from Cooperstown led Dr. Francis to go there August 27, 1851, to
see his esteemed friend in his own home. And of Cooper the Doctor
wrote: "I explained to him the nature of his malady--frankly assured him
that within the limits of a week a change was indispensable to lessen
our forebodings of its ungovernable nature. He listened with fixed
attention.--Not a murmur escaped his lips. Never was information of so
grave a cast received by any individual in a calmer spirit."

So passed the summer days of 1851 with the author, near his little lake,
the Glimmerglass, and its Mt. Vision, when one mid-September Sunday
afternoon, with his soul's high standard of right and truth undimmed,
James Fenimore Cooper crossed the bar.

While from youth Cooper was a reverent follower of the Christian faith,
his religious nature deepened with added years. Eternal truth grew in
his heart and mind as he, in time, learned to look above and beyond this
world's sorrows and failures. In July, 1851, he was confirmed in
Christ's Church,--the little parish church just over the way from the
old-Hall home, whose interests he had faithfully and generously served
as sometime warden and as vestryman since 1834.

[Illustration: CHRIST'S CHURCH, COOPERSTOWN, N.Y.]

Of one such service Mr. Keese writes that in 1840 the original Christ's
Church of Cooperstown underwent important alterations. Its entire
interior was removed and replaced by native oak. As vestryman Mr. Cooper
was prime mover and chairman of the committee of change, and hearing of
the chancel screen in the old Johnstown church, first built by Sir
William Johnson, he took a carpenter and went there to have drawings
made of this white-painted pine screen, which at his own expense he had
reproduced with fine, ornamental effect in oak, and made it a gift to
Christ's Church. It was removed from Christ's Church about 1891, badly
broken and abandoned. This so disturbed Cooper's daughters that his
grandson, James Fenimore Cooper of Albany, New York, had the pieces
collected, and stored them for using in his Cooperstown home; but he--by
request of the Reverend Mr. Birdsall--had them made into two screens for
the aisles of the church, where they were erected as a memorial to his
father, Paul Fenimore, and his great-grandfather, Judge William Cooper.

[Illustration: FENIMORE COOPER'S SCREEN GIFT.]

Mr. Keese's words, dating January, 1910, are: "And now comes in a rather
singular discovery made by the