"Cooper was hated as well as loved during his lifetime, but, at his death, the love had quenched the hate, and there are none but lovers of him now. He was manly, sincere, sensitive, independent; rough without but sweet within. He sought the good of others, he devoutly believed in God, and, if he was always ready to take his own part in a fight, he never forgot his own self-respect or forfeited other men's. America has produced no other man built on a scale so continental."—Julian Hawthorne, in "The World's Best Literature."

46 His character was like the bark of the cinnamon,-a rough and a stringent rind without, and an intense sweetness within. Those who penetrated below the surface found a genial temper, warm affections and a heart with ample place for his friends, their pursuits, their good name, their welfare. They found him a philanthropist."William Cullen Bryant.

"It is said that if you cast a pebble into the ocean at the mouth of our harbor, the vibration made in the water passes gradually on till it strikes the icy barriers of the deep at the south pole. The spread of Cooper's reputation is not confined within narrower limits. The Spy' is read in all the written dialects of Europe and in some of those of Asia.

The French, immediately after its first appearance, gave it to the multitudes who read their far diffused language, and placed it among the first works of its class. It was rendered into Castilian, and passed into the hands of those who dwell under the beams of the Southern Cross. At length it passed the eastern frontier of Europe, and the latest record I have seen of its progress toward universality is contained in a statement of the International Magazine, derived, I presume, from its author, that in 1847 it was published in a Persian translation at Ispahan. Before this time, I doubt not, they are reading it in some of the languages of Hindostan and, if the Chinese ever translated anything, it would be in the

hands of the many millions who inhabit the far Cathay."-William Cullen Bryant.

666

The Spy' is not a perfect work of art; but it is a story of adventure and character such as the world loves and will never tire of. This book reveals unquestionable gen. ius. The nation's criticism was to buy the book and read it, and they and other nations have been doing so ever since. The incidents are so many and the complications so ingenious that one forgets the detail after a few years, and comes to the perusal with fresh appetite."-Julian Hawthorne.

2. THE PILOT," 1823.

"In this book the resources of the writer's invention first appear in full development. . . . It is generally accepted as the best sea-story ever written."-Julian Hawthorne.

"In this work Cooper has had many disciples, but no rival. All who have since written romances of the sea have been but travelers in a country of which he was the great discoverer, and none of them all seemed to love a ship as Cooper loved it, or have been able so strongly to interest all classes of readers in its fortunes. Among other personages drawn with great strength in The Pilot' is the general favorite, Tom Coffin, with all the virtues and one or two of the infirmities of his profession, superstitious as seamen are apt to be, yet whose superstitions strike us as but an irregular growth of his devout recognition of the Power who holds the ocean in the hollow of His hand; true hearted, gentle, full of resources, collected in danger, and at last calmly perishing at the post of duty, with the vessel he has long guided, by what I may call a great and magnaminous death."William Cullen Bryant.

3. "THE PIONEER," 1823.

"In 1823, and in his thirty-fourth year Cooper brought out his 'Pioneers,' the scene of which was laid on the borders of his own beautiful lake. . . . In the Pioneers,' Leatherstocking is first introduced—a philosopher of the woods ignorant of books, but instructed in all that nature, without the aid of science, could reveal to the man of quick senses and inquiring intellect, whose life has been passed under the open sky, and in companionship with a race whose animal perceptions are the acutest and most cultivated of which there is any example. But Leatherstocking has higher qualities. In him there is a genial blending of the gentlest virtues of the civilized man with the better nature of the aboriginal tribes. All that in them is noble, generous and ideal, is adopt

ed into his own kindly character and all that is evil is rejected. Leatherstocking

is acknowledged on all hands to be one of the noblest as well as most striking and original creations of fiction. In some of his subsequent novels, Cooper-for he had not yet attained to the full maturity of his powers— heightened and ennobled his first conception, of the character, but in The Pioneers' it dazzled the world with the splendor of novelty."-William Cullen Bryant.

"In the course of the narrative the whole mode of life of a frontier settlement from season to season appears before us, and the typical figures which constitute it. It is history illuminated by romance and uplifted by poetic imagination." - Julian Haw

thorne.

4. "THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS," 1826. "In this work the construction of the narrative has signal defects, but it is one of the triumphs of the author's genius that he makes us unconscious of them while we read. It is only when we have had time to awake from the intense interest in which he has held us by the vivid reality of his narrative and have begun to search for faults in cold blood, that we are able to find them."William Cullen Bryant.

5. "THE PRAIRIE," 1827.

"I read it with a certain awe, an undefined sense of sublimity, such as one experiences on entering for the first time, upon those immense grassy deserts from which the work takes its name."-William Cullen Bryant.

6. "THE RED ROVER," 1828.

"Its incidents are conducted and described with a great mastery over the springs of pity and terror."-William Cullen Bryant.

7. THE BRAVO," 1831.

"The Bravo' was written to martial music . . A picture of the heartless cruelty and treachery of the Venetian oligarchy, in its secret working, is laid before the reader; it is a picture which in no particular surpasses in the darkness of its coloring what history has revealed on the same subject.”—Susan Fenimore Cooper.

8. THE PATHFINDER," 1840.

'It while he was in the midst of litigations that he published, in 1840, 'The Pathfinder.' People had begun to think of him as a controversialist, acute, keen and persevering, occupied with his personal wrongs and schemes of attack and defense. They were startled from this estimate of his character by the moral duty of that glorious

William Cullen Bryant.

"Those who have read Cooper carefully will find that in his mind also the religious sentiment though never dormant became stronger and more definite as he drew near his grave. It has been truly said that there is nothing in his works which could embitter his death-bed. From the first they breathe a pure and healthy morality, and an earnest sense of higher duties and obligations. Nothing can be more beautiful than the religion of 'Long Tom' and Leather Stocking.' There is a beautiful mixture of simplicity and grandeur in their conceptions of the Creator. They have studied Him in His own works; they recognize His power, for they have seen it manifested in its sublimest forms; they seem almost to grasp that sublimity itself in their strong conceptions, and read its awful lessons with a throbbing heart but unaverted eye; they love Him, too-for they love the glorious works that He has made; and that love pervading their whole nature, give worth and estimation to the meanest production of His will. And from this arises a sense of duty so deep and so firm-a perception of right so instinctive and so true-such love of justice and such fearlessness of purpose-that, without ceasing for the moment to be the humble coxswain or unlettered scout, they are men at whose feet the best and the wisest may sit meekly and learn."

-New York Quarterly.

"The first striking quality of Cooper [in his sea-novels] is the admirable clearness and accuracy of his description of the manœuvers, etc., of ships. Even a landsman who is ignorant, practically, of such things, must appreciate this, and be enabled to comprehend, at least in a general manner, the

object and results of the efforts of seamanship so vividly delineated. We never noted any technical or professional error on Cooper's part, and, whatever he himself might be practically, he certainiy was a good seaman theoretically.

66

Secondly,-Cooper possessed an absolutely unparalleled faculty of imparting to his ships a species of living interest. He, indeed, makes a vessel walk the waters like a thing of life,' and the reader gradually feels an absorbing interest in her motions and her fate as an individual craft. We refer to the Ariel in the 'Pilot,' or to the Rover's ship and the Royal Caroline (in the 'Red Rover') as wonderful instances of this peculiar talent.

Thirdly, he is unsurpassed in the power he possesses to invest the ocean itself with attributes of awe-striking sublimity and mystery. His mind, in a word, was intensely poetical, and in his earlier works especially, he revels in fine poetical imagery in connection with the sea and ships."

-Dublin University Magazine.

IV. His Place in Literature. "Cooper died the unquestioned chief of American novelists and however superior to his may have been the genius of his contemporary, Walter Scott, the latter can hardly be said to have rivaled him in breadth of dominion over readers of all nationalities. Cooper was a household name from New York to Ispahan, from St. Petersburg to Rio Janeiro; and the copyright on his works in various languages would to-day amount to a large fortune every year. Three generations have passed away since with The Spy,' he won the sympathies of mankind; and he holds them still. It is an enviable record," -Julian Hawthorne.

· Cooper exemplified in his literary career a story he was in the habit of telling of one of his early adventures. While he was in the navy he was traveling in the wilderness bordering upon Ontario. The party to which he belonged came upon an inn where they were not expected. The landlord was totally unprepared, and met them with a sorrowful countenance. There was, he assured them, absolutely nothing in the house that was fit to eat. When asked what he had that was not fit to eat, he could only say in reply, that he could furnish them with venison, pheasant, wild-duck and some fresh fish. To the astonished question of what better he supposed they could wish the landlord meekly replied that he thought they might have wanted some salt pork. The story was truer of Cooper himself than of his innkeeper. Nature he could depict and the

wild life led in it so that all men stood ready and eager to gaze on the pictures he drew. He chose too often too inflict upon them instead of it the most commonplace moralizing, the stalest disquisitions upon manners and customs and the driest discussions of politics and theology."

-Prof. Thomas R. Lounsbury.

"The enduring monuments of James Fenimore Cooper are his works. While the love of country continues to prevail his memory will exist in the hearts of the people... So truly patriotic and American throughout, they should find a place in every American's library."

-Daniel Webster.

with a garland of flowers, a dainty silver wand.

EVIL SPIRIT: Deep black suit and black hair on an ugly looking hunched-back fellow.

STAGE PROPERTIES: A few pots of shrubs, a green baize for the floor, a small furnace, with a big kettle. A gloomy winter background.

STAGE ARRANGEMENT: A gloomy wintry background with a cave at stage back center. In the cave place a glowing furnace. On it a boiling kettle. The green baize covers the floor and pots of shrubs stand about the stage. The floor and plants should be well covered with snow.

SCENE: As the curtain rises the stage is in darkness except for the glowing light from the furnace (side lights may be used to advantage). ZAGAR is seen bending over the furnace. The roaring of the wind and the whirling of snow-flakes is continuous (small bits of cotton blown by persons outside the stage). ZAGAR stirs the contents of the pot, then chants quietly. Enter MATTEO, his sword clanking on the floor as he stalks along. He paces to and fro as if in great agitation, strikes his forehead and then bursts out into a wild strain (with an occasional shout when his spirits seem to overcome him):

Allegretto.

AH! LOVE.

AIR CARMEN.

MATTEO [approaching the cavern and shouting]. Ho, there! Zagar, thou witch, come forth, I say, and give me what I seek.

ZAGAR [entering bent almost double over her staff]. What wilt thou with me?

MATTEO. A love potion for Zilla, my love. Make it strong. Hearest thou, witch of Endor?

ZAGAR. I hear, I hear [shaking her head, waving her staff, and chanting]:

Hither, hither, from thy home,
Dainty Spirit, thou must come!
Born of air, fed on dew,

Charms and potions canst thou brew?
Bring thou here with fairy speed,
A love philter which I need;

Make it sweet, and good, and strong,
Spirit, answer now my song.

[Soft dreamy music is played. From the back of the cave appears GoOD SPIRIT trip. ping in waving a wand].

GOOD SPIRIT [Sings].

Hither I come,

From my airy home,

Far away in the silver moon.
Take this magic spell,

thee love beware!

And use it well,

For its power will vanish soon!

[Drops a small gilded bottle at ZAGAR'S feet, then, waving her wand, vanishes to soft music].

MATTEO. [Watches the witch who picks up the bottle, looks at it and then gives it to him.] And now, witch, a potion for one I hate, and make it strong. Quick, call in your imp, I must be off. [Strides about the stage in an angry manner.]

ZAGAR. [Thumps staff on floor and rocking back and forward, chants :]

Hither, hither, from thy home,
Evil Spirit, I bid thee come!
Born of Satan, fed on blood,

Foods and potions canst thou brew?
Bring to me with impish speed,
The poison philter that I need;
Make it heavy, swift and strong,
Spirit, answer now my song.

[An awful crash of thunder is heard, then a flash of sharp light goes across the stage. MATTEO starts back appalled. Enter EVIL SPIRIT with a mocking ha, ha! ha, ha! ha, ha, ha!!!! He throws the bottle at MATTEO's feet, sneers, then disappears. MATTEO picks up the bottle and, gazing at it a mement, shudders, then sings:]