The beauty of this Wild-Rose Point claimed Cooper’s earliest love.  He made it the scene where Deerslayer and Chingachgook rescued Wah-ta-Wah.  Its flatiron-shaped pebble-beach jutted out from the lake’s west shore and was covered with fine old forest trees garlanded with vines; and from their graveled rootage there gurgled a limpid spring of sweet waters.  Then a wild brook came brawling down the hills to find its gentle outlet on the beach.  Azalias and wild roses made its shrubbery, while pitcher-plant, moccasin-flower, gentians blue and white, with brilliant lobelias, were among the native blossoms that charmed the author’s childhood and made this Three-Mile Point especially dear to him.

[Illustration:  COOPER’S NEW YORK CITY HOME, ST. MARK’S PLACE.]

The Italian part of Cooper’s “Gleanings in Europe” was brought to print in 1838, and later in this year appeared “The American Democrat.”  Then “Homeward Bound,” its sequel, “Home as Found,” and the “Chronicles of Cooperstown”—­all came in hot haste from the author’s modest three-story brick home in St. Mark’s Place near Third Avenue in New York City.  In these books Cooper told his side of foreign and town troubles, and it was said that not ten places or persons could complain in truth that they had been overlooked.  Thereby New York society and the American press became greatly excited.  Cooper was ever a frank friend or an open enemy.  A critic wrote of him and this time:  “He had the courage to defy the majority and confound the press, from a heavy sense of duty, with ungrateful truths.  With his manly, strong sense of right and wrong he had a high regard for courage in men and purity in women, but, with his keen sense of justice, he was not always judicious.  Abroad he defended his country with vigor, and was fearless in warning and advising her, when needful, at home.  While he never mistook ‘her geese for swans,’ he was a patriot to the very core of his heart.”  However, this over-critical writing soon became newspaper gossip, and began for Cooper six long years of tedious lawsuits, finally settled in his favor in 1843.  With such able men as Horace Greeley, Park Benjamin, and Thurlow Weed among others in battle-array against him, Cooper closed this strife himself by making a clear, brilliant, and convincing six-hour address before the court during a profound silence.  Well may it be said:  “It was a good fight he fought and an honorable victory he won” when he silenced the press as to publishing private or personal affairs.  His speech was received with bursts of applause, and of his closing argument an eminent lawyer said:  “I have heard nothing like it since the days of Emmet.”  “It was clear, skilful, persuasive, and splendidly eloquent,” is another’s record.  At the Globe Hotel the author wrote his wife the outcome, and added:  “I tell you this, my love, because I know it will give you pleasure.”  In “American Bookmen,” by M.A.  De Wolfe Howe, it appears that when going to one of his Cooper trials Mr. Weed picked up a new book to shorten the journey.  It proved to be “The Two Admirals,” and says Weed:  “I commenced reading it in the cars, and became so charmed that I took it into the court-room and occupied every interval that my attention could be withdrawn from the trial with its perusal.”  Mr. Howe adds:  “Plaintiff and defendant have rarely faced each other under stranger conditions.”