[Illustration:  HORACE GREELEY.]

[Illustration:  PARK BENJAMIN.]

[Illustration:  THURLOW WEED.]

While in the St. Mark’s-Place home the family found Frisk, described by Mr. Keese as “a little black mongrel of no breed whatever, rescued from under a butcher’s cart in St. Mark’s Place, with a fractured leg, and tenderly cared for until recovery.  He was taken to Cooperstown, where he died of old age after the author himself.  Mr. Cooper was rarely seen on the street without Frisk.”

The shores of Otsego, “the Susquehanna’s utmost spring,” Cooper made the scenic part of “Home as Found,” but high authority asserts the characters to be creatures of the author’s fancy, all save one,—­“a venerable figure, tall and upright, to be seen for some three-score years moving to and fro over its waters; still ready to give, still ready to serve; still gladly noting all of good; but it was with the feeling that no longer looked for sympathy.”  It was of “Home as Found” that Morse wrote to Cooper:  “I will use the frankness to say I wish you had not written it.  But whenever am I to see you?”

The effect of this conflict with the press so cut the sale of Cooper’s books that in 1843 he wrote:  “I know many of the New York booksellers are afraid to touch my works on account of the press of that righteous and enlightened city.”  Of these disturbing conditions Balzac’s opinion was:  “Undoubtedly Cooper’s renown is not due to his countrymen nor to the English:  he owes it mainly to the ardent appreciation of France.”

Cooper’s income, from England, suffered on account of an act of Parliament change, in 18381 of the copy-right law.  But his London publisher, Bentley, was credited with usually giving the author about $1500 each for his later stories.  Report gave him about $5000 each for his prior works.

May 10, 1839, Cooper published his “History of the United States Navy.”  It was first favored and then, severely criticised at home and abroad; but the author was fourteen years in gathering his material, and his close contact with navy officers and familiarity with sea life made him well qualified for the work.  He had not yet convinced the press that an author’s and editor’s right to criticise was mutual; that each might handle the other’s public work as roughly as he pleased, but neither might touch on the other’s private affairs.  However, the “Naval History” sold well and has borne the test of time, and still remains an authority on subjects treated.  There are many officers who well remember their delight on first reading those accounts of the battles of long-ago, of which Admiral Du Pont said that any lieutenant “should be ashamed not to know by heart.”  One well qualified to judge called Cooper’s “Naval History” “one of the noblest tributes ever paid to a noble profession.”