For illustration of the above strictures we will refer to a single novel, “The Last of the Mohicans,” which everybody will admit to be one of the most interesting of his works,—­full of rapid movement, brilliant descriptions, hair-breadth escapes, thrilling adventures,—­which young persons probably read with more rapt attention than any other of his narratives.  In the opening chapter we find at Fort Edward, on the head-waters of the Hudson, the two daughters of Colonel Munro, the commander of Fort William Henry, on the shores of Lake George; though why they were at the former post, under the protection of a stranger, and not with their father, does not appear.  Information is brought of the approach of Montcalm, with a hostile army of Indians and Frenchmen, from the North; and the young ladies are straightway hurried off to the more advanced, and consequently more dangerous post, when prudence and affection would have dictated just the opposite course.  Nor is this all.  General Webb, the commander of Fort Edward, at the urgent request of Colonel Munro, sends him a reinforcement of fifteen hundred men, who march off through the woods, by the military road, with drums beating and colors flying; and yet, strange to say, the young ladies do not accompany the troops, but set off, on the very same day, by a by-path, attended by no other escort than Major Heyward, and guided by an Indian whose fidelity is supposed to be assured by his having been flogged for drunkenness by the orders of Colonel Munro.  The reason assigned for conduct so absurd that in real life it would have gone far to prove the parties having a hand in it not to be possessed of that sound and disposing mind and memory which the law requires as a condition precedent to making a will is, that hostile Indians, in search of chance scalps, would be hovering about the column of troops, and so leave the by-path unmolested.  But the servants of the party follow the route of the column:  a measure, we are told, dictated by the sagacity of the Indian guide, in order to diminish the marks of their trail, if, haply, the Canadian savages should be prowling about so far in advance of their army!  Certainly, all the sagacity of the fort would seem to have been concentrated in the person of the Indian.  How much of this improbability might have been avoided, if the action had been reversed, and the young ladies, in view of the gathering cloud of war, had been sent from the more exposed and less strongly guarded point of Fort William Henry to the safe fortress of Fort Edward!  Then the smallness of the escort and the risks of the journey would have been explained and excused by the necessity of the case; and the subsequent events of the novel might have been easily accommodated to the change we have indicated.