r of the mystic East. At home he lived altogether among
books, and in the companionship of poetic imagination passed the years
of almost exile from Malta, his fondest retrospect. A winning soul was
John Worthington, widely beloved for what he was, and mourned for all
that he might have been.

During the Civil War a girl of extraordinary beauty and vivacity,
skilled as a musician, drew many suitors to her home, the house which
still stands at the southwest corner of Pioneer and Elm streets. Her
name was Elizabeth Davis, and her happy disposition made her a universal
favorite in the community. Toward the close of the war she suffered a
disappointment in love, the exact nature of which was not made known,
but so seriously affecting her attitude toward life that she registered
a solemn vow never again to be seen in public. From this time forth she
kept to the house, although it was said that she sometimes walked about
at night. Years passed. Father, mother, brother, and sister, followed
one another to the grave, until Elizabeth Davis became the only
inhabitant of the old house. Nobody ever saw her except a negro who
brought her supplies. In the village there grew up a new generation to
which she was a stranger. The windows of the house showed an abundance
of the choicest plants, always carefully tended. Passers-by often
arrested their steps to listen to the sound of a piano splendidly played
within. But nobody ever caught a glimpse of a face or form. The most
that the nearest neighbors saw was a hand and arm that were stretched
forth from the windows every evening to close the blinds. Thus Elizabeth
Davis lived for more than thirty years after the close of the war, and
carried her secret to the grave.

In the time of the Civil War the favorite reading matter of the soldiers
in camp and hospital throughout the northern armies was supplied by the
enterprise of Erastus F. Beadle, who had learned the publishing business
in the employment of the Phinneys in Cooperstown, himself being a native
of Pierstown, just over the hill. He became known throughout the United
States as the publisher of "Beadle's Dime Novels," and on his retirement
from business in 1889 purchased "Glimmerview," the residence which
overlooks the lake next east of the O-te-sa-ga. Here he died in 1894.
This inventor of the "dime novel" made an amazing success of publishing
paper-covered books adapted to the popular taste on a scale of cheapness
and in quantitie