The party returned in a moralizing vein.  How vague already in the village which his genius has made known over the civilized world is the fame of Cooper!  To our tourists the place was saturated with his presence, but the new generation cares more for its smart prosperity than for all his romance.  Many of the passengers on the boat had stopped at a lakeside tavern to dine, preferring a good dinner to the associations which drew our sentimentalists to the spots that were hallowed by the necromancer’s imagination.  And why not?  One cannot live in the past forever.  The people on the boat who dwelt in Cooperstown were not talking about Cooper, perhaps had not thought of him for a year.  The ladies, seated in the bow of the boat, were comparing notes about their rheumatism and the measles of their children; one of them had been to the funeral of a young girl who was to have been married in the autumn, poor thing, and she told her companion who were at the funeral, and how they were dressed, and how little feeling Nancy seemed to show, and how shiftless it was not to have more flowers, and how the bridegroom bore up-well, perhaps it’s an escape, she was so weakly.

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

The summer was really going.  On Sunday the weather broke in a violent storm of wind and rain, and at sunset, when it abated, there were portentous gleams on the hills, and threatening clouds lurking about the sky.  It was time to go.  Few people have the courage to abide the breaking of the serenity of summer, and remain in the country for the more glorious autumn days that are to follow.  The Glows must hurry back to Newport.  The Bensons would not be persuaded out of their fixed plan to “take in,” as Mr. Benson expressed it, the White Mountains.  The others were going to Niagara and the Thousand Islands; and when King told Irene that he would much rather change his route and accompany her, he saw by the girl’s manner that it was best not to press the subject.  He dreaded to push an explanation, and, foolish as lovers are, he was wise for once in trusting to time.  But he had a miserable evening.  He let himself be irritated by the lightheartedness of Forbes.  He objected to the latter’s whistling as he went about his room packing up his traps.  He hated a fellow that was always in high spirits.  “Why, what has come over you, old man?” queried the artist, stopping to take a critical look at his comrade.  “Do you want to get out of it?  It’s my impression that you haven’t taken sulphur water enough.”