passer-by. A brick building, its
architectural features suggest roomy attractiveness--a condition
little sought after in these days when the value of every inch of
ground calls for compactness regardless of beauty of appearance. One
looking at this building and given to sentiment might argue that it is
strongly reminiscent of a human being who had once been vigorous and
had made a considerable show in the world of fashion and pride, but
who had sunk to poverty and decrepitude. For the carved window-cases
are hacked and beaten away, the wrought-iron railings are twisted and
rusty, the marble steps are cracked and crumbling, the high ceilings
with their heavy and ornate mouldings are seamed and discolored, and
the massive oaken doors are cracked by many a rusty nail driven into
them, holding ragged and worn-out garments. Yet even in its age and
neglect are found traces of its primal sturdy and artistic
proportions.

In the year 1821, this house was the home of James Fenimore Cooper.
His first book, _Precaution_, had failed utterly. His second book,
_The Spy_, had been prodigiously successful, when in this year he went
to New York to live in what was then the fashionable district of St.
John's Park. He was thirty-one years old, had lived at Cooperstown,
studied at Yale, shipped as a sailor before the mast, made voyages to
England and Spain, been appointed midshipman, and seen service on Lake
Ontario and Lake Champlain, had resigned his commission, and had
married Augusta de Lancey at Heathcote Hill Manor, Mamaroneck. After
the birth of his daughter, Susan Fenimore Cooper, who became a writer
of rural sketches, he settled down in Westchester County to live the
life of a country gentleman. He might have remained there all his days
but that one day he got hold of a particularly stupid book of English
life, and was so bored by it that it forced from him the exclamation
that he could write a better himself! Which remark being interpreted
literally by his wife, there was nothing for the country gentleman but
to make good his boast. So he wrote a dull and stupid story which
even his friends had difficulty in reading to the end, and then,
doubtless finding writing more agreeable than farming, wrote another
that destined him evermore to a literary life.

This much of Cooper's life was behind him when he moved into the Beach
Street house. In this home he wrote _The Pioneers_, first of the
famous Leatherstocking Tales and, too, _Th