BY HENRIETTA CHRISTIAN WRIGHT.
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER.
HE DISTINGUISHED THE CALL OF ANIMALS.
Late in the eighteenth century the village of Cooperstown lay almost in the midst of the primeval forest, which extended for miles around. Here the future novelist James Fenimore Cooper had been brought while yet an infant by his father, who had built the family mansion, Otsego Hall, in this secluded spot, far from the highways of travel, designing to make it the centre of a settlement of some note, if possible. Here, as the boy grew older, he learned wood-lore as the young Indians learned it, face to face with the divinity of the forest. He knew the language of the wild animals, and could distinguish their calls far across the gloomy spaces of the wood; he could follow the deer and bear to their retreats in dim secluded recesses; he could trace the path of the retreating wolf by the broken cobwebs glistening in the early sunlight; and the cry of the panther to its mate high overhead in the interlacing boughs of the pines and hemlocks was of a speech as familiar as his own tongue. When he was thirsty he made a hunter's cup of glossy leaves and drank in true Indian fashion; when fatigued, he could lie down and rest with that feeling of security that only comes to the forest-bred; when thoughtful, he could learn from the lap of the waves against the shore, the murmur of leaves, and the rustle of wings those lessons which Nature teaches in her quiet moods.
These experiences and impressions sank into Cooper's heart, and were relived again long after in the pages of his romances with such vividness that they are plainly seen to be real memories.
Leaving his home while still a young boy, Cooper went to Albany to study under a private tutor, and in 1803 entered Yale College, which, owing to some trouble with the authorities, he left in the third year of his course. It was now decided that he should enter the navy, and he left New York in the autumn of 1806, being then in his fifteenth year, on a vessel of the merchant marine. There was then no Naval Academy in America, and a boy could only fit himself for entering the navy before the mast; his ship, the Sterling, visiting Portugal and Spain, carrying cargoes from port to port, and taking life in a leisurely manner that belonged to the merchant sailing-vessels of that day. It was a time of interest to all seamen, and Cooper's mind was keenly alive to the new life around him. The English were expecting a French invasion, and the channel was full of ships of war, while every port on the southern coast was arming for defence. The Mediterranean was yet subject to incursions of the Barbary pirates, who would descend under cover of night upon any unprotected merchant-vessel, steal the cargo, scuttle the ship, and carry away the crew to be sold as slaves to the Tripolitan and Algerian husbandmen, whose orchards of dates were cultivated by many a white person from across the Atlantic, held there in cruel slavery.
The waters of the Mediterranean were full of merchant-men of all nations. Here, side by side, could be seen the Italian, French, and English sailor, while the flags of Russia, Turkey, Egypt, and Greece dotted the farther horizon.
HIS PLACE WAS ON THE DECK AMONG THE SAILORS.