Page:A Camp in the Adirondacks, Book News Monthly, October 1905.djvu/2

 which contributes so large a share in the aggregate value of any work accomplished.

LARGE CABIN AND LIVING-ROOM AT CAMP ELSINORE

One might speak at length of the country houses of a dozen or more American writers of prose and verse—many of them have been described and pictured—but few will be found to surpass, whether in beauty or in uniqueness, "Camp Elsinore," in the Adirondacks, where Mrs. Edward Horner [sic] Coates, better known in the literary world as Florence Earle Coates, the Philadelphia poet, passes most of her summers.

Camp Elsinore is situated on the Upper St. Regis Lake, at the foot of St. Regis Mountain. The lake is considered one of the most beautiful in the Adirondack region, and a group of camps has grown up about it. Here Mr. Anson Phelps Stokes, Hon. Whitelaw Reid, Mr. Frederick V. Vanderbilt and a number of others spend the summer months, and among the variety of camps, each of which has been constructed with a view to reflecting, if possible, something of its owner's personal tastes, we find Camp Elsinore, built and owned by the husband of Florence Earle Coates, otherwise Mr. Edward H. Coates, president of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

The country round about Camp Elsinore is in every way delightful. The lake is hemmed in by tall trees—a picturesque woodland, in which the deer are to be found in ever increasing numbers. It is a land of invigorating mountain breezes, of the merry songs of countless birds, of enrapturing sunrises and sunsets—a country full of poetic charm, at once restful and inspiring. Life on the Upper St. Regis is simple and amusements are chiefly of the quiet, reposeful variety. The lake abounds in fish, affording an excellent opportunity for angling, and sailing is among the most favored pastimes.

In Camp Elsinore Mrs. Coates has done no little of her literary work, and the environment seems in every way congenial to the development of her graceful poetic faculty. It has inspired a number of her most delightful poems and has undoubtedly contributed largely to the harmonious coloring of those of her works which contain descriptions of natural scenery and to