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The Lake Gun

James Fenimore Cooper

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Book Excerpt: 
. . . from freezing; and summer and winter, springtime and autumn, is this wanderer to be observed; occasionally battling with the ice that makes a short distance from the shore, now pursuing its quiet way before a mild southern air in June, or, again, anchored, by its roots touching the bottom, as it passes a point, or comes in contact with the flats. It has been known to remain a year or two at a time in view of the village of Geneva, until, accustomed to its sight, the people began to think that it was never to move from its berth any more; but a fresh northerly breeze changes all this; the "Jew" swings to the gale, and, like a ship unmooring, drags clear of the bottom, and goes off to the southward, with its head just high enough above water to be visible. It would seem really that his wanderings are not to cease as long as wood will float.

{Village of Geneva = now the City of Geneva, at the northern end of Lake Seneca}

No white. . . Read More

Community Reviews

Interesting but...

A good story if you take it in the form its written in. The notes about how its really a political satire were unnecessary and uninteresting. While it may have been written for that purpose, its better as a legend.

This was marvelous

The Lake Gun is Cooper's fascinating allegory that offered the reader a polemical denunciation of an 1850s New York state politician (William Henry Seward) hidden in a somewhat contrived Native American legend based in the environs of Lake Seneca. Cooper echoes Hawthorne in his denunciation of aboli

A study in metaphor, brilliant writing

I first wanted to read this short story to learn more about the lake gun effect. The effect has occurred in several lakes over hundred of years. It is manifest in loud booming sounds that gave no credible explanation. The most well-known gun in the New England r