ork. Here it was that having
read some of Cooper's sea tales it occurred to the old sailor that the
author might be the young James Cooper whom he had known aboard the
_Sterling_. Accordingly he wrote to the novelist at Cooperstown, seeking
the desired information, and received in reply a cordial letter
beginning with the words, "I am your old shipmate, Ned."

On his next visit in New York, Cooper got into touch with Myers, and
invited the old tar to spend several weeks of the summer as his guest at
Otsego Hall in Cooperstown. The novelist had much in common with Ned
Myers, for his own experience at sea was sufficient to qualify him as a
sailor. "I have been myself," said Cooper, "one of eleven hands,
officers included, to navigate a ship of three hundred tons across the
Atlantic Ocean; and, what is more, we often reefed topsails with the
watch." While in Cooperstown as the guest of the novelist the old sailor
who had shipped on seventy-two different craft, and had passed a quarter
of a century out of sight of land, spun the yarn of his experience which
Cooper wove into the story of _Ned Myers_.

It is remarkable that one whose writings evince so strong an orthodoxy
of Christian faith, with a championship of churchly doctrines too rigid
for many of his readers, did not himself become a communicant of the
Church until the last year of his life. On Sunday, July 27, 1851, Bishop
de Lancey visited Christ Church, Cooperstown, and among those to whom he
administered the sacrament of Confirmation, in the presence of a large
congregation, was his brother-in-law, James Fenimore Cooper. The
novelist's family pew was one which stood sidelong at the right of the
chancel. He had by this time become quite infirm, and the bishop, after
receiving the other candidates at the sanctuary rail, left the chancel,
and administered Confirmation to Fenimore Cooper kneeling in his own
pew.

[Illustration: _Alice Choate_

AT FENIMORE COOPER'S GRAVE]

Fenimore Cooper died less than two months later, on Sunday, September
14, 1851, aged sixty-two years lacking one day. The body lay in state at
Otsego Hall, and on Wednesday the funeral services were held in Christ
Church, the interment being made in the Cooper plot in Christ
churchyard. This grave, covered by the prostrate slab of marble marked
by a cross, and bearing an inscription that sets forth nothing beyond
the novelist's name, with dates of birth and death, has become a shrine
of literar