in 1904. The Pell-Clarkes made
Swanswick known as a haven of good cheer for miles around. The old
house, simple in its lines and modest in proportions, had an air of
singular distinction. The library in the west wing, with its curious
skylight, and bookcases well stocked with the classic favorites of an
English country gentleman, was a revelation to the connoisseur of old
volumes; and the whole house was full of quaintly delightful surprises.
It was the master of the house himself who gave to the place its
atmosphere. He was ideally the centre of things, especially when he sat
in the library reading aloud from some favorite author, which he did
always with perfect justice of expression, and in a voice of unrivalled
melody. He was a lover of outdoor life, and laid out on his own property
at the head of the lake the golf grounds now managed by the Otsego Golf
Club, the oldest links of any in America that have been maintained on
their original course. Mr. and Mrs. Pell-Clarke were reckoned and
beloved as partly belonging to Cooperstown, for they drove down from the
head of the lake almost daily, drawn by the whitish speckled horses,
Pepper and Salt, that everybody came to know. Pell-Clarke had the frame
and bearing of an athlete. Tall, with clean-cut features, he was one of
the handsomest men of his time, a noble and brilliant soul, an exuberant
and fascinating personality.

A country-seat that may be described as unique in all America, Hyde
Hall, lies nestled in the haunches of the Sleeping Lion, toward the head
of Otsego Lake. "The Sleeping Lion" is Cooperstown's nickname for Mount
Wellington, the wooded hill that stretches along the northern margin of
the Glimmerglass. The formal name was given to Mount Wellington by the
builder of Hyde Hall, in honor of his famous classmate at Eton, in
England. When this mountain is viewed from Cooperstown the aptness of
the more familiar, descriptive term--the Sleeping Lion--becomes evident.
In spite of its distance from the village, Hyde Hall has its place not
only in the view but in the story of Cooperstown, for its proprietors
have been closely associated with the life at the southern end of the
lake.

[Illustration: _J. W. Tucker_

SHADOW BROOK]

The grounds of Hyde Hall lie toward the head of Otsego, on the eastern
side, where Hyde Bay increases the width of the lake by a generous sweep
of rounded shore. Into this bay from the east flows Shadow Brook, the
most picturesque st