tering under numerous wounds, the lofty and overloaded spars yielded to the mighty force of the squall, tumbling in succession toward the hull, until nothing stood but the three firmer, but shorn, and nearly useless, lower masts. But, happily, the strife of the elements was of short continuance. The squall soon swept over the spot.

"But, as the one danger passed away from before the eyes of the mariners of the Dart, another, scarcely less to be apprehended, forced itself upon their attention.

The Dolphin seemed to have a charmed fate. But cooler thought and more impartial reflection, compelled the internal acknowledgement, that the vigilance and wise precautions of the remarkable individual who appeared not only to govern her movements, but to control her fortune, had their proper influence in producing the result. The vessel of the Rover had already opened many broad sheets of canvas; and, as the return of the regular breeze gave her the wind, her approach was rapid and unavoidable.

"A broadside was hurled from the Dart. The ship of the Rover received the iron storm while advancing, and immediately deviated from her course, in such a way as to prevent its repetition. Then she was seen sweeping toward the bows of the nearly

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Come on, ye murderous thieves!' cried the dauntless veteran. Well do ye know that Heaven is with the right!'

"The grim freebooters in his front recoiled and opened; then came a sheet of flame from the side of the Dolphin, and, at this crisis in the combat, a voice was heard in the melee, that thrilled on all nerves.

"Make way there, make way!' it said, in tones clear, deep and breathing with authority, make way, and follow; no hand but mine shall lower that vaunting flag!'

"Wilder saw with agony that numbers and impetuosity were sweeping his superiors from around him; friend after friend fell at his feet. Then a voice, deep as the emotion which such a scene might create, uttered in the very portals of his ear: 'Our work is done! He that strikes another blow makes an enemy of me!'"

[From "The Spy."]

There is a period in the life of every woman when she may be said to be predisposed to love."

"The heart which has not become callous soon sickens with the glory that has been purchased with a waste of human life."

"An unquiet life makes an uneasy grave." "We love to identify with the persons of our natural friends all those qualities to which we ourselves aspire, and all those virtues we have been taught to revere."

[From "The Deerslayer."]

"On the human imagination events produce the effects of time."

"Nothing is ever made more sure by swearing about it."

"Content is a great fortifier of good looks."

[From "The Last of the Mohicans."] "Your drinking Indian always learns to walk with a wider toe than the natural say

age, it being the gift of a drunkard to straddle, whether of white or red skin."

"Grass is a treacherous carpet for a flying party to tread on, but wood and stone take no print from a moccasin."

[From The Pathfinder."]

"A man may carry his prudence so far as to forget his courage."

"Of what use would valor be without the means of turning it to account?"

"Kind must cling to kind, and country to country, if one would find happiness."

[From "The Pioneers."]

"Where is the use of being a judge, or having a judge, if there is no law?"

[From "The Pilot."] 'The eye of a man is a sort of a lighthouse to tell one how to steer into the haven of his confidence."

"There is often wisdom in science, but there is sometimes safety in ignorance."

"It is a woman's province to be thrifty."

[From "The Red Rover."]

"Superstition is a quality that seems indigenous to the ocean."

"Life is sweeter than gold."

"The ship which often runs the hazard of the shoals gets wrecked at last."

"When a man once knows a thing thor

oughly, it is a great folly to spend his breath in words."

"The vulgarest minds are always the most reluctant to confess their blunders."

"Ruins in a land are, like most of the signs of decay in the human form, sad evidences of abuses and passions which have hastened the inroads of time."

"Whole fleets have often been towed to their anchors, and there warped; waiting for wind and tide to serve."

"The world must be often tried and thoroughly known, before we can pretend to judge of the motives of those around us." The true secret of the philosopher is not in living forever, but in living while he can."

James Fenimore Cooper, novelist and historian, was born at Burlington, New Jersey, September 15, 1789. Though New Jersey may claim his birthplace, Cooper's childhood, from his second to his fourteenth year, was passed on the then frontiers of civilization, at Cooperstown, New York, on the Susquehanna. There, in the primeval forest, hard by, the broad Lake Otsego and the wide-flowing river, his father, Judge William Cooper, built his house known as Otsego Hall and then laid out the town-a town that spread over extensive tracts of land all his own.

Here young Cooper began his life, with a forest around him and stretching up the mountains, full of wild animals, and wild men, Indian and white. All these nursed him and implanted in him seeds of poetry and wrought into the sturdy fibres of his mind golden threads of creative imagination. Then round about the hearth at night, men of pith and character told tales of the Revolution, of battle, adventure, and endurance which the child, hearing, fed upon with his soul, and grew strong in patriotism and independ

ence.

The boy received a limited educa

tion at the village school, and, later, was sent to Albany where he was fitted for college. In 1802 he entered Yale, but, in his junior year, was dismissed for a breech of discipline.

Deciding to enter the United States Navy, he shipped as a sailor before the mast on a merchant vessel (plying between New York and Europe) by way of preparation. The navy offered prospects of advancement to him because his father had been a representative in Congress and was a leading Federalist. In 1808 he was regularly entered as a midshipman of the United States. Navy and was detailed to service on Lakes Ontario and Champlain, thus gaining familiarity with scenes subsequently portrayed in his novels. His aptness in this arduous school may be judged from the technical accuracy that characterizes his marine stories. He rose to the rank of lieutenant. In 1811 he married a sister of Bishop De Lancey, of Westchester County, New York, and domestic joys far outweighed with him the chances of warlike distinction. He therefore resigned his commission and settled down as a gentleman farmer which he continued to be until death.

From 1814 to 1817 he resided at Cooperstown, but in 1817 he made his home at Scarsdale, Westchester Co., N. Y. In 1820 appeared his first book, "Precaution," written partly as an experiment because of his disappointment on reading a novel treating of English society, and his belief that he could write a better one. The book was published anonymously and attracted but little attention either in the United States or in England.

His friends, learning of his venture, urged him to depict American scenes and, as a result, he wrote "The Spy" and published it in 1821. It received such high praise on both continents that, in 1823, he wrote and published "The Pioneers," the first of his famous Leather-Stocking Tales. In 1824 appeared "The Pilot," the first sea-story, properly speaking, ever written. This work established his fame as a writer of sea stories. In France and Germany he was considered equal if not su

perior to Walter Scott. In 1826 he sailed for Europe and remained abroad until 1833. For a portion of this period he was acting United States consul at Lyons.

With the publication of "The Water Witch" (1830) the most fortunate decade of Cooper's life closed. A decline in popularity followed, owing to a change in general literary taste, to certain political opinions championed by him, and to severe strictures on American and English life and traits made in his books of travel (1836-38) and in later works.

He was slandered and ridiculed by American newspapers and finally brought suits of libel in which he defended himself with great ability, pleading his own cases and winning them. The most important of his suits related to the fairness of his 'History of the Navy of the United States" (1839), which was estab lished by the proceedings. He died of dropsy, September 14, 1851, at his home at Cooperstown.

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"More than a century ago, in the town of Burlington, New Jersey, was born a man destined to become one of the best known figures of his time. He was as devout an American as ever lived, for he could arraign the shortcomings of his countrymen as stanchly as he could defend and glorify their ideals. He entered as fearlessly and passionately into the life around him, seeing intensely, yet sometimes blindly, feeling ardently, yet not always aright; acting with might and conviction, yet not seldom amiss. He loved and revered good, scorned and hated evil, and, with the strength and straightforwardness of a bull, championed the one and gored the other. He worshipped justice, but lacked judgment; his brain stubborn and logical, was incongruously mated with a deep and tender heart.

"A brave and burly backwoods gentleman was he, with a smattering of the humanities from Yale, and a dogged precision of principle and conduct from six years in the navy. He had the iron memory proper to a vigorous organization and a serious, observant mind; he was tirelessly industrious-in nine-andtwenty years he published thirty-two novels, many of them of prodigious length, besides producing much matter never brought to light. His birth fell at a noble period of our history and his surroundings fostered true and generous manhood. Doubtless many of his contemporaries were as true men as he; but to Cooper, in addition was vouchsafed the gift of genius; and that magic quality dominated and transfigured his else rugged and intractable nature, and made his name known and loved over all the earth. . . . 'Nobility was innate in him; he conceived lofty and sweet ideals of human nature and conduct, and was never false to them. The

ideal man, the ideal woman-he believed in them to the end and more than twice or thrice in his fictions we find personages like Harvey Birch, Leatherstocking, Long Tom Coffin, the jailor's daughter in The Bravo,' and Mabel Dunham and Dew-of-June in 'The Pathfinder,' which give adequate embodiment to his exalted conception of the possibilities of his fellow creatures.

"Perhaps he hardly appreciated at its value that one immortal thing about him, -his genius, and was too much concerned about his dogmatic and bull-headed self. Unless the world confessed his infallibility, he could not quite be at peace with it. . . . He was uncompromisingly serious on all subjects, or, if at times, he tried to be playful, we shudder and avert our faces. It is too like Juggernaut dancing a jig. He gave too much weight to the verdict of the moment, and not enough to that judgment of posterity to which the great Verulam was content to submit his fame. Cooper, in short, had his limitations, but with all his errors, we may take him and be thankful.

"Moreover, his essential largeness appears in the fact that in the midst of his bitterest conflicts, at the very moment when his pamphlets and 'satires,' were heating the printing-presses and people's tempers, a novel of his would be issued, redolent with pure and serene imagination, telling of the prairies and the woods, of deer and panther, of noble redskins and heroic trappers. It is another world, harmonious and calm; no echo of the petty tumults in which its author seemed to live is audible therein. But it is a world of that author's imagination, and its existence proves that he was greater and wiser than the man of troubles and griev ances who so noisily solicits our attention. The surface truculence which fought and wrangled was distinct from the interior en