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Encircling Laurel Lake
Familiar figures of old days in Lenox were Major Caleb Hyde, Samuel Collins, and Colonel Elijah Northrup (his house of 1778 is still standing on Main Street, the residence of Henry Sedgwick), also Representatives Asher Sedgwick, Oliver Belden, and William 0. Curtis, Senator Charles Mattoon, County Treasurer Joseph Tucker, James Robbins, and Judge William Walker who came from old Rehoboth in 1770, and purchased some 200 acres on Walker Hill (now Lanier Hill). Judge Walker always drove four horses or four oxen; in his house, Yokun farm, remain still the huge chimney, and exquisite French wall-paper laid on in 'Yok-un Farm," the Judge Walker house, as it looked in I865, when the Hon. Richard Goodman purchased it of Judge Edwards Pierrepont, minister to England under Grant. sheets, and the room in the " L, " where Madame Walker directed her maidens at their spinning. " Yokun " has been the home for many years of the family of the Hon. Richard Goodman.
On the hither side of Laurel Lake is the broad sweep of "Erskine Park," the summer home of the inventor George Westinghouse; thence you may command, set in sublime scenery, "Yokun" and the " Allen Winden " of Charles Lanier, Esq., on this Walker's or Lanier's Hill. " The Perch" of Fanny Kemble also overlooks Laurel Lake, on which she spent long days fishing for pickerel, "the most patient fisherman hereabouts." Where willows dip, by the western shore of Laurel Lake, the close-cropped upland rises to the terraces of " The Mount," the home of Edith Wharton. Simplicity is the accent of this estate by the author's preference, and the house is a copy of Beton, the seat of Lord Brownlow in Lincolnshire. June is full of invitations to the outdoor revel of bird-folk and flowers; quite equal here to the scene at Elvetham in Hampshire, poetized by Peter Lylly, for the occasion of "The Honorable Entertainment given by the Queen's Majestie in Progress" by the right Honorable the Earle of Hertford. Thus runs the Dittie of the Six Virgins' Song:
And trees doe whistle melodie! Now everie thing that nature breeds Doth clad itself in pleasant weeds. 0 beauteous Queene of second Troy, Accept of our unfained joy! " [2] Still another estate in the literary annals of Lenox touches Laurel Lake- " Wyndhurst," originally the " Blossom Farm" of the Rev. John Hotchkin, Principal of the celebrated Lenox Academy.[3] Henry Ward Beecher wrote Star Papers here and the height is known as "Beecher's Hill." Gen. John F. Rathbone christened the place " Wyndhurst" ; it looks out upon bewitching October Mountain, and the Housatonic Valley. The ivy-mantled tower of the "Tudor" mansion of the present owner, John Sloane, Esq., commands a sweep of sixty miles across Berkshire from Greylock to the Dome. In the appropriate landscape setting of "Wyndhurst" yearly blooms the memory of the power and charm of Charles Eliot and Olmsted the elder. Adjoining the Beecher farm is " Coldbrooke, " the estate of Captain John S. Barnes, who has an unusual collection of war-relics of 1812. Coldbrooke is the summer 'home of James Barnes the author. The early estate of Mrs. Dorr, a sister of Samuel Gray Ward, is now part of " Blantyre," the present estate of Robert W. Paterson, Esq. His collection of paintings includes the signatures of Meissonier, Romney, Bridgman, Henner, and Lembach. The furniture is modelled after Hatfield House, and includes pieces from the Marquand collection. The old Albany post-road used to run through the Paterson and Barnes places. The Elizabethan villa built by George H. Morgan, Esq., on the old Ogden Hagerty estate and designed by Arthur Rotch, well becomes its setting of magnificent old pines. Mrs. Hagerty held the earliest salon in Lenox, and among other interesting events Christine Nilsson sang in her drawing-room. Miss Hagerty became the wife of the gallant Robert Gould Shaw.
"Sunnyridge," the old Brevoort place, is the house of George Winthrop Folsom, Esq. Between the Lanier and Goodman estates is that of Cortlandt Field Bishop, Esq., the president of the Aero Club of America. one of the new marvels applying science to sport, combined with valuable explorations of earth and air; the earliest ascensions were made in Pittsfield.
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For more than fifty years the Rev. Samuel Shepard preached in Lenox church to all the countryside. "His Lenox was not the Lenox of to-day. On every southern hillside, with protecting walls of forest to the north, stood ample farmhouses. The valleys were luxuriant with corn and waving grain. Town meeting day found the old town house--which is still standing and still in use-full of as fine a set of New England farmers as any town could boast. Eloquence was the rule." 
Judge Walker raised his gambrel-roof on a most attractive height, whence may be observed the clear waters of three embowered ponds- Makheenac, Lily, and Laurel Lakes; this latter is literally a " mountain mirror." Seated beneath " Yokun's " honeysuckle summerhouse on the west knoll, one becomes the guest of the clouds, the cirrus trains which float or scud across Bald Head and Monument, to be finally drowned in the azure distance of Sheffield's proud Dome. One of the prettiest of days is when "the clouds are sticking across,"- as the daughter of a Cape Cod fisherman expressed it, her weather eye unconsciously alert for the smacks outside the bar. 