Dullness
past furnishes fire to present excitement.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v07 - Cic to Cuv
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 (#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
## p. 3994 (#364) ###########################################
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,
## p. 3995 (#365) ###########################################
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? ”
"It seems an open book, with letters of red written on its
pages. One need not be a conjurer to divine it is no extract
from the Bible. "
"Nor from the statute books of Queen Anne. I warrant me
'tis a ledger of profit gained in her many wanderings. Goggling
and leers! the bold air of the confident creature is enough to put
an honest man out of countenance! "
"Wilt read the motto of the witch? " demanded he of the
India shawl, whose eye had been studying the detail of the brig
antine's equipment, rather than attending to the object which so
much attracted the looks of his companions. "The night air has
tautened the cordage of that flying jib-boom, fellows, until it
begins to lift its nose like a squeamish cockney when he holds
it over salt water! See to it, and bring the spar in line; else
we shall have a reproof from the sorceress, who little likes to
have any of her limbs deranged. Here, gentlemen, the opinions
of the lady may be read as clearly as a woman's mind can ever
be fathomed. "
While speaking to his crew, Tiller had changed the direction.
of the boat; and it was soon lying, in obedience to a motion of
## p. 3996 (#366) ###########################################
3996
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
his hand, directly beneath the wild and significant-looking image
just described. The letters in red were now distinctly visible;
and when Alderman Van Beverout had adjusted his spectacles,
each of the party read the following sentence: —
"Albeit I never lend nor borrow,
By taking, nor by giving of excess,
Yet to supply the ripe wants of my friend,
I'll break a custom. " - MERCHANT OF VENICE,'
"The brazen! " exclaimed Myndert, when he had gone
through this quotation from the immortal bard. "Ripe or
green, one could not wish to be the friend of so impudent a
thing; and then to impute such sentiments to any respectable
commercial man, whether of Venice or Amsterdam!
Let us
board the brigantine, friend mariner, and end the connection ere
foul mouths begin to traduce our motives for the visit. "
"The overdriven ship plows the seas too deep for speed;
we shall get into port in better season without this haste. Wilt
take another look into the lady's pages? A woman's mind is
never known at the first answer. "
The speaker raised the rattan he still carried, and caused a
page of painted metal to turn on hinges that were so artfully
concealed as not to be visible. A new surface, with another
extract, was seen.
"What is it, what is it, patroon? " demanded the burgher,
who appeared greatly to distrust the discretion of the sorceress.
"Follies and rhymes! but this is the way of the whole sex; when
nature has denied them tongues, they invent other means of
speech. "
"Porters of the sea and land
Thus do go about, about;
Thrice to thine, and thrice to thine;
And thrice again to make up nine. "
"Rank nonsense! " continued the burgher. "It is well for
those who can, to add thrice and thrice to their stores; but look
you, patroon-it is a thriving trade that can double the value of
the adventure, and that with reasonable risks and months of
patient watching. "
"We have other pages," resumed Tiller, "but our affairs drag
for want of attending to them. One may read much good matter
## p. 3997 (#367) ###########################################
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
3997
in the book of the sorceress, when there is leisure and oppor-
tunity. I often take occasion, in the calms, to look into her
volume; and it is rare to find the same moral twice told, as these
brave seamen can swear. "
If the exterior of the brigantine was so graceful in form and
so singular in arrangement, the interior was still more worthy of
observation. There were two small cabins beneath the main
deck, one on each side of, and immediately adjoining, the limited
space that was destined to receive her light but valuable cargoes.
It was into one of these that Tiller had descended like a man
who freely entered into his own apartment; but partly above and
nearer to the stern was a suite of little rooms that were fitted
and finished in a style altogether different. The equipments were
those of a yacht, rather than those which might be supposed
suited to the pleasures of even the most successful dealer in
contraband.
The principal deck had been sunk several feet, commencing
at the aftermost bulkhead of the cabins of the subordinate offi-
cers, in a manner to give the necessary height, without inter-
fering with the line of the brigantine's shear. The arrangement
was consequently not to be seen by an observer who was not
admitted into the vessel itself. A descent of a step or two,
however, brought the visitors to the level of the cabin floor,
and into an ante-room that was evidently fitted for the conven-
ience of the domestic. A small silver hand-bell lay on a table,
and Tiller rang it lightly, like one whose ordinary manner was
restrained by respect. It was answered by the appearance of a
boy, whose years could not exceed ten, and whose attire was so
whimsical as to merit description.
The material of the dress of this young servitor of Neptune
was a light rose-colored silk, cut in a fashion to resemble the
habits formerly worn by pages of the great. His body was
belted by a band of gold, a collar of fine thread lace floated on
his neck and shoulders, and even his feet were clad in a sort
of buskins, that were ornamented with fringes of real lace and
tassels of bullion. The form and features of the child were
delicate, and his air as unlike as possible to the coarse and
brusque manner of a vulgar ship-boy.
"Waste and prodigality! " muttered the alderman, when this
extraordinary little usher presented himself in answer to the
summons of Tiller. "This is the very wantonness of cheap
## p. 3998 (#368) ###########################################
3998
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
goods and an unfettered commerce! There is enough of Mech-
lin, patroon, on the shoulders of that urchin, to deck the
stomacher of the Queen. 'Fore George, goods were cheap in the
market when the young scoundrel had his livery! "
The surprise was not confined, however, to the observant and
frugal burgher. Ludlow and Van Staats of Kinderhook mani-
fested equal amazement, though their wonder was exhibited in a
less characteristic manner. The former turned short to demand
the meaning of this masquerade, when he perceived that the hero
of the India shawl had disappeared. They were then alone with
the fantastic page, and it became necessary to trust to his
intelligence for directions how to proceed.
"Who art thou, child? and who has sent thee hither? "
demanded Ludlow. The boy raised a cap of the same rose-
colored silk, and pointed to an image of a female, with a swarthy
face and a malign smile, painted with exceeding art
front.
on its
-
"I serve the sea-green lady, with the others of the brigan-
tine. "
"And who is this lady of the color of shallow water, and
whence come you in particular? »
"This is her likeness: if you would speak with her, she
stands on the cutwater, and rarely refuses an answer. "
"Tis odd that a form of wood should have the gift of
speech! »
"Dost think her, then, of wood? " returned the child, looking
timidly and yet curiously up into the face of Ludlow. "Others
have said the same; but those who know best, deny it. She
does not answer with a tongue, but the book has always some-
thing to say. "
"Here is a grievous deception practiced on the superstition
of this boy: I have read the book, and can make but little of its
meaning. "
"Then read again. "Tis by many reaches that the leeward
vessel gains upon the wind. My master has bid me bring you
in-
"Hold-thou hast both master and mistress? You have told
us the latter, but we would know something of the former. Who
is thy master? »
The boy smiled and looked aside, as if he hesitated to
answer.
## p. 3999 (#369) ###########################################
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
3999
"Nay, refuse not to reply. I come with the authority of the
Queen. »
"He tells us that the sea-green lady is our queen, and that
we have no other. "
"Rashness and rebellion! " muttered Myndert; "but this fool-
hardiness will one day bring as pretty a brigantine as ever sailed
in the narrow seas to condemnation; and then will there be ru-
mors abroad, and characters cracked, till every lover of gossip
in the Americas shall be tired of defamation. "
"It is a bold subject that dares say this! " rejoined Ludlow,
who heeded not the by-play of the alderman: "your master has
a name? »
"We never hear it. When Neptune boards us, under the
tropics, he always hails the Skimmer of the Seas, and then they
answer. The old god knows us well, for we pass his latitude
oftener than other ships, they say. "
"You are then a cruiser of some service in the brigantine?
no doubt you have trod many distant shores, belonging to so
swift a craft? "
“I! — I never was on the land! " returned the boy, thought-
fully. "It must be droll to be there: they say one can hardly
walk, it is so steady! I put a question to the sea-green lady
before we came to the narrow inlet, to know when I was to go
ashore. "
"And she answered? "
"It was some time first. Two watches were passed before a
word was to be seen; at last I got the lines. I believe she
mocked me, though I have never dared show it to my master,
that he might say.
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 (#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
## p. 3994 (#364) ###########################################
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,
## p. 3995 (#365) ###########################################
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? ”
"It seems an open book, with letters of red written on its
pages. One need not be a conjurer to divine it is no extract
from the Bible. "
"Nor from the statute books of Queen Anne. I warrant me
'tis a ledger of profit gained in her many wanderings. Goggling
and leers! the bold air of the confident creature is enough to put
an honest man out of countenance! "
"Wilt read the motto of the witch? " demanded he of the
India shawl, whose eye had been studying the detail of the brig
antine's equipment, rather than attending to the object which so
much attracted the looks of his companions. "The night air has
tautened the cordage of that flying jib-boom, fellows, until it
begins to lift its nose like a squeamish cockney when he holds
it over salt water! See to it, and bring the spar in line; else
we shall have a reproof from the sorceress, who little likes to
have any of her limbs deranged. Here, gentlemen, the opinions
of the lady may be read as clearly as a woman's mind can ever
be fathomed. "
While speaking to his crew, Tiller had changed the direction.
of the boat; and it was soon lying, in obedience to a motion of
## p. 3996 (#366) ###########################################
3996
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
his hand, directly beneath the wild and significant-looking image
just described. The letters in red were now distinctly visible;
and when Alderman Van Beverout had adjusted his spectacles,
each of the party read the following sentence: —
"Albeit I never lend nor borrow,
By taking, nor by giving of excess,
Yet to supply the ripe wants of my friend,
I'll break a custom. " - MERCHANT OF VENICE,'
"The brazen! " exclaimed Myndert, when he had gone
through this quotation from the immortal bard. "Ripe or
green, one could not wish to be the friend of so impudent a
thing; and then to impute such sentiments to any respectable
commercial man, whether of Venice or Amsterdam!
Let us
board the brigantine, friend mariner, and end the connection ere
foul mouths begin to traduce our motives for the visit. "
"The overdriven ship plows the seas too deep for speed;
we shall get into port in better season without this haste. Wilt
take another look into the lady's pages? A woman's mind is
never known at the first answer. "
The speaker raised the rattan he still carried, and caused a
page of painted metal to turn on hinges that were so artfully
concealed as not to be visible. A new surface, with another
extract, was seen.
"What is it, what is it, patroon? " demanded the burgher,
who appeared greatly to distrust the discretion of the sorceress.
"Follies and rhymes! but this is the way of the whole sex; when
nature has denied them tongues, they invent other means of
speech. "
"Porters of the sea and land
Thus do go about, about;
Thrice to thine, and thrice to thine;
And thrice again to make up nine. "
"Rank nonsense! " continued the burgher. "It is well for
those who can, to add thrice and thrice to their stores; but look
you, patroon-it is a thriving trade that can double the value of
the adventure, and that with reasonable risks and months of
patient watching. "
"We have other pages," resumed Tiller, "but our affairs drag
for want of attending to them. One may read much good matter
## p. 3997 (#367) ###########################################
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
3997
in the book of the sorceress, when there is leisure and oppor-
tunity. I often take occasion, in the calms, to look into her
volume; and it is rare to find the same moral twice told, as these
brave seamen can swear. "
If the exterior of the brigantine was so graceful in form and
so singular in arrangement, the interior was still more worthy of
observation. There were two small cabins beneath the main
deck, one on each side of, and immediately adjoining, the limited
space that was destined to receive her light but valuable cargoes.
It was into one of these that Tiller had descended like a man
who freely entered into his own apartment; but partly above and
nearer to the stern was a suite of little rooms that were fitted
and finished in a style altogether different. The equipments were
those of a yacht, rather than those which might be supposed
suited to the pleasures of even the most successful dealer in
contraband.
The principal deck had been sunk several feet, commencing
at the aftermost bulkhead of the cabins of the subordinate offi-
cers, in a manner to give the necessary height, without inter-
fering with the line of the brigantine's shear. The arrangement
was consequently not to be seen by an observer who was not
admitted into the vessel itself. A descent of a step or two,
however, brought the visitors to the level of the cabin floor,
and into an ante-room that was evidently fitted for the conven-
ience of the domestic. A small silver hand-bell lay on a table,
and Tiller rang it lightly, like one whose ordinary manner was
restrained by respect. It was answered by the appearance of a
boy, whose years could not exceed ten, and whose attire was so
whimsical as to merit description.
The material of the dress of this young servitor of Neptune
was a light rose-colored silk, cut in a fashion to resemble the
habits formerly worn by pages of the great. His body was
belted by a band of gold, a collar of fine thread lace floated on
his neck and shoulders, and even his feet were clad in a sort
of buskins, that were ornamented with fringes of real lace and
tassels of bullion. The form and features of the child were
delicate, and his air as unlike as possible to the coarse and
brusque manner of a vulgar ship-boy.
"Waste and prodigality! " muttered the alderman, when this
extraordinary little usher presented himself in answer to the
summons of Tiller. "This is the very wantonness of cheap
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3998
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
goods and an unfettered commerce! There is enough of Mech-
lin, patroon, on the shoulders of that urchin, to deck the
stomacher of the Queen. 'Fore George, goods were cheap in the
market when the young scoundrel had his livery! "
The surprise was not confined, however, to the observant and
frugal burgher. Ludlow and Van Staats of Kinderhook mani-
fested equal amazement, though their wonder was exhibited in a
less characteristic manner. The former turned short to demand
the meaning of this masquerade, when he perceived that the hero
of the India shawl had disappeared. They were then alone with
the fantastic page, and it became necessary to trust to his
intelligence for directions how to proceed.
"Who art thou, child? and who has sent thee hither? "
demanded Ludlow. The boy raised a cap of the same rose-
colored silk, and pointed to an image of a female, with a swarthy
face and a malign smile, painted with exceeding art
front.
on its
-
"I serve the sea-green lady, with the others of the brigan-
tine. "
"And who is this lady of the color of shallow water, and
whence come you in particular? »
"This is her likeness: if you would speak with her, she
stands on the cutwater, and rarely refuses an answer. "
"Tis odd that a form of wood should have the gift of
speech! »
"Dost think her, then, of wood? " returned the child, looking
timidly and yet curiously up into the face of Ludlow. "Others
have said the same; but those who know best, deny it. She
does not answer with a tongue, but the book has always some-
thing to say. "
"Here is a grievous deception practiced on the superstition
of this boy: I have read the book, and can make but little of its
meaning. "
"Then read again. "Tis by many reaches that the leeward
vessel gains upon the wind. My master has bid me bring you
in-
"Hold-thou hast both master and mistress? You have told
us the latter, but we would know something of the former. Who
is thy master? »
The boy smiled and looked aside, as if he hesitated to
answer.
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JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
3999
"Nay, refuse not to reply. I come with the authority of the
Queen. »
"He tells us that the sea-green lady is our queen, and that
we have no other. "
"Rashness and rebellion! " muttered Myndert; "but this fool-
hardiness will one day bring as pretty a brigantine as ever sailed
in the narrow seas to condemnation; and then will there be ru-
mors abroad, and characters cracked, till every lover of gossip
in the Americas shall be tired of defamation. "
"It is a bold subject that dares say this! " rejoined Ludlow,
who heeded not the by-play of the alderman: "your master has
a name? »
"We never hear it. When Neptune boards us, under the
tropics, he always hails the Skimmer of the Seas, and then they
answer. The old god knows us well, for we pass his latitude
oftener than other ships, they say. "
"You are then a cruiser of some service in the brigantine?
no doubt you have trod many distant shores, belonging to so
swift a craft? "
“I! — I never was on the land! " returned the boy, thought-
fully. "It must be droll to be there: they say one can hardly
walk, it is so steady! I put a question to the sea-green lady
before we came to the narrow inlet, to know when I was to go
ashore. "
"And she answered? "
"It was some time first. Two watches were passed before a
word was to be seen; at last I got the lines. I believe she
mocked me, though I have never dared show it to my master,
that he might say.
