In 1817 Cooper and his young family started for a few month’s visit to Heathcote Hill, and later in this year he lost his mother.  As the stone house, then building at Fenimore, burned down in 1823, the land was sold later, and the few months’ expected absence grew into seventeen years.  Perhaps it was this thread of loss added to his wife’s wishes that led Cooper to build a country home on the Scarsdale farm,—­a portion of the de Lancey estate, which came to Mrs. Cooper after her marriage.  Here he built the picturesque home in which his literary career began.  “Nothing that Cooper knew remains excepting the superb land and water view,” which drew him to place this home of his there, and he has pictured mile upon mile of the shimmering, sail-dotted Sound in scenes of his “Water Witch.”  It is of record that the windows of the room in which he wrote “Precaution,” “The Spy,” and “The Pioneers” overlooked this enchanting vista which then and later claimed place in his books.  It was four miles from Mamaroneck and some twenty-five from New York City.  The height on which the new house stood was called Angevine, from a former Huguenot tenant.  It gave a glorious view over miles of fine wooded country, with a broad reach of Long Island Sound beyond, over which were moving white, glittering sails “a sailor’s eye loves to follow.”  Of active habits and vigorous health, Cooper threw himself with almost boyish eagerness into the improvement and beautifying of this homestead,—­planning the barn, building the then new zigzag, ha-ha fence, watching the growth of shrubs and trees that he had transplanted, and with cheering talk lightening the labors of his workmen.

[Illustration:  ELIZABETH FENIMORE COOPER IN THE OLD HALL HOME.]

[Illustration:  COOPER’S ANGEVINE FARM HOME.]

[Illustration:  MAMARONECK CREEK SLOOPS.]

“In 1818 Cooper was made paymaster, and in the next year quartermaster in the Fourth Division of Infantry, New York State Militia.  As Governor Clinton’s aid, in blue and buff uniform, cocked hat, and sword, and title of colonel, he would go to reviews on his favorite horse, ‘Bull-head.’”

At that time each village on the Sound had its sloop which carried the farmer’s produce thrice a week through the perils of Hell Gate to Fulton market, and brought back tea, sugar, cloth, calicoes, and silks, and, perchance, some volume fresh from the London press,—­a bit of Byron’s brilliance, a romance from the unknown author of “Waverley,” one of Miss Edgeworth’s charming tales, or the more serious religious work of Wilberforce—­which had “arrived by packet-ship from England”—­the next day’s papers would announce.  Lucky was thought the household that could first cut the pages of the new print.