crowd saw with surprise James Cooper with his small rider keeping pace with the other flying youth.  Another, and the other corners were soon passed; both sprang like race-horses near the end of the course, but Cooper, with his little black-eyed girl aloft and the perspiration pouring down his manly brow and cheeks, was the first to reach the mark, and amidst such cheers and hurrahs as only pioneers can freely give, and as freely enjoy.  The fruit he had won, but soon it was shared by all around.  That little girl, later the wife of Captain William Wilson, often told the story of her ride on pleasant James Cooper’s shoulders.

[Illustration:  OTSEGO HALL GATES.]

While never a rhymester, Cooper, in his early manhood and at rare times after, did write occasional sentimental and comic verses that betokened both clever imagination and other merit.  Into the Otsego Herald printing-office a poor epileptic ballad-singer came one day to ask help from a group of gentlemen A purse was made up for him, but he, looking among them, said if one of them would write for him “a few verses—­something new”—­they would be worth more than the silver given him.  Young Cooper offered to try, and asked on what subject he should write “There’s nothing sells like ballads,” was the reply.  So the ballad was promised; and some thirty or more pathetic verses were written at once, about the small frontier village recently burnt by troops under Colonel Murray during the close of the last war with England.  This ballad bore the high-sounding title of “Buffalo Burnt, or the Dreadful Conflagration.”  It won such success among the farm-house gentry that the singer returned for another ballad and obtained it.  Some years later Mr. Cooper was invited to a tea-party in a near village, when a young lady, led to the piano for music, began to sing, much to the author’s disturbing amazement, “Buffalo Burnt, or the Dreadful Conflagration.”

[Illustration:  BUFFALO BURNT.]

So passed the pleasant vacation days of our young sailor, whose training before-the-mast enabled his father to obtain for him a midshipman’s commission in the United States Navy, for which James Cooper reported for duty at New York City, January 12, 1808.  At the age of nineteen he first served aboard the Vesuvius. Thence he was ordered to Oswego, New York, to build the brig Oneida for Lake Ontario service, and which the spring of 1809 saw launched.

[Illustration:  THE “VESUVIUS.”]

[Illustration:  ONTARIO FORESTS.]

While the war flurries which called for the building of the vessel were tethered, Cooper had learned his lesson in ship-building, ship-yard duties, and water-border life; and these served him more than thirty years later in his matchless Indian story, “The Pathfinder.”  Miss Susan Cooper has left some interesting pages of this period of her father’s naval service; in part they read:  “In 1808 several young officers under Lieutenant Woolsey were ordered to