Your most obliged and humble servant,

     J. FENIMORE COOPER.

During 1844 Cooper brought to print “Afloat and Ashore” and “Miles Wallingford”—­“which two are one,” he wrote, “with a good deal of love in part second for the delight of the ladies.”  Adventure is plenty, however, and the water-craft very much alive.  In England “Miles Wallingford” appeared under the name of its heroine, Lucy Harding; and, says one:  “It is a hard task not to fancy he was drawing, in slight particulars at least, the picture of his own wife, and telling the story of his early love.”  The tale is of the good old times in New York, and land scenes of her river counties.

Those interested in Cooper’s review of the naval court-martial of Lieutenant Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, for the execution of Spencer, will find the whole subject and its lesson of fearful retribution in Graham’s Magazine of 1843-44.  Alleged “mutiny on the high seas” was charged to young Spencer.  He was the son of Secretary of State John C. Spencer who, as superintendent of public instruction, rejected with harsh, short comment Cooper’s “Naval History” offered (unknown to the author) for school use and directed the purchase of Mackenzie’s “Life of Perry.”  Just as Cooper was putting through the press his severe criticism of Mackenzie’s version of the Battle of Lake Erie, the Somers returned from her unfortunate cruise.  Cooper instantly stopped his paper at the expense of a round sum to the printer, saying:  “The poor fellow will have enough to do to escape the consequences of his own weakness.  It is no time to be hard on him now.”

[Illustration:  LIEUT.  ALEXANDER SLIDELL MACKENZIE.]

The year 1845 brought from Cooper’s pen “Satanstoe”—­quaint, old-fashioned, and the first of his three anti-rent books.  Its hero, a member of the Littlepage family, writes his own life-story.  From his home on one of the necks of Long-Island Sound, in Westchester County, he visits New York City, catches a glimpse of the pleasant Dutch life in Albany, and with comrades plunges into the wilderness to examine, work, and settle his new, large grant of land at Mooseridge.  Professor Lounsbury’s able life of Cooper affirms of “Satanstoe”:  “It is a picture of colonial life and manners in New York during the eighteenth century, such as can be found drawn nowhere else so truthfully and vividly.”  The title “Satanstoe” was given in a moment of Cooper’s “intense disgust” at the “canting” attempt then made to change the name of the dangerous passage of Hell Gate, East River, to Hurl Gate.

[Illustration:  HELL GATE.]

“The Chainbearer,” second of the anti-rent series, was published early in 1846, and continues the story of “Satanstoe” in the person of the hero’s son, who finds in the squatters on his wilderness inheritance the first working of the disorderly spirit of anti-rent—­the burning question of New York at that time.  Honest Andries Coejemans and his pretty niece Ursula, the wily Newcome and rude Thousandacres of this story are each strong types of character.