Chapter XI: Introduction (9)

DRAW up the papers, lawyer, and make ’em good and stout,
For things at home are cross-ways, and Betsy and I are out,――
We who have worked together so long as man and wife
Must pull in single harness the rest of our nat’ral life.

“What is the matter,” says you? I swan it’s hard to tell!
Most of the years behind us we’ve passed by very well;
I have no other woman――she has no other man;
Only we’ve lived together as long as ever we can.

So I have talked with Betsy, and Betsy has talked with me;
And we’ve agreed together that we can never agree;
Not that we’ve catched each other in any terrible crime;
We’ve been a gatherin’ this for years, a little at a time.

There was a stock of temper we both had for a start;
Although we ne’er suspected ’twould take us two apart;
I had my various failings, bred in the flesh and bone,
And Betsy, like all good women, had a temper of her own.

The first thing, I remember, whereon we disagreed,
Was somethin’ concerning heaven――a difference in our creed;
We arg’ed the thing at breakfast――we arg’ed the thing at tea――
And the more we arg’ed the question, the more we couldn’t
agree.

And the next that I remember was when we lost a cow;
She had kicked the bucket, for certain――the question was
only――How?
I held my opinion, and Betsy another had;
And when we were done a talkin’, we both of us was mad.

And the next that I remember, it started in a joke;
But for full a week it lasted and neither of us spoke.
And the next was when I fretted because she broke a bowl;
And she said I was mean and stingy, and hadn’t any soul.

And so the thing kept workin’, and all the self-same way;
Always somethin’ to ar’ge and something sharp to say,――
And down on us came the neighbors, a couple o’ dozen strong,
And lent their kindest sarvice to help the thing along.

And there have been days together――and many a weary week――
When both of us were cross and spunky, and both too proud to
speak;
And I have been thinkin’ and thinkin’, the whole of the summer
and fall,
If I can’t live kind with a woman, why, then I won’t at all.

And so I’ve talked with Betsy, and Betsy has talked with me;
And we have agreed together that we can never agree;
And what is hers shall be hers, and what is mine shall be mine;
And I’ll put it in the agreement, and take it to her to sign.

Write on the paper, lawyer――the very first paragraph――
Of all the farm and live stock, she shall have her half;
For she has helped to earn it through many a weary day,
And it’s nothin’ more than justice that Betsy has her pay.

Give her the house and homestead; a man can thrive and roam,
But women are wretched critters, unless they have a home.
And I have always determined, and never failed to say,
That Betsy never should want a home, if I was taken away.

There’s a little hard money besides, that’s drawin’ tol’rable
pay,
A couple of hundred dollars laid by for a rainy day,――
Safe in the hands of good men, and easy to get at;
Put in another clause there, and give her all of that.

I see that you are smiling, sir, at my givin’ her so much;
Yes, divorce is cheap, sir, but I take no stock in such;
True and fair I married her, when she was blythe and young,
And Betsy was always good to me exceptin’ with her tongue.

When I was young as you, sir, and not so smart, perhaps,
For me she mittened a lawyer, and several other chaps;
And all of ’em was flustered, and fairly taken down,
And for a time I was counted the luckiest man in town.

Once when I had a fever――I won’t forget it soon――
I was hot as a basted turkey and crazy as a loon――
Never an hour went by me when she was out of sight;
She nursed me true and tender, and stuck to me day and night.

And if ever a house was tidy, and ever a kitchen clean,
Her house and kitchen was tidy as any I ever seen,
And I don’t complain of Betsy or any of her acts,
Exceptin’ when we’ve quarreled, and told each other facts.

So draw up the paper, lawyer; and I’ll go home to-night,
And read the agreement to her, and see if it’s all right;
And then in the morning I’ll sell to a tradin’ man I know――
And kiss the child that was left to us, and out in the world
I’ll go.

And one thing put in the paper, that first to me didn’t occur;
That when I am dead at last she will bring me back to her,
And lay me under the maple we planted years ago,
When she and I was happy, before we quarreled so.

And when she dies, I wish that she would be laid by me;
And lyin’ together in silence, perhaps we’ll then agree;
And if ever we meet in heaven, I wouldn’t think it queer
If we loved each other the better because we’ve quarreled here.

¹ From “Farm Ballads.” Copyright 1873, 1882, by Harper &
Brothers.

* * * * *

GONE WITH A HANDSOMER MAN.¹

(FROM “FARM BALLADS.”)

JOHN.
I’VE worked in the field all day, a plowin’ the “stony streak;”
I’ve scolded my team till I’m hoarse; I’ve tramped till my
legs are weak;
I’ve choked a dozen swears, (so’s not to tell Jane fibs,)
When the plow-pint struck a stone, and the handles punched my
ribs.

I’ve put my team in the barn, and rubbed their sweaty coats;
I’ve fed ’em a heap of hay and half a bushel of oats;
And to see the way they eat makes me like eatin’ feel,
And Jane won’t say to-night that I don’t make out a meal.

Well said! the door is locked! out here she’s left the key,
Under the step, in a place known only to her and me;
I wonder who’s dyin’ or dead, that she’s hustled off pell-mell;
But here on the table’s a note, and probably this will tell.

Good God! my wife is gone! my wife is gone astray!
The letter it says, “Good-bye, for I’m a going away;
I’ve lived with you six months, John, and so far I’ve been
true;
But I’m going away to-day with a handsomer man than you.”

A han’somer man than me! Why, that ain’t much to say;
There’s han’somer men than me go past here every day.
There’s han’somer men than me――I ain’t of the han’some kind;
But a _loven’er_ man than I was, I guess she’ll never find.

Curse her! curse her! I say, and give my curses wings!
May the words of love I’ve spoken be changed to scorpion
stings!
Oh, she filled my heart with joy, she emptied my heart of
doubt,
And now, with a scratch of a pen, she lets my heart’s blood
out!

Curse her! curse her! say I, she’ll some time rue this day;
She’ll some time learn that hate is a game that two can play;
And long before she dies she’ll grieve she ever was born,
And I’ll plow her grave with hate, and seed it down to scorn.

As sure as the world goes on, there’ll come a time when she
Will read the devilish heart of that han’somer man than me;
And there’ll be a time when he will find, as others do,
That she who is false to one, can be the same with two.

And when her face grows pale, and when her eyes grow dim,
And when he is tired of her and she is tired of him,
She’ll do what she ought to have done, and coolly count the
cost;
And then she’ll see things clear, and know what she has lost.

And thoughts that are now asleep will wake up in her mind,
And she will mourn and cry for what she has left behind;
And maybe she’ll sometimes long for me――for me――but no!
I’ve blotted her out of my heart, and I will not have it so.

And yet in her girlish heart there was somethin’ or other she
had
That fastened a man to her, and wasn’t entirely bad;
And she loved me a little, I think, although it didn’t last;
But I mustn’t think of these things――I’ve buried ’em in the
past.

I’ll take my hard words back, nor make a bad matter worse;
She’ll have trouble enough; she shall not have my curse;
But I’ll live a life so square――and I well know that I can,――
That she always will sorry be that she went with that
han’somer man.

Ah, here is her kitchen dress! it makes my poor eyes blur;
It seems when I look at that, as if ’twas holdin’ her.
And here are her week-day shoes, and there is her week-day hat,
And yonder’s her weddin’ gown; I wonder she didn’t take that.

’Twas only this mornin’ she came and called me her “dearest
dear,”
And said I was makin’ for her a regular paradise here;
O God! if you want a man to sense the pains of hell,
Before you pitch him in just keep him in heaven a spell!

Good-bye! I wish that death had severed us two apart.
You’ve lost a worshiper here, you’ve crushed a lovin’ heart.
I’ll worship no woman again; but I guess I’ll learn to pray,
And kneel as _you_ used to kneel, before you run away.

And if I thought I could bring my words on Heaven to bear,
And if I thought I had some little influence there,
I would pray that I might be, if it only could be so,
As happy and gay as I was a half-hour ago.

JANE (_entering_).
Why, John, what a litter here! you’ve thrown things all around!
Come, what’s the matter now? and what have you lost or found?
And here’s my father here, a waiting for supper, too;
I’ve been a riding with him――he’s that “handsomer man than
you.”

Ha! ha! Pa, take a seat, while I put the kettle on,
And get things ready for tea, and kiss my dear old John.
Why, John, you look so strange! come, what has crossed your
track?
I was only a joking, you know; I’m willing to take it back.

JOHN (_aside_).
Well, now, if this _ain’t_ a joke, with rather a bitter cream!
It seems as if I’d woke from a mighty ticklish dream;
And I think she “smells a rat,” for she smiles at me so queer,
I hope she don’t; good gracious! I hope that they didn’t hear!

’Twas one of her practical drives――she thought I’d understand!
But I’ll never break sod again till I get the lay of the land.
But one thing’s settled with me――to appreciate heaven well,
’Tis good for a man to have some fifteen minutes of hell.

¹ Copyright, 1873, 1882, by Harper & Brothers.

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

JOAQUIN MILLER.

“THE POET OF THE SIERRAS.”

IN the year 1851, a farmer moved from the Wabash district in Indiana to the wilder regions of Oregon. In his family was a rude, untaught boy of ten or twelve years, bearing the unusual name of Cincinnatus Hiner Miller. This boy worked with his father on the farm until he was about fifteen years of age, when he abandoned the family log-cabin in the Willamette Valley of his Oregon home to try ♦his fortune as a gold miner.

♦ ‘this’ replaced with ‘his’

A more daring attempt was seldom if ever undertaken by a fifteen year old youth. It was during the most desperate period of Western history, just after the report of the discovery of gold had caused the greatest rush to the Pacific slope. A miscellaneous and turbulent population swarmed over the country; and, “armed to the teeth” prospected upon streams and mountains. The lawless, reckless life of these gold-hunters――millionaires to-day and beggars to-morrow――deeming it a virtue rather than a crime to have taken life in a brawl――was, at once, novel, picturesque and dramatic.――Such conditions furnished great possibilities for a poet or novelist.――It was an era as replete with a reality of thrilling excitement as that furnished by the history and mythology of ancient Greece to the earlier ♦Greek poets.

♦ ‘Greeks’ replaced with ‘Greek’

It was into this whirlpool that the young, untaught――but observant and daring――farmer lad threw himself, and when its whirl was not giddy and fast enough for him, or palled upon his more exacting taste for excitement and daring adventure, he left it after a few months, and sought deeper and more desperate wilds. With Walker he became a filibuster and went into Nicaragua.――He became in turn an astrologer; a Spanish _vaquero_, and, joining the wild Indians, was made a Sachem.

For five years he followed these adventurous wanderings; then as suddenly as he had entered the life he deserted it, and, in 1860 the prodigal returned home to his father’s cabin in Oregon. In his right arm he carried a bullet, in his right thigh another, and on many parts of his body were the scars left by Indian arrows. Shortly after returning home he begun the study of law and was admitted to practice within a few months in Lane County, Oregon; but the gold fever or spirit of adventure took possession of him again and in 1861 we find him in the gold mines of Idaho; but the yellow metal did not come into his “Pan” sufficiently fast and he gave it up to become an express messenger in the mining district. A few months later he was back in Oregon where he started a Democratic Newspaper at Eugene City which he ran long enough to get acquainted with a poetical contributor, Miss Minnie Myrtle, whom he married in 1862――in his usual short-order way of doing things――after an acquaintance of three days. Where “Joaquin” Miller――for he was now called “Joaquin” after a Spanish brigand whom he had defended――got his education is a mystery; but through the years of wandering, even in boyhood, he was a rhymester and his verses now began to come fast in the columns of his paper.

Illustration: JOAQUIN MILLER’S STUDY, OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA.

In 1862, after his marriage he resumed the practice of law, and, in 1866, at the age of twenty-five, was elected Judge of Grant County. This position he held for four years during which time he wrote much poetry. One day with his usual “suddenness” he abandoned his wife and his country and sailed for London to seek a publisher. At first he was unsuccessful, and had to print a small volume privately. This introduced him to the friendship of English writers and his “Songs of the Sierras” was issued in 1871. Naturally these poems were faulty in style and called forth strong adverse criticism; but the tales they told were glowing and passionate, and the wild and adventurous life they described was a new revelation in the world of song, and, verily, whatever the austere critic said, “The common people heard him gladly” and his success became certain. Thus encouraged Miller returned to California, visited the tropics and collected material for another work which he published in London in 1873 entitled “Sunland Songs.” Succeeding, the “Songs of the Desert” appeared in 1875; “Songs of Italy” 1878; “Songs of the Mexican Seas” 1887. Later he has published “With Walker in Nicaragua” and he is also author of a play called “The Danites,” and of several prose works relating to life in the West among which are “The Danites in the Sierras,” “Shadows of Shasta” and ’49, or “The Gold-seekers of the Sierras.”

The chief excellencies of Miller’s works are his gorgeous pictures of the gigantic scenery of the Western mountains. In this sense he is a true poet. As compared with Bret Harte, while Miller has the finer poetic perception of the two, he does not possess the dramatic power nor the literary skill of Harte; nor does he seem to recognize the native generosity and noble qualities which lie hidden beneath the vicious lives of outlaws, as the latter reveals it in his writings. After all the question arises which is the nearer the truth? Harte is about the same age as Miller, lived among the camps at about the same time, but he was not, to use a rough expression, “one of the gang,” was not so pronouncedly “on the inside” as was his brother poet. He never dug in the mines, he was not a filibuster, nor an Indian Sachem. All these and more Miller was, and perhaps he is nearer the plumb line of truth in his delineations after all.

Mr. Miller’s home is on the bluffs overlooking the San Francisco Bay in sight of the Golden Gate. In July, 1897, he joined the gold seekers in the Klondike regions of Alaska.

* * * * *

THOUGHTS OF MY WESTERN HOME.

WRITTEN IN ATHENS.

SIERRAS, and eternal tents
Of snow that flashed o’er battlements
Of mountains! My land of the sun,
Am I not true? have I not done
All things for thine, for thee alone,
O sun-land, sea-land, thou mine own?
From other loves and other lands,
As true, perhaps, as strong of hands,
Have I not turned to thee and thine,
O sun-land of the palm and pine,
And sung thy scenes, surpassing skies,
Till Europe lifted up her face
And marveled at thy matchless grace,
With eager and inquiring eyes?
Be my reward some little place
To pitch my tent, some tree and vine
Where I may sit above the sea,
And drink the sun as drinking wine,
And dream, or sing some songs of thee;
Or days to climb to Shasta’s dome
Again, and be with gods at home,
Salute my mountains――clouded Hood,
Saint Helen’s in its sea of wood――
Where sweeps the Oregon, and where
White storms are in the feathered fir.

* * * * *

MOUNT SHASTA.

TO lord all Godland! lift the brow
Familiar to the noon,――to top
The universal world,――to prop
The hollow heavens up,――to vow
Stern constancy with stars,――to keep
Eternal ward while ♦eons sleep;
To tower calmly up and touch
God’s purple garment――hems that sweep
The cold blue north! Oh, this were much!

Where storm-born shadows hide and hunt
I knew thee in my glorious youth,
I loved thy vast face, white as truth,
I stood where thunderbolts were wont
To smite thy Titan-fashioned front,
And heard rent mountains rock and roll.
I saw thy lightning’s gleaming rod
Reach forth and write on heaven’s scroll
The awful autograph of God!

♦ ‘cons’ replaced with ‘eons’

* * * * *

KIT CARSON’S RIDE.

RUN? Now you bet you; I rather guess so.
But he’s blind as a badger. Whoa, Paché boy, whoa!
No, you wouldn’t think so to look at his eyes,
But he is badger blind, and it happened this wise;――

We lay low in the grass on the broad plain levels,
Old Revels and I, and my stolen brown bride.
“Forty full miles if a foot to ride,
Forty full miles if a foot and the devils
Of red Camanches are hot on the track
When once they strike it. Let the sun go down
Soon, very soon,” muttered bearded old Revels
As he peered at the sun, lying low on his back,
Holding fast to his lasso; then he jerked at his steed,
And sprang to his feet, and glanced swiftly around,
And then dropped, as if shot, with his ear to the ground,――
Then again to his feet and to me, to my bride,
While his eyes were like fire, his face like a shroud,
His form like a king, and his beard like a cloud,
And his voice loud and shrill, as if blown from a reed,――
“Pull, pull in your lassos, and bridle to steed,
And speed, if ever for life you would speed;
And ride for your lives, for your lives you must ride,
For the plain is aflame, the prairie on fire,
And feet of wild horses, hard flying before
I hear like a sea breaking hard on the shore;
While the buffalo come like the surge of the sea,
Driven far by the flame, driving fast on us three
As a hurricane comes, crushing palms in his ire.”

We drew in the lassos, seized saddle and rein,
Threw them on, sinched them on, sinched them over again,
And again drew the girth, cast aside the macheer,
Cut away tapidaros, loosed the sash from its fold,
Cast aside the catenas red and spangled with gold,
And gold-mounted Colts, true companions for years,
Cast the red silk serapes to the wind in a breath
And so bared to the skin sprang all haste to the horse.

Not a word, not a wail from a lip was let fall,
Not a kiss from my bride, not a look or low call
Of love-note or courage, but on o’er the plain
So steady and still, leaning low to the mane,
With the heel to the flank and the hand to the rein,
Rode we on, rode we three, rode we gray nose and nose,
Reaching long, breathing loud, like a creviced wind blows,
Yet we spoke not a whisper, we breathed not a prayer,
There was work to be done, there was death in the air,
And the chance was as one to a thousand for all.

Gray nose to gray nose and each steady mustang
Stretched neck and stretched nerve till the hollow earth rang
And the foam from the flank and the croup and the neck
Flew around like the spray on a storm-driven deck.
Twenty miles! thirty miles――a dim distant speck――
Then a long reaching line and the Brazos in sight.
And I rose in my seat with a shout of delight.
I stood in my stirrup and looked to my right,
But Revels was gone; I glanced by my shoulder
And saw his horse stagger; I saw his head drooping
Hard on his breast, and his naked breast stooping
Low down to the mane as so swifter and bolder
Ran reaching out for us the red-footed fire.
To right and to left the black buffalo came,
In miles and in millions, rolling on in despair,
With their beards to the dust and black tails in the air.

As a terrible surf on a red sea of flame
Rushing on in the rear, reaching high, reaching higher,
And he rode neck to neck to a buffalo bull,
The monarch of millions, with shaggy mane full
Of smoke and of dust, and it shook with desire
Of battle, with rage and with bellowings loud
And unearthly and up through its lowering cloud
Came the flash of his eyes like a half-hidden fire,
While his keen crooked horns through the storm of his mane
Like black lances lifted and lifted again;
And I looked but this once, for the fire licked through,
And he fell and was lost, as we rode two and two.

I looked to my left then, and nose, neck, and shoulder
Sank slowly, sank surely, till back to my thighs;
And up through the black blowing veil of her hair
Did beam full in mine her two marvelous eyes
With a longing and love, yet look of despair,
And a pity for me, as she felt the smoke fold her,
And flames reaching far for her glorious hair.
Her sinking steed faltered, his eager ears fell
To and fro and unsteady, and all the neck’s swell
Did subside and recede, and the nerves fell as dead.
Then she saw that my own steed still lorded his head
With a look of delight, for this Paché, you see,
Was her father’s and once at the South Santafee
Had won a whole herd, sweeping everything down
In a race where the world came to run for the crown;
And so when I won the true heart of my bride,――
My neighbor’s and deadliest enemy’s child,
And child of the kingly war-chief of his tribe,――
She brought me this steed to the border the night
She met Revels and me in her perilous flight,
From the lodge of the chief to the north Brazos side;
And said, so half guessing of ill as she smiled,
As if jesting, that I, and I only, should ride
The fleet-footed Paché, so if kin should pursue
I should surely escape without other ado
Than to ride, without blood, to the north Brazos side,
And await her,――and wait till the next hollow moon
Hung her horn in the palms, when surely and soon
And swift she would join me, and all would be well
Without bloodshed or word. And now as she fell
From the front, and went down in the ocean of fire,
The last that I saw was a look of delight
That I should escape,――a love,――a desire,――
Yet never a word, not a look of appeal.――
Lest I should reach hand, should stay hand or stay heel
One instant for her in my terrible flight.

Then the rushing of fire rose around me and under,
And the howling of beast like the sound of thunder,――
Beasts burning and blind and forced onward and over,
As the passionate flame reached around them and wove her
Hands in their hair, and kissed hot till they died,――
Till they died with a wild and a desolate moan,
As a sea heart-broken on the hard brown stone,
And into the Brazos I rode all alone――
All alone, save only a horse long-limbed,
And blind and bare and burnt to the skin.
Then just as the terrible sea came in
And tumbled its thousands hot into the tide,
Till the tide blocked up and the swift stream brimmed
In eddies, we struck on the opposite side.

“Sell Paché――blind Paché? Now, mister! look here!
You have slept in my tent and partook of my cheer
Many days, many days, on this rugged frontier,”
For the ways they were rough and Comanches were near;
“But you’d better pack up, sir! That tent is too small
For us two after this! Has an old mountaineer,
Do you book-men believe, get no tum-tum at all?
Sell Paché! You buy him! a bag full of gold!
You show him! Tell of him the tale I have told!
Why he bore me through fire, and is blind and is old!
... Now pack up your papers, and get up and spin
To them cities you tell of.... Blast you and your tin!”

* * * * *

JOAQUIN MILLER’S ALASKA LETTER.

As a specimen of this author’s prose writing and style, we
present the following extract from a syndicate letter clipped
from the “Philadelphia Inquirer.”

_Head of Lake Bennett, Alaska_, August 2, 1897.

I WRITE by the bank of what is already a big river, and at the fountain head of the mighty Yukon, the second if not the first of American rivers. We have crossed the summit, passed the terrible Chilkoot Pass and Crater Lake and Long Lake and Lideman Lake, and now I sit down to tell the story of the past, while the man who is to take me up the river six hundred miles to the Klondike rows his big scow, full of cattle, brought from Seattle.

* * * * *

THE BEAUTY AND GRANDEUR OF CHILKOOT PASS.

All the pictures that had been painted by word, all on easel, or even in imagination of Napoleon and his men climbing up the Alps, are but childish playthings in comparison with the grandeur of Chilkoot Pass. Starting up the steep ascent, we raised a shout and it ran the long, steep and tortuous line that reached from a bluff above us, and over and up till it lost itself in the clouds. And down to us from the clouds, the shout and cry of exultation of those brave conquerers came back, and only died away when the distance made it possible to be heard no longer. And now we began to ascend.

It was not so hard as it seemed. The stupendous granite mountain, the home of the avalanche and the father of glaciers, melted away before us as we ascended, and in a single hour of brisk climbing we stood against the summit or rather between the big granite blocks that marked the summit. As I said before, the path is not so formidable as it looked, and it is not half so formidable as represented, but mark you, it is no boy’s play, no man’s play. It is a man’s and a big strong man’s honest work, and takes strength of body and nerve of soul.

Right in the path and within ten feet of a snow bank that has not perished for a thousand years, I picked and ate a little strawberry, and as I rested and roamed about a bit, looking down into the brightly blue lake that made the head waters of the Yukon, I gathered a little sun flower, a wild hyacinth and a wild tea blossom for my buttonhole.

OUR MOST NOTED NOVELISTS.

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER.

THE WALTER SCOTT OF AMERICA.

OUR first American novelist, and to the present time perhaps the only American novelist whose fame is permanently established among foreigners, is James Fenimore Cooper. While Washington Irving, our first writer of short stories, several years Cooper’s senior, was so strikingly popular in England and America, Cooper’s “Spy” and “Pilot” and the “Last of the Mohicans” went beyond the bounds of the English language, and the Spaniard, the Frenchman, the German, the Italian and others had placed him beside their own classics and were dividing honors between him and Sir Walter Scott; and it was they who first called him the Walter Scott of America. Nor was this judgment altogether wrong. For six or seven years Scott’s Waverly Novels had been appearing, and his “Ivanhoe,” which was first published in 1820――the first historical novel of the world――had given the clue to Cooper for “The Spy,” which appeared in 1821, the first historical novel of America. Both books were translated into foreign languages by the same translators, and made for their respective authors quick and lasting fame.

James Fenimore Cooper was born in Burlington, New Jersey, September 15, 1789――the same year that George Washington was inaugurated President of the United States. His father owned many thousand acres of wild land on the head waters of the Susquehanna River in New York, and while James was an infant removed thither and built a stately mansion on Otsego Lake, near the point where the little river issues forth on its journey to the sea. Around Otsego Hall, as it was called, the village of Cooperstown grew up. In this wilderness young Cooper passed his childhood, a hundred miles beyond the advancing lines of civilization. Along the shores of the beautiful lake, shut in by untouched forests, or in the woods themselves, which rose and fell unbroken――except here and there by a pioneer’s hut or a trapper’s camp――he passed his boyhood days and slept at night among the solemn silence of nature’s primeval grandeur. All the delicate arts of the forest, the craft of the woodsman, the trick of the trapper, the stratagem of the Indian fighter, the wiley shrewdness of the tawny savage, the hardships and dangers of pioneer life were as familiar to Cooper as were the legends of North Britain and the stirring ballads of the highlands and the lowlands to Walter Scott. But for this experience we should never have had the famous Leather Stocking Tales.

From this wilderness the boy was sent at the age of thirteen to Yale College, where he remained three years, but was too restless and adventurous to devote himself diligently to study and was dismissed in disgrace at sixteen. For one year he shipped before the mast as a common sailor and for the next five years served as a midshipman in the United States Navy, making himself master of that knowledge and detail of nautical life which he afterwards employed to so much advantage in his romances of the sea.

In 1811 Cooper resigned his post as midshipman, and married Miss Delancey, with whom he lived happily for forty years. The first few years of his married life were spent in quiet retirement. For some months he resided in Westchester County, the scene of his book “The Spy.” Then he removed to his old home at Cooperstown and took possession of the family mansion, to which he had fallen heir through the death of his father. Here he prepared to spend his life as a quiet country gentleman, and did so until a mere accident called him into authorship. Up to that date he seems never to have touched a pen or even thought of one except to write an ordinary letter. He was, however, fond of reading, and often read aloud to his wife. One day while reading a British novel he looked up and playfully said: “I could write a better book than that myself.” “Suppose you try,” replied his wife, and retiring to his library he wrote a chapter which he read to Mrs. Cooper. She was pleased with it and suggested that he continue, which he did, and published the book, under the title of “Precaution,” in 1820.

No one at that time had thought of writing a novel with the scene laid in America, and “Precaution,” which had an English setting, was so thoroughly English that it was reviewed in London with no suspicion of its American authorship. The success which it met, while not great, impressed Cooper that as he had not failed with a novel describing British life, of which he knew little, he might succeed with one on American life, of which he knew much. It was a happy thought. Scott’s “Ivanhoe” had just been read by him and it suggested an American historical theme, and he wrote the story of “The Spy,” which he published in 1821. It was a tale of the Revolution, in which the central figure, Harvey Birch, the spy, is one of the most interesting and effective characters in the realm of romantic literature. It quickly followed Scott’s “Ivanhoe” into many languages.

Encouraged by the plaudits from both sides of the Atlantic Cooper wrote another story, “The Pioneers” (1823), which was the first attempt to put into fiction the life of the frontier and the character of the backwoodsman. Here Cooper was in his element, on firm ground, familiar to him from his infancy, but the book was a revelation to the outside world. It is in this work that one of the greatest characters in fiction, the old backwoodsman Natty Bumpo――the famous Leather-Stocking――appeared and gave his name to a series of tales, comprised, in five volumes, which was not finally completed for twenty years. Strange to say, this famous series of books was not written in regular order. To follow the story logically the reader is recommended to read first the “Deerslayer,” next the “Last of the Mohicans,” followed by “The Pathfinder,” then “The Pioneers,” and last “The Prairie,” which ends with the death of Leather-Stocking.

The sea tales of Cooper were also suggested by Walter Scott, who published the “Pirate” in 1821. This book was being discussed by Cooper and some friends. The latter took the position that Scott could not have been its author since he was a lawyer and therefore could not have the knowledge of sea life which the book displayed. Cooper, being himself a mariner, declared that it could not have been written by a man familiar with the sea. He argued that it lacked that detail of information which no mariner would have failed to exhibit. To prove this point he determined to write a sea tale, and in 1823 his book “The Pilot” appeared, which was the first genuine salt-water novel ever written and to this day is one of the best. Tom Coffin, the hero of this novel, is the only one of all Cooper’s characters worthy to take a place beside Leather-Stocking, and the two books were published within two years of each other. In 1829 appeared “The Red Rover,” which is wholly a tale of the ocean, as “The Last of the Mohicans” is wholly a tale of the forest. In all, Cooper wrote ten sea tales, which with his land stories established the fact that he was equally at home whether on the green billows or under the green trees.

In 1839 Cooper published his “History of the United States Navy,” which is to this day the only authority on the subject for the period of which it treats. He also wrote many other novels on American subjects and some eight or ten like “Bravo,” “The Headsman” and others on European themes; but it is by “The Spy,” the five Leather-Stocking tales, and four or five of his sea tales that his fame has been secured and will be maintained.

In 1822, after “The Spy” had made Cooper famous, he removed to New York, where he lived for a period of four years, one of the most popular men in the metropolis. His force of character, big-heartedness, and genial, companionable nature――notwithstanding the fact that he was contentious and frequently got into the most heated discussions――made him unusually popular with those who knew him. He had many friends, and his friends were the best citizens of New York. He founded the “Bread and Cheese Lunch,” to which belonged Chancellor Kent, the poets Fitz-Green Halleck and Wm. Cullen Bryant, Samuel Morse, the inventor of the telegraph, and many other representatives of science, literature, and the learned professions. In 1826 he sailed for Europe, in various parts of which he resided for a period of six years. Before his departure he was tendered a dinner in New York, which was attended by many of the most prominent men of the nation. Washington Irving had gone to the Old World eleven years before and traveled throughout Great Britain and over the Continent, but Cooper’s works, though it was but six years since his first volume was published, were at this time more widely known than those of Irving; and with the author of the “Sketchbook” he divided the honors which the Old World so generously showered upon those two brilliant representatives of the New.

Many pleasant pages might be filled with the records of Cooper’s six years in Europe, during which time he enjoyed the association and respect of the greatest literary personages of the Old World. It would be interesting to tell how Sir Walter Scott sought him out in Paris and renewed the acquaintance again in London; how he lived in friendship and intimacy with General Lafayette at the French capital; to tell of his associations with Wordsworth and Rogers in London; his intimate friendship with the great Italian Greenough, and his fondness for Italy, which country he preferred above all others outside of America; of the delightful little villa where he lived in Florence, where he said he could look out upon green leaves and write to the music of the birds; to picture him settled for a summer in Naples; living in Tasso’s villa at Sarento, writing his stories in the same house in which the great Latin author had lived, with the same glorious view of the sea and the bay, and the surf dashing almost against its walls. But space forbids that we should indulge in recounting these pleasant reminiscences. Let it be said that wherever he was he was thoroughly and pronouncedly an American. He was much annoyed by the ignorance and prejudice of the English in all that related to his country. In France he vigorously defended the system of American government in a public pamphlet which he issued in favor of General Lafayette, upon whom the public press was making an attack. He was equally in earnest in bringing forward the claims of our poets, and was accustomed at literary meetings and dinner parties to carry volumes of Bryant, Halleck, Drake and others, from which he read quotations to prove his assertions of their merits. Almost every prominent American who visited Europe during his seven years’ sojourn abroad brought back pleasant recollections of his intercourse with the great and patriotic novelist.

Cooper returned to America in 1833, the same year that Washington Irving came back to his native land. He retired to his home at Cooperstown, where he spent the remaining nineteen years of his life, dying on the 14th day of September, 1852, one day before the sixty-second anniversary of his birth. His palatial home at Cooperstown, as were also his various places of residence in New York and foreign lands, were always open to his deserving countrymen, and many are the ambitious young aspirants in art, literature and politics who have left his hospitable roof with higher ideals, loftier ambitions and also with a more exalted patriotism.

A few days after his death a meeting of prominent men was held in New York in honor of their distinguished countryman. ♦Washington Irving presided and William Cullen Bryant delivered an oration paying fitting tribute to the genius of the first great American novelist, who was first to show how fit for fiction were the scenes, the characters, and the history of his native land. Nearly fifty years have passed since that day, but Cooper’s men of the sea and his men of the forest and the plain still survive, because they deserve to live, because they were true when they were written, and remain to-day the best of their kind. Though other fashions in fiction have come and gone and other novelists have a more finished art nowadays, no one of them all has succeeded more completely in doing what he tried to do than did James Fenimore Cooper.

♦ ‘Washingion’ replaced with ‘Washington’

If we should visit Cooperstown, New York, the most interesting spot we should see would be the grave of America’s first great novelist; and the one striking feature about it would be the marble statue of Leather Stocking, with dog and gun, overlooking the last resting-place of his great creator. Then we should visit the house and go into the library and sit in the chair and lean over the table where he was created. Then down to the beautiful Otsego Lake, and as the little pleasure steamer comes into view we peer to catch the gilded name painted on its side. Nearer it comes, and we read with delight “Natty Bumpo,” the real name of Leather Stocking. Otsego Hall, the cemetery and the lake alike, are a shrine to the memory of Cooper and this greatest hero of American fiction. And we turn away determined to read again the whole of the _Leather Stocking Tales._

* * * * *

ENCOUNTER WITH A PANTHER.

(FROM “THE PIONEERS.”)

BY this time they had gained the summit of the mountain, where they left the highway, and pursued their course under the shade of the stately trees that crowned the eminence. The day was becoming warm, and the girls plunged more deeply into the forest, as they found its invigorating coolness agreeably contrasted to the excessive heat they had experienced in the ascent. The conversation, as if by mutual consent, was entirely changed to the little incidents and scenes of their walk, and every tall pine, and every shrub or flower called forth some simple expression of admiration. In this manner they proceeded along the margin of the precipice, catching occasional glimpses of the placid Otsego, or pausing to listen to the rattling of wheels and the sounds of hammers that rose from the valley, to mingle the signs of men with the scenes of nature, when Elizabeth suddenly started and exclaimed:

“Listen! There are the cries of a child on this mountain! Is there a clearing near us, or can some little one have strayed from its parents?”

“Such things frequently happen,” returned Louisa. “Let us follow the sounds; it may be a wanderer starving on the hill.”

Urged by this consideration, the females pursued the low, mournful sounds, that proceeded from the forest, with quick impatient steps. More than once the ardent Elizabeth was on the point of announcing that she saw the sufferer, when Louisa caught her by the arm, and pointing behind them, cried, “Look at the dog!”

Brave had been their companion from the time the voice of his young mistress lured him from his kennel, to the present moment. His advanced age had long before deprived him of his activity; and when his companions stopped to view the scenery, or to add to their bouquets, the mastiff would lay his huge frame on the ground and await their movements, with his eyes closed, and a listlessness in his air that ill accorded with the character of a protector. But when, aroused by this cry from Louisa, Miss Temple turned, she saw the dog with his eyes keenly set on some distant object, his head bent near the ground, and his hair actually rising on his body, through fright or anger. It was most probably the latter, for he was growling in a low key, and occasionally showing his teeth in a manner that would have terrified his mistress, had she not so well known his good qualities.

“Brave!” she said, “be quiet, Brave! what do you see, fellow?”

At the sound of her voice, the rage of the mastiff, instead of being at all diminished, was very sensibly increased. He stalked in front of the ladies, and seated himself at the feet of his mistress, growling louder than before, and occasionally giving vent to his ire by a short, surly barking.

“What does he see?” said Elizabeth; “there must be some animal in sight.”

Hearing no answer from her companion, Miss Temple turned her head, and beheld Louisa, standing with her face whitened to the color of death, and her finger pointing upward, with a sort of flickering, convulsed motion. The quick eye of Elizabeth glanced in the direction indicated by her friend, where she saw the fierce front and glaring eyes of a female panther, fixed on them in horrid malignity, and threatening to leap.

“Let us fly,” exclaimed Elizabeth, grasping the arm of Louisa, whose form yielded like melting snow.

There was not a single feeling in the temperament of Elizabeth Temple that could prompt her to desert a companion in such an extremity. She fell on her knees, by the side of the inanimate Louisa, tearing from the person of her friend, with instinctive readiness, such parts of her dress as might obstruct her respiration, and encouraging their only safeguard, the dog, at the same time, by the sounds of her voice.

“Courage, Brave!” she cried, her own tones beginning to tremble, “courage, courage, good Brave!”

A quarter-grown cub, that had hitherto been unseen, now appeared, dropping from the branches of a sapling that grew under the shade of the beech which held its dam. This ignorant, but vicious creature, approached the dog, imitating the actions and sounds of its parent, but exhibiting a strange mixture of the playfulness of a kitten with the ferocity of its race. Standing on its hind-legs, it would rend the bark of a tree with its forepaws, and play the antics of a cat; and then, by lashing itself with its tail, growling and scratching the earth, it would attempt the manifestations of anger that rendered its parent so terrific. All this time Brave stood firm and undaunted, his short tail erect, his body drawn backward on its haunches, and his eyes following the movements of both dam and cub. At every gambol played by the latter, it approached nigher to the dog, the growling of the three becoming more horrid at each moment, until the younger beast, overleaping its intended bound, fell directly before the mastiff. There was a moment of fearful cries and struggles, but they ended almost as soon as commenced, by the cub appearing in the air, hurled from the jaws of Brave, with a violence that sent it against a tree so forcibly as to render it completely senseless.

Elizabeth witnessed the short struggle, and her blood was warming with the triumph of the dog when she saw the form of the old panther in the air, springing twenty feet from the branch of the beech to the back of the mastiff. No words of ours can describe the fury of the conflict that followed. It was a confused struggle on the dry leaves, accompanied by loud and terrific cries. Miss Temple continued on her knees, bending over the form of Louisa, her eyes fixed on the animals, with an interest so horrid, and yet so intense, that she almost forgot her own stake in the result. So rapid and vigorous were the bounds of the inhabitant of the forest, that its active frame seemed constantly in the air, while the dog nobly faced his foe at each successive leap. When the panther lighted on the shoulders of the mastiff, which was its constant aim, old Brave, though torn with her talons, and stained with his own blood, that already flowed from a dozen wounds, would shake off his furious foe like a feather, and rearing on his hind-legs, rush to the fray again, with jaws distended and a dauntless eye. But age, and his pampered life, greatly disqualified the noble mastiff for such a struggle. In everything but courage he was only the vestige of what he had once been. A higher bound than ever raised the wary and furious beast far beyond the reach of the dog, who was making a desperate but fruitless dash at her, from which she alighted in a favorable position, on the back of her aged foe. For a single moment only could the panther remain there, the great strength of the dog returning with a convulsive effort. But Elizabeth saw, as Brave fastened his teeth in the side of his enemy, that the collar of brass around his neck, which had been glittering throughout the fray, was of the color of blood, and directly, that his frame was sinking to the earth, where it soon lay prostrate and helpless. Several mighty efforts of the wild-cat to extricate herself from the jaws of the dog followed, but they were fruitless, until the mastiff turned on his back, his lips collapsed, and his teeth loosened, when the short convulsions and stillness that succeeded announced the death of poor Brave.

Elizabeth now lay wholly at the mercy of the beast. There is said to be something in the front of the image of the Maker that daunts the hearts of the inferior beings of his creation; and it would seem that some such power in the present instance suspended the threatened blow. The eyes of the monster and the kneeling maiden met for an instant, when the former stooped to examine her fallen foe; next to scent her luckless cub. From the latter examination it turned, however, with its eyes apparently emitting flashes of fire, its tail lashing its sides furiously, and its claws projecting inches from her broad feet.

Miss Temple did not or could not move. Her hands were clasped in the attitude of prayer, but her eyes were still drawn to her terrible enemy――her cheeks were blanched to the whiteness of marble, and her lips were slightly separated with horror. The moment seemed now to have arrived for the fatal termination, and the beautiful figure of Elizabeth was bowing meekly to the stroke, when a rustling of leaves behind seemed rather to mock the organs than to meet her ears.

“Hist! hist!” said a low voice, “stoop lower, gal! your bonnet hides the creature’s head.”

It was rather the yielding of nature than a compliance with this unexpected order, that caused the head of our heroine to sink on her bosom; when she heard the report of the rifle, the whiz of the bullet, and the enraged cries of the beast, who was rolling over on the earth, biting its own flesh, and tearing the twigs and branches within its reach. At the next instant the form of Leather-Stocking rushed by her, and he called aloud:

“Come in, Hector, come in old fool; ’tis a hard-lived animal, and may jump agin.”

Natty fearlessly maintained his position in front of the females, notwithstanding the violent bounds and threatening aspect of the wounded panther, which gave several indications of returning strength and ferocity until his rifle was again loaded, when he stepped up to the enraged animal, and, placing the muzzle close to its head, every spark of life was extinguished by the discharge.

* * * * *

THE CAPTURE OF A WHALE.

“TOM,” cried Barnstable, starting, “there is the blow of a whale.”

“Ay, ay, sir,” returned the cockswain, with undisturbed composure; “here is his spout, not half a mile to seaward; the easterly gale has driven the creater to leeward, and he begins to find himself in shoal water. He’s been sleeping, while he should have been working to windward!”

“The fellow takes it coolly, too! he’s in no hurry to get an offing.”