29
V. THE TOM THUMB 38
VI. MUNICIPAL AFFAIRS 52
VII. THE COOPER UNION FOR THE
ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE AND ART 64
VIII. NATIONAL POLITICS 96
IX. THE END 104

PREFACE

DURING the last decade of Peter Cooper's life, the writer of this
biographical sketch enjoyed some degree of intimacy with him, as
professional adviser and traveling companion, and also, incidentally, as
consulting engineer of the firm of Cooper and Hewitt, and manager of a
department in the Cooper Union. This circumstance, together with the
preference kindly expressed by Mr. Cooper's family, doubtless influenced
the selection of the writer for the honorable task of preparing this
book,--a task which was welcome as a labor of love, though the execution
of it has been hindered and impaired by the demands of other duties. The
real difficulty has been to compress within the prescribed limits a
story covering so many years and so many topics, yet not possessing
those features of dramatic action or adventure which could be treated
briefly, with picturesque effect.

Mr. Cooper's family has kindly furnished abundant material for this
work, including, besides his own published utterances, the notes of the
stenographer to whom Mr. Cooper, in the last years of his life, dictated
his "reminiscences." The use which has been made of these will be
evident to the reader. Beyond an occasional revelation of the character
of the speaker, or a side-light thrown upon the manners and conditions
of our early national life, they have not furnished valuable data; and
the study of them suggests an observation which may be heeded with
advantage in similar cases hereafter, though it comes too late to be
useful in this instance, namely, that the recollections of old people
with retentive memories, like Peter Cooper, may be invaluable, if they
are intelligently aroused and guided; but if the speakers (as in his
case) are left to their own initiative, they are too likely to furnish
superfluous accounts of events already described more accurately in
authentic contemporaneous records.

It has not been practicable to preserve, in the treatment of the
subject, a strictly chronological order. As the titles of the several
chapters indicate, the different lines of Mr. Cooper's activity have
been considered, to some extent, separately, so that their periods
overlap e