here obtained. He has inhabited it, ever since, at intervals, and he thinks he
can answer for the faithfulness of the picture he has drawn.
    Otsego has now become one of the most populous districts of New-York. It
sends forth its emigrants like any other old region, and it is pregnant with
industry and enterprise. Its manufactures are prosperous, and, it is worthy of
remark, that one of the most ingenious machines known in European art, is
derived from the keen ingenuity which is exercised in this remote region.
    In order to prevent mistake, it may be well to say that the incidents of
this tale are purely a fiction. The literal facts are chiefly connected with the
natural and artificial objects, and the customs of the inhabitants. Thus the
Academy, and Court house, and gaol, and inn, and most similar things are
tolerably exact. They have all, long since, given place to other buildings of a
more pretending character. There is also some liberty taken with the truth in
the description of the principal dwelling: the real building had no firstly and
lastly. It was of bricks and not of stones, and its roof exhibited none of the
peculiar beauties of the composite order. It was erected in an age too primitive
for that ambitious school of architecture. But the author indulged his
recollections freely, when he had fairly entered the door. Here all is literal,
even to the severed arm of Wolfe and the urn which held the ashes of Queen Dido.
1
    The author has elsewhere said that the character of the Leather Stocking is
a creation, rendered probable by such auxiliaries as were necessary to produce
that effect. Had he drawn still more upon fancy, the lovers of fiction would not
have so much cause for their objections to his work. Still the picture would not
have been in the least true, without some substitutes for most of the other
personages. The great Proprietor resident on his lands, and giving his name to
instead of receiving it from his estates, as in Europe, is common over the whole
of New York. The physician, with his theory rather obtained than corrected by
experiments on the human constitution, the pious, self-denying, laborious, and
ill paid missionary, the half-educated, litigious, envious and disreputable
lawyer with his counterpoise, a brother of the profession of better origin and
of better character, the shiftless, bargaining, discontented seller of his
betterments, the plausible carpenter, and most of the others are more familiar
to all who have ever dwelt in a new Country.
    From circumstances, which, after