was not especially lenient to our own; compelled you and me to begin Virgil with the eclogues, and Cicero with the knotty phrases that open the oration in favor of the poet Archias, because these writers would not have placed them first in the books if they did not intend people to read them first; spent his money freely and sometimes that of other people; was particularly tenacious of the ritual and of all decencies of the Church; detested a democrat as he did the devil; cracked his jokes daily about Mr. Jefferson, never failing to place his libertinism in strong relief against the approved morals of George III., of several passages in whose history it is charitable to suppose he was ignorant; prayed fervently on Sunday; decried all morals, institutions, churches, manners but those of England from Monday to Saturday.”

The lad from Otsego soon became a prime favorite with his tutor, who took pleasure in teaching him.  The old-fashioned, heroic romances were a rare delight to him,—­a taste which was thought to come from his mother, who was very fond of such reading.  One vacation, at about the age of eleven, he and a playmate lost themselves in the exciting interest of such a tale; “Don Belianus of Greece” made so deep an impression on Cooper that after reading it he said seriously to his playfellow that he would write a book himself, and would “begin it at once.”  And, like “Don Belianus of Greece,” this story was to have “knights, and squires, and horses, and ladies, and castles and banners.”  With the glory of his story in mind, the boy had utterly forgotten his hearty dislike of pen-work at school.  But his active brain soon put to flight this hobgoblin; he thought of the bit of a blue newspaper—­the Otsego Herald—­printed in Cooperstown by the father of his comrade.  So they planned to use the resting-time of the press for the printing of this new book, of which, however, only a few chapters were put in type.  The new author soon wearied of his work; but none the less it was the first step in his future literary career.

During 1801 a man near fifty, cleanly clad in sailor’s gear but without stockings or neckcloth, appeared before Judge Cooper and asked if the lot between Fenimore and the village was for sale.  The answer was, “Yes, but the price is high,” and naming it, the stranger requested that a deed be made out at once; he counted down the amount in gold, and gave his name as Esaias Hausman.  He had built for himself a small rude house on this lot and lived alone in it for years.  The secrets of his former life, his wide learning (once found teaching a college president Hebrew), and disappearance at times, were never solved.  Only his death revealed a purse of gold worn between his shoulder-blades.  There was no will, so to public sale went the little hut and its lake-shore lot.  This man of mystery made a deep impression on Cooper’s boy-mind, and later, in 1838, was the subject of several pages of the author’s