The midsummer view of Otsego Lake at one time included, in the clearings along the western shore and hillsides, a great luxuriance of hop-vines. The golden wreaths of hops, as they hang ripening in the August sunshine, sweeping in graceful clusters from the tall poles, or swinging in the breeze in umbrella-like canopies, add a more picturesque feature to the landscape than any other growing crop. Hops have a part in the story of Cooperstown, which was at one time the centre of the most important hop-growing industry in America. Hop culture was introduced into Otsego county about the year 1830. In 1845 only 168,605 pounds were produced. In 1885, within a radial distance of forty miles from Cooperstown was included more than half of the hop-producing region of the United States. [Illustration: _Elizabeth Hudson_ HOP PICKING] The hop-picking season, during the latter part of August, has given a picturesque character of its own to the life of the village and environs. In the primitive days of the industry, when the harvesting of the crop did not require any additional help from outside of the immediate region, the task of hop-picking was lightened by the enjoyment of social pleasures and romantic excitements that came to be associated with it by the young people of Otsego. At the beginning of the picking season, in those days, anyone passing through the country would meet wagon after wagon, of the style known as a "democrat," loaded down with gay and lively maidens, with one or two young men to each load. On reaching the hop-yard to which they were assigned, these frolicsome parties exchanged their holiday attire for broad-rimmed hats and working dresses. Boxes were placed about the hop-yard, four pickers to each, the boxes being divided into four sections holding ten bushels apiece, and into these were dropped the clusters picked from the vines by nimble fingers. Experienced hands can fill two or more boxes in a day, for which as much as fifty cents a box used to be paid. The midday lunch was taken beneath the shade of the nearest tree, or, in case the pickers were boarded by the grower, all adjourned to the largest room in an out-building, where a rural feast was spread with no niggard hand. Hop-pickers expect to live on the fat of the farmer's land, and as a rule they are not disappointed. Whole sheep and beeves vanish like manna before the Israelites in the short three weeks of the picking season, while gallons of coffee, firkins of butter, barrels of flour, and sugar by the hundred weight are swallowed up in the capacious maw of the small army. The nightly hop-dance used to be an indispensable adjunct of the picking season, much counted upon by the gay throng, but rather frowned upon, as an occasion of scandal, by staid and proper seniors.