The Lake Gun

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Джеймс Фенимор Купер. The Lake Gun

The Lake Gun

by. James Fenimore Cooper

The Lake Gun

by. James Fenimore Cooper

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{This text has been transcribed and annotated by Hugh C. MacDougall, Founder and Secretary of the James Fenimore Cooper Society (jfcooper@wpe.com), who welcomes corrections and emendations. The text has been transcribed as written, except that because of the limitations of the Gutenberg Project format, italicized words have been transcribed in FULL CAPITALS.}

{"The Lake Gun" is one of James Fenimore Cooper's very few short stories, and was written in the last year of his life. It was commissioned by George E. Wood for publication in a volume of miscellaneous stories and poems called "The Parthenon" (New York: George E. Wood, 1850), and Cooper received $100 for it. The story was reprinted a few years later in a similar volume called "Specimens of American Literature" (New York, 1866). It was published in book form in 1932 in a slipcased edition limited to 450 copies (New York: William Farquhar Payson, 1932) with an introduction by Robert F. Spiller.}

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For more than half a century has this remnant of the forest floated about, from point to point, its bald head whitening with time, until its features have become familiar to all the older inhabitants of that region of country. The great depth of the Seneca prevents it from freezing; and summer and winter, springtime and autumn, is this wanderer to be observed; occasionally battling with the ice that makes a short distance from the shore, now pursuing its quiet way before a mild southern air in June, or, again, anchored, by its roots touching the bottom, as it passes a point, or comes in contact with the flats. It has been known to remain a year or two at a time in view of the village of Geneva, until, accustomed to its sight, the people began to think that it was never to move from its berth any more; but a fresh northerly breeze changes all this; the "Jew" swings to the gale, and, like a ship unmooring, drags clear of the bottom, and goes off to the southward, with its head just high enough above water to be visible. It would seem really that his wanderings are not to cease as long as wood will float.

{Village of Geneva = now the City of Geneva, at the northern end of Lake Seneca}

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