During this Switzerland vacation Cooper's fancy was strongly attracted by Vevay's celebration of an old-time festival, abbaye des Vignerons, or great holiday of the vine-dressers. It was "a gay and motley scene, blending the harvest-home with a dash of the carnival spirit." Shepherds and shepherdesses in holiday attire and garlands, tripping the measures of rustic song and dance. Aproned gardeners with rake and spade, their sweethearts
with bread-baskets of fruit and flowers, uniting in the dance à la ronde, as they came to a certain point in the procession; and so went the reapers, mowers, gleaners, herdsmen, and dairy-maids in Alpine costume, timing their steps to horn and cow-bell, and singing the heart-stirring chorus Ranz des Vachs, or the "Cowherds of the Alps," the wild notes coming back in many an Alpine echo. The festival concluded with a rustic wedding, the bride being dowered down to the broom and spindle by the lady of the manor.
Such a holiday on the shores of Lake Leman, and the Pass of St. Bernard, Cooper placed as a background for his plot based on the hard old feudal-times law—that (in the canton of Berne) the odious office of executioner or headsman was made a family inheritance. The efforts of the unhappy father and mother to save their son from such a fate make up the pathetic interest of "The Headsman," issued in 1833. The Hospice of St.
Bernard so well described in this book was visited by the author the previous year.
When the power to write first dawned on Cooper's mind there came also and grew with it the desire to serve his native land in the field of letters. Love of country and countrymen guided his ardent, generous pen in "The Spy," "The Pioneers," "The Last of the Mohicans," and "The Prairie," written before he went to Europe. European society he entered, and was courted as literary men of reputation are courted there, but always with the honest pride of being an American. Under these pleasant conditions "The Red Rover," "The Traveling Bachelor," "The