During the first half of the century a "general lake party" in the summer corresponded to the "select ball" of each winter as constituting one of the two great social events of the year in Cooperstown. It ought to be said that the term "lake party" had a distinct social significance, and the word "picnic," which came later to be used to describe the same thing, meant to the elder inhabitants an affair that had quite lost the flavor of the older custom, and the use of the word was regarded as one of the signs of social decadence. The means of navigation most often used by the lake parties was a huge scow propelled by long oars. A typical lake party was given in July of 1840, when Governor Seward visited Cooperstown. On the way home upon the lake the old scow, according to custom, was stopped opposite to the Echo, and several persons tried their voices to show off the wonderfully clear reverberations that would be flung back from the eastern hillside. But the master of this art was "Joe Tom," the negro who had been chief cook of the lake party, and was now at one of the long oars of the scow. On being asked to awaken the famous echo, Joe Tom shouted, "Hurrah for Governor Steward!" and when the echo came back, "You've got it to a 't,' Joe!" exclaimed Governor Seward. At this period the authority in aquatic affairs, and the most renowned fisherman of the lake, was Commodore Boden. Miss Cooper says of her father's novel _Home as Found_ that the one character in it "avowedly and minutely drawn from life" was that of the Commodore, "a figure long familiar to those living on the lake shores--a venerable figure, tall and upright, to be seen for some three score years moving to and fro over the water, trolling for pickerel or angling for perch, almost any day in the year, excepting when the waters were icebound in winter."[120] The commodore was of quite imposing appearance, handsome alike in form and figure, straight as an arrow, and lithe as an Indian, with silvery locks that hung gracefully down upon his shoulders. His method of fishing was fascinating to watch. Standing erect in his boat, the commodore would paddle from the outlet of the lake to some inviting patch of weeds, and there, in quite shallow water, noiselessly drop his anchor. Then, wielding a rod nearly twenty feet in length, he would "skip" his tempting bait--generally the side of a small perch--with amazing vigor and marvellous dexterity, oftentimes taking fifteen or twenty pickerel in less than an hour. To see him strike, manipulate and land a fish weighing three or four pounds, his pliant rod bending nearly to a semicircle, was a spectacle not to be forgotten.[121]