One morning not long after his return from Europe he was passing, as usual, his leisure hours at the mountain farm. While overlooking his workmen he espied a small skiff leaving an opposite shore-point of the lake and making directly for his own landing. Mr. Cooper thought the boatman was on an errand to himself. Presently the stranger, tin pail in hand, made his appearance and inquired of Cooper and his men whether a large swarm of bees had been seen "somewhere there-abouts." He had lost a fine swarm early in the morning several days before, and had since looked in vain for them; but "a near-by farmer's wife had seen them cross the lake that way." No bees had been seen by the men of Châlet. One of them said, however, "bees had been very plenty about the blossoms for a day or two." The farmer began to look about closely, and from the unusual number of bees coming and going among the flowers on the hill, he felt sure his honeybees were lodged somewhere near. So, with Mr. Cooper, much interested, the search for the lost
swarm began. A young grove skirted the cliffs; above were scattered some full, tall, forest trees,—here and there one charred and lifeless. The farmer seemed very knowing as to bees, and boasted of having one of the largest bee-sheds in the county. Rustic jokes at his expense were made by the workmen. They asked him which of the great tall trees his bees had chosen; they wished to know, for they would like to see him climb it, as Mr. Cooper had said that no axe should fell his forest favorites. The farmer nodded his head and replied that there was no climbing nor chopping for him that day—the weather was too warm; that he intended to call his bees down—that was his fashion. Taking up his pail he began moving among the flowers, and soon found a honey-bee sipping from the cup of a rose-raspberry. He said he knew at once the face of his own bee, "to say nothin' of the critter's talk"—meaning its buzzing of wings. A glass with honey from the tin pail soon captured the bee: uneasy at first, it was soon sipping the sweets. When quite satisfied it was set free, and its flight closely followed by the farmer's eye. Another bee was found on a head of golden-rod; it was
served the same way but set free at an opposite point from the first's release; this second flight was also closely noted. Some twelve of the tiny creatures from the clover and daisies were likewise treated, until the general direction of the flight of all was sure. This "hiving the bees" by the air-line they naturally took to their new home proved the farmer to be right, for an old, half-charred oak-stub, some forty feet high and "one limb aloft was their lighting-place, and there they were buzzing about the old blighted bough." The farmer then went to his boat and brought back a new hive and placed it not far
from the old oak; he put honey about its tiny doorway and strewed many flowers around it. With the sunset his bees had taken possession of their new home, and by moonlight they were rowed across the lake and placed beside the mother-swarm in the farmer's garden.
The author placed this incident in the "Prairie Round" of "The Oak Openings." Its Indian Peter shows how Christian influences in time triumph over revenge—the deadliest passion of the red-man's heart. On New Year's Day, 1848, "The Oak Openings" was begun, and the following spring saw it finished. This note appears in the author's diary: "Saturday, January 1, 1848. Read St. John. No church. Weather very mild, though snow fell in the night. Walking very bad, and I paid no visits outside of the family. Had —— at dinner. A merry evening with the young people. Played chess with my wife. Wrote a little in 'Oak Openings' to begin the year with."
Cooper was a born story-teller, and with a born sailor's love of salt water could not for long keep from spinning tales of the sea. All of which accounts for spirited and original "Jack Tier," which came from his pen in 1848. The story was
called at first "Rose Budd"—the name of the young creature who is one of its important characters. But plain, homely, hard-working "Jack," under a sailor's garb, following her commonplace, grasping husband the world over, and finding herself in woman's gear and grief by his side when he made his last voyage of all without her—it is she who had earned the real heroine's right to the name "Jack Tier." It is a story of the treacherous reefs off Florida and the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
All those quiet years in Cooperstown the author kept pace in mind and interest with the times, and often gave expression to his opinion on current events. Of General Scott in Mexico he wrote, February 1, 1848: "Has not Scott achieved marvels! The gun-thunders in the valley of the Aztecs were heard in echoes across the Atlantic." Years before this the last chapter of "The Spy" paid tribute to the "bravery of Scott's gallant brigade" in 1814, at Lundy's Lane, not far from Niagara. That Cooper strongly condemned Scott's "General Order" is another record of later years.
Reform—along all lines of service—was Cooper's watchword; his home-cry, first and
last, was to "build up our navy!" And, with his knowledge of naval affairs and accurate estimate of seamen of all grades, what an admirable secretary of our navy these qualifications would have made him! His political instincts seemed clear and unerring. April 13, 1850, he thought "Congress a prodigious humbug; Calhoun's attitude another," as was also Webster's answer, which, however, had "capital faults." From almost a seer and a prophet came in 1850 these words: "We are on the eve of great events. Every week knocks a link out of the chain of the Union." This was written to a dear and valued friend of South Carolina, to whom a few months later he further wrote: "The Southerns talk of fighting Uncle Sam,—that long-armed, well-knuckled, hard-fisted old scamp, Uncle Sam." And among the dearest of his life-long friends stood this "Southern" Commodore, William Branford Shubrick. Yet in close quarters, "he would rather have died than lied to him." His standards of honesty were as rock-hewn; and his words on his friend Lawrence perhaps apply as aptly to himself: "There was no more dodge in him than there was in the mainmast."