After ten years of devoted care the author is on record as saying with some humor: "for this
year the farm would actually pay expenses." But full returns came in charming views over field, wood, and lake, where his fancy built "Muskrat Castle" and the "Ark of Floating Tom." Besides, its pork and butter were the sweetest, its eggs the whitest and freshest; its new peas and green corn "fit for the pot" were the first in the country. When the morning writing hours were over at the Hall, it was to the Châlet, as he called this farm, that he drove, to look after his horses, cows, pigs, and chickens.
The dumb creatures soon learned to know and love him. They would gather about him and
frequently follow him "in a mixed procession often not a little comical. He had a most kindly feeling for all domestic animals," and "was partial to cats as well as dogs; the pet half-breed Angora often perched on his shoulders while he sat writing in the library." Then there were the workmen to direct, for whom he always had a kindly word. One of these said: "We never had to call on him a second time for a bill; he brought us the check. When I knocked at his library door it was surprising how quickly I heard the energetic 'Come in.' When I met him in the street in winter he often said: 'Well, Thomas, what are you driving at?' If work was dull he would try to think of something to set me about." Of Cooper's activity was added: "When the masons were repairing his home, in 1839, he, at fifty, and then quite stout, went up their steep, narrow ladder to the topmost scaffold on the gable end and walked the ridge of the house when the chimney was on fire." The Châlet brought to the author's mind "Wyandotté," or "The Hutted Knoll," a tale of border-life during the colonial period. A family of that time forces from the wilderness an affluent frontier home and settlement for its successors. In "Sassy Dick"
the idle and fallen Indian is pathetically portrayed: Dick's return to the dignity of Wyandotté, the Indian chief, by reason of the red-man's fierce instincts, is a pen-picture strong in contrasts, illustrating how "he never forgot a favor nor forgave an injury." This story and that of Ned Myers were published in 1843.
