man of fiery
spirit. When Dr. Gott's patients, on being restored to health, seemed
inclined to forget their indebtedness to him, he threatened them with
chastisement, and published the following rhymed notice in the _Otsego
Herald_:

Says Dr. Gott,
I'll tell you what,
I'm called on hot,
All round the Ot-
-Segonian plot,
To pay my shot
For pill and pot.
If you don't trot
Up to the spot,
And ease my lot,
You'll smell it hot.

NATHANIEL GOTT.

Dr. Gott was an eccentric. He wore short breeches, with long stockings,
and always ate his meals from a wooden trencher. Among a company of
village men enjoying a convivial evening at the tavern a contest of wit
and satire arose between Dr. Gott and Elihu Phinney who had become warm
friends. Finally it was proposed that each should compose an impromptu
epitaph for the other. In the epitaph which he improvised for Judge
Phinney Dr. Gott, adapting the conceit of the schoolmen, made out Judge
Phinney's soul to be so small that thousands of such could dance on the
point of a cambric needle. Judge Phinney retorted with the following:

Beneath this turf doth stink and rot
The body of old Dr. Gott;
Now earth is eased and hell is pleased,
Since Satan hath his carcass seized.

Amid shouts of laughter from the onlookers, Dr. Gott, turning jest into
earnest, strode from the tavern, and his friendship for Judge Phinney
was ended.

The town pump stood on the north side of Main Street a few rods east of
Chestnut street. Its former position is now marked by a tablet set in
the sidewalk. On the corner west of the pump Daniel Olendorf kept a
tavern. He was a small man, and very lame from a stiff knee. The muscles
of the leg were contracted, making it considerably shorter than the
other. At one time he was leading a lame horse through the street, when
a little dog came following on behind, holding up one leg and limping
along on the other three. The sight caused no little merriment along the
street when the lame man, the lame horse, and the lame dog were seen
marching in procession. Olendorf, wondering at the cause of so much
amusement, looked back and saw the uninvited follower. He picked up a
stone, and flung it at the dog, exclaiming, "Get along home; there is
limping enough here without you, you little lame cuss, coming limping
after us!"

Young James Cooper, afterward the novelist, had left the vi