OTSEGO LAKE.
At three o'clock A.M. on a cloudy and somewhat chilly morning, left the door of the Eagle in a very comfortable extra coach, which was chartered to convey a freight of four persons to the mansion of Mr. C——e, lying upon Otsego Lake, distant from Albany some sixty miles.
My companions were Mr. H——e, whom I had with me at starting, and Mr. I. V. B——n, for whom we had agreed to halt at his hotel on the top of the State House hill, and a long halt we had of it; for, having no great confidence in our punctuality, he had very wisely, as far as his own comfort was concerned, left orders to be called whenever we should appear: and not a moment earlier was he in the least danger of being roused, for we had to awaken one of the Irish waiters before he could be come at; a task of no small difficulty. After some half-hour's delay at the top of the hill, we set forward.
Mem.—In future, always arrange on all early expeditions to have my quarters beat up last.
Although the morning broke gloomily, the sun rose brave and bright, and managed throughout the day to keep the field against both wind and cloud, that sought to overcast him. For the most part, this line of country is very tame, and offers little to compensate for the bad road leading through it. The amusement, therefore, which a series of fine landscapes affords the traveller not being found here, we had to draw upon our own personal resources to banish weariness; happily these were not wanting: the youngest of my friends was the son of a leading Whig, or Oppositionist, and newly inoculated with the right degree of political fervour becoming the time and his age; the senior was a Tory, or of the Government party, possessed of much natural humour, and having a thorough knowledge of the people.
Previous to starting, the young politician was bold in his assertion that in Schoharie county,—that through which our route lay,—the Whig interest was in the ascendant; this assertion his better instructed opponent as stoutly contradicted, insisting on the contrary, that Jacksonism was the political creed cherished as orthodox amongst the country people.
The mode of coming at the true state of the parties was simple enough; we had only, whilst halting to change horses or bait, to touch upon the absorbing topic of the day, and the village loungers, landlord, bar-keeper, and guests, might have been placed upon a canvassing roll without a chance of error, so decidedly did they make "their love known."
I soon discovered that the "ould Gineral" had a hollow thing of it on this line of march, as, indeed, I have uniformly observed to be the case in all the agricultural districts; and although it may be argued that the confidence of these sons of the soil may neither be wisely nor well placed, it must, I conceive, be on all hands admitted that it is at least the result of honest conviction; for, if a stranger may be permitted to judge, I should say, a more virtuous and right-meaning class does not exist than the agriculturists generally of these States; indeed it appears clear to me that it is to this great body of truly independent electors the political seer must turn when he would desire fairly to calculate the probable changes likely to be worked out in this vast region. They are the owners of the land which their votes govern; they are invulnerable to the anarchist and the mad agrarian; they are observant and intelligent; and although liable, as are all men, to be for a time hoodwinked, or led astray, by interested brawlers, only let the veil be once lifted, and a glimpse afforded which shall inform them that their property or the country's freedom are endangered, and they will be found a rampart behind which all true patriots, the lovers of order and country, may rally, and which they may hold impregnable against the furious assault of the leveller, or the insidious sap of the disguised despot.
But enough of this: chacun à son métier; yet here I am betrayed into a homily where I only contemplated a jest. The truth is, my allusion to this topic at all arose from the vivid recollection I still have of the great fun I derived from this canvassing of my companions in support of their opinions previously expressed.
At each new stopping-place, my Whig friend would jump out with eager anticipations that here his majority would be made too palpable for denial; after him would quickly stride his long-legged, long-headed rival; and in a moment both were hard at it with the inmates of the house.