were driving home from his farm, I often ran to open the gate for him,
which trifling act he acknowledged with old-time courtesy. His fine
garden joined my father's, and once, being in the vicinity of the fence,
he tossed me several muskmelons to catch, which at that time were quite
rare in the village gardens."

To this same little girl, when she had sent him an appreciation of one
of his novels, Fenimore Cooper wrote a letter that certainly shows a
benignant attitude toward children. "I am so much accustomed to
newspapers," he wrote, "that their censure and their praise pass but for
little, but the attentions of a young lady of your tender years to an
old man who is old enough to be her grandfather are not so easily
overlooked.... I hope that you and I and John will have an opportunity
of visiting the blackberry bushes, next summer, in company. I now invite
you to select your party, to be composed of as many little girls, and
little boys, too, if you can find those you like, to go to my farm next
summer, and spend an hour or two in finding berries. It shall be your
party, and the invitations must go out in your name, and you must speak
to me about it, in order that I may not forget it, and you can have your
school if you like or any one else. I shall ask only one guest myself,
and that will be John,[111] who knows the road, having been there once
already."

Another child who found Fenimore Cooper a most genial friend was
Caroline A. Foote, who afterward became Mrs. G. Pomeroy Keese. She was a
frequent visitor at Otsego Hall, where the novelist made much of her,
and when she was thirteen years old he wrote some original verses in her
autograph album, at her request, concluding with these lines:

In after life, when thou shalt grow
To womanhood, and learn to feel
The tenderness the aged know
To guide their children's weal,
Then wilt thou bless with bended knee
Some smiling child as I bless thee.

Encouraged by this success, Caroline Foote afterward asked Cooper to
write some verses for her schoolmate, Julia Bryant, daughter of William
Cullen Bryant, who was a warm friend of the novelist. With his young
petitioner by his side Cooper sat at the old desk in the library of
Otsego Hall and laughingly dashed off these lines:

Charming young lady, Miss Julia by name,
Your friend, little Cally, your wishes proclaim;
Read this, and you'll soon learn to know it,
I'