ady been mentioned, his infant son Fenimore died. His talents
and his reputation gave him at once a leading position in society. Nor
were his associates inferior men. He founded a club which included on
its rolls the residents of New York then best known in literature and
law, science and art. The names of many will be even more familiar to
our ears than they were to those of their contemporaries. All forms of
intellectual activity were represented. To this club belonged, among
others, Chancellor Kent the jurist; Verplanck, the editor of Shakespeare;
Jarvis the painter; Durand the engraver; DeKay the naturalist; Wiley the
publisher; Morse the inventor of the electric telegraph; Halleck and
Bryant, the poets. It was sometimes called after the name of its (p. 064)
founder; but it more commonly bore the title of the "Bread and Cheese
Lunch." It met weekly, and Cooper, whenever he was in the city, was
invariably present. More than that, he was the life and soul of it.
Though kept up for a while after his departure from the country, it was
only a languishing existence it maintained, and even this speedily ended
in death.

His pecuniary situation had been largely improved by his literary
success. The pressure upon his means had in fact been one of the main
reasons, if not the main reason, that had led him to contemplate
pursuing a literary life. The property left by his father had gradually
dwindled in value, partly through lack of careful uninterrupted
management. His elder brothers, on whom the administration of the estate
had successively devolved, had died. The result was, that he found
himself without the means which in his childhood he might justly have
looked forward to possessing. So far from being a man of wealth he was
in the earlier part of his literary career a poor man. From any
difficulties, however, into which he may have fallen he was more than
retrieved by the success of what he wrote. Precisely what was the sale
of his books, or how much he received for their sale, it would be hard
and perhaps impossible now to tell. He was careless himself about
preserving any records of such facts. But, besides this natural
indifference, he seemed to resent any public reference to the price paid
him for his writings as an unauthorized intrusion into his personal
affairs. Allusions even to the amount of his receipts he apparently
regarded as springing not so much from a feeling of pride in his
success, as from a desire to