August, 1907, “Historic Cooperstown” held her Memorial Celebration.  Her founder, Judge William Cooper, his hardy pioneers, and the “memory of one whose genius had given her Glimmerglass country world-wide fame,” were honored with world-wide tributes.  Among these were addresses, heartfelt, and able, from the late Bishop Henry Codman Potter, on “The Religious Future”; Francis Whiting Halsey, on “The Headwaters of the Susquehanna”; George Pomeroy Keese, on “Early Days of Cooperstown,” and James Fenimore Cooper of Albany, New York, on his great-grandfather “William Cooper.”

From “The Cooperstown Centennial” one learns that at five o’clock on Wednesday afternoon of August 7 many people were reverently taking part in solemn services around the grave of James Fenimore Cooper and beneath the glinting tree-shadows of Christ’s Church yard.  The service began with a procession of young girls in white surrounding the author’s last resting-place, where verses on Cooper were recited by Miss Wilkinson; then the little folk sang the lyric tribute of Mr. Saxton: 

      0, great magician, may the life
      We lead be such a one as thine—­
    A simple life, transcending art,
    A spirit close to Nature’s heart,
      A soul as strong and clear, and fine.

[Illustration:  THE CHILDREN’S TRIBUTE.]

After singing, the children, gathering around, covered the marble slab with their tributes—­the flowers of the season.  Some poetic pictures in blank verse were given of Cooper’s works, by the Reverend Dr. W.W.  Battershall of St. Peter’s Church in Albany, New York, the present rector, and successor of Doctor Ellison, Cooper’s boyhood instructor.  Then the Rev. Ralph Birdsall, rector of the author’s “little parish church,” spoke of Fenimore Cooper’s church-yard home:  “A marble slab that bears no praise for fame or virtue; only a simple cross, symbol of the faith in which he lived and died, and upon which he based his hopes of immortality.”  The soldier lying near, brought from the field of honor; the author’s old neighbors, who exchanged with him in life the friendly nod; hands that were calloused with the axe and shovel, and Judge Temple’s aged slave in narrow home—­all sleeping beneath the same sward and glancing shadows are not less honored now than is the plain, unpolished slab of stone, bearing two dates,—­of birth and entrance into the life eternal of James Fenimore Cooper.

On his airy height of the “Cooper Memorial,” gleaming white through the lakewood slope of Mt.  Vision, wondrous Leatherstocking stands, a rare tribute to simple, uplifting goodness.  Clad in his hunting-shirt, deerskin cap, and leggings, his powder-horn and bullet-pouch swung over his shoulder, his dog Hector at his feet, looking up with speaking expression into the fine, wise, honest face of his master, stands Natty, gazing over all the lake he loved so well.

[Illustration:  LAKE OTSEGO.]

    ——­ o’er no sweeter lake
    Shall morning break or noon-cloud sail;
    No fairer face than thine shall take
      The sunset’s golden veil.