s me." When he had become accustomed to a suit of
clothes, he was as loath to change them as to alter his friendships or
politics. As he was plain in dress, so he was simple and abstemious in
habits of life. His bare living probably cost as little as that of any
working-man in the country.

George Clarke had an insatiable land-hunger. In looking after his wide
estates he allowed the Hyde Hall Property to become dilapidated, and
mortgaged the land that he owned to buy more. His land gave him great
yields of hops at the height of that industry in Otsego, but he was
always inclined to buy more hops rather than to sell. Little by little,
mortgages were foreclosed; Hyde Hall fell into decay; and in 1889 George
Clarke died insolvent.

Mrs. Clarke, in her youth, was said to be one of the most beautiful
women of her day. Those who knew her in later years can testify to an
abiding charm of personality which time could never efface. Hyde Hall in
summer she loved, but always the most perfect place in the world to her
was Monte Carlo, and there for many years she passed the winter,
becoming at last the oldest member of the American colony, having
crossed the ocean thirty times from America to Southern France. An old
lady tireless of life and all its activities, sprightly in manner,
brilliant in conversation, graceful in gesture, gay in dress, decked in
jewelry that scintillated with her quick motions, shod in tiny,
high-heeled slippers that clicked the measure of an alert step, and
sometimes permitted a flash of bright silk stockings; a lover of life
and gaiety and beauty to whom Monte Carlo seemed the most homelike spot
on earth--her reign as mistress in her younger days gave a color of its
own to the story of Hyde Hall.

When George Clarke died in 1889, his son, George Hyde Clarke, having
been graduated at the Columbia Law School, had for several years made
his home at Hyde Hall, and had restored the place to something like its
original condition. He married Mary Gale Carter, granddaughter of
William Holt Averell of Cooperstown, and it was through her inheritance
that the old home was saved to the family.

Hyde Clarke inherited some of the English traditions of his grandfather.
He was sent to England at the age of fourteen years, and educated at the
famous Harrow school. In spite of his later devotion to legal studies,
and his admission to the bar of the State of New York, his real tastes
inclined to agriculture. Having been