for one, and the "Headsman," for another, — good stories in their way, but without the solid sup- port which a novelist has when he de'ls with his own people and his own time. The "Pioneers" was made more important by the composition of four other "Leatherstocking Tales" complet- ing the interesting drama in five acts, which culminates at last in the simple hero's death, told with manly pathos. The "Pilot" had in its track the "Red Rover" and eight other talesof the sta; and it was also succeeded in time by a "History of the American Navy" and by a series of "Lives of Naval Officers," in which Cooper proved his loyalty to his first profession. Perhaps it is not strange that he who could describe fight- ing with contagious interest should not himself shrink from controversy. Cooper was large-hearted, but he was also hot- headed and thin-skinned. A high-minded man, beyond all question, he was high-tempered also, generally opinionated and occasionally irascible. Even in Cooperstown he became involved in a dispute which calls for no consideration now. In his travels in Europe he had been quick to repel ignorant aspersion against his native land; and on his return home he had not hes- itated to point out the failings and the faults of his fellow-citi* sens, not always with the suavity which persuades to a change of heart. Bitterly attacked in the newspapers, he defended himself with his pen and in the courts of law. That he was 108 THURSDAY, AUGUST 8, J907. meanly assailed by mean men is shown by the fact that he was successful in the several libel suits he brought against his tra- ducers. But the echoes of these "old, unhappy far-off things and battles long ago" have died away now these many years; and they need not be recalled. Cooper was independent and uncompromising; "his character," so Bryant testified, "was like the bark of the cinnamon, a rough and astringent rind without, and an intense sweetness within." Although these needless disputes may have saddened the later years of his life, he was happy in his family and in his friends, whom he bound to him with hoops of steel. These friends, with Bryant and Irving at the head of them, were mak- ing ready for a public dinner to testify the high esteem in which they held him, when they heard that his health had begun to fail. He was then contemplating a sixth "Leatherstocking Tale;" but he did not live to start on his new story. And it was at Cooperstown that he died, in the fall of 1851, on the last day of his sixty-second year. Fame has its tide, its flood and its ebb, like the ocean; and the author who is lifted high by a wave of popularity is certain in time to sink into the trough of the sea, perhaps to be raised aloft again by a later billow. The fame of Cooper soared after his first successes, only to fall away sadly during the later con- troversies. It was proclaimed again by Bryant and Bancroft and Parkman in the stress of emotion evoked by his sudden death, to be obscured once more in the two score years that fol- lowed, as other literary fashions came into favor. Now, at last, in this new century, it has emerged once more, solidly estab- lished on his real merits and not likely again to be called in question. Time has made its unerring choice from out his many books, selecting those which are most representative of hi*: gen- ius at its finest. It is by its peaks that we measure the height of a mountain, and not by its foot-hills and its valleys. Irving had Cooper in mind when he remarked that "in life they judge a writer by his last production; after death by what he has done best." No author can go down to posterity with a baggage- wagon full of his complete works; he can descend that long trail laden only with what will go in the saddlebags. Cooper is a born story-teller; and the kind of story he excels THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. JO^ in is the tale of adventure, peopled, now and again, with vital and veracious characters, having a life of their own independent of the situations in which they may chance to be actors. Of this kind of story the Odyssey is the earliest example as it is the greatest. Professor Trent is only just when he insists that Cooper lifted "the story of adventure into the realms of poetry." It may be acknowledged at once that he is not a flawless artist never quitting his work till he has made it as perfect as he can; and his best books are not always kept up to their highest level. Even though he is denied the gift of verse he is essentially a poet; but he is ro Virgil, no Racine interested in his manner as much as in his matter and joying in his craftsmanship for its own sake. He had the largeness of affluent genius, and also the carelessness which often accompanies this, such as we may observe in Scott and even in Shakespeare, rich creators of char- acter in whose works there is much that we could desire to be different and not a little that we could wish away. As his devoted daughter admitted loyally, "He never was, in the sense of studied preparation, an artist in the composition of a work of ficton. He wrote, as it were, from the inspiration of the moment." But even in this improvisation his native gift of rarrative did not desert him. "It is easy to find fault with "The Last of the Mohicans," said Parkmac; "but it is far from easy to rival or eveu approach its excellence. The book has the genuine game flavor; it exhales the odors of the pine- woods and the freshness of the mountain wind." In this story, as in others, the author may be sluggish In starting, over-lei- surely in exposition, not always plausible in the mctives assigned fcr the entanglements in which his creatures are imme^hed; he may be inconsistent now and then; but these are minor defects, forgotten when the tale tightens to the tensity cf drama. Then the interest is beyond all question; and we can not choose but hear. We read on, not merely to learn what is to happen next, but to know more about the characters as thev reveal themselves under the stress of danger. We are not mere spectators looking on idlv; we are made to see the thing as it is; ■we feel ourselves almost participants in the action; we are car- ried along by the sheer pow^r of the write-, — breathless, delighted, convinced. ISO THURSDAY, AUGUST 8, t907. There are two reasons why Cooper has come into his own later than was his right, and why full recognition of his genius has been delayed. The first is a consequence of the enduring vogue of realism, which has failed to jerceive that he was one of its precursors, and which has no relish for his more evident romanticism. Yet sharp-eyed cr:tics ought to have been able to see thot Cooper's detail d desc iptions of customs and of cos- tumes, when these were truly characteristic and needful to relate the character to the backgrouni, set a pattern for Balzac, the romanticist thus servin-^ as a stimulus to the realist. They migbt even have noted that Cooper is a romanticist who is often a realist, just as Balzac is a realist who is often a romanticist. In all later fiction there are no more sternly characters than Natty Burappo anu Long Tom Coffin; and though the method of their presentation is not so modern, they can withstand com- pari .on with Huckleberry Finn and Silas Lapham, and with Colonel Newcome and old Goriot. A second reason for the tardiness of Cooper's recognition may be found in the fact that the vicissitudes of literary repula- tio . seem to be more or lessd pendent on the historians of liter- ature, and, as it happens. Cooper's deficiences as a writer are of a kind obnoxious tc the ordinary literary critics, who are rarely broad minded or keen-sighted enough to perceive beneath Coop- er't more obviou^ defects tbe larger merits, which are clear to the plain people, insensitive to the lesser blemisaes that send shivers down the spine of the dilettante. These critics arc uimoved by Cooper's fundamental force, which the plain people feel fully, while they are acutely sensitive to his lapses from lit- erary conventions and traditions. Cooper came to story-telling late, with little experience in writing. He was not at all book- ish; he was not a man of the library, but a man of the open air, — of the ocean and the forest. In a sense, he was not a man of letters at all; he was interested not so much in literature aa in life itself. And we must recall the pitiful fact also that there are always fastidious criticasters who think that whatever wins wide popularity must be poor stuff, ignorant that rearly all the really great writers have achieved indisputable popularity while they were alive to enjoy it. Cooper's lack of early training can not be gainsaid; and THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. J t i therefore his style appeals but little to tho?e who cherish a rare word for its owj sake and who delight in verbal marquetry. Even if he is essentially a poet, he is no sonneteer, polisaing hi3 lines until he can see his own image in them. He is careless of the rules of rhetoric, — sometimes unforgivably careless. Evei in grammar he was no purist, no precisian; and his use of wo ds is not always defensible, evtn if it is an overstatement of the case to charge bim with "linguistic astigmatism." But if thtre is clumsv writing in his pages, this is never the result of the failure of any attempt at fine writing. Awkward he mav be at times, but he is always sincere and direct; he is always unpretentious and simple. He has something to say, and he says it, so as to stamp ' 'on the mind of the reader the impression he desired to convey." He achieves the primary object of all good writing, in that he makes himself clearly understood, even if he sometims fails to attain the secondary purpose of giving added pleasure by the mere expression. In describing nature and in depicting character, his style is nervous aid ucerring; and it can rise on occasion into geruine eloquence. When Bry- ant first read the "Pioneers,"he declared that here was "the poet of rural life in this country;" and Paikman praised the vigor and the fidelity of Cooper's descriptions of scenery, asserting that they who can not feel the eflSciency of his "strong pictur ing have neither heart nor mind for the grandeur of the outer world." After admitting that Cooper is not beyond reproach for an occasional laxity in his style, for an occasional stiffness in his dialogue, and for an occasional prolixity in bis narrative, it may be as well to add that sometimes he fatigues himself and his readers in the search for conic relief. Even Scott is not infre- quently tedious in his minor characters, meant to be laughed at; an:' as Cooper lacked Sc tt's real richness of humor, he i j mere often tiresome and at greater length. There are passages of admirab'e humor scattered here and there in Cooper's pages, seemingly unconsious, most of th^m; and there are quaint char, acters sketched with a delightful appreciation of their absurd- ities. But it must be confessed that when he sets out to be funny by main strength, he is plainly joking with difficulty. It is as though he thrust his hand into the grabbag of our varieT 112 THURSDAY, AUGUST 8, J907. gated humanity, willing to take whatever his fingers might find, whether it was truly a prize, like his great creations, or only a wooden doll dressed like a figure of fun and unfit to be thrust to the front of the stage. Perhaps this may account in some measure for the flatness of a few of his female characters. He can draw women sympa- thetically, although some cf his heroines are a little colorless. The wife of Ishmael Bush, the squatter, mother of seven stal- wart sons and sister of a murderous rascal, is an unforgettable portrait, solidly painted by a master; and Dew-of-June, the girl wife of the treacherous Arrowhead,, a primitive type but eternally feminine, is depicted with equal art. Judith and Hetty, the supposed daughters of the buccaneer, are real and vivid and womanly, both oT them. And it is remembered also that women must ever play a minor part in the tale of adven- ture, since the bolder experiences in life are not ht for gentle and clinging heroines; and more often than not Cooper presents them with a kind of chivalric aloofness. These adverse criticisms need not detain us. There is no denying that there are weak spots in Cooper's works; and there is no advantage in seeking to disguise this or to gloss it over. Cooper is what he is, — even if he is not what he is not. He is a teller of tales, creator of character, a poet; and in his chosen form he has left more than one masterpiece. Very few master- pieces are absolutely free from defect; but detects, however obvi- ous and however numerous, have never prevented the ultimate appreciation of a masterpiece. That Cooper was able to leave more than one masterpiece be- hind him was due mainly, of course, to his own genius, but it was the consequence also of a singular piece of luck. It was his good fort ine to take up novel-writing at the precise moment in the history of the art of fiction when one of his predecessors had just provided him with the exact model he needed, and when another had jusi revealed the richness of the material that lay ready to his land The year 1820, in which his imitation of a British novel had proved to him that he could at least tell a story, even though his subject might be alien to all his interests, was also the year in which Scott sent forth"Ivanhoe"and in which Irving completed the "Sketcb Book," containing "Kip van Win- THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. 113 kle" and the "Legend of Sleepy Hollow." Scott supplied Cooper with the mould into which he could pour whatever he might have to express; and Irving disclosed the unsuspected possibilities of romance in American life, which had hitherto been deemed too barren and too bare for the creative artist to at- tempt. Irving's delightful tales may have drawn Cooper's attention to the kind of matter he could deal with most satisfac- torily, while Scott's historical novel certainly indicated the manner in which he might handle it most advantageously. It is characteristic of genius to be uninventive of formulas and to take over unhesitatingly the patterns which chance to be popular. Sophocles followed closely in the footsteps of i^Jschy- lus, and Shakespeare found his profit at first in accepting the frameworks which had been put together by Marlowe and by Kyd, That author is lucky who finds a formula ready to his hand and fit for the work he wants to do, as that author is unfortunate who has no inspiring model. Perhaps we have here a reason why one of Cooper's forerunners, Charles Brock- den Brown, a man of undeniable endowment, was able to leave so little that to-day bides in our memories. He had before him only the unsatisfactory fictions of Mrs. Radcliffe and of Godwin; and it is an interesting speculation to inquire whether he might not have rivaled Cooper if he had lived a score of years later, and had written only after Scott had devised the historical novel. Scott had begun by editing the ballads of the Border and by writing ballads of his own. Then he rhymed the longer Lady of the Lake and Marmion, retaining the tone and color of the ballad. When he was "beaten out of poetry" by Byron, he began to do in prose what he had been doing in verse, availing himself fully of the larger liberty that prose allows for descrip- tion and for character delineation. This accounts for the ro- mantic element in his novels; and the realistic element is the result of his desire to do for the Scots peasant what Miss Edge- wDrth had done for the Irish. The first eight of the prose nar ratives we now know as the Waverley Novels dealt with adven- ture in his own country, and they were then generally called the "Scottish Novels." But Scott wisely feared that "Scotland forever' might weary the English public sooner or later; so he 1 14 THURSDAY, AUGUST 5, t907. crossed the border and employed in a tale of England the methcl he had invented for tales of Scotland. "Ivanhoe"' is, in fact, the first English historical novel, with romantic episodes in the foreground and with realistic characters in the background. "Ivanhoe" appeared in 1820; and in 1821 Scott was encouraged by its success to cross the channel and to use the same framework jor a tale of France, "Quentin Durward." It is easy now to see how much Scott lost when he left his na* live land, which he knew intimately, for other countries with which he had only a literary acquaintance. His humbler Scots characters, whom he loved so heartily and whom he drew witk such fidelity, are rooted in truth; and they abide to-day as the bulwarks of his fame. But the valiant young fellow wbc tilts in tourneys and fights a long fight and bears a charmed life, this bravura hero is now out of fashion along with the rest of the frippery of romanticism. His deeds of dering-do may still please the boy in us — the boy eternal in all of us at some stage of our mental developement; but he fails to satisfy grown men wh© can still relish the permanently convincing figures of Scott's realism — Jeanie Deans, for example and Caleb Balderstone. Tales cf adventure come and go, one after another; they please the fancy of the moment only to sink swiftly into oblivion; but character honestly presented mubt survive as long as man is in- terested in his fellow-creatures. There is no denying, however, that the formula of the his- torical novel as Scott declared it, with its core of romanticism and its casing of realism, was pleasing to the many-headed and many-minded public; and there is no cause for wonder that it was seized upon at once by other novelists in other countries. It was the formula which exactly fitted the kindred genius of Cooper, who also had the native gift of story-telling and the power of presenting simple and primitive character. Both the romantic and the realistic elements of Scott's framework ap- pealed strongly to Cooper, who had the same rapidity of action, the same inventiveness of situation, the same command of pa- thos, even though his human sympathy might be less broad and his humor far less abundant. But Cooper never imitated Scott slavishly. He found in Scott's stories formula fit for his use, and he availed ^himself ot it, modifying it freely. He did in THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. 115 America very much what Hugo and Dumas were to do in France, and Manzoni in Italy; he borrowed the loom set up by the Scotch novelist, only to weave on it a web of his own coloring. Scott IS generally considered as a historical novelist; but Cooper's historical novels are not his chief title to fame. In- deed, the best of them are scarcely to be classed at all as histor- ical novels in the narrower sense, since they do not seek to evoke the manners and the man of long ago. The "Spy' and the "Pilot" deal with the American Revolution; and this was hardly more remote from Cooper than were the Napoleonic wars from Thackeray when he wrote "Vanity Fair", which we accept now rather as a picture of society contemporary with the author, than as a historical novel, True romance does not require the remoteness of the past; and it is not the real artist, but the magic-lantern operator, who has to have the room darkened before he can display his pictures from life. The revolutionary conflict had come to a happy conclusion less than two score years before Cooper chose to put it into fiction, and he had many friends who were survivors of the strife. That war was nearer to him than the Civil War is to us to-day. There was no strain of the imagination needful before he could put himself back in the times that tried men's souls; and he was not com- pelled to step off his own shadow, as Scott vainly strove to do when he composed "Ivanhoe" and "yuentin Durward". The "Pilot" is like the "Spy" in that it is a novel of the American revolution, although its scenes are not on the land, but on the ocean mainly, and also in that the nameless hero is a seemingly enigmatic yet fundamentally simple character, like the darkly glimpsed figure of Harvey Birch. Although the "Pilot" is the result of a desire to deal more effectively with life on the blue water than had been accomplished in the "Pirate", BO story of Cooper's more clearly reveals his real independence of Scott. The manner may be more or less similar; but the matter is wholly unlike, and so is the point of view. Scott is a landsman, a dweller in court-rooms and libraries; Cooper is a sailor, a man of the ocean, with a tang of the salt air in him. When he sailed before the mast in the merchant marine, he had bunked with the able seamen in the forecastle, and he knew them through and through. When he received his commission in the U6 THURSDAY, AUGUST 8, J907. navy, he gained an equal intimacy with the officers of the ward- room. When he set out to tell the first sea-tale ever attempted, he was writing out of the fullness of knowledge, and he was ac- complishing a labor of love. It is not easy for us now to perceive that the "Pilot" was a most daring experiment in fiction. No one had ever ventured to lay a story boldly on the sea and to seek for interest in the handling of a ship. Now and again, it is true, an episode or two of a novel had taken place on the ocean; and storms at sea had tempted the pens of the poets. But the novelists and the poets were landsmen, all of them; and they could not choose but take the landsman's attitude of dread rather than the sailor's attitude of delight. They had never felt the joy of the seaman, when the wind blows high and the giant surges sweep ahead, and there is no land within a hundred leagues. Cooper was a novelist and a poet and also a ssailor-man; he knew ships because he had lived in them and loved them; he knew seamen because he had lived with them and appreciated their special qualities. There is a storm in the "Odyssey"; bit Homer was a lands- man who looked at the sea with the eyes ol a landsman, even if be may have made a few coasting trips between the mainland and the isles of Greece. There is a storm in the "i^neid" also, but Vergil achieved only a studio-piece, a cento from the Greek poets. Robinson Crusoe, mariner of York, was wrecked by a gale and cast away; but although Defoe had crossed the chan- nel and had perhaps even braved the Bay of Biscay, he dealt with the storm cnly as a device to get his hero alone on an island. Smollett had been a surgeon's aiate in the navy, and had sailed the Western Ocean; but his eye was open only for the strange humors of seafaring men, and there is no love for the sea in any of his comic chronicles, no understanding o' its might and its mystery. Bcrnardin de Saint-Pierre had gone on long voyages in distant waters, and he was able to call up a tor- nado to make an end of "Paul and Virginia"- but he was only an artist in emotional description; he did not know the sea and love it as a sailor knows it and loves it. Scott in the "Pirate" had proved again the landsman's incapacity to get full val* e out of a sea-theme; and it was this storv of Scott's which mcved Cooper to undertake the "Pilot". THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. 117 Here at last was the real thing, a story of the ocean, of ves- sels manoeuvring, of sailors as they are, — the work of a sailor who was also a teller of tales, a creator of character, a poet. Here was the formula to be handed down to those who might come after, to Melville and to Marryat, — good story-tellers, both of them, but lacking Cooper's double experience as a sailor before the mast in a merchant vessel, and as an oBBcer on the quarterdeck of a mar-of-war. The very novelty of the "Pilot," its originality, seemed to the author's friends dangerous, and they discouraged him. Perhaps this is the reason why the sto- ry is a little slow in getting under way. and why the author sometimes tacks more than once before coming to close quarters. There are a few scenes on land, far less interesting than those at sea. But how sympathetically the character of Long Tom Coffin is presented! How vie^orous and how humorous is the pinning of the British officer to the mast by Long Tom's har- poon! How superb is the account of the ship working off-shore in a gale! It is no wonder that the French naval historian, Admiral Jurien de la Graviere, declared that "he could never read it without his pulse thrilling again with the joy of seamanship." Heartened by the cordial acceptance of this first sea-tale, Cooper soon spun another yarn, the "Red Rover," the action of which was laid wholly on the ocean, — after the opening chap- ters. In none of his novels does Cooper better display bis mas- tery of narrative, and his power of sustaining interest. There- after he could not long be kept away from salt-water; he wrote sea-tale after sea-tale, until there were half a score ot them, set- ting forth the most varied aspects of the unstable element. In "Wing-and-Wing" he skirted the lovely shores of the Mediter- ranean; and in the "Two Admirals" he set in array a goodly fleet on the Atlantic. Although these ten sea-tales are not all oi equal excellence, they are all proofs of his love for life afloat, of his insight into the shifting moods of nature, and of his un- derstanding of the hardy men who go down to the sea in ships. They all reveal his ability make the average reader perceive and enjoy technical operations. They are all more or less touched ■with the poetry of the sea, and instinct with the gliding grace of the vessels themselves. Cooper's "ships live", so Captain Mahan has informed us; * 'they are handled as ships then were 118 THURSDAY, AUGUST 8, 1907. and act as ships still would act under the circumstances". And the historian ot sea-power holds that the water is "a noble field for the story-teller, for of all inanimate objects, a sailing ship in her vivid movement most nearly simulates life." "Cooper of the wood and wave, ''as Stevenson affectionally termed him. is not more at home on the ocean than he is in the forest. Fine as are the sea-tales, they are surpassed in power and in popularity by the five stories in which the career of Leatherstocking- is traced from youth to old age. In the char- acter typified in Leatherstocking, Lowell found "the protagonist of our New World epic, a figure as poetic as that of Achilles, as ideally representative as that of Don Quixote, as romantic in his relation to our homespun and plbeian myths as Arthur in his to his mailed and plumed cycle of chivalry". And Thackeray declared that he liked Scott's, manly and unassuming heroes, but he avowed that he thought Cooper's were quite their equals and that "perhaps Leatherstocking is better than any one in Scott's lot. La Longue Carabine is one of the great prize-men of fiction. He ranks with your Uncle Toby, Sir Roger de Cov- erley. Falstaff — heroic figures all, American or British; and the artist has deserved well of his country who devised him." Per- haps there is no better proof of Cooper's genuine power than that he can insist on Leatherstocking's goodness, — a dangerous gift for a novelist to bestow on a man, — and that he can show us Leatherstocking declining the advances of a handsome wo- man, — a dangerous position for a novelist to put a man in,— without any reader ever having felt inclined to think Leather- stocking a prig. We believe in his simple-minded goodness; and he keeps our sympathy in his rejection of Judith as in Ma- bel's rejection of him. Cooper was shrewd in his judgment of his own works; he said himself that "if anything from the pen of the writer of these romances is at all to outlive himself, it is, unquestionably, the series of the "Leatherstocking Tales." For the deserved pop- ularity of this series, abiding now nearly three score years since the author's death, there are many reasons besides the noble simplicity and the sturdy veracity of the central character. There are other figures as fresh and as real. There is Hurry Harry; there is Ishmael Bush; both of them necessary types of THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. 119 men bred on the border. There are Chingachgook and Uncas and Hardheart, good men and true. There is all the glamour of frontier life, now faded forever. There is the underlying poetry of the unbroken forest and of the sweeping prairie, of the broad lakes, and of the rapid streams. There are linked adven- tures of breathless interest, studded with moments of poignant emotion, — the death-grip of the wounded Indian over the falls, in the "Last of the Mohicans," the implacable execution of the traitor in the "Prairie," and many another in the other tales, scarcely less tense with iragedy. There is the rich gilt of nar- rative; there are vigor and accuracy of description. There is unfailing fertility of invention; and there is also the larger interpreting imagination. There are pictures of resourcefulness in the presence of danger, and of courage in the face of death. There is unstrained pathos. And behind all these things, there is the author himself, delighting in his work and sustaining his story by his manly wisdom and his elemental force. There would be no need to say more about this series, if it had not been attacked for one of its most salient characteristics, — for its presentation of the red men with whom the white men of the forest and the prairie were ever at war. Scorn has been heaped high on Cooper's Indians; they have been denounced as wooden images, fit only to stand outside cigar stores; and they have been described as belonging to "an extinct tribe that never existed." The first of these criticisms may be dismissed as fool- ish; whether true or false, Chiugachgook and Uncas and Hard- heart are alive. The color on their cheeks is not redder than the blood in their veins. Just as West, when he first beheld the Apollo Belvidere, was made to think of a Mohawk brave, so Longfellow, at a performance of Corneiile's "Cid" by the Come- iie-Francaise, was reminded of Cooper's Indians "by its rude fower, and a certain force and roughness." The second charge, however, that they are not taken from life, calls for considera» iion. Parkman, for example (to be cited always with the ut- aost respect), held Cooper's Indians to be false to the fact as he had seen it himself. But the aborigines have been studied more sympathetically in the sixty years that have elapsed since Park- man tramped the Oregon trail; and our riper knowledge has J20 THURSDAY. AUGUST 8. 1907. revealed a poetry in the red man and a picturesqueness very like those with which Cooper endowed him. It is often assumed that we are indebted to Cooper tor the idealized "noble savage," whom Rousseau evolved from his in- ner consciousness, and who is as remote as possible from the real man at any stage of his social evolution. But this noble savage is not to be discovered anywhere in Cooper's stories. As Mr. Brownell has recently pointed out, Cooper does not at all ideal- ize the red man; "in general, he endow? the Indian with traits which would be approved even by the ranchman, the rn<=:tler, or the army ofiScer. " And his Indians are the result of early inti- macy and of conscientious study. His daughter has told us how he followed the frequent Indian delegations from town to town, observing them care'ully, conversing with them freely, and impressed "with the vein of poetry and of laconic eloquence marking their brief speeches." If there is any lack of faithfulness in Cooper's presentation of the Indian character, it is due tc the fact that he was a ro- mancer, and therefore an optimist, bent on making the best of things. He told the truth as he saw it and nothing but the truth; but he did not always tell the whole truth. The Indian was rising from savagery into barbarism, with all that this implies; and Cooper f uts before us the Indian's courage and his fortitude, leaving more or less in the shad w the Indian's feroc- ity and his cruelty, i hat this was Cooper's intent is plain from a passage in the preface to the "Leatherstocking Tales, " where- in he declares that "it is the privilege of all writers of fiction, mere particularly when their works aspire to the elevation of romances, to present the beau ideal of their characters to the reader. This it is which constitutes poetry, and to suppose that the red man is to oe represented only in the squalid misery or in the degraded state that certainly more or less belongs to his condition, is, we apprehend, taking a very narrow view of an autlior's privileges." Here again Cooper was akin to Scott, who chose to dwell only on the bright side of chivalry and to picture the merry England of Richard Lionheart as a pleasanter period to live in than it could have been in reality. Cooper's red men are probably closer to the actual tacts than Scott's black knights and white ladies. And when all is said, Chingachgook and THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. ilt Uncas and Hardheart. even if not completely truthful, jus- tify themselves; they linger long in the memory; they stand forth boldly, for their author has breathed into them the breath of life. Parkman might find fault with the validity of Cooper's Indians' but he had been taken captive by their vitality. There was a time when the historian was "so identified with the nov- elist's red heroes that he dreamed of them". Just as it was the reading of Scott's romances which stirred Thierry to write the history of the Norman Conquest, so it was the reading of Coop- er's romances which started Parkman on his life-long task, the history of the protracted struggle between France and England here in America. Probably it was Cooper also, quite as much as Parkman, who moved another American historian to narrate the successive stages of the "Winning of the West;" and Mr. Roosevelt has been glad alwavs to testify to the stern reality of Cooper's steadfast borderers. This reveals to us that, underlying the "Leatheistocking Tales" and lending significance to them, is the fact that they set forth imaginary episodes in a real struggle, — in that long and inevitable conflict between two opposing civilizations, which looms larger than any mere war,and which has true epic grandeur in the clash of contending racial ideals. This is what lends to the •'Leatherstocking Tales" their largeness; and this is what gives them their major meaning for us. They help to explain how it was that these United States came to be what they are. Cooper has told us in the introduction to the "Spy" that, after he had published his empty imitation of a British novel, it became a matter of reproach among his friends that "he, an American in heart as in birth," should have depicted "a state of society so diflferent from that to which he belonged." This reproach it was which moved him to undertake the "Spy", in which "he chose patriotism for his theme". And patriotism is the theme of all his greater books. Cooper was intensely American in his feeling, and yet hfoadly cosmopolitan in his outlook on the world. Not for Bothing had he been an officer in the American navy and also a long sojourner in Europe. He had a noble detachment from all that was petty and temporary. In his novels he is curiously 122 THURSDAY, AUGUST , J907. fair to all manner of foreigners, possessing apparently the sub- tle sympathy which gives understanding. And here he stands in striking contrast with only too many of his countrymen four score years ago, who were at one and the same time provincial in their boastfulness and colonial in their subservient deference to the opinion of the mother-country. Cooper was stanchly patriotic; "with him", so Professor Lounsbury tells us, "love of country was not a sentiment, it was a passion". Perhaps be- cause of his unbounded faith in the future of his native land, be was not blind to her present faults and while he "defended bis country from detractors abroad, he sought to save her from flat- terers at home", — to borrow Bryant's apt phrase. Lowell was to perform a similar service half a century later and i: isa grati- fying proof of our growth in independence, that Lowell aroused scarcely a tithe of the vindictive animosity which vented itself on Cooper, and which not only assailed the man, but also depre- ciated the author. The elder Dana dwelt upon Cooper's "self-reliance and civil courage, which would with equal freedom speak out in the face of the people, whether they were friendly or adverse''. Civic courage is a virtue none too common, even nowadays; and Cooper possessed it in a high degree. It needs to be noted also that Cooper's opinions upon public matters were not casual or '"reakish ; they were founded on principle. He had given careful consider- ation to the affairs of state and he had a political philosophy of his own, more solidly buttressed than we can discover in the equipment of any other writer of romance of his century, whether American or European. Recall the thinness of Dick- ens's political theories, for example, or of Hawthorne's. Even Hugo's are found on analysis tc be vague and fantastic. "Coop- ers politics, as Mr. Brownell has reminc'ed us. "are rational, discriminating, and suggesive. He knew men as Lincoln knew them — which is to say very differently from Dumas and Steven- son.'' There is no demand on any of us that we shall accept Cooper's political theories, or reduce them to a system. It is enough that he had a body of doctrine, complete and clear, which gives a certain solicity to his fiction, lacking in that of all the others who have undertaken the tale of adventure. It is the triple duty of the novelist and of the dramatist t* THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL, 123 make us see, to make us feel, and to make us think. Cooper succeeded in making his readers think, even though they might resent it, because he had done his own thinking in advance. And his thinking had not been done in a vacuum; he was not only shrewd and sagacious, he had also an immense variety of information, not merely upon the ocean and the forest, but upon subjects as remote as horticulture and agriculture and stock- raising. His friends were "struck with the inexhaustible vivac- ity of his conversation and the minuteness of his knowledge in everything which depended upon acuteness of observation and exactness of recollection." When all is said, Cooper stands forth a large man, in him- self, in his work, and in the range of his influence. If we may judge an author by the number of those he has stimulated, Cooper must take high rank. He has stirred a host of other writers, often men who pursued wholly different artistic ideals. Redrew from Balzac "roars of pleasure and admiration and Dnmas avowedly imitated him in the 'Mohicans of Paris'. Mr. Kipling once remarked to me, after a rereading of Cooper, that he had come across scene after scene which he knew already in the narratives of later novelists, and that a host of later writ- ers had been going to Cooper's works, as to a storehouse of effec- tive situations where they could help themselves, so fertile in invention was the earlier American author. Kven Thackeray did not disdain to borrow from him the hint of one of his noblest chapters; and Poe may have taken over the suggestion of the method of his marvelously acute M. Dupin from the skill with which Cooper's redskins followed a trail blind to eyes less acute than theirs. Better than any other American author, save Poe, so Professor Trent has asserted. Cooper, "stands the test of cos- mopolitan fame"; and his share in the swift spreading of the romantic movement throughout Europe is almost, if not quite, eqMal to the share of Scott and of Byron. A poet, a teller of tales which moved many others to imita- tion and from which many others might borrow, he was above all else a creator of characters, which could not be taken from him. It is by the characters he brings into being that a novel- ist survives; and it is by this test that he must abide. And cer- tain of the wisest critics of the nineteenth century have testified 124 THURSDAY, AUGUST 8, J907. to Cooper's power of giving- life to creatures that the world will not willingly let die. Lowell made sure that Natty Bumppo "Won't 20 to oblivion quicker Than Adams the parson and Primrose the vicar." Sainte-Beuve declared that Cooper possessed that ' 'creative faculty which brings into the world new characters, and by vir- tue of which Rabelais produced Panurge, Le Sage Gil- Bias, and Richardson Pamela. There can be no higher praise than this. Cooper deserved it; and by so deserving it, as Thackeray said, he deserved well of his country. Hon. John Worthington introducing Mr. Clinton ScoUard. said: In every period of history the people when celebrating, grand events, have called to their aid the services of the poet. His inspired thought and fitting words, crystalized in rhymic verse have ever served to perpetuate the deeds and honors of men. James Fenimore Cooper wrote occasional verse, but he never claimed to be a poet. Yet in the larger sense he was a poet. For he was a maker, a creator, a seer. It is fitting that to this graphic poet of primeval forest and lake, some tribute should here be paid by one who has gained modern renown through a grace and a delicacy of lyric power which Cooper would have been the first to admit e. I have the honor of intro- ducing the poet of the day, Clinton Scollard: Mr. Scollard then gave the following poem. 'CHILDREN OF ROMANCE/' In .Memory of James Fenimore Cooper. Where round Hellenic headlands the blue seas Sweep with melodious beat, Romance was born, "Within her eyes the untrammeled ecstacies And ardors of the morn. Her impulses are glad as those that run At nesting time from wing to shimmering wing, That mount from root to bough-top when the sun Loosens the sap in spring. And since her raciant birth-hour long ago She hath bequeathed her ichor and her zest — Kindling her virile children with the glow From her impassioned breast. She was the soul of chivalry when night — Those purblind ages, sanguine and obscure — Oppressed mankind, hers was the torch to light Trouvere and Troubadour. She was to Marlowe an inspiring ray; No vital charm from Shakespeare she concealed; She walked with Sidney through that last red day On Zutphen's fatal field. She was a voice heroic, eloquent, With many a virginal and varied chord, The gamut of a mighty instrument. To him of Abbotsford. And unto him we hail and hold our own, Our pioneer, for whom green laurels be, She spake in accents of primeval tone From forest and from sea. Ope but the record of his storied page And learn how loyally he worshipped herl 126 THURSDAY, AUGUST 8, J907 Through him we gain a precious heritage — A new interpreter. Soon will the red man rest beneath the mould, Naught but a name, a vision-vanished race; And yet through Cooper's genius will he hold An unforgotten place. But yesterday at twilight-time I strayed, And heard the wood-thrush chant its evening mass From out the interbraiding boughs that shade The shores of Glimmer-Glass. Cleaving the distance on its vibrant course, Silvered the soft insistence of a bell, And o'er the Susquehannas tranquil course The velvet shadows fell. They gather where the great Romancer slept — Whose fancy many a form with life imbued — In that Gods Acre where he long has kept Earth's final quietude. [ The hour was frought with magic, tor it brought Forth from the neighboring isleways of the pine Those whom his wrapt imagination wrought. Line upon silent line. First the immortal woodsman, gun on arm, Deerslayer — Pathfinder here to the last, The spell of whose incomparable charm O'er all our hearts is cast. And those high-natured warriors of the wild, Father and son, of the undaunted look — Beloved Uncas, knightly forest child, And noble Chingachgook. And swarthy seamen, savoring of the surge. Rovers upon the unconquerable main, Triumphant, although winds and waters merge, O'er peril and o'er pain. And shadowy others — bravo, patriot, maid — From many a land, our own and alien climes; THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. 127 Dim wraiths! — and yet the figment of a shade The master's touch sublimes. Such was the pageant of my vesper dream While fluctuant starlight round m: fire flies threw, And heavenly starlight gilded with its gleam Otsego's breadth of blue. Ah, he may sleep, the magician whose pen Transfigured out cf naught such pulsing lives, Yet midst the ceaseless moil of mortal men His spirit still survives. Here where he dwelt and strove in human guise Around whose name are quenchless lustres shed, What lips shall dare, in unbelieving wise, Deciare that he is dead? In yonder sacred garth his dust may rest, But that so potent essence which was he Strides with the sunlight up the mountain crest More animate than we. The lake he loved, the forest paths his feet In other days were wont to fare along, Are lush with summer opulence, are sweet With sunshine and with song. The air is tinct with attar faint and fine That morning from the dewy loam distills; Through it, with what transcendent beauty shine His wooded home-land hills! Here let us leave him, one with mother-earth That yielded him so pure and rich a store, One with her mood of primal grief and mirth Till tine shall be no more! X his closed the Literary Excercises. The display of Paine's fire-works in the evening was much the finest ever seen in Cooperstown. They were exhibited on a float at the foot of Pioneer street and witnessed by an immense crowd both on shore and lake. Two distinguished men of the lionr, one of the past and one of the present, divided the honors 125 THURSDAY, AUGUST 8, J907. of picturesque illumination — both Fenimore Cooper and Bishop Potter were easily recognisable and cheered by the spectators. The cataract of fire was a wonderful exhibit. Centennial Exercises Friday and Saturday, August 9th and 10th. Friday was characterized by the arrival, encampment, parade and guard mount of the Second Battalion of the 10th Regiment and Company G of Oneonta. The Oneonta company arrived at 10 o'clock and returned that night. The Albany companies, four in number, arrived about 11 o'clock in command of Major Chas. Staats. The presence of the military companies added much to the Centennial and their appearance on parade was witnessed with great interest. Saturday the Battalion gave a drill and inspection on Main street. Saturday evening the ofiBcers were entertained at dinner at Five-Mile Point by mem- bers ot the local committee. The Battalion left for home Sun- day afternoon about 4 o'clock. Saturday the military, with ball games, band concerts and moving pictures finished the entertainment. The Marion Fancy Military Co., a feature not advertised, was an added attraction Saturday afternoon and evening when they gave two exhibitions on the street. Their rapid marching and handling of their rifles was marvelous and their agility in scaling a 12foot wall a surprise. The Military Parade. Main Street From the Kast. The Loan Exhibits. The chairman of the Loan Exhibits report is, in part, xi follows : The generous management of the Young Men's Christian Association placed almost the entire second floor of their beaiF tiful and commodious building at the disposal of the loan exhibit committee. While the major part of the articles showu belonged to the permanent exhibit yet very many rare and his- toric antiques were loaned for the week only. The book in which the loans were permanently recorded and classified shows that 211 exhibits were placed irrespective of the oil paintings and medallions. Each was placed in one of eight classes aac placarded with the ofiScial blank of the committee. Upon entering the building the visitors were asked to regis- ter. But the crush was too great at times to permit of any- thing like complete returns. For instance on one day 1,50C> were registered before 5 o'clock. However, a careful estimate based on actual registrations places the number visiting the exhibits at 5,000 for the entire week. Some registered from as far west as Oregon, others from as far south as Havana. In the first hall were glass cases containing rare books printed in Cooperstown a hundred years ago, historical doc- uments and land indentures dating back to 1793, and exquisite needle work with interesting associations. Here the visitor paused to view a dinner-party invitation issued by George Washington to Judge William Cooper, the inkwell, pen-holder, and signature of J. Fenimore Cooper, and the hand-made satic wedding slippers of Mrs. Fenimore Cooper. On a long table were placed curious household utensils, — mortar and pestle, wrought iron toaster, and irons, fireplace bellows, foot warmer, snuff-box, brass candlestick with tray and snuffers, candle molds, and the ingenious betty lamp. Here were also quaint and rare dishes, the process of whose making in some cases now lost, — copper and silver lustre, black basalt, old blue china, lowestoft, pewer, britannia, and silver. Around the windows hung brass warm- mo THE LOAN EXHIBITS, rag pans, silver headed canes, Mexican rifles, Revolutionary flintlock?^, and sidearms, most of them marked by historic con- nections. On the side walls hung fine old garments worn by promincni local personages at high receptions and balls. Here was the quiet Quaker garb worn by Judge Nelson's wife, here a beautiful flowered silk ball dress worn by Mrs. John Russell, md here a magenta silk worn by Mrs. J. Fenimore Cooper. Ihese dresses were of superior material and workmanship, well preserved in color and fold. The second hall was arranged as an Art gallery. The exhibit included paintings of Cooperstown's most famous char- acters of the past, — Col. Charles Stewart, Commissary General an Washington's staff, Mr. and Mrs. James Averell, Mr. Wm. H. Averell, George Pomeroy, Theodore Keese, Judge and Mrs. Samuel Nelson, Mr. and Mrs. John H. Prentiss, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Campbell, Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Wortbiugton, George Clarke, James Averell, Mr. and Mrs. John M. Bowers, Mrs. Elizabeth Cooper seated in Otsego Hall, and J. Fenimore Cooper as he appeared at 35 and again at 60. Some of these were T),ainted by S. F. B. Morse afterwards more famous as an inventor. Oarmen Silva, Queen of Roumania, sent her photograph and Aatograph, a most beautiful tribute to Cooper. Among the landscapes were several fine old paintings of Otsego Lake loaned by Theodore Turner, Mrs. Campbell Smith, and Mrs. H. C. Potter. In the center of the hall were glass cases containing medallions and daguerreotypes. Among the Miniatures were those of the mother and grandmother of Mr. J. R. Worthington, Col. Stewart, Mrs. Martha Wilson, Mr. John M. Bowers, Mrs. George Clarke, Mrs. Duncan C. Pell, Miss Georgina Pell, Mr. Edward Clark, Mr. George Pomeroy, Mrs. Theodore Keese, Mrs. I»yman Foot. There was also a very interesting pencil drawing of the children of James Fenimore Cooper taken when the youngest child, Paul, was about seven years old. The third hall contained by far the most valuable collection. Many of the articles treasured here can not be duplicated in the museums of the great universities. Particularly noteworthy is the collection of Indian relics. But inasmuch as this exhibit will remain intact it need not be further mentioned in this brief sketch. Tributes to Cooper and Coop- erstown. Written by Well- known Writers and Scholars. For Publication on the Occasion of Cooperstown*s Centennial Celebration, "The Centennial Celebration of the town of the founder of strictly American romance will be a veritably notable event." EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN. The Spirit of the Place. There is a little lake among the hills, A silver, shining lake, called Glimmerglass, Pervaded by a spirit kind, which fills The sunshine and the floating clouds that mass Themselves above it, with a quietness That falls like music on a tired heart, And leaves upon the mind sweet thoughts which bless The solitude of summer. Then depart With me along the fragrant wooded shore And lend yourself unto this spirit fair. The poet who lived here, is now no more, But you will find his pictures painted there Across the hills and as the twilight falls, Will hear the echo of a voice that calls. MARY BORDEN. J32 TRIBUTES TO COOPER AND COOPERSTOWN. Letter from Rev. Dr. Morgan Dix. Mount Kisco, N. Y., July 25th, 1907. John Worthington, Esq., Chairman Literary Committee. My Dear Sir : I am much indebted to you for your letter inviting some words expressive of my interest in the Cooperstown Centen- nial Celebration. I can make no contribution which would add to the value of those which will be written or spoken on that occasion; for surely nothing will be lacking which heart could speak or hand indite, on the subject now engaging your atten- tion. The name and memory of James Fenimore Cooper; how precious to our people! And where in any place, or when any time, did lustrous jewel shine in more beautiful setting? The fame of the great novelist is immortal; we read his works over and over again, with new delight; while, in associating that name with the peaceful village, the lovley lake, the mountains, and the scenery of the region, we find complete correspondeace between the man and his home; as if nature had done her best to provide a shrine for the wonderful genius, the brilliant writer, the pure, high-toned religious soul. I wish it were possible for me to be with you on the 4th of August, and during the ensuing week, and observe the order of the events of those days. As that is a pleasure which I am compelled to forego, may these few words be accepted in lieu of a personal appearance at your celebration. I remain, Very truly yours, MORGAN DIX. From Edward Everett Hale. Boston, Mass., June 24, 1907. Dear Sir: I thank you for your letter. I wish I could be with you at your celebration. We owe Cooper a great deal more than the youngsters in , ' 1 ^^^l&^^B^^H vfQIuV ij IP I^^^^^HHRSMpi^^HHj^^^ ^^H^^RLlVrr' ^ n 1 ^■SbL ^^HMpi 1 B'% '^^^^^ ' I^^J^SHhI^^ ftHfi 1 Wr^W?^ ■.■'•s^3 1 ^nwrofv^fW^ . j^^H^ra«|gB|nitei y ' VaH 1 ■i^i.,sMmK^ Wtkrii'^t--^' X,Kf '-• T^-^nri"tm^^fiioV- m^^^ Iirn ¥ffffi-i[? ^1 Float No. 1. Before the "Wliite >1an Came. Float No.'.i. George Washington in front of his Tent. THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL J33 Literary Life know. I am told that to this hour, you will find Cooper's novels in French bookstores, where you can find no other American book. It is easy to laugh at some of the imitations of Sir Walter Scott in the earlier books. But those who laugh are perhaps these who do not know how Scott was worshipped then among' all intelligent people who could read English. I had the honor to write the introduction to Appleton's edi- tion of "The Pioneers". I was glad to hear that the sales of Cooper's historical novels are as large now as they ever were. You need not say at the celebration, that within an hour of my first arrival in Cooperstown in 1844, I went to the bookstore to buy "The Pioneers", and that the dealer had never heard of it! This would not happen there in 1907. Truly your greatly obliged, EDWARD EVERETT HALE- To John Worthington, Esq., Chairman, etc. Mr. Alden's Tribute. Editorial Rooms, Harper's Magazine, New York. Dear Mr. Worthington, Thirty-six years ago Miss Constance Fen- imore Woolson contributed to Harper's Magazine an article, entitled, "The Haunted Lake", a beautiful memorial to her grand-uncle, James Fenimore Cooper. The article contained a poem from her pen, two stanzas of which are especially appro* priate to the occasion celebrated, during the coming week. "Thrice blest art thou in every curling wavelet, In every floating water-lily sweet. From the old Lion at thy northern boundary, To fair Mount Vision sleeping at thy feet. "A master's hand painted all thy beauties, A master's hand hath peopled all thy shores With wraiths of mighty hunters and fair maidens. Haunting thy forest glades forever more." It is with Lake Otsego that we associate our first great nov- J34 TRIBUTES TO COOPER AND COQPERSTOWN. elist, in his childhood and in his raaturit}-. But we do not for- get his sea-faring years from which came the inspiration of such romances as "Water-Witch", "Wing and Wing", nor the years ■when in New York City he was the associate of Irving and Bry- ant and Halleck; nor the period of his sojourn in Europe where he and Irving were then the only representatives of American Literature. Cooper had no predecessor and no successor in his own field of fiction; he stood alone. He did not write fiction in the modern sense, but romances: Yet he was a creator, and his "Natty" ■will stand forever as the most original of pioneer characters. No writer has been so successful in the portrayal of American frontier life. Whatever his defects in the light of advanced criticism, he^holds a lasting place in American Literature. H. M. ALDEN. Ik Marvel. Edgewood, New Haven, 23rd July, 1907. My Dear Mr. Worthington, I have delayed replying to your esteemed favor of the 3rd inst.— hoping that some cherry gap in the chronic invalidism which 85 fastens upon one — would enable me to send you somewhat in the vein j-ou suggest; but no such gap comes! I regret this the more, since recalling the fact that my first printed effusion (in college days) was a sophomoric appreciation of J. F. Cooper. I further recalled visiting Cooperstown some- where between 1838 and 1845 for a sight of Otsego Hall, and •was also, a most interested attendant upon that great memorial meeting (in honor of J. F. Cooper) when Daniel Webster and Washington Irving were present upon the platform and contrib- uted in their ways to make the occasion memorable. I am glad Mr. Lounsbury is to be present with you; no more just expositor of the virtues and notable qualities of J. F. Cooper — our great colonial novelist — could be found. Hoping that your purpose will meet with the success it deserves, I remain, Yours very respectfully, DONALD G. MITCHELL. '■^'■t '*.**' fe*-. ■■ '.' i" ^a.V *#|. wu '.4,, %■ .^"'^ ^-^ [ IS 1^ 1 ^" './ IB .'irm t i.\ J,« ♦' -^•Sl^~~~~^' MT "^"l. i '^ '^^^tka^J^'^^^m^ m 1M fef^ •>Tj«*»'''«*"i^ ^hO f,-^ w^t w% Hi 7 V^ .i?'5 s ^ ^^^^'~" " '•• ,-T--,^SBP^BBES y-iin W bLs- Float >o. 3. <».\ Cart. ^^ '. ' ' ■•• •* 1 ,* '^i'^Se if p^- ,_ . — — ^,. % ^^/ fr /<«ifSl ^^^^^mLt- ■^^IJ^ ^» -Ill ' - ■ - » ■,^ Le3'her3loch,n^\, flj^^V ^^ "" Float No. 4. L,eatlierstocking. THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL J'S John Burroughs. West Park, N. Y., April 26, 1907. Mj dear Mr. Worthington, Pardon me for saying that I am sur- prised that anyone should think I am the man to write a poem for any such occasion as you mention. My muse went silent several years ago, but in her most vociferous period she would have grown dumb at your suggestion. Seriously I wish I could do what you ask, but I can not. I have many fond raemoriea of Cooperstown. I went to the old Seminary there fifty-one years ago this April and its beautiful scenery has floated through ng? dreams ever since. Let some of our younger bards plume themselves on tire occasion of your celebration — Mr. Gilder, Henry VanDyke, Mr, Moody or Florence Wilkinson. Thanking you for the honor you would confer upon me,3 I am, Very sincerely yours, JOHN BURROUGHS. James Fenimore Cooper from "American Prose/ (N. Y. Macmillan Co. 1898.) "Cooper » » » inaugurated three especial classes of fic- tion — the novel of the American Revolution, the Indian nov^l and the sea novel; and in each case he produced a class of works which * * * have secured a permanence and a width of range unequaled in the English language, save by Scott alone * * * "If he did not create permanent characters in Harves? Birch, the Spy; Leatherstocking, the Woodsman; Long Totn Coffin, the Sailor; Chingachgook, the Indian; then there is n© such thing as literary creation." From the author, THOMAS WENT WORTH HIGGINSON, Cambridge, Mass., 1907, 36 TRIBUTES TO COOPERSTOWN AND COOPER. Admiral Dewey's Tribute. Navy Department, Office of The Admiral of the Navy, Washington, June 18, 1907. My dear sir : Success to the Centennial Celebration of the village of Cooperstown, — a village which in itself is now and will al- ways be a most beautiful memorial to the great American novel- wt^ James Fenimore Cooper. There is much about Cooper which gives to the Navy a jpecial interest in him; his early service as an officer nearly a century ago; his excellent history of the Navy which he fear- lessly wrote as he believed it to be; his "Lives of Distinguished American Naval Officers", and his many wonderful stories per- iaining to the sea. None appreciate more than the naval officers of the present day how much influence the writings of Cooper have had upon American young men; and as hi? stories never lose their inter- 8Bt, many future generations will yet receive benefit from them. GEORGE DEWEY. "Carmen Sylva" and Cooper. The Queen of a country in Eastern Europe seems so remote m every way from our Otsego hills and their literary traditions that it is interesting to knew of the admiration for Fenimore Cooper felt by such a sovereign. Queen Elisabeth of Roumania is famous not only as a wise and good queen, but also under her pen name "Carmen Sylva", as a gifted writer. In a letter recently written by her are the words, "Oh! haven't I read and enjoyed Fenimore Cooper! I should think so!'' This suggested the idea that Queen Elisabeth might be willing to send some brief message of appreciation of James Fenimore Cooper as a greeting to the people of Cooperstown on ihe occasion of the village centennial. An invitation to do so Float No. 5. Historic Stage Coach, Cooperstown to Catskills. Float N'o. 6. Modem Coaching:, F. Ambrose Clark's Four-in-Hand. THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL 137 was accordingly sent, to which she q^raciously replied. Her answer took a most pleasing form. It consisted of a large pho- tograph of herself, below which the Queen has written a mes- sage with her own hand. The portrait shows a beautitul woman with kind and attractive expression. Her hair is snow white, her dress white lace, about her neck is a rope of pearls; a narrow band of black velvet is worn as a head dress, from which a white veil falls down her back. This picture will b9 placed in the Cooperstown Museum. In her message, which follows, it will be noticed that the word 'poet' is used in the sense of 'author'. "Our hearts are lull of love for the great poet, our childhood's dearest friend. We can never thank him enough for all the joy he gave usl" Elisabeth, "Carmen Sylva". Bucarest, June, 1907. The portrait of the Queen of Roumania was accompanied by a letter from Baroness von Kranichfeld, Her Majesty's Secre- tary, and is as follows. Bucarest, Roumania, June 18th, 1907. Bv Her Majesty's Orders I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your interesting letter for which my Royal Mistress thanks you. Enclosed you will find a few words from Carmen Svlva's fertile pen whicn the great souled writer kindly deigns to send so that you may gladden the hearts of the good folk of Coopers- town on the first of August, when they celebrate the Centenary of their great man, Feniraore Cooper; a man whose works like thoss of Britain's Daniel Defoe, will ever be the joy of youth in all lands. In Germany, Cooper is particularly honored, for I do not suppose there is any school boy whose library does not contain his esciiing books. And not only is the school boy charmed by their wonders of courage, boldness, and the fine traits of noble character therein contained, but their elders still live under the spell of their magic. I myself can remember the enjoyment my sainted Husband and myself had one winter in reperusing Feni- more's works, snowed in at our Alpine home; and how they mads us feel young again by the remembrance of the joy they had given us in youth. Pure and good is all that they con- ns TRIBUTES TO COOPER AND COOPERSTOWN. tain, fit food for the young, and if they recount scenes of cruelty and treachery', they are of a race that knew no better; and vet was so noble and exalted in its calmer moments that I think no eye can retain its tears when we think of that race as disappear- ing from the globe, being obliged to give up their vast lands so glorious in their freedom, to intruders in whose characters we find no nobler parts. Excuse me for my words. I know that nations must rise and fall in the scale of destiny, that races must disappear to give place to others, and as with nations, so with families; but I think there is no more melancholy picture than that of the last of a grand race, be it white, red, black or yellow, or of a family whose last member is carried to the grave. And when nations and races and families have been noble and grand in their actions, have performed deeds af prowess and of virtue that the gods might envy, no man should be more respected by us who enjoy what they have lost than he who, like Fenimore Cooper, records those deeds of valour or generos- ity or patriotism and prevents the soul of the race from siuking as its body does into oblivion. Fenimore Cooper, then, shall live to all time, continuing to be the joy of youth in all quarters of the world, sowing seeds of valour in many a young heart, stirring up the spirits of both bov and girl to perform in after life deeds as courageous and splendid as his immortal heroes performed. Three loud cheers to the memory of Fenimore Cooper!!! And permitting a digression, it may interest you to hzarn that the first of August will be a great day here in Roumania, at least in Bucarest, for it will celebrate the first anniversary of the institution for the Blind of our Sovereign Queen EHsavata, in whose youthful mind doubtless Fenimore sowed some seeds of truth, for if it be correct that no person and no book ever goes through our mind without influencing them, certainly Cooper would be no exception. So please think of us on the first of August as we will think of you, and on that day memorable to us both let us praise THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL J39 tbe Lord for his o;ood gifts in whatever forte they come. I remain Yours faithfully, Baroness von Kranichfeld' Secretary to Her Majesty Elisabeth, Queen of Roumania." JOHN PEARSON. William Cooper. The bloodiest wave of border warfare broke on the western frontier of New York during the Revolution. The settlers were the victims of raids of Tories and Indians as well as of the more regular expeditions from Canada. It is not strange that no important settlements were undertaken — it is perhaps remark- able that many of the old ones were not abandoned during this period. When peace was restored and order once more reigned along the frontier, the long withheld speculation in land broke out violently and settlers were encouraged to buy farms and build homes in the wilderness so long made unsafe by the Indian, the Tory and the border raider. This outbreak of activity offered to men of enterprise with the love of adventure and speculation in their veins an opportunity to acquire wealth and often polit- ical importance. It was then that William Cooper, the founder of Coopers- town appeared on the scenes where the rest of his life was to be spent. He was born in Byberr ?, Pennsylvania, on December 2, 1754, and was married to Elizabeth Fenimore at Burlington, N. J., on December 12, 1775. He was living at Burlington when he made the settlement at Cooperstown ard in 1789 brought his family to the latter place. This settlement was the first impor- tant one undertaken after the war of the Revolution. It was known by the name of Cooperstown as early as 1786, but until 1791, when it became the county town, the settlement was fre- quently called the "Foot of the lake." On an old indenture now in the Museum at Cooperstown appears what purports to be a map of the "Improvements" then existing on the site of the present village about 1774. The 140 TRIBUTES TO COOPER AND COOPERSTOWN. "Improvements" shown by the map were few and were probably even less important in fact. Whatever they amounted to they "were the first on Otsego Lake and had practically disappeared when in 1785 Judge Cooper visited the site of Cooperstown, nor were there any evidences of the temporary occupation of Hart- wick which is said to have taken place when he thought that his patent reached the south end of Otsego Lake. In one of a series of letters written by Cooper to William Sampson in 1807 and published in Dublin in 1810, he describes his first trip to Otsego as follows: "In 1785 I visited the rough and hilly country of Otsego, where there existed not an inhabi- tant, nor tiny trace of a road; I was aloce, three hundred miles from home, without bread, meat, or food of any kind; fire and fishing tackle were my only means of subsistence I caught trout in the brook ard roasted them on the ashes. My horse fed on the grass that grew by the edge of the waters. I laid me down to sleep in my watch coat, nothing but the melancholy Wilderness around me. In this way I explored the country, formed my plans of future ^-ettlsment, and meditated upon the spot where a place of trade or a village should afterwards be established." He further tells Sampson that in May, 1786, he opened the sale of forty thousand acres of land which was all taken up in sixteen days. This land included the present site of Cooperstown and the purchasers at this sale were the sattlers of the village and of this part of Otsego County. These letters contain a graphic description of the struggles of the early settlers. Famine nearly destroyed the settlement in 178'>, and only the appearance in the Susquehanna Kiver of large quantities of herring saved it by supplying food for the winter, William Cooper lived among the settlers and made common cause with them in these early struggles. He spent his private means for the common good, and eventually saw the settlement grow into a thriving frontier town. He gathered the settlers together and led them in the necessary work of bridge and road building. He opened a store to supply them with necessaries; gave them credit and gathered together and sold for them the first cummercial products of the settlement — wood ashes and maple sugar Among the stories of these early days which have survived, and which are characteristic of the times andthe man, is one of Float No. ~. Family Coach of Ex-Gov. John A. Dix. Float No. 8. Neptune— Old Hand Fire Engine. THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL Hi Judge Cooper's having offered a lot of one hundred and fifty acres of land to any man on the patent who could throw him. Tradition says that he was finally thrown and the lot conveyed to his conqueror. The writer some years ago had a curious con- firmation of this story. He was introduced by the late E. D. Palmer of Albany to a gentleman who in the course of conversa- tion said that his grandfather had thrown Judge Cooper in a wrestling match under the following circumstances: After a bad season the tenants of a township owned by the Judge found themselves unable to pay their interest. The matter was dis- cussed at a public meeting, and one of their number selected to go to Cooperstown and arrange for delay in payment. As the story runs, the ambassador called on Judge Cooper and laid be- fore him the object of his call. The Judge proposed a wrestling match with the understanding that if he were thrown he would give receipts in full for all interest, while if he won it was to be paid. The challenge was accepted, the Judge thrown and the champion returned home triumphant bearing the receipts. This may be the same story in a different form, for such con- tests have been frequent. They must have been an expensive amusement unless the landlord was invincible. However, a lot in those days could have had no very grea value, for once when Jugde Cooper's eldest son was showing the sights of New York to his youngest brother he took him to a pasty shop and after watching the boy eat pasty after pasty said to him : "Jim, eat all you want but remember that each one costs the old man a lot." "William Cooper was an active federalist, and became the first judge of Otsego County and served two terms in Congress. The duties of a successful politician in the last years of the eighteenth century were certainly varied. In a letter written to Cooper by Philip Schuyler in 1791 the letter says : "I believe fasling and prayer to be good, but if you had only fasted and prayed I am sure we should not have had seven hundred votes from your county. Report says that you were very civil to the young and handsome of the sex, that you flattered the old and ugly, and even embraced the toothless and decrepid, in order to obtain votes. When will you write a treatise on electioneering? Whenever you do, afford only a few copies to your friends." Among his papers are still to be found affidavits dated in 1799 142 TRIBUTES TO COOPER AND COOPERSTOWN. telling how he successfull}' defended himself in a fight with a rival candidate. The customs and manners of the locality do not seem to have improved during the intervening years. Many are the stories of the hospitality dispensed at Coopers- town which have survived and which with the receipted bills for tuns of Maderia speak eloquently of the gayer side of frontier liff. The village had a reputation for hospitality and social advantages. It was visited by many of the well-known men of the times. Tallyrand stayed at the home of Judge Cooper and wrote verses to one of his daughters, and any foreigners tempora- rily exiled made their home there. The settlement at Cooperstown once fairly on its feet Judge Cooper turned to other localities and many settlements owe their beginnings to him. A work which he first undertook as a means of livelihood he carried on largely from love ci seeing settlements develope under his supervision. At the time of his death he had amassed a large fortune. The speculation in wild lands continued for year^, with extraordinary activity. As an example of the character of the transactions in which Judge Cooper was engaged, a reference to his books shows that in February, 1803, he bDught the town of De Kalb in St. Lawrence County, about sixty-four thousand acres, for sixty-two thousand seven hundred and twenty dollars. In three months he had sold 56,886 acres for $112,226.00. In another case he paid ten dollars an acre for land in the North Woods which is hardly worth that price today. In the midst of such activities William Cooper died in De- cember, 1809, as the result of a blow on the head struck by an opponent at a political meeting in Albany. As they were leav- ing the meeting place, alter a heated political discussion, he was struck with a walking stick by a man following him. Our judgment of William Cooper's character and achieve- ments must be drawn from the letters he has left, from contem- porarv documents and from his handiwork in the prosperous vil- lages that have grown from his settlements, as well as from the places where settlements once existed — now only a memory about which his name clings. Of the latler there are several. Most of these failures were due to changed methods of transportation. In his time road- ways and natural waterways were the arteries of commerce; the THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL 143 railway not dreamed of and the canal merely a vision. Judge Cooper's views on the canal written in 1807 are of suflQcient interest to justify their quotation in full as follows: "The trade of this vast country must be divided between Montreal and New York, and the half of it thus lost to the United States, unless an inland commurication can be formed from the Lake Erie to the Hudson. This project, worthy of a nation's enterprise, has been for some time meditated by indi- viduals. Of its practicability there can be no doubt whilst the world has as yet produced no work so noble; nor has the uni- verse auch another situation to improve. Its obvious utility will hereafter challenge more attention; men of great minds will turn their thoughts and devote their energies to its accomplish- ment, and I doubt not that it will one day be achieved. The surface of the lake Erie is elevated about 280 feet above the Hudson at Albany. A canal large enough for sloops SO tons burden, will not only bring the produce of these great and rich tracts of land in the state of New York to its capital, but will secure all the trade and productions of the vast country ■which surrounds the lakes Erie, Huron, Michigan and Superior. Were this once effected, a sloop might then perform an inland voyage of seventeen hundred miles! The trade of Lake Erie already supports twenty-three ships, brigs, scows and sloops, and Ontario twelve. The United States have millions of acres in the Michigan country of which the produce by this operation would be transportable to a mar- ket. How, you ask, and by what funds is this great work to be accomplished? "Without presuming that my opinion should be the guide in so important a coccern, it is enough if I can point out one way which it may be possible, and I think the mode I am about to propose not only possible, but very practicable. The State of New York may cede the track of this canal to the United States, and the United States may then grant a charter to a company, with strong rights and immunities, and the fullest security the general laws will admit of against the evils of freight wars or civil changes; in short whatever would encour- age the European capitalist to adventure in this magnificent enterprise. Let the United States take shares to the amount of ten millions of dollars, which will serve as an encouragement tU TRIBUTES TO COOPER AND COOPERSTOWN. and security to the foreign capitalists, and be a safeguard against the effects of those fluctuations in councils and public opinions, to which the affairs ot men are everywhere liable. The banks of this canal would become a carriage road, and one of the most beautiful in the universe. That most attractive and gratifying object of human curiosity, the falls of Niagara, would of itself creat^ a thoroughfare, and the product of the tolls on the turnpikes and canal gates would raise a revenue suflS- cient in a very short time, to requite the undertakers. No stran- ger but would make this tour his object, and no traveler of taste would leave it uncelebrated. But, as this speculation lies in the province of fancy and may be treated as a vision, I leave it to its fate and shall proceed in more direct answer to your queries touching roads likely to be made or encouraged by the state; think they will be the following : First, from Catskill on the Hudson westward to Lake Erie, through the counties of Delaware, Broome, Steuben and Genesee. Second, from Albany to Niagara. Third, from Albany through the counties of Saratoga, and the uncultivated parts of the state, to the county of St. Law- rence, at or near the long Soo in the St. Lawrence. Fourth, from Plattsburg on Lake Champlain to Rome or Utica on the Mohawk river. These ought to be made under the auspices of government, and with these remarks I close my answers and observations on your third head of inquiries." None ot Judge Cooper's contemporaries engaged in similar work, made so deep an impression on his times. From his let- ters the following quotations are taken as perhaps better than an^'thing that can be written today showing his character and the result of his labors: "You have now before you, as well as I can explain, the advantages and the difiSculties which belong to an enterprise in new lands. But let me be clearly understood in this, that no man who does not possess a steady mind, a sober judgment, fortitude, perseverance, and above all, common sense, can expect to reap the reward which to him who possesses those qualifications is almost certain. * # * ♦ THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. 145 I began with the disadvantages of a small capital, and the e»ciimbrance of a large family, and yet I have already settled niore acres than any man in America. There are forty thnusand sonls now holding, directly or indirectly, under me, and I trust that no one amongst so many can justly impute to me any act resembling oppression. I am now descending into the vale of life, and I must acknowledge that I look back with self compla- cency upon what I have done, and am proud of having been an instrument in reclaiming such large and fruitful tracts from the waste of the creation. And I question whether that sensation is not now a recompense more gr3teful to me than all the other profits I have reaped. Your good sense and knowledge will excuse this seeming- boast; if it be vain (we must all have our vanities), let it at least serve to show that industry has its re- ward, and age its pleasures, and be an encouragement to others to persevere and prosper." With Judge Cooper's personal appearance his descendants are familiar through the existence of three portraits, one by Gilbert Stuart, one by an unknown artist and one by Copley, His kindly gray eye, robust figure and firm expression bear out tke story of his life as outlined here. In writing from Canajoharie to his wife about 1834 his yeungest son describes him as follows: — "I have been up the rayine to the old Frey house. It looks as it used to in many respects, and in many it is changed for the worse. The mills still stand before the door, the house is, if anything, as comfor- table and far finer than formerly, but there is a distillery added, with a hundred or two as fat hogs as one could wish to see. I enjoyed this walk exceedingly. It recalled my noble looking, warm hearted, witty father, with his deep laugh, sweet voice and fine rich eye, as he used to lighten the way, with bis anec- dotes and fun. Old Frey, with his little black peepers, pipe, hearty laugh, broken English and warm welcome, was in the background. I went to the very spot, where one of the old man's slaves amused Sam and myself with the imitation of a tttrkey, some eight and thirty years since; an imitation that no artist has ever yet been able to supplant in my memory." The J46 THE LOAN EXHIBITS. Frej referred to was Hendrick Frey, a prominent figure in the Mohawk Valley a century ago. JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. Dated, Albany, July, 1907. The Location of Cooperstown. In all commemorations, in order to fully appreciate the pur- pose, it is alwajs necessary to carry the mind back to the period «t which the event to be signalized, occurred; even to go a little further back to understand why the event did occur. Let ui then recall the times in which William Cooper lived, to fully comprehend why Cooper came to Otsego f^ake to found the town which bears his name. During the war of the Revolution and for some years immediately following, the men of America found themselvet too exhausted to at once take up the advance in subduing the wilderness that lay at their western gate. It is true that dur- ing the war military expeditions had explored regions that, up to that time, had been little known, but the power to advance had been checked by the poverty of the people, growing out of the tremendous effort that had been made to secure liberty and independence. During the quarter of a century preceding the war, the English Commissioner, Sir William Johnston, had made trea- ties with the tribes of the Iroquois or Six Nations by which the boundary for settlement by the whites in the Province of New York, had been fixed by a line drawn from Oswego on Lake Ontario, to the headwaters of the Unadilla River and along that river to its confluence with the Susquehanna, the present west- ern boundary ot Otsego county. Most of the land as far west as ihat boundary, was granted by Royal Letters Patent to vari- ous individuals, but little of it had been actually taken up and occupied west of Schoharie. Beginnings had been made, and we have records of settlements at Lindsay's Bush (now Cherry Valley), Springfield, Fort Plain, Fort Schuyler and Fort Stan- wix. The above named forts were originally military posts established by the Albany government to secure the western ^order against invasion by the French from Canada by way of Float No. 9. Veterans of E,. C. Turner Post, G. A. B. Float No. 10. Sons of Veterans of J. F. Clark Camp, S. of V. THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL, 147 the Great Lakes, but since the conquest of_^Canada by the Eng- lish, there was no longer any fear from that source. The fer- tility of this region was known, and each recurring year brought a greater number of hardy settlers, principally from the New England Provinces. The war put a stop to this move- ment, but in due course of time it naturally began again and was even stimulated by the cheap sale of sequestered landa (confiscated) by the state from the former owners who had re- mained true to their allegiance to the Crown and had opposed the Revolution. Now while this movement by agriculturists was in progress, men in trade were seeking new locations to establish trade centers. Otsego county was nearly entirely patented out before the Revolution. Of the original patentees but few retained their holdings for more than a generation. In fact, most of these patents of land were land speculations. But there still were a few notable exceptions. My own family was among the origi- nal patentees and held lands in the Cherry Valley, Oothout and Bradt^patents down to the death of my own father. The Clarkes, unlike William Cooper, never sold land until they were obliged to. It was notorious that my family was Tory through- out the Revolution, and it could hardly be otherwise inasmuch as it had furnished several officers of note who served George II and George III, but it so happened that at the time of the Revolution the then owners of the estate were minors and sa were exempt from the operation of the Confiscation Acts. Ulti* mately, my grandather forsook his estate at Hyde in Cheshire, England, and settled as an Amerian citizen on Otsego Lake, at- tracted to it by its beauty and because of his belief in the future developement of Cooperstown, though at the time he owned many thousands of acres in other and older parts of the state. Hyde Hall, on Hyde Bay at the northeast end of Otsego Lake, was built in 1815 and was designed to be the home of a family having the land accruing instinct. Like this and even older is the home of the Bowers family. The manor house of the Bowers patent was built before the 19th century, and had 15,- 000 acres of land around it, bordering on the lake and the river. Mill sites and shipping points were the first locations sought. It is hard for this generation to imagine the conditions at that 14S TRIBUTES TO COOPER AND COOPERSTOWN. time when water power was practically the only ally to man's and beast's physical effort. But great state problems were already on foot to establish water ways by which the opening trade of a vast continent could be fostered. The harnessing of the Susquehanna River and its tributaries was one of the first of these problems. We are apt to think of George Washington only as a great soldier and a great statesman, but in fact civil engineering was his first profession, and we kcow that he, ac- companied by Lafayette, soon after the close of the Revolution, took a trip of inspection and survey to mark the points of this water system aad to acquaint himself, and the others associated with him, with the means by which the future developement of this region should be carried out. During this trip Wash- ington came to Cooperstown. It was evident to him, as it was later to William Cooper and others that tbe site where the Sus- quehanna River emerges from Otsego Lake was the natural Iccation for a large and thriving trade center. Here was to be a town at the bead of navigation of the Susquehanna River controlling a widespread area of splendid and fertile country well watered and well wooded. One can easily imagine the dream of the founder of this town. First, in the early stage an almost inexhaustable supply of the best lumber to befouni, white pine, hemlock and white and red oak. The lumber to be sawed and shipped and the bark to use in tanning the hides of the animals which would find natural pasture just as fast as the land could be cleared. Here was a land where every hardy grain could be raised for the mill to grind on every stream in every valley, to find its way to a great emporium at sea level by the waters of the Susquehanna. Soon these mills would have other duties to perform tor tbe wool and flax that the country could produce would soon have to be woven by this same water power. In short, while the whole region around was to be cleared and settled. Cooperstown was to become the centre to which acd from which all trade was to assemble. Now, in fact, this dream was in a measure realized. How many of us today know that Otset'O county, with its centre at Cooperstown, was lor many years the third most important county in the state, outstripped in population and wealth only by New York and Oneida? Who of us realize that Otsego's population was greater in 1810 than it was in 1900? What then was it that THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. 149 called a halt to our progress? It was the introduction of steam power. Railroads have side-tracked us. Steam has made it possible to open the vast prairies for settlement, and the ever restless and pushirg Yankee farmer has left for tbe Dakotasj the little mill by the stream is closed to give way to the hum- ming factory built by the side of the main artries of trade. No longer- the river but the steel rail. The forces of nature have been set aside for artificial power. The application of steam power has made it unnecessary to seek location for factories where they could obtain natural power. But here l?;t us pause, at the beginning of the 20th century, let us indulge in a dream of our own. Science produces steam, but science is advancing, and science knows that artificial means to produce power is not economy. Robert Fulton is to have a great monument erected to commemorate his fame, but his reign is over. Electr'cal power is to be the power of the future, and already those who are producing this fofce have returned to the old natural agent for producing power. Streams and lakes are already being har- nessed for the creation of this new force. Any one of us to-day can travel a few miles from Cooperstown down the Susquehanna and see for themselves. Then how long will it be before this fine reservoir of Otsego will be drawn upon to perform its share of the national developement? This may be in a sense a digres- sion, but it certainly is a subject that furnishes food for thought. Perhaps before many years, Otsego county may again have a thriving and profitable manufacturing population, equipped with electrical power furnished by its streams and thea will our deserted farms find tenants and our farmers a home market. It would not be proper, in writing an article about Coopers- town, to fail paying full respect to the character and ability of William Cooper, its founder. Few of us nowadays can appre- ciate what it cost in energy to be a pioneer in the days of our ancestors. Cooper set out from his home in Burlington, N. J., on horse back and alone, to discover the land of Central and Western New York. He rode 300 miles to the source of the Susquehanna. He thence traversed the whole of the western part of the state, subsisting on game and fish and tethering his horse by the side of the streams, where it could find pasture* The country was dense forest and yet he was able to write a 150 TRIBUTES TO COOPER AND COOPERSTOWN. description of the land which would bother most of us to-daj to beat. His knowledge of the g-eography and topography was inti- mate. He passed over the "iand and noted everything. He described it in such a way that no one could mistake him. He speaks of the wonderful advantages of Western New York in having water ways to make transportation cheap, and points out the natural spots in a diversity of locations, or trading cen- ters, to be established and developed. With marvellous insight in to the future he predicts the construction of the Erie Canal, and points out the great advantages to be obtained for New York City by its construction. Cooper was versatile. His information about husbandry was unbounded. He soon found out what were the best crops for soil and climate. He showed himsejf to be a man of singularly shrewd knowledge of how to colonize and to satisfy the requirements of poor settlers. He iound means to protect them in days of adversity and so caused them to bring out the largest results for the benefit of the whole community. He bought up enormous tracts of land and resold them at large profit to himself and got the people onto the land, and this he did where others had signally failed, He gave his name to this village, and it is his most enduring monument to his fame and is shared in by all the country side for miles around. G. HYDE CLARKE. James Fenimore Cooper. Mighty Magician, whose mysterious skill, Touches and brings to life a vanish'd race: Haunting Otsego's shore, her vale and hill, The Red Man finds again his hunting place. Across the bosom of his once dear lake. Again the birch canoe in silence flies, The stealthv paddle leaves a silver wake, While from the sedge the startled heron cries. The Indian lives, almost we see his form. Lithe as a panther, climb from height to height, He bends his bow, his brown and sinewy arm, Guides the swift arrow's straight and certain flight. Float No. 11. Orphanage. Float No. 13. Hop Picking at I'ncas Farm. 150 TRIBUTES TO COOPER AND COOPERSTOWN. description of the land which would bother most of us to-day to beat. His knowledge of the geography and topography was inti- mate. He passed over the iand and noted everything. He described it in such a way that no one could mistake him. He speaks of the wonderful advantages of Western New York in baving water ways to make transportation cheap, and points out the natural spots in a diversity of locations, or trading cen- ters, to be established and developed. With marvellous insight in to the future he predicts the construction of the Erie Canal, and points out the great advantages to be obtained for New York City by its construction. Cooper was versatile. His information about husbandry was unbounded. He soon found out what were the best crops for soil and climate. He showed himsejf to be a man of singularly shrewd knowledge of how to colonize and to satisfy the requirements of poor settlers. He iound means to protect them in days of adversity and so caused them to bring out the largest results for the benefit of the whole community. He bought up enormous tracts of land and resold them at large profit to himself and got the people onto the land, and this he did where others had signally failed. He gave his name to this village, and it is his most enduring monument to his fame and is shared in by all the country side for miles around. G. HYDE CLARKE. James Fenimore Cooper. Mighty Magician, whose mysterious skill, Touches and brings to life a vanish'd race: Haunting Otsego's shore, her vale and hill. The Red Man finds again his hunting place. Across the bosom of his once dear lake. Again the birch canoe in silence flies, The stealthv paddle leaves a silver wake, While from the sedge the startled heron cries. The Indian lives, almost we see his form. Lithe as a panther, climb from height to height, He bends his bow, his brown and sinewy arm, Guides the swift arrow's straight and certain flight. Fluat >'o. 11. Orphanage. Float >o. IS. Hop Picking at Uncas Farm. THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. J5J Echo on echo answers to his call, He treads the forest paths by night and day, Great Oaks and Pine Trees his Ancestral Hall, The spring his wine-press and the deer his prey. Thou'st peopled all the Country of the Lake, And Romance swings a golden Censer there, As mists low lying, which the sun beams wake, , Shed radiant moisture on the summer air. Beloved Magician, at thy simple shrine Today let all the world in reverence bow, Greatest in this, that at a touch of thine J he Red Man lives, immortal he and thou. FLORENCE ST. JOHN WARDWELL. Fenimore Cooper, the Novelist. Critics of the modern school have often wondered at the success which has so long attended the writings of Cooper. His books have lived when more ambitious writings have per- ished. His popularity today shows no sign of waning. All bis modern imitators, both in England and France, have failed to make and maintain a vogue equal to their master's. In novels of the sea neither Marry att nor Clark Russell has been able to take his place in the popular regard, nor to equal his power. In the tales of Indian life, despite the fact that the Indians are not real and the trappers are artificial, no writer has surpassed him. Why should romantic novels have so vital and enduring a success in the case of Cooper and prove so frail a medium of fame for all his successors? The answer to the question explains the actual powers of Fenimore Cooper. He was the pathfinder in this domain of romance, he blazed the trail, and exhausted the field for all who came after him. There was left little to do but imitate. The entire body of scouts, from the earliest member to Buffalo Bill, are simply variants of Natty Bumppo. The real Indian had no more beauty in him than the aver- age savage, a fact proved triumphantly by '"the failure of the ;52 TRIBUTES TO COOPER AND COOPERSTOWN. Indian novel. A savage provides no interest except for the ethnologist and the missionary. He is mostly disgusting, with all his virtue. Cooper must have known that, for he saw the Indian in his native state. With the daring of the true roman- cer, he invented an Indian whose singular beauty harmonized with the solemn and mysterious wilderness of the new world. That virgin forest loomed large in the imagination of all men at that period; and to have it peopled by a red race, grave, stoi- cal, simple, philosophical, noble and rnelaucholy, caught and held the fancy of mankind. How many times have the histori- ans and ethnologists told us that Cooper's Indian never exist- ed? How often have the critics urged u? to ponder on the im- mortality of such books, which mask the truth and fact by a sickly romanticism? Yet the books continue to delight, while their realistic substitutes fail! Cooper lives ia opposition to the critics, because the life in bis books, all defects admitted, is as true as it is brilliant. The surge of the wild sea, the mystery of the great wilderness, the power of sailor, of savage, of settler, the pulse of the great contest for possession, the main lines of life and action, in a word, are all there; and the realism which brings these things so close that one can smell the bilge-water and the surf, or taste the venison of the campfire, or study the paint on a warrior's cheek, has not proved so good a preserver of a writer's fame as the romanticism which Cooper adopted because he could not help himself. It was not only in his tem- perament. His theme demanded the haze of romance. We all sympathize with the exponents of literary taste, the defenders of modern standards, at the stubborn popularity of the novelists. That his books refuse to vanish, that the children of men linger over his pages in every generation, that his charm is perennial, should not set them railing at the prevailing lack of taste, but rather warn them of the existence of a power in the books of Cooper, which they will not recognize because his form of expression is distasteful to them. JOHN TALBOT SMITH. THE GCXDPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL, f53 Cooperstown. The village of Cooperstown, which is just now celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of its incorporation, may prop- erly be treated of under three aspects — first, as it is favored by nature; second, as it is consecrated by leg-end and literary gen- ius; and third, as it is a community of homes. If is no small advantage for a people lo live amid scenes of great natural beauty, where hill, river, and lake combine harmoniously and in such manner as not only to satisfy, but to delight the heart and imagination. The natural charm possessed by this place may be at the first view less striking than that produced by the sub- lime scenery where mountains play a conspicuous part, yet the very modesty of its unique perfections appeals with peculiar force to a fastidious taste. It is hazardous to express oneself about things that beggar description. It is too much like try- ing to gild refined gold or paint the lily. To call Otsego Lake beautiful would be as much a pleonasm as it would be to call a Frenchman witty. The immediate fascination which the lake has for those who see it for the first time and in one of its best moods, was once well indicated by a discriminating stranger who, in the dusk of evening, saw it from Lakewood Cemetery. After standing for a few minutes in silent admiration, he said: '*Well, if they ever bury me here, I shall want them to take the coppers off my eyes." If it were ever possible to worship nature, it would seem that such adoration could be indulged m here. Here, if anywhere, the lines of Elizabeth Barrett Browning- would fitly apply: — Earth's crammed with heaven, and every common bush Afire with God, but only he who sees Takes off his shoes. Natural scenery is said to have appealed to Walter ScDtt only so far as it had local legend associated with it, though he often depicted nature with care and in a happy manner. Cooper, on. the contrary, if his descriptive writings are taken as evidence, loved nature for its own sake. The former, it may be claimed, had as a natural setting for the creations of his fancy nothing of superior charm to what Cooper found here in the wilds of America. The Scottish Lakes, Loch Katrine and Lock 154 TRIBUTES TO COOPER AND COOPERSTOWN. JLomond, as the work of God's band, have a picturesque beauty in no way surpassing that of Lake Otsego. It might seem, however, that the "dramatis personae" of Scott's writings, half historic and half his own creations, the historic ones including even royalty, would give the Scotch romancer a distinct advan- tage, — that Marie, Queen of Scots, Fitz James, Roderick Dhu, and Ellen Douglas would quite put out of competition the sim- ple frontier folk and untutored savages of the New World. But whatever advantage, if any, the Britain had over the American, was not due to the social rank of his characters. That Cooper was successful in peopling the wilderness with persons so hum- ble, and yet characters concededly proof against oblivion, is greatly to his credit, — "And Natty won't go to oblivion quicker Than Adams the parson or Primrose the vicar." While Cooperstown, considered as a home has no special claim to be chronicled beyond what could be urged for other communities, still this home phase of the subject, wherein every- day citizenship, with its humdrum activities and its neigh- borly loves and strifes, has for a hundred years been working out the problems common to all civic life, should not be lost sight of in connection with a centennial event. The long con- tinuous association of the same people, their personal friend-, ships and family intimacies, are factors worthy ol note. The genius of Cooper should not absorb the interest of the occasion to the exclusion of everything else. If we were memorializing the one hundredth anniversary of Cooper's birth, the case would indeed be different. There are many minor characters that have figured significantly in the scenes of our village, lesser lights when compared with Cooper, who have lived their day and left their impress upon things human. From among them the liv- ing may select each his own as predilection dictates. Every one has a few choice souls who have "crossed the bar and gone out to sea," who, besides having possessed native qualities that ennoble nuraan nature, have a precious meaning to him person- ally. Let such a one, searching among the "hie jacets" of the dead, " — from the inscription wipe the weeds and moss. For every heart best knoweth its own loss." JOHN G. WIGHT. Float No. 14. A iVlodern lutlustry, Francis ^^■agou AVorks. Float No. 13. Thanksgivinjj Hospital Ambulance. THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. 155 A New Glimpse of Cooper. James Fenimore Cooper must have been a genuine lover of children, from my recollections of him. To meet him on the street in the village of Cooperstown was always a pleasure — his eye twinkled, his face beamed and his cane pointed at you with a smile and a greetiag of some forthcoming humor. When I happened to be passing the gates of the old "Hall" and he and Mrs. Cooper were driving home from his farm I often ran to open the gate for him, which trifling act he acknowledfjed with old-time courtesy. His fine garden joined my father's and once being in the vicinity of the fence he tossed me several muskmelons to catch— which at that time were quite rare in the village gardens. In 1844, Mr. Cooper sent me a picture book called "The Young American's Library: The Primer," published by Wiley and Putnam, New York, from an English copy, accompanied by a note from him written on large paper with a large seal— no envelope. The picture-book I have kept for sixty-three years, and it is still delightful reading. It is classed as "rare" by book collectors; its associations make it priceless to me. A copy of Mr. Cooper's note accompanying the little book is as follows: "Hall, Cooperstown, Apr. 22nd, 1844. Mr. Fenimore Cooper begs Miss Alice Worthington will do him the favor to accept the accompanying book. Mr. Cooper is quite aware that Miss "Worth in gton's education is advanced beyond the commencement of this work (which was written expressly for the Princess Alice of Great Britain), but that por- tion of the volume may be of service to her little brother who will be highly diverted at finding letters cutting so many cap- ers. Mr. Cooper felt quite distressed for Miss Worthiagton's muff during the late hot weather and begs to offer the use of his new ice-house should the muff complain. *Miss Beebe can also find a cool spot for her favorite in a corner of the same building, which will be altogether at her service." •A cousin of mine and I were walking out on a hot day in 156 TRIBUTES TO COOPER AND COOPERSTOWN* April with our precious muffs, which g^ave him the merry thought about the ice house. In 1848 I received another letter from him written on the same large paper enclosed in a yellow envelope. I had sent him a certain cutting from a newspaper regarding one cf his books (probably the suggestion of an older head). His handwriting was fine, beautifully clear, and very distiaguished. "Otsego Hall, Cooperstown, Feb. 12th, 1848. My dear Miss Alice SVorthington: I have received your let- ter with the most profound sentiments of gratitude. The com- pliment from the newspapers did not make half the impression that was made by your letter. I am so much accustomed to newspapers, that their censure and their praise pass but for little, but the attentions of a young lady of your tender years, to an old man, who is old enough to be her grandfather are not so easily overlooked. Nor must you mistake the value I attEch to the passage cut from the paper, for, even that coming- through your little hands is far sweeter than would have been two candy horns filled with sugar plums. I hope that you and I and John will have an opportunity of visiting the black-berry bushes, next summer, in company. I now invite you to select your party to be composed of as many little girls, and little boys, too, if you can find those you. like, to go to my farm next summer, and spend an hour or two in finding berries. It shall be your party, and the invitations must go out in your name, and you must speak to me about it, in order that I may not forget it, and you can have your school if you like, or any one else. I shall ask only one guest myself, and that will be John, who knows the road, having been there once already. With the highest consideration, your most obliged, and most humble servant, J. Fenimore Cooper. Miss Alice Worthiugton, Cooperstown." ALICE TRUMBULL SYNNOTT. THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. 157 Lines Written by J. Fenimore Cooper in Otsego Hall, August, 1843. To Caroline A. Foot. "Multum in parvo," e'en this book Hath thrice been sent to me; Until it frowning- seems to look Reproaches dire from thee, For fickle oaths, forgotten troth And other vows between us both. But now, dear Cally, comes the hour When triumph crowns thy will, Submissive to thy winning power I seize the recreant quill; Indite these lines to bless thy days, And sing my paeans in thy praise. But dearest child, 'twixt thee and me No flattering strain can swell, 'Tis truth alone thou most would say, And truth that I would tell; Forgetful of thy transient cares Receive my blessing and my prayers. In after life when thou shalt grow To womanhood, and learn to feel The tenderness the aged know To guide their children's weal, Then wilt thou bless with bended knee Some smiling child as I bless thee. J. Fenimore Cooper. The above was written by J. Fenimore Cooper for Caroline A. Foot, now Mrs. G. Pomeroy Keese, when she was a school- girl of 13 years. As she was soon to leave Cooperstown, were she had been some time a resident and a frequent visitor at Otseg-o Hall, where she always had a warm welcome from Mr. Cooper and his family, she was anxious to have something from his pen. So she made bold to enter his sanctum, carrying her album in her hand, and asking him to write a verse or two in the same. 158 TRIBUTES TO COOPER AND COOPERSTOWN. At first he declined, saying that he was no poet, but after repeated solicitations he at last consented. Her delight waa great, not only in receiving the very graceful, loving sentiment contained in the four verses, but also for his autograph, which at this day is rare and valuable. Not long after a copy of this poem was sent to an old school friend, Julia Bryant, daughter of the poet, and as Bryant and Cooper were mutual friends, Miss Bryant wrote that she should never be satisfied until she too had a few lines with Mr. Cooper'* autograph. The request was made and at once Cooper, seated at his desk in old Otsego Hall with his young petitioner by his side, wrote the following verse: "Charming young lady, Miss Julia by name, Your friend little Cally your wishes proclaim; Read this and you'll soon learn to know it, I'm not your papa the great lyric poet." J. Fenimore Cooper. The House Speaks. "Pretty? No, that word does not express it; you go by sounds." The tree murmured inarticulately, the house listened with at- tention, apparently the murmuring was articulate to her. "You see the lake stirred suddenly by night breezes and lit up faintly by the moon? How of ten tou have described your visions to me! In my earliest days, I, too, could see the lake quite plainly, but now for many a year you've seen it for me." The tree, assenting, touched his friend's cheek gently — the cheek, though rugged, was yet firm and comely. "We've been good allies," the house resumed, "in all our storms we've stood together. You've sheltered me, and I have given you my best — the great tradition — I hope I have preserved that faithfully?" The tree caressed the house, the wind was rising, a sound came from the hills as though of muffled thunder. The hour was midnight. THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. 159 "Never learn to speak!" the house exclaimed. "As you know, I have not always spoken and even now the words come painfully. It took me half a century to decipher my own in- scription, and nearly ten years more from those few letters to evolve a language. Nevertheless, I don't regret the labour, the re- sult has given me so much — the talks with you, dear. We used to speak by signs, and there you had the advantage, since with a touch you told me everything. You tell me now ttiat you are proud of me. Because I've stood my ground, not heeding changes? But that was natural — I was built by William Cooper. I think of that whenever small things trouble me. It's not the staring, I'm used to that; besides, you shield my features. No, it's rather a lack of understanding, sometimes. "Remember him? My friend, he has been with me always. Bis kind, strong face has smiled at me on many a bleak, black evening. (A fancy? Perhaps, but what a happy one! I live on fancies, nowadays, and your fidelity.) I've longed at such times to ask him what he thought of us, but I've never had the courage. Instead, I've kept quite still and held myself up straighter; I, at least, can never forget my builder. Partial? I may be, but I am so deliberately. I like to think of him as fine and noble; a pioneer, keen-sighted and intelligent, who in his sagacity recognized the qualities of this region, a region that his son was afterwards to make illustrious. Ah, how well I knew the great romancer, he was a frequent guest of mine. Sometimes I suspect that all my thoughts, and yours too, came from that one brain, which in its large creativeness, scattered fancies broadcast, careless of hoarding, where the store seemed inexhaustible. Yes, he was our greatest glory, and when he died it was a heavy day. We all mourned — lake, woods, brooks, and flowers, even the rough loads grieved their hearts away. And since that time — it must be three score years now — I've watched each night for his return, hoping against hope that he might re-visit his Otsego, a place he loved so constantly in life. And hoping this, I have composed a message, to come through me from all the speechless things— the hills and waters that owe their fame to his descriptions. Yes, I shall repeat it, if he should ever pass my way— Hush, was that a horseless carriage? I feel so lost somehow in this new age. It's only at night that I recover a little confidence, it's only at night that I'm myself i60 TRIBUTES TO COOPER AND COOPERSTOWN. at all. And even then, the strange white light confuses me — you and I were satisfied with the moon. Old-fashioned? You may well say that; if not for vou and my dear memories, [ think my poor old heart would wither and die." The tree bent lower, whispering something soothingly, to which the house responded eagerly. "How pTfttty that is! Yes, 1 understand you, I always shall, as long as you and I endure. Tell me how the lake looks now? Dark and stormy? That is how I like it best. I wish my eyes could be for once as high as yours are." The house brolie oflF, the tree lifted beseeching fingers, whereupon the house went on again. "The message? I am half-afraid to tell it lest it should not sound quite right. Words don't come easily, I was over six- ty before I even began to speak. But I will try, please listen critically, and afterwards say frankly what you think. I have had it Inng in mind, and yet it halts in places; it takes a cen- tury, doubtless, to construct good prose. This is it: 'Dear Vanished Magician: Greeting from your old time friends! We have neither for- gotten nor grown indifferent, we care as much as when you went away — nay more, perhaps, since lost things reach the stars. And this is what we say to you; I am speaking for Otsego, although my voice alasl is not so sweet as hers. We thank you for your brave, true character, that made you honoured wher ever you went; we thank you for your tender-heartedness, that made you loved by weak and strong; we thank you for your noble intellect, that made you famous throughout the world. Most of all, we thank you for your great creations, those living beings, who haunt our lake to-day. And so, dear Master, take our loving homage, and give us one kind thought as you pass by.*' Silence reigned again, the house waited anxiously, she did not even raise her eyes. At last the tree, much moved, stretched out his arms and clasped her. And after that, there was no need of moiu. CLARt; BENEDICT. Report of the Treasurer. RECEIPTS. A. Busch, J. J. Hopkins, C. F. Thelson, 1}. Martin, J. M. Bowers, Dr. M. I. Bassett, Mary Bingham, Wedderspoon & Whipple, D. H. Gregory, Miss Randall, Geo. Groat, Mrs. P. Cook, W. H. Martin, Miss K. ly. Mather, The Misses Paulding, Mrs. and Miss Benedict, G, W. Fairchild, Chas. Smith, Mrs. Kent Jarvis, Theo. Ernst, Cash, no name, Mary Worthington, C. N. Duyckinck, H. T. Bryce, T. R. Proctor, Chas. P. Rogers, C. F. Zabriskie, John Worthington, Shumway Bros.^ W. D. Johnson, Wm. Cobbett, A. R. Smith, Rev. P. A. H. Brown, Miss Arnold and sisters, Mrs. Charlotte P. Browning, W. C. Stokes, M. C. Jermain, S. S. Spaulding, Mrs. Henrietta Pell-Clarke, Prof. M. J. Mnlter, W. P. K. Fuller, Dr. H. D. & Miss F. V. Sill, SO 00 1100 00 Dr. John G. Wight, 5 00 10 00 National Express Co., 2S 00 10 00 Dr. A. J. Butler, 5 00 1 00 John Marsh, IS 00 200 00 G. H.White, 10 00 10 00 Simon Uhlmann, 25 00 5 00 Dr. Morgan Dix, 25 00 10 00 E. Averell Carter, SO 00 5 00 Dr. J. E. Janvrin, 10 00 5 00 E. A. Kaple, S 00 5 00 James Fenimore Cooper, SO 00 5 00 Church & Scott, 50 00 1 00 Beattie & Doubleday, 25 00 10 00 M. F. Augfur, 25 00 5 00 W. H. Michaels, 25 00 60 00 B. F. Murdock's Sons, 50 00 25 00 Frank Lettis, 25 00 10 00 Smith & Ross, 20 00 5 00 Wm. Dutcher, 25 00 5 00 George Farquharson, S 00 2 00 H. Reisman, 20 00 5 00 W. E. McEwan, 10 00 50 00 Pappas, 10 00 SO 00 Ah Choy, 1 00 10 00 A. J. Telfer, 5 00 40 00 E. E. '^axton, 5 00 75 00 Dr. J. H. Moon, S 00 5 00 Fred Eettis, 10 00 3 00 N. W. Cole, 5 00 5 00 W. C. Fowler, 10 00 5 00 A. B. Clarke, 5 00 10 00 Frank Hale, S 00 25 00 F. B. Shipman, 5 00 10 00 T. C. Turner, 10 00 , 3 00 Asa Acker, 10 00 50 00 Austin & Delong, 10 00 25 00 E. E. Skinner, 1 00 25 00 B. Clark, 2 00 50 00 A. T. VanHorne, S 00 5 00 Schneider Bros., 10 00 5 00 D. E. Siver, 10 00 }62 REPORT OF THE TREASURER. C. B. Cooley. Mrs. Lucy B. Harris, Mrs. Florence E. Whitbeck, Geo. L. Turner, J. D. Valentine, Dr. B. W. Dewar, The Clinton Mills Power Co., Taylor & Ellsworth, Rev. Sidney S. Conger, Dr. J. B. Conkling, G. M. Jarvis, W. J. Ashton, H. W. Bean. Win. Constable, Georg-e Strachan, Mrs. Katharine J. Townsend, L. M. Barnum, J. G. White, Brainard & Sherwood, If. A. Cossaart, A. S. Potts, John Cronauer, B. S. Morgan, W. M. Bronner, D. R. Dorn, Spingler it Gould, Geo. H. Carley, Brazee & Boden, G. W. Lang-, Waldo Cory, M. E. Lippitt, W. F. Wagner, W. Scott Root, E. D. Stocker, Austin, Bolton & Bronner, Thos. Kelsey, J. E. Reynolds, Dr. A. S. Knapp, J. B. Slote, R. O. Marshall, C. A. Franc's, Mrs. M. A. Smith, W. R. Littell, Jackson & Brooks, Mrs. C. A. Burch, A. C. Shipraan, Justin Lang-e, Miss N. Davison, 5 00 Harry Pitcher, Lunch Wagon, , 5 00 25 00 Dr. C. V. S. Evans, 3 00 25 00 C. F. Root, 10 00 1 00 Rev. T. A. Early. 10 00 5 00 D. J. McGown, 20 00 5 00 C. G. Tennant, 5 00 100 00 Dr. E. L. Pitcher, 5 00 25 00 C. R. Hartson. 25 00 25 00 A. J. Gardner, 5 00 10 00 R. R. Converse, 5 00 5 00 C. W. McLane, 5 00 25 00 B. J. Graves, 10 00 100 00 John Bowmaker, 5 00 100 00 Win. Southworth, 2 00 10 00 Dr. A. N. Beach. 5 00 25 00 P. Hotaling. 5 00 25 00 G. M. Wedderspoon, 10 00 5 00 G. B. Woodman, 15 00 10 00 Arnold & Cooke, 100 00 10 00 C. M. Allison, 10 00 20 00 H. Bancroft, 5 00 10 00 Second National Bank, 100 00 25 00 J. P. Doane, 5 00 10 00 H. K. Murdock, 5 00 25 00 Bundy Shoe Store, 10 00 25 00 C. W. Smith, 20 00 25 00 A. S. Phinney, 25 00 25 00 R. A. Davy, 2 00 5 00 Dr. James Burton, 10 00 20 00 Rev. Ralph Birdsall, 5 00 25 00 Bundy Bros. St. Cruttenden, 100 00 5 00 F. G. Lee, 50 00 10 00 Mrs. Maria M. C. Smith, 5 00 10 00 W. F. Morgan, 50 00 25 00 A. Ryerson, 50 00 10 00 S. L. Warrin, 5 00 5 00 One-half proceeds of Centen- S 00 nial Ball, 65 00 5 00 F. W. Green, 25 00 5 00 International Cheese Co., 100 00 5 00 Frank Mulkins, 20 00 5 00 Mrs. J. A. Schroni, 5 00 10 00 Miss Grace 8. Bowen, 5 00 10 00 W. C. Austin, 10 00 5 00 N. P. Willis, 10 00 5 00 J. J. Byard, Jr., 15 00 25 00 F. W. Spraker, 5 00 1 00 Otsego Lake Transit Co., 50 00 THE COOPERSTOWN CENTENNIAL. ItZ L. H. Spencer, 10 00 C. T, Brewer, 10 00 J. F. & J. H. Mecneghan, 5 00 E. A. Potter, 5 00 John K. Doan, 5 00 C. W. Davidson, 25 00 One-half proceeds of Maccabee Ball, 19 SO J. F. Brady & Co., 25 00 J. A. M. Johnston, 10 00 Stephen C. Clark, 500 00 Edward S. Clark, 500 00 Mrs. H. C. Potter, 500 00 F. A. Clark, 500 00 M. Hanlon, 50 00 Chas. O'Hagan, 5 00 G. Pomeroy Keese, 10 00 Mrs. S. H. Cobb, 5 00 F. P. Fuller, 1 00 R. H. White, 10 00 R. G. White, 5 00 Village of Cooperstown, 200 00 F. ly. Quaif , 5 00 F. D. Gilbert, 2 00 Crist, Scott & Parshall, 50 00 *$6,000 50 DISBURSEMENTS. Advertising, Printing, &c. W. B. Littell, for postage, $24 00 C. T. Cooke, expenses, adver- tising, 80 70 W. B. Littell, expenses pub- licity nom., Oneonta Press, advertising, Unadilla Times, advertising, Bichfleld Springs Mercury, advertising, Worcester Times, advertising. Citizens Pub. Co. , Oneonta Herald, Edmeston Local, Bural Times, Otego, The Otsego Journal, John Sawyer, Monitor Publishing Co., adver tising, 6 00 5 96 5 GO 10 00 6 00 6 00 19 20 10 GO 6 00 5 GO 8 00 5 00 M. Hanlon, balloon ticket din- ners, 2 26 P. J. Carney, adv. conductors' excursion. 15 00 L. P. Carpenter & Sons, adver- tising, 6 00 E. A. Tibbits, typewriting, 3 50 Oneonta Star, advertising, 13 80 Otsego Tidings, '• 5 00 C. B. Cooley, printing pro- grams, 12 00 Mrs. F. M. Shumway, reporting relig., lit., hist, exercises, 25 00 Transit Co., balloon tickets around lake, 5 25 Freeman's Journal, programs, dodgers, &c., 91 65 Otsego Bepublican, printing ordered by print, com., 89 05 Crist, Scott & Parshall, print- ing ordered by print, com., 76 41 Carr's Hotel, balloon ticket dinners, 1 00 *«543 26 DECOBATINQ. B. G. White to Saratoga to see Koster, 13 50 B. G. White, postage, 80 The C. H. Koster Co., deco- rating, 1,070 00 Elbelight Co., of America, light on Main St., 400 00 B G. White, expenses for tele- phone service, 1 60 The C. H. Koster Co., extra bunting, 1 52 Beattie & Doublebay, lanterns, &c., 32 45 *«1,519 87 PBOGBAMME COMMITTEE. Expenses in effort to secnre Firemen's tournament, 65 82 H. Ellsworth, moving piano, 10 00 164 REPORT OF THE TREASURER. Oneonta Basket Ball team, fares and meals, 10 60 A. J. Butler, porters, &o., 2 85 Marion Cadets, military enter- tainment, 50 00 B. A. Cook, moving pictures, 150 00 Military Co., Albany, 530 00 Ed. Adams, dynamite and firing salute, 15 00 Ed. Adams, scraping track at fair grounds, 8 75 W, H. Martin, basket ball ma- terials and telephoning ser- vice, 51 H, F. Campbell, services in matter Marion Military Co. , 12 00 *«855 43 LITERARY. Chas. Elliott for literary ar- ticle, 20 00 John Worthington, postage, 3 00 Expenses Mr. Bunn and Halsey, speakers, 45 00 Brander Matthews, speaker, 250 00 M. Hanlon for room and board Ml. Halsey and family, 25 50 John Worthington, express, &o., 2 90 *«346 30 MUSIC. A. deJ. Allez, sundry expenses 5 94 A. deJ. Allez, music for choir 2 72 Committee to Albany to hear band, 18 86 W. M. Bronner, orchestra for Maccabee ball, 45 00 O. H. Collins, for band and mileage for same, 926 48 M. Hanlon, board and rooms for band, 290 00 0. F. Farmer, services as fifer parade, 5 00 0. A. Franois, advanced for board band man at Carr's 9 00 ♦»1,303 00 FIREWORKS. Paine Mfg. Co. , fireworks and firing same, 500 00 E. Eckler, labor on fireworks dock, 12 00 G. H. White for telephone, express and postage, 2 20 H. E. Lewis & Co. , lumber for fireworks dock, 41 62 N. E. Truax, poles, for fire- works dock, 6 60 Sanford Ballard, labor, 2 50 John Pank, 8 00 *«572 92 Less proceeds sale of fire- works dock lumber, 25 00 $547 92 BUILDING & BOOTH COM- MITTEE. B. G. Johnson, paid for labor and material, 69 60 C. F. Root, lumber and labor band stand, Ac, 68 69 A. J. Gage, for drawing chairs, lumber,