It was poor Kent's turn to blush. He looked very uncomfortable. Miss Cosgrove glanced at him with wide inquiring eyes. He had not expected to read his poetry in such a setting. He stepped forward, and seizing little James Cooper under the arms lifted him to a chair.
"Behold," he said, "I should be glad to read the verses, but this gentleman, Master Cooper, has told me they are poor, and he should know because he plans to be an author."
The Captain's diversion succeeded. The guests were looking at the boy.
"My son James an author!" exclaimed Mrs. Cooper. "It's the first I've heard of it!"
"I don't want to," said the boy, very uncomfortable now that he was the centre of notice. "I want to be a soldier."
"That's right," said his father, "and I hope you may be if ever the country needs you. Friends, I give you these United States!"
By the time that toast was drunk Captain Kent had drawn Miss Cosgrove into a little alcove under the stairs and James had stolen out of the great hall.
James Cooper was a very fortunate boy. His father's house stood in one of the loveliest reaches of country on the Atlantic coast. Cooperstown lay on the southeastern shore of Otsego Lake, where the Susquehanna rushes out through a fertile valley between high hills. Bays and points of woodland break the Lake's edge, and in the distance rise the clear blue slopes of mountains.
Otsego Hall was built about the time when the young republic was stretching out for space in which to grow. Mr. Cooper found this lovely lake, and built on the frontier. Beyond his home spread seemingly endless forests, filled with the wandering bands of the Indians of the Six Nations, and with all manner of wild animals. The Lake was the home of flocks of gulls, loons and wild duck, and more times than he could count young Cooper had seen a long file of Indian canoes steal swiftly across its upper bays. It was an ideal region for a boy of an adventurous turn of mind, fond of the outdoor world.
The heir of Otsego Hall was not such a boy of the wilderness as were Daniel Boone, Andrew Jackson or Abraham Lincoln. He did not have to fight his way in the rough new world as they did. Mr. Cooper was well-to-do, and intended that his son should take a proper place in the young nation. There was little he could learn at the local academy, and so he was soon sent to school at Albany, where he lived in the home of an English clergyman who was fond of denouncing the war of the Revolution and the new country, and so made James Cooper more of an ardent patriot than ever.