Natty Bumppo will live forever as a symbolic figure, representative of certain indigenous qualities in American life. Lowell found in Leather-Stocking "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 plebeian myths as Arthur in his to his mailed and plumed cycle of chivalry." Americans themselves do not realize how widely, in other countries, Leather-Stocking is still regarded as typical of certain qualities in the American character. Among Americans who had half-forgotten their Cooper, there was no little surprise at the exclamation of Gabriel Hanotaux, member of the French Academy, distinguished author and statesman of France, when, in the spring of 1917, on the entrance of the United States into the war against Germany, he expressed his joy in a message that was cabled round the world, "Old Leather-Stocking still slumbers in the depth of the American soul!" There is a point on Otsego Lake, opposite to Natty Bumppo's cave, from which passing boatmen awaken the famous Echo of the Glimmerglass. For more than half of the nineteenth century there lived in the village a negro whose lungs were renowned for their power to call forth the fullness of this strange echo. "Joe Tom," as he was named, was always called upon, as the guide of lake excursions, to perform this peculiar duty. Stationing his scow at the focal point, the negro would shout across the water, "Natty Bumppo! Natty Bumppo!--Who's there?" And after a moment the cry would be flung back, as by the spirit of Leather-Stocking, from the heights of the steep woods and rocky faces of the hill. On a still summer evening Joe Tom was sometimes able, by a single shout, to call forth three distinct echoes, which were heard in regular succession,--the first from the region of the cave, the second from Mount Vision, and the third from Hannah's Hill on the opposite side of the lake, until the margin of the Glimmerglass seemed to resound with cries of "Natty Bumppo!--Natty Bumppo!" uttered by eerie voices. The years pass, and no other name retains such magic power to wake the sleeping echo of the Glimmerglass. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 91: _History of Otsego County_, 1878, p. 249.] [Footnote 92: Calvin Graves, who came to Cooperstown in 1794, and lived in the place for 84 years, is quoted as saying that he well knew Shipman, the Leather-Stocking of Cooper's novels, and that Shipman was never married. Graves said that he had often visited the old hunter's cave in company with him. This testimony seems to point to the Hoosick Shipman, who having deserted his family for twenty-six years, might easily pass for a bachelor in Otsego, and who is said to have lived in a cave, concerning which nothing is mentioned in the traditions of David Shipman.] CHAPTER XI STRANGE TALES OF THE GALLOWS