e Pilot_.

In the New York of that day there was one place where he loved to go
for a quiet dinner and discussion with the literary friends whom he
quickly gathered around him. This was the chief hostelry of the day,
the City Hotel, which stood close by where Wall Street runs into
Broadway. It was at one of these dinners that he met James A.
Hillhouse, who, though he had already written _The Judgment_ and was
recognized as a poet, was then engaged in mercantile pursuits in the
city; but was very soon to make a home in New Haven and remain there
during the rest of his life. Hillhouse was not a regular diner with
Cooper, but he introduced there a friend who became much more regular
in his attendance. Samuel Woodworth was even then shouldering aside
adversity with intermittent success. It was his habit to walk briskly
up from his printing office at the foot of Wall Street, very much in
the manner of a man having an imperative appointment. Four years
before Cooper came to town, on a very hot summer day, Woodworth had
walked in this same eager manner to his house farther up-town in Duane
Street, and there, drinking from a pump before his door, had said:
"I'd like to have a drink to-day from the old bucket that hung in my
father's well." Whereupon his kindly wife hinted that the old bucket
of his remembrance would make a good subject for a poem--a hint that
within the hour took the form of _The Old Oaken Bucket_, a pastoral
poem well remembered and much sung, though many another of his, many
an operetta, and even the historical romance, _The Champion of
Freedom_, have faded from memory.

At these dinners, when Cooper sat with his friends, Woodworth and
Morris held the first discussions of the plans for _The Mirror_, which
was started in 1823, but from which the inconstant Woodworth soon
retired.

On more than one occasion one of the dinner party was Richard Henry
Dana, a founder of the _North American Review_ and the friend of
Bryant. The City Hotel was quite convenient for him, for he had made a
sort of headquarters in the place of Wiley, the publisher, around the
corner in Wall Street by New Street. At that time he issued from
Wiley's shop _The Idle Man_, that literary publication which scarcely
lived long enough to include his novels, _Tom Thornton_ and _Paul
Felton_, and some contributions from Washington Allston and Bryant.

Many a good idea came from the meetings at the City Hotel, but
possibly none more felicitous