of attraction for the young sailor. This gentleman only, his family and dependents, lived on Shelter Island, between which and the mainland all coming and going was by boat. Here they had shooting, fishing, and cruising a-plenty. The author's thorough knowledge of these waters was the probable reason for starting his two sealers from this port in search of valuable sealing-grounds in the polar seas. The schooners and their captains were American. One of the sealers was owned by an old, hard-fisted miser of Puritanic pattern, whose sweet niece Mary, pretty and simply good, makes the
very lovable heroine of this book. Beneath the low porch and within the thrifty garden and great orchard of her island home, Mary's heart had been captured by Roswell Gardner, the daring young captain of her uncle's schooner The Sea Lion. In the faith of the Star and the Cross the young girl worshipped with strong and childlike piety, while her lover "stood coldly by and erect with covered head,"—a doubter, but honestly striving to find his balance. Mary prays and hopes while the young man sails to the far-away ice land, where, shipwrecked and alone with his Maker, he finds the light of Truth shining for him on the far-away shores of his frozen hold. Of this sea tale Professor Lounsbury writes: "'The Sea Lions' is certainly one of the most remarkable conceptions that it ever entered into the mind of a novelist to create." And he adds: "It is a powerful story."
"Ways of the Hour" came from Cooper's pen in 1850. The purpose of this story was to attack trial by jury.
From the time of Cooper's friendship with Charles Mathews in the early 1820's, he had been in touch with the stage, and in June, 1850,
he mentions writing a three-act play in "ridicule of new notions." The title was "Upside Down; or, Philosophy in Petticoats"—a comedy. Of this play Cooper's friend Hackett, the American Falstaff of that day, wrote him: "I was at Burton's its first night and saw the whole of the play. The first act told well; the second, pretty well, but grew heavy; the third dragged until the conclusion surprised the attention into warm applause."
This clever but not over-successful farce closed the literary career of James Fenimore Cooper.
