lay on the southeastern shore of Otsego Lake, where the Susquehanna
rushes out through a fertile valley between high hills. Bays and points
of woodland break the Lake's edge, and in the distance rise the clear
blue slopes of mountains.

Otsego Hall was built about the time when the young republic was
stretching out for space in which to grow. Mr. Cooper found this lovely
lake, and built on the frontier. Beyond his home spread seemingly
endless forests, filled with the wandering bands of the Indians of the
Six Nations, and with all manner of wild animals. The Lake was the home
of flocks of gulls, loons and wild duck, and more times than he could
count young Cooper had seen a long file of Indian canoes steal swiftly
across its upper bays. It was an ideal region for a boy of an
adventurous turn of mind, fond of the outdoor world.

The heir of Otsego Hall was not such a boy of the wilderness as were
Daniel Boone, Andrew Jackson or Abraham Lincoln. He did not have to
fight his way in the rough new world as they did. Mr. Cooper was
well-to-do, and intended that his son should take a proper place in the
young nation. There was little he could learn at the local academy, and
so he was soon sent to school at Albany, where he lived in the home of
an English clergyman who was fond of denouncing the war of the
Revolution and the new country, and so made James Cooper more of an
ardent patriot than ever.

When he was thirteen he was sent to Yale College, and felt himself
almost a grown man. He had been better prepared than most of his
classmates, and so decided he did not need to study to keep up with
them. Instead of working he devoted all his time to sport, and to
wandering through the beautiful country about New Haven. He was learning
a great deal about outdoor life, and storing his mind with pictures, but
at the same time was learning little of the Latin and Greek which his
teachers thought vastly more important. He got into scrape after scrape
with other boys of his way of thinking, and finally in his third year a
midnight frolic led to his being dismissed. Mr. Cooper took his son's
side and argued with the faculty, but the boy had to leave. His father
looked about for some means of taming his son's wild habits and decided
to send him to sea for a time.

Nothing could have pleased James better. He wanted to see the world, and
he was fond of ships. He had no special ambition, but rather looked
forward to serving in the navy.