The village was supported by its manufacturing interests, and was quite populous. It had a number of long streets, some of which reached across the stream, and over a spacious mill pond, and others swept at right angles along the course of the great Cherry Valley turnpike. In its streets were to be heard, in addition to the English, nearly all the dialects of the German between the Rhine and the Danube; the Low Dutch as spoken by the common country people on the manor of Rensselaerwyck, the Erse and Gaelic, as not unfrequently used by the large proportion of its Irish and Scotch, and what seemed quite as striking to one brought up in seclusion from it, the genuine Yankee, as discoursed by the increasing class of factory wood choppers, teamsters, schoolmasters, men out at the elbows, and travelling wits. The latter were indeed but a sorry representation of New England, as we have since found it. No small amount of superstitions were believed and recited in the social meetings of such a mixed foreign population. Accounts of instances of the second sight, death-lights on the meadows and in the churchyard, the low howling of premonitory dogs before funerals, and other legendary wares, to say nothing of the actual and veritable number of downright spooks, seen on various occasions, on the lands of the Veeders, the Van Valkenburgs, the Truaxes, and the Lagranges, rendered it a terror to all children under twelve to stir out of doors after dark. There were in the annals of Iosco, several events in the historical way which served as perfect eras to its inhabitants; but none, it is believed, of so striking and general importance as the story of the Mad Wolf, of which I am about to write.