eekskill, and here
the lad lived until he was seventeen years old.

Next to Benjamin Franklin, Peter Cooper was our all-round educated
American. His perfect health--living to a great age--with sanity and
happiness as his portion, proves him to be one who knew the laws of
health and also had the will to obey them. He never "retired from
business"--if he quit one kind of work it was to take up something more
difficult.

He was in the fight to the day of his death; and always he carried the
flag further to the front.

He was a Freethinker at a time when to have thoughts of your own was to
be an outcast. His restless mind was no more satisfied with an outworn
theology than with an outgrown system of transportation. His religion
was blended with his work and fused with his life.

He built the first railway-locomotive in America, and was its engineer
until he taught others how. He rolled the first iron rails for
railroads. He made the first iron beams for use in constructing
fireproof buildings. He was the near and dear friend and adviser of
Cyrus W. Field, and lent his inventive skill, his genius and his money,
to the laying of the Atlantic Cable; and was the President of the
Atlantic Cable Company for eighteen years.

In building and endowing Cooper Union, he outlined a system of education
so beneficent that it attracted the attention of the thinking men of the
world. And it is even now serving as a model upon which our entire
public-school system will yet be founded--a system that works not for
culture, for bric-a-brac purposes, but for character and competence. A
what-not education may be impressive, but is worthless as collateral.
The achievements of Peter Cooper make the average successful man look
like a pigmy.

What the world needs is a few more Peter Coopers--rich men who do not
absolve themselves by drawing checks for charity, but who give their
lives for human betterment.

Let us catch up with Peter Cooper.

* * * * *

John Cooper, the father of Peter Cooper, was of English stock. He was
twenty-one years old in that most unforgetable year, Seventeen Hundred
Seventy-six. At the first call to arms, he enlisted as a minuteman. He
fought valiantly through the war, in the field, and in the
fortifications surrounding New York City, and came out of Freedom's
fight penniless, but with one valuable possession--a wife.

In Seventeen Hundred Seventy-nine, he married the daughter of