The Lake Gun

by James Fenimore Cooper




{This text has been transcribed and annotated by Hugh C.
MacDougall, Founder and Secretary of the James Fenimore
Cooper Society (jfcooper@wpe.com), who welcomes
corrections and emendations. The text has been
transcribed as written, except that because of the
limitations of the Gutenberg Project format, italicized
words have been transcribed in FULL CAPITALS.}

{"The Lake Gun" is one of James Fenimore Cooper's very
few short stories, and was written in the last year of his
life. It was commissioned by George E. Wood for
publication in a volume of miscellaneous stories and poems
called "The Parthenon" (New York: George E. Wood,
1850), and Cooper received $100 for it. The story was
reprinted a few years later in a similar volume called
"Specimens of American Literature" (New York, 1866). It
was published in book form in 1932 in a slipcased edition
limited to 450 copies (New York: William Farquhar Payson,
1932) with an introduction by Robert F. Spiller.}

{Introductory Note: The "Lake Gun," though based on
folklore about Seneca Lake in Central New York State (the
"Wandering Jew" and the "Lake Gun"), and on a supposed