“Why, Irene, I have no prospects without you. I love you; you are my life. I don't understand. I am just yours, and nothing you can do will ever make it any different for me; but if you want to be free--” “No, no,” cried the girl, trying in vain to restrain her agitation and her tears, “not that. I don't want to be free. But you will not understand. Circumstances are so cruel, and if, Stanhope, you ever should regret when it is too late! It would kill me. I want you to be happy. And, Stanhope, promise me that, whatever happens, you will not think ill of me.” Of course he promised, he declared that nothing could happen, he vowed, and he protested against this ridiculous phantom in her mind. To a man, used to straightforward cuts in love as in any other object of his desire, this feminine exaggeration of conscientiousness is wholly incomprehensible. How under heavens a woman could get a kink of duty in her mind which involved the sacrifice of herself and her lover was past his fathoming. The morning after this conversation, the most of which the reader has been spared, there was an excursion to Cooperstown. The early start of the tally-ho coaches for this trip is one of the chief sensations of the quiet village. The bustle to collect the laggards, the importance of the conductors and drivers, the scramble up the ladders, the ruses to get congenial seat-neighbors, the fine spirits of everybody evoked by the fresh morning air, and the elevation on top of the coaches, give the start an air of jolly adventure. Away they go, the big red-and-yellow arks, swinging over the hills and along the well-watered valleys, past the twin lakes to Otsego, over which hangs the romance of Cooper's tales, where a steamer waits. This is one of the most charming of the little lakes that dot the interior of New York; without bold shores or anything sensational in its scenery, it is a poetic element in a refined and lovely landscape. There are a few fishing-lodges and summer cottages on its banks (one of them distinguished as “Sinners' Rest”), and a hotel or two famous for dinners; but the traveler would be repaid if there were nothing except the lovely village of Cooperstown embowered in maples at the foot. The town rises gently from the lake, and is very picturesque with its church spires and trees and handsome mansions; and nothing could be prettier than the foreground, the gardens, the allees of willows, the long boat wharves with hundreds of rowboats and sail-boats, and the exit of the Susquehanna River, which here swirls away under drooping foliage, and begins its long journey to the sea. The whole village has an air of leisure and refinement. For our tourists the place was pervaded by the spirit of the necromancer who has woven about it a spell of romance; but to the ordinary inhabitants the long residence of the novelist here was not half so important as that of the very distinguished citizen who had made a great fortune out of some