or of
which he constantly heard. Yet there are many qualities manifest in
his writings which do not seem to belong to his personality and many
elements exhibited in his personality which are not suggested by his
stories.

Born in Burlington, N. J., September 15, 1789, he was taken, at the
age of about a year, to that part of the State of New York which has
since become lastingly associated with his life and work. His early
home was one of a considerable degree of affluence. His father, near
the close of the Revolution, had become possessed of large tracts of
land about the sources of the Susquehanna, and on the borders of the
endless forests of Central New York the Cooper family established a
home. In this wilderness James Fenimore Cooper spent his boyhood. This
settlement was not unlike the ordinary new settlements which are, at
various stages of their history, found in many of the States of the
American Union. It was picturesque in the richness and diversity of
the gifts of nature. Game abounded in water and wood. The years he
here lived deeply affected his character and influenced his career. It
is reported that in later life he said "he might have chosen for his
subject happier periods, more interesting events, and possibly more
beauteous scenes, but he could not have taken any that would lie so
close to his heart."[13] Apparently the education of books and of
formal teachers was less influential than the education of nature. In
the schools of Cooperstown and under the tuition of the rector of St.
Peter's Church, Albany--a graduate of an English university--and at
Yale College, he received whatever of intellectual training he
received in his youth. A frontier town, however, offered few
facilities in education, and his career at New Haven was cut short in
the midst by his dismission for some sort of a college frolic, and
even while he was at Yale he confesses that he played the first year
and did not work much the rest of the time. The discipline he
received, however, from his English master at Albany seems to have
been one of the formative factors of his early life.

[Footnote 13: "James Fenimore Cooper," by Thomas R.
Lounsbury, page 5. To this, the only biography of Cooper, and
an admirable work, the writer acknowledges his great
obligations. On his death-bed Cooper instructed his family to
publish no life of himself.]

In the autumn of 1806, at the age of seventeen,