No More Learning

"I will never set foot in that church again! " she said.
can one be safe, where a man is allowed to say whatever he
chooses in the pulpit? A ritual never can be personal or
insulting. I shall abide by the Prayer-Book hereafter. "
« How


## p. 3976 (#342) ###########################################

3976
ROSE TERRY COOKE
In due time this matter faded out of the popular mind, as all
things do in course of time, and nothing came between pastor
and people except a gradual sense on their part that Solomon
was right when he said, "Much study is a weariness to the flesh;"
not only the student's flesh, but also theirs who have to hear
reiterated all the dry outcome of such study.
But Parson Tucker's career was not to be monotonous. His
next astonishing performance was at a wedding. A very pretty
young girl, an orphan, living in the house of a relative, equally
poor but grasping and ambitious, was about to marry a young
man of great wealth and thoroughly bad character; a man whom
all men knew to be a drunkard, a gambler, and a dissolute fel-
low, though the only son of a cultivated and very aristocratic
family. Poor Emily Manning had suffered all those deprivations
and mortifications which result from living in a dependent con-
dition, aware that her presence was irksome and unwelcome,
while her delicate organization was overtaxed with work whose
limits were as indefinite as the food and clothing which were its
only reward. She had entered into this engagement in a sort of
desperation, goaded on by the widowed sister-in-law with whom
she lived, and feeling that nothing could be much worse than
her present position. Parson Tucker knew nothing of this, but
he did know the character of Royal Van Wyck; and when he
saw the pallid, delicate, shrinking girl beside this already worn-
out, debased, bestial creature, ready to put herself into his
hands for life, the "daimon" laid hold upon him and spake
again. He opened the service, as was customary in Hartland,
with a short address; but surely never did such a bridal exhort-
ation enter the ears of man and woman before.
"My friends," he began, "matrimony is not to be lightly un-
dertaken, as the matter of a day; it is an awful compact for life
and death that ye enter into here. Young man, if thou hast
not within thyself the full purpose to treat this woman with
pure respect, loyal service, and tender care; to guard her soul's
innocence as well as her bodily welfare; to cleave to her only,
and keep thyself from evil thoughts and base indulgences for
her sake, if thou art not fit, as well as willing, to be priest
and king of a clean household, standing unto her in character
and act in God's stead so far as man may, draw back even now
from thine intent; for a lesser purpose is sacrilege here, and
will be damnable infamy hereafter. "


## p. 3977 (#343) ###########################################

ROSE TERRY COOKE
3977
Royal Van Wyck opened his sallow green eyes with an inso-
lent stare. He would have sworn roundly had not some poor
instinct of propriety restrained him; as it was, he did not speak
but looked away. He could not bear the keen deep-set eyes
fixed upon him, and a certain gaunt majesty in the parson's
outstretched arm and severe countenance daunted him for the
moment. But Thomas Tucker saw that he had no intention of
accepting this good advice, so he turned to Emily.
"Daughter," he said, "if thou art about to enter into this
solemn relation, pause and consider. If thou hast not such con-
fidence in this man that thy heart faileth not an iota at the
prospect of a lifelong companionship with him; if thou canst not.
trust him utterly, respect him as thy lord and head, yield him
an obedience joyful and secure next to that thou givest to God;
if he is not to thee the one desirable friend and lover; if thou
hast a thought so free of him that it is possible for thee to
imagine another man in his place without a shudder; if thou art
not willing to give thyself to him in the bonds of a lifelong,
inevitable covenant of love and service; if it is not the best and
sweetest thing earth can offer thee to be his wife and the mother
of his children,-stop now; stop at the very horns of the altar,
lest thou commit the worst sin of woman, sell thy birthright for
a mess of pottage, and find no place for repentance, though thou
seek it carefully and with tears. "
Carried away with his zeal for truth and righteousness, speak-
ing as with the sudden inspiration of a prophet, Parson Tucker
did not see the terror and the paleness deepening, as he spoke,
on the bride's fair countenance. As he extended his hand toward
her she fell in a dead faint at his feet. All was confusion in an
instant. The bridegroom swore and Mrs. Manning screamed,
while the relations crowded about the insensible girl and tried to
revive her. She was taken at once up-stairs to her room, and the
wedding put off till the next day, as Mrs. Manning announced.
"And you won't officiate at it, old fellow! I'll swear to that! "
roared the baffled bridgroom with a volley of profane epithets,
shaking his fist in the parson's calm face.
"Having taken the sword, I am content to perish thereby,
even as Scripture saith," answered Thomas Tucker, stalking out
of the door.
That night as he sat in his study, the door opened softly, and
Emily Manning came in and knelt at the side of the parson's


## p. 3978 (#344) ###########################################

3978
ROSE TERRY COOKE
chair. "I have no place to go to, sir," she whispered, with
trembling lips. "You saved me to-day; will you help me now?
I was going to sin, but I didn't know it till you told me. ”
"Then it was not sin, my child," said Parson Tucker gently.
"Sin is conscious transgression, and from that thou hast instantly
departed. "
"But what could I do? " she asked, her eyes full of tears.
"I have no home. Marcia is tired of me, and I have no other
friends. I wanted a home so much. Oh, I was wrong, for I did
not love him. And now I have run away from Marcia, — she
was so dreadful,- and what shall I do? »
"Poor child! " he said tenderly. "Sit here. I will help.
My old woman, in the kitchen below, shall fetch thee to a
chamber. Keziah brought her with us; she is kind, and will
care for thee, while I go to bring a friend. " So saying, the
parson rung his bell for old Jane, gave the girl over to her
care, and set out himself for President Winthrop's house.
"I have brought you a good work," he said abruptly to Mrs.
Winthrop. "Come with me; there is a soul in need at my
house. "
Mrs. Winthrop was used to this sort of summons from the
parson. They had been good friends ever since the eccentric
interview brought about by Jack Mason's valentine, and when
charity was needed Eleanor Winthrop's heart and hand were
always ready for service. She put on hat and shawl, and went
with the parson to his house, hearing on the way all the story.
"Mr. Tucker," she said, as he finished the recital, "aren't
you going to make much trouble for yourself by your aggressive
honesty? "
Thomas looked at her, bewildered.
"But the truth is to be spoken! " he replied, as if that were
the end of the controversy.
And she was silent, recognizing the
fact that here conventions were useless, and self-preservation
not the first law of grace, if it is of nature.
All Mrs. Winthrop's kindliness was aroused by the pitiful
condition of Emily Manning. She consoled and counseled her
like a mother, and soon after took her into her household as
governess to the little girls whom Mr. Winthrop's first wife had
left him; making for the grateful girl a happy home, which in
after years she left to become the wife of a good man, toward
whom she felt all that Parson Tucker had required of her on


## p. 3979 (#345) ###########################################

ROSE TERRY COOKE
3979
that painful day which she hated now to remember. And as the
parson performed this ceremony he turned after the benediction
to Eleanor Winthrop, and said with a beam of noble triumph
on his hollow visage, "Blessed be the Lord! I have saved a soul
alive! »
But long before this happy sequel came about, he had other
opportunities to distinguish himself. There came a Sunday when
the service of infant baptism was to be performed; and when
the fair sweet babes, who had behaved with unusual decorum,
were returned to their mothers' arms, and the parson according
to order said, "Let us pray," he certainly offered the most
peculiar petition ever heard in the Green Street Church. After
expressing the usual desire that the baptized children might
up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, he went
grow
on:
Yea!
«But if it please thee, O Father, to recall these little ones
to thyself in the innocence of their infancy, we will rejoice and
give thanks, and sound thy praises upon the harp and timbrel.
with the whole heart we will praise thee; for we know the
tribulations and snares, the evil and folly and anguish, of this
life below; and we know that not one child of Adam, coming
to man's estate, is spared that bitter and woful cup that is
pressed out from the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil,
which
our progenitors ate of in thy garden of Paradise, and
thereby sinned and fell, and bequeathed to us their evil long-
ings
and habitual transgression. They are the blessed who are
taken
away in their infancy, and lie forever by green pastures
and still waters in the fields of heaven. We ask of thee no
greater or better gift for these lambs than early to be folded
where
none shall hurt or destroy in all thy holy mountain, and
love that is above all mother's love shall cradle them
the
throughout eternity. Amen! "
ble at
who
Not a mother in that congregation failed to shiver and trem-
this prayer, and tears fell fast and thick on the babes
slumbered softly in the tender arms that had gathered them.
home, after consecrating them to that God who yet they were
so unwilling should literally accept their offering. Fifty pairs
of eyes were turned on Parson Tucker with the look of a bear
robbed of its cubs; but far more were drowned in tears of mem-
ory and, regret, poignant still, but strangely soothed by this vivid
presentation of the blessedness wherein their loved and lost were
safely abiding.


## p. 3980 (#346) ###########################################

3980
ROSE TERRY COOKE
Much comment was exchanged in the church porch, after
service, on the parson's prayer.
"We ought to hold a special meeting to pray that the Lord
will not answer such a petition! " cried one indignant mother,
whose little flock were clinging about her skirts, and who had
left twin babies, yet unbaptized, at home.
"It is rather hard on you, aunty! " said the graceless Jack
Mason, the speaker's nephew, now transformed into an unprom-
ising young lawyer in Hartland. "You'd rather have your babies
sin and suffer with you than have 'em safe in their little graves,
hadn't you? I don't go with the parson myself. I didn't so
much mind his funeral gymnastic over old Baker, and his dispo-
sition of that party's soul in Hades, because I never before sup-
posed Roosevelt Baker had a soul, and it was quite reassuring to
be certain he met with his dues somewhere; but he's worse than
Herod about the babies! "
However, the parson did not hear or know what was said of
hi and in an ignorance that was indeed bliss continued to
preach and minister to his people in strict accordance with his
own views of duty. His next essay was a pastoral visit to one
of his flock, recently a widow, a woman weak in body and mind
both; desirous above all things to be proper and like other
people, to weep where she must, smile when she ought, wear
clothes like the advance-guard of fashion, and do "the thing"
to be done always, whether it was the right and true thing
or not.
Her husband had spent all her fortune in speculation, taken
to drink as a refuge from folly and reproach at home, and
under the influence of the consoling fluid had turned his wife
out-of-doors whenever he felt in the mood; kicked her, beaten
her, and forced her, in fear of her life, over and over to steal
from her own house and take refuge with the neighbors, and
ask from them the food she was not allowed at home. At last
the end came. Parson Tucker was sent for to see the widow
and arrange for funeral services. She had not been present at
the Baker funeral, or indeed been in Deerford for some years
after that occasion, so she adhered to the conventions; and when
Parson Tucker reached the house he was shown into a dark-
ened room, where the disconsolate woman sat posed already in
deep mourning, a widow's cap perched upon her small head.
A woman would have inferred at once that Mrs. Spring had


## p. 3981 (#347) ###########################################

ROSE TERRY COOKE
3981
anticipated the end of Joe's last attack of mania à potu, and pre-
pared these funeral garments beforehand; but Thomas Tucker
drew no such conclusions. He sat down silently and grimly, after
shaking hands with Mrs. Spring, and said nothing. She began
the conversation: —
"This is a dreadful affliction, Mr. Tucker. I don't know how
I shall live through it. "
"It is terrible, indeed," said the parson.
"I do not wonder,
madam, that you mourn to see your partner cut off in his sins,
without time for repentance; but no doubt you feel with grati-
tude the goodness which hath delivered you from so sore a
burden. "
"What? " screamed the widow.
"I speak of God's mercy in removing from your house one
who made your life a terror, and your days full of fear and suf-
fering; you might have been as others, bereaved and desolate,
and mourning to your life's end. "
"I don't know what you mean, Parson Tucker," said Mrs.
Spring sharply, removing a dry handkerchief from unwet eyes.
"Poor dear Joseph is taken away from me, and I'm left a
desolate widow, and you talk in this way! I'm sure he had the
best of hearts that ever was; it was only, as you may say, acci-
dental to him to be a little overcome at times, and I'm—I'm –
o-h! "
some well-
He rose up
Here she gave a little hysterical scream, and did
executed sobbing; but the parson did not mind it.
before her, gaunt and gray.
"Madam, did not this man beat,
and abuse, and insult, and starve you, when he was living? Or
have I been misinformed ? »
"Well-oh dear, what dreadful questions! "
"Did he? " thundered the parson.
"He didn't mean to; he was excited, Mr. Tucker.
He- »
"He was drunk. And is that excuse? Not so, madam. You
know, and I know, that his death is a relief and a release to
you. I cannot condole with you on that which is not a sorrow; "
and he walked rigidly out of the door.
Is it necessary to say that Mr. Spring's funeral did not take
place in Deerford ? His widow suddenly remembered that he had
been born in a small town among the hills of West Massachu-
setts, and she took his body thither, to be "laid beside his dear
payrents," as she expressed it.


## p. 3982 (#348) ###########################################

3982
ROSE TERRY COOKE
Things had now come to a bad pass for Parson Tucker. The
church committee had held more than one conference over their
duty toward him. It was obvious that they had no real reason
for dismissing him but his ghastly honesty, and that hardly offers
a decent excuse to depose a minister of the gospel. They hardly
knew how to face the matter, and were in this state of perplexity
when Mr. Tucker announced, one Sunday, after the sermon, that
he would like to see the church committee at his study on Tues-
day night; and accordingly they assembled there and found
President Winthrop with the parson.
"Brethren," said Thomas Tucker, after the preliminary wel-
come had passed, "I have sent for you to-night to say, that
having now been settled over your church eight years, I have
found the salary you paid me so much more than was needed
for my bodily support that I have laid by each year as the sur-
plus came to hand, that I might restore to you your goods.
The sum is now something over eight thousand dollars, and is
placed to the credit of your chairman, in the First Deerford
Bank. " The committee stared at each other as if each one
were trying to arouse himself from sleep. The chairman at last
spoke :-
"But Mr. Tucker, this is unheard-of!
-
The salary is yours;
we do not desire to take it back; we can't do it. "
"That which I have not earned, Brother Street, is not mine.
I am a solitary man; my expenses are light. It must be as I
said. Moreover, I have to say that I hereby withdraw from
your pulpit, of necessity. I have dealt with our best physicians
concerning a certain anguish of the breast which seizes me at
times unawares, and they all concur that an evil disease lieth
upon me.
I have not much time to live, and I would fain with-
draw from activities and duties that are external, and prepare for
the day that is at hand. "
The committee were pained as well as shocked. They felt
guilty to think how they had plotted this very thing among
themselves; and they felt too a certain awe and deep respect for
this simple unworldly nature, this supernatural integrity. Mr.
Street spoke again; his voice was husky:-
"If this is so, Mr. Tucker, we must of course accept your
resignation; but my dear pastor, keep the money! You will
need care and comforts, now this trouble has come on you. We
can't take it back. "


## p. 3983 (#349) ###########################################

ROSE TERRY COOKE
3983
Parson Tucker looked at him with a grave sweet smile.
« I
thank you, brother, but I have a private store. My sister left
her worldly goods to me, and there is enough and to spare for
my short sojourn," he answered.
"But it isn't according to the fitness of things that we should
take your salary back, Parson Tucker," put in bustling Mr.
Taylor. "What upon earth should we do with it? "
"Friend," said the parson, "the eternal fitness of things is
but the outcome of their eternal verity. I have not, as I said,
earned that wage, and I must restore it: it is for you to decide
what end it shall serve in the church. ”
A few more words passed between them, and then each
wrung the parson's hand and left him, not all with unmoved
hearts or dry eyes.
"I don't wonder he's going to die! " exclaimed Mr. Street, as
the committee separated at a street corner. "He's altogether
too honest to live! "
From that day Thomas Tucker sank quietly toward his grave.
Friends swarmed about him, and if delicacies of food could have
saved him, the dainty stores poured in upon him would have
renewed his youth; but all was in vain.
President Winthrop sat by him one summer day, and seeing
a sad gleam in his sunken eye, asked gently, "You are ready
and willing to go, Brother Tucker? " nothing doubting a glad
assent.
But the parson was honest to the last. "No," he said, "I do
not want to die; I am afraid. I do not like strange and new
things. I do not want to leave my books and my study. "
"But, dear brother,” broke in the astonished president, "it is
a going home to your Father's house! "
"I know not what a home is, friend, in the sense of regret or
longing for one. My early home was but as the egg to the
bird, a prison wherein I was born, from which I fled; nor was
my knowledge of a father one that commends itself as a type
of good. I trust, indeed, that the Master will take me by the
hand, even as he did Peter upon the water; but the utterance
of my secret soul is even that of the apostle with the keys:
'Lord, save, or I perish! >»
"But you have been a power for good, and a close follower
of Peter's Lord," said Mr. Winthrop, altogether at a loss for the
proper thing to say to this peculiar man.


## p. 3984 (#350) ###########################################

3984
ROSE TERRY COOKE
"One thing alone have I been enabled to do, Brother Win-
throp, for which I can with heart and soul thank God, even at
this hour. Yea, I thank him that I have been enabled to speak
the truth even in the face of lies and deceptions, through his
upholding. " A smile of unearthly triumph filled every line of
the wasted face, and lit his eyes with a flash of divine light as
he said this. He grasped close the friendly hand he was hold-
ing, turned his cheek to the pillow, and closed his eyes, passing
into that life of truth and love that awaited him, even as a
child that lies down in the darkness, trembling, fearful, and
weary, but awakes, in the dawn of a new day, in the heart of
home.
"Still," said President Winthrop to his wife, as they walked
home after the funeral, "I believe in the good old proverb,
Eleanor, that the truth is not to be spoken at all times. '»
"And I never believed in it so little! " she cried, indig-
nantly. "Think what a record he has left; what respect hangs
about his memory! Do we know how many weak souls have
relied on his example, and held to the truth when it was hard,
because he did and could? It is something to be heroic in these
days, even if it is unpopular!
"
The president shrugged his shoulders.
From The Sphinx's Children and Other People's': copyrighted 1886, by
Ticknor and Company


## p. 3984 (#351) ###########################################



## p. 3984 (#352) ###########################################


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## p. 3984 (#353) ###########################################

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## p. 3984 (#354) ###########################################

JAMES FEN MORE COOPER


## p. 3985 (#355) ###########################################

3985
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
(1789-1851)
BY JULIAN HAWTHORNE
M
men
ORE than a century ago, in the town of Burlington, New Jer-
sey, was born a man destined to become one of the best
known figures of his time. He was as devout an American
as ever lived, for he could arraign the shortcomings of his country-
as stanchly as he could defend and glorify their ideals. He
entered fearlessly and passionately into the life around him, seeing
intensely, yet sometimes blind; feeling ardently, yet not always
aright; acting with might and conviction, yet not seldom amiss. He
loved and revered good, scorned and hated evil, and with the
strength and straightforwardness of a bull championed the one and
gored the other. He worshiped justice, but lacked judgment; his
brain, stubborn and logical, was incongruously mated with a deep
and tender heart. A brave and burly backwoods gentleman was he,
with a smattering of the humanities from Yale, and a dogged pre-
cision of principle and conduct from six years in the navy. He had
the iron memory proper to a vigorous organization and a serious,
observant mind; he was tirelessly industrious-in nine-and-twenty
years he published thirty-two novels, many of them of prodigious
length, besides producing much matter never brought to light. His
birth fell at a noble period of our history, and his surroundings fos-
tered true and generous manhood. Doubtless many of his contem-
poraries were as true men as he: but to Cooper in addition was
vouchsafed the gift of genius; and that magic quality dominated
and transfigured his else rugged and intractable nature, and made
his name known and loved over all the earth. No author has been
more widely read than he; no American author has won even a tithe
of his honorable popularity.
Though Jersey may claim his birthplace, Cooper's childhood from
his second to his fourteenth year was passed on the then frontiers of
civilization, at Cooperstown on the Susquehanna. There in the pri-
meval forest, hard by the broad Lake Otsego and the wide-flowing
river, the old Judge built his house and laid out his town. Trees,
mountains, wild animals, and wild men nursed the child, and im-
planted in him seeds of poetry and wrought into the sturdy fibres of
his mind golden threads of creative imagination. Then round about
VII-250


## p. 3986 (#356) ###########################################

3986
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
the hearth at night, men of pith and character told tales of the
Revolution, of battle, adventure, and endurance, which the child,
hearing, fed upon with his soul, and grew strong in patriotism and
independence. Nobility was innate in him; he conceived lofty and
sweet ideals of human nature and conduct, and was never false to
them thereafter. The ideal Man—the ideal Woman - he believed in
them to the end. And more than twice or thrice in his fictions we
find personages like Harvey Birch, Leatherstocking, Long Tom Cof-
fin, the jailer's daughter in The Bravo,' and Mabel Dunham and
Dew-of-June in The Pathfinder,' which give adequate embodiment
to his exalted conception of the possibilities of his fellow creatures.
For though portrayal of character in the ultra-refined modern sense
of the term was impossible to Cooper, yet he perceived and could
impressively present certain broad qualities of human nature, and
combine them in consistent and memorable figures. Criticism may
smile now and then, and psychology arch her eyebrows, but the fig-
ures live, and bid fair to be lusty long after present fashions have
been forgotten.
But of the making of books, Cooper, during the first three decades
of his life, had no thought at all. He looked forward to a career of
action; and after Yale College had given him a glimpse of the range
of knowledge, he joined a vessel as midshipman, with the prospect
of an admiral's cocked hat and glory in the distance. The glory,
however, with which the ocean was to crown him, was destined to be
gained through the pen and not the sword, when at the age of five-
and-thirty he should have published The Pilot. ' As a naval officer,
he might have helped to whip the English in the War of 1812; but
as author of the best sea story in the language he conquered all the
world of readers unaided. Meanwhile, when he was twenty-one years
old he married a Miss Delancey, whose goodness (according to one of
his biographers) was no less eminent than his genius, and who died
but a short time before him. The joys of wedded life in a home of
his own outweighed with him the chances of warlike distinction, and
he resigned his commission and took command of a farm in West-
chester County; and a gentleman farmer, either there or at his boy-
hood's home in Cooperstown, he remained till the end, with the
exception of his seven-years' sojourn in Europe.
His was a bodily frame built to endure a hundred years, and the
robustness of his intelligence and the vivacity of his feelings would
have kept him young throughout; yet he died of a dropsy, at the
prime of his powers, in 1851, heartily mourned by innumerable
friends, and having already outlived all his enmities. He died, too,
the unquestioned chief of American novelists; and however superior
to his may have been the genius of his contemporary Walter Scott,
b


## p. 3987 (#357) ###########################################

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
3987
the latter can hardly be said to have rivaled him in breadth of
dominion over readers of all nationalities. Cooper was a household
name from New York to Ispahan, from St. Petersburg to Rio Janeiro;
and the copyright on his works in various languages would to-day
amount to a large fortune every year. Three generations have passed
since with The Spy' he won the sympathies of mankind; and he
holds them still. It is an enviable record. And although in respect
of actual quality of work produced there have been many geniuses
greater than he, yet it is fair to remember that Cooper's genius had
a great deal of stubborn raw material to subdue before it could pro-
ceed to produce anything. It started handicapped. As it was, the
man wasted years of time and an immensity of effort in doing, or
trying to do, things he had no business with. He would be a politi-
cal reformer, a critic of society, an interpreter of law, even a master
grammarian. He would fight to the finish all who differed from him
in opinion; he fought and-incredible as it may seem- he actually
conquered the American press. He published reams of stuff which
no one now reads and which was never worth reading, to enforce his
views and prove that he was right and others wrong.
All this power
was misdirected; it might have been applied to producing more and
better Leatherstockings and Pilots. Perhaps he hardly appreciated
at its value that one immortal thing about him,- his genius,—and
was too much concerned about his dogmatic and bull-headed Self.
Unless the world confessed his infallibility, he could not be quite at
peace with it.
Such an attitude arouses one's sense of humor; it
would never have existed had Cooper possessed a spark of humor
himself. But he was uncompromisingly serious on all subjects, or if
at times he tried to be playful, we shudder and avert our faces. It
is too like Juggernaut dancing a jig. And he gave too much weight
to the verdict of the moment, and not enough to that judgment of
posterity to which the great Verulam was content to submit his
fame. Who cares to-day, or how are we the better or the worse, if
Cooper were right or wrong in his various convictions? What con-
cerns us is that he wrote delightful stories of the forest and the sea;
it is in those stories, and not in his controversial or didactic homilies,
that we choose to discover his faith in good and ire against evil.
Cooper, in short, had his limitations; but with all his errors, we may
take him and be thankful.
Moreover, his essential largeness appears in the fact that in the
midst of his bitterest conflicts, at the very moment when his pam-
phlets and "satires" were heating the printing-presses and people's
tempers, a novel of his would be issued, redolent with pure and
serene imagination, telling of the prairies and the woods, of deer and
panther, of noble redskins and heroic trappers. It is another world,


## p. 3988 (#358) ###########################################

3988
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
harmonious and calm; no echo of the petty tumults in which its
author seemed to live is audible therein. But it is a world of that
author's imagination, and its existence proves that he was greater
and wiser than the man of troubles and grievances who so noisily
solicits our attention. The surface truculence which fought and
wrangled was distinct from the interior energy which created and
harmonized, and acted perhaps as the safety-valve to relieve the
inward region from disturbance.
The anecdote of how Cooper happened to adopt literature as a
calling is somewhat musty, and its only significant feature is the
characteristic self-confidence of his exclamation, on laying down a
stupid English novel which he had been reading to his wife, "I
could write as well as that myself! " Also in point is the fact that
the thing he wrote, 'Precaution,' is a story of English life, whereof
at that time he had had no personal experience. One would like to
know the name of the novel which touched him off; if it was stu-
pider and more turgid than 'Precaution' it must have been a curi-
osity. Cooper may have thought otherwise, or he may have been
stimulated by recognition of his failure, as a good warrior by the
discovery that his adversary is a more redoubtable fighter than he
had gauged him to be. At all events, he lost no time in engaging
once more, and this time he routed his foe, horse and foot. One is
reminded of the exclamation of his own Paul Jones, when requested
to surrender-"I haven't begun to fight! " (The Spy' is not a per-
fect work of art, but it is a story of adventure and character such as
the world loves and will never tire of. Precaution' had showed
not even talent; 'The Spy' revealed unquestionable genius. This is
not to say that its merit was actually unquestioned at the time it
came out; our native critics hesitated to commit themselves, and
awaited English verdicts. But the nation's criticism was to buy the
book and read it, and they and other nations have been so doing
ever since. Nothing in literature lasts longer, or may be oftener
re-read with pleasure, than a good tale of adventure. The incidents
are so many and the complications so ingenious that one forgets the
detail after a few years, and comes to the perusal with fresh appe-
tite. Cooper's best books are epics, possessing an almost Homeric
vitality. The hero is what the reader would like to be, and the lat-
ter thrills with his perils and triumphs in his success. Ulysses is
Mankind, making sweet uses of adversity, and regenerate at last;
and Harvey Birch, Leatherstocking, and the rest are congenial types
of Man, acting up to high standards in given circumstances.
But oh! the remorseless tracts of verbiage in these books, the
long toiling through endless preliminaries, as of a too unwieldy army
marching and marshaling for battle! It is Cooper's way; he must
K_KAMAR


## p. 3989 (#359) ###########################################

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
3989
warm to his work gradually, or his strength cannot declare itself.
His beginnings abound in seemingly profitless detail, as if he must
needs plot his every footstep on the map ere trusting himself to take
the next. Balzac's method is similar, but possesses a spiritual charm
lacking in the American's. The modern ability of Stevenson and
Kipling to plunge into the thick of it in the first paragraph was
impossible to this ponderous pioneer. Yet when at length he does
begin to move, the impetus and majesty of his advance are tremen-
dous; as in the avalanche, every added particular of passive prepara-
tion adds weight and power to the final action. Cooper teaches
us, Wellington-like, "what long-enduring hearts can do! " Doubtless,
therefore, any attempt to improve him by blue-penciling his tedious-
ness would result in spoiling him altogether. We must accept him
as he is. Dullness past furnishes fire to present excitement. It is a
mistake to "skip" in reading Cooper; if we have not leisure to read
him as he stands, let us wait until we have.
'Precaution' and 'The Spy' both appeared in 1821, when the
author was about thirty-two years old. Two years passed before the
production of 'The Pioneers,' wherein Cooper draws upon memory
no less than upon imagination, and in which Leatherstocking first
makes our acquaintance. As a rule (proved by exceptions), the best
novels of great novelists have their scene in surroundings with which
the writer's boyhood was familiar. The Pioneers' and the ensuing
series of Leatherstocking tales are placed in the neighborhood of the
lake and river which Cooper, as a child, had so lovingly learned by
heart. Time had supplied the requisite atmosphere for the pictures
that he drew, while the accuracy of his memory and the minuteness
of his observation assured ample realism. In the course of the nar-
rative the whole mode of life of a frontier settlement from season to
season appears before us, and the typical figures which constitute it.
It is history, illuminated by romance and uplifted by poetic imagina-
tion. One of our greatest poets, speaking after the second-thought
of thirty years, declared Cooper to be a greater poet than Hesiod or
Theocritus. But between a poet and a prose-writer capable of poetic
feeling there is perhaps both a distinction and a difference.
The birth-year of the Pioneers' and of the 'Pilot' are again the
same. Now Cooper leaves, for the time, the backwoods, and em-
barks upon the sea. He is as great upon one element as upon the
other of whom else can that be affirmed? We might adapt the
apophthegm on Washington to him: he was "first on land, first
on sea, and first in the hearts of his readers. " In The Pilot' the
resources of the writer's invention first appear in full development.
His personal experience of the vicissitudes and perils of a seaman's
life stood him in good stead here, and may indeed have served him


## p. 3990 (#360) ###########################################

3990
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
well in the construction of all his fictions. Fertility in incident and
the element of suspense are valuable parts of a story-teller's outfit,
and Cooper excelled in both; he might have been less adequately
furnished in these respects had he never served on a man-of-war.
Be that as it may, The Pilot' is generally accepted as the best sea
story ever written. Herman Melville and his disciple Clark Russell
have both written lovingly and thrillingly of the sea and seamen,
but neither of them has rivaled their common original. Long Tom
Coffin is the peer of Leatherstocking himself, and might have been
made the central figure of as many and as excellent tales. The
three books-'The Spy,' 'The Pioneers,' and 'The Pilot'-form a
trilogy of itself more than sufficient to support a mighty reputation;
and they were all written before Cooper was thirty-five years old.
Indeed, his subsequent works did not importantly add to his fame;
and many of them of course might better never have been written.
'Lionel Lincoln,' in 1825, fell far short of the level of the previous
romances; but The Last of the Mohicans,' in the year following, is
again as good as the best, and the great figure of Leatherstocking
even gains in solidity and charm. As a structure, the story is easily
criticized, but the texture is so sound and the spirit so stirring that
only the cooler after-thought finds fault. Faults which would ship-
wreck a lesser man leave this leviathan almost unscathed.
At this juncture occurred the unfortunate episode in Cooper's
career. His fame having spread over two continents, he felt a
natural desire to visit the scene of his foreign empire and make
acquaintance with his subjects there; it seemed an act of expedi-
ency too to get local color for romances which should appeal more
directly to these friends across the sea. Upon these pretexts he set
forth, and in due season arrived in Paris. Here however he chanced
to read a newspaper criticism of the United States government;
and true to his conviction that he was the heaven-appointed agent
to correct and castigate the world, he sat down and wrote a sharp
rejoinder. He was well furnished with facts, and he exhibited
plenty of acumen in his statement of them; though his cumbrous and
pompous style, as of a schoolmaster laying down the law, was not
calculated to fascinate the lectured ones. In the controversy which
ensued he found himself arrayed against the aristocratic party,
with only the aged Lafayette to afford him moral support; his argu-
ments were not refuted, but this rendered him only the more
obnoxious to his hosts, who finally informed him that his room was
more desirable than his company. As a Parthian shaft, our redoubt-
able champion launched a missile in the shape of a romance of
ancient Venice (The Bravo'), in which he showed how the perver-
sion of institutions devised to insure freedom, inevitably brings to


## p. 3991 (#361) ###########################################

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
3991
pass freedom's opposite. It is a capital novel, worthy of Cooper's
fame; but it neither convinced nor pleased the effete monarchists
whom it arraigned. In the end accordingly he returned home, with
the consciousness of having vindicated his countrymen, but of having
antagonized all Europe in the process. It may be possible to win
the affection of a people while proving to them that they are fools
and worse; but if so, Cooper was not the man to accomplish the
feat. It should be premised here that during his residence abroad
he had written, in addition to The Bravo,' three novels which may
be placed among his better works; and one, The Wept of Wish-ton-
Wish,' whose lovely title is its only recommendation. The Red
Rover' was by some held to be superior even to The Pilot'; and
'Heidenhauer' and 'The Headsman of Berne' attempt, not with
entire success, to repeat the excellence of The Bravo. ' He had
also published a volume of letters critical of national features,
entitled 'Notions of the Americans,' which may have flattered his
countrymen's susceptibilities, but did nothing to assuage the wounded
feelings of those with whom he contrasted them.
Now, when a warrior returns home after having manfully sup-
ported his country's cause against odds, and at the cost of his own
popularity, he feels justified in anticipating a cordial reception.
What then must be his feelings on finding himself actually given the
cold shoulder by those he had defended, on the plea that his defense
was impolitic and discourteous? In such circumstances there is one
course which no wise man will pursue, and that is to treat his
aspersers with anything else than silent disdain. Cooper was far
from being thus wise: he lectured his fellow-citizens with quite as
much asperity as he had erewhile lectured the tyrants of the Old
World; with as much justice too, and with an effect even more
embroiling. In A Letter to his Countrymen,' 'Monikins,' 'Home-
ward Bound,' and 'Home as Found,' he admonished and satirized
them with characteristic vigor. The last-named of these books
brings us to the year 1838, and of Cooper's life the fiftieth. He
seemed in a fair way to become a universal Ishmael. Yet once
more he had only begun to fight. In 1838 he commenced action
against a New York newspaper for slander, and for five years there-
after the courts of his country resounded with the cries and thwack-
ings of the combatants. But Cooper could find no adversary really
worthy of his steel, and in 1843 he was able to write to a friend, “I
have beaten every man I have sued who has not retracted his
libels! " He had beaten them fairly, and one fancies that even he
must at last have become weary of his favorite passion of proving
himself in the right. Howbeit, peace was declared over the corpse
of the last of his opponents, and the victor in so many fields could


## p. 3992 (#362) ###########################################

3992
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
now apply himself undisturbedly to the vocations from which war
had partially distracted him,- only partially, for in 1840, in the
heat of the newspaper fray, he astonished the public by producing
one of the loveliest of his romances and perhaps the very best of
the Leatherstocking series, The Pathfinder. ' William Cullen Bryant
holds this to be "a glorious work," and speaks of its moral beauty,
the vividness and force of its delineations, and the unspoiled love
of nature and fresh and warm emotions which give life to the narra-
tive and dialogue. Yet Cooper was at that time over fifty years of
age.
Nevertheless, so far as his abilities both mental and physical
were concerned, the mighty man was still in the prime of his man-
hood, if not of his youth. During the seven or eight years yet to
elapse, after the close of his slander suits in 1843, before his un-
expected death in 1851, he wrote not less than twelve new novels,
several of them touching the high-water mark of his genius. Of them
may be specially mentioned Two Admirals' and 'Wing-and-Wing,'
'Wyandotte,' and 'Jack Tier. ' Besides all this long list of his
works, he published 'Sketches of Switzerland' in 1836; Gleanings in
Europe, in a series of eight volumes, beginning 1837; a 'Naval His-
tory of the United States' in two octavo volumes; and wrote three
or four other books which seem to have remained in manuscript.
Altogether it was a gigantic life-work, worthy of the giant who
achieved it.
Cooper was hated as well as loved during his lifetime, but at his
death the love had quenched the hate, and there are none but lovers
of him now. He was manly, sincere, sensitive, independent; rough
without but sweet within. He sought the good of others, he devoutly
believed in God, and if he was always ready to take his own part
in a fight, he never forgot his own self-respect or forfeited other
men's. But above all he was a great novelist, original and irresist-
ible. America has produced no other man built on a scale so con-
tinental.
Durian Hanthome


## p. 3993 (#363) ###########################################

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
3993
THE PRIVATEER
From The Water-Witch'
THE
HE exploits, the mysterious character, and the daring of the
Water-Witch and of him who sailed her, were in that
day the frequent subjects of anger, admiration, and surprise.
Those who found pleasure in the marvelous listened to the
wonders that were recounted of her speed and boldness with
pleasure; they who had been so often foiled in their attempts
to arrest the hardy dealers in contraband reddened at her name;
and all wondered at the success and intelligence with which her
movements were controlled. It will therefore create no aston-
ishment when we say that Ludlow and the patroon drew near
to the light and graceful fabric with an interest that deepened
at each stroke of the oars. So much of a profession which, in
that age, was particularly marked and apart from the rest of
mankind in habits and opinions, had been interwoven into the
character of the former, that he could not see the just propor-
tions, the graceful outlines of the hull, or the exquisite symme-
try and neatness of the spars and rigging, without experiencing
a feeling somewhat allied to that which undeniable superiority
excites in the heart of even a rival. There was also a taste in
the style of the merely ornamental parts of the delicate machine,
which caused as much surprise as her model and rig.
Seamen, in all ages and in every state of their art, have
been ambitious of bestowing on their floating habitations a style
of decoration which while appropriate to their element, should
be thought somewhat analogous to the architectural ornaments of
the land. Piety, superstition, and national usages affect these
characteristic ornaments, which are still seen, in different quar-
ters of the world, to occasion broad distinctions between the
appearances of vessels. In one, the rudder-head is carved with
the resemblance of some hideous monster; another shows gog-
gling eyes and lolling tongues from its cat-heads; this has the
patron saint, or the ever-kind Marie, embossed upon its mold-
ings or bows; while that is covered with the allegorical emblems
of country and duty. Few of these efforts of nautical art are
successful, though a better taste appears to be gradually redeem-
ing even this branch of human industry from the rubbish of
barbarism, and to be elevating it to a state which shall do no


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3994
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
violence to the more fastidious opinions of the age. But the
vessel of which we write, though constructed at so remote a
period, would have done credit to the improvements of our own
time.
It has been said that the hull of this celebrated smuggler was
low, dark, molded with exquisite art, and so justly balanced as
to ride upon its element like a sea-fowl. For a little distance
above the water it showed a blue that vied with the color of
the deep ocean, the use of copper being then unknown; while
the more superior parts were of a jet black delicately relieved
by two lines of a straw color, that were drawn with mathe-
matical accuracy, paralleled to the plane of her upper works, and
consequently converging slightly toward the sea. beneath her
counter. Glossy hammock-cloths concealed the persons of those
who were on the deck, while the close bulwarks gave the brigan-
tine the air of a vessel equipped for war. Still the eye of Lud-
low ran curiously along the whole extent of the two straw-colored
lines, seeking in vain some evidence of the weight and force of
her armament. If she had ports at all, they were so ingeniously
concealed as to escape the keenest of his glances. The nature
of the rig has been already described. Partaking of the double
character of brig and schooner, the sails and spars of the for-
ward-mast being of the former, while those of the after-mast
were of the latter construction, seamen have given to this class
of shipping the familiar name of hermaphrodites. But though
there might be fancied, by this term, some want of the propor-
tions that constitute seemliness, it will be remembered that the
departure was only from some former rule of art, and that no
violence had been done to those universal and permanent laws
which constitute the charm of nature. The models of glass
which are seen representing the machinery of a ship, are not
more exact or just in their lines than were the cordage and spars
of this brigantine. Not a rope varied from its true direction;
not a sail but it resembled the neat folds of some prudent house-
wife; not a mast or a yard was there but it rose into the air, or
stretched its arms, with the most fastidious attention to sym-
metry. All was airy, fanciful, and full of grace, seeming to
lend to the fabric a character of unreal lightness and speed. As
the boat drew near her side, a change of the air caused the
buoyant bark to turn like a vane in its current; and as all the
long and pointed proportions of her head-gear came into view,


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JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
3995
Ludlow saw beneath the bowsprit an image that might be sup-
posed to make, by means of allegory, some obvious allusions to
the character of the vessel. A female form, fashioned with the
carver's best skill, stood on the projection of the cutwater. The
figure rested lightly on the ball of one foot, while the other was
suspended in an easy attitude resembling the airy posture of the
famous Mercury of the Bolognese. The drapery was fluttering,
scanty, and of a light sea-green tint, as if it had imbibed a hue
from the element beneath. The face was of that dark bronzed
color which human ingenuity has from time immemorial adopted
as the best medium to portray a superhuman expression. The
locks were disheveled, wild, and rich; the eye full of such a
meaning as might be fancied to glitter in the organs of a sor-
ceress; while a smile so strangely meaning and malign played
about the mouth, that the young sailor started when it first met
his view, as if a living thing had returned his look.
"Witchcraft and necromancy! " grumbled the alderman, as this
extraordinary image came suddenly on his vision also.
"Here
is a brazen-looking hussy! and one who might rob the queen's
treasury itself, without remorse! Your eyes are young, patroon:
what is that the minx holds so impudently above her head?