gard for precedent.

For fifty-seven years Peter and Sarah fought the battle of life
together. He clarified his thought by explaining his plans to her, and
together they grew rich--rich in money, rich in knowledge, rich in
experience, rich in love.

* * * * *

There are men who are not content to put all their eggs into one basket,
and then watch the basket.

Peter Cooper craved the excitement of adventure. His nature demanded new
schemes, new plans, new methods upon which to break the impulse of his
mind. The trade-wind of his genius did not blow constantly from one
direction. Had he been content to focus on coach-building, he could have
become rich beyond the dream of avarice. As it was, the fact that he
could build as good a coach as any one else satisfied that
quarter-section of his nature.

When the war of Eighteen Hundred Twelve closed, there was a great
shrinkage in wool. Peter Cooper sold his holdings for a grocery-store,
which he ran just long enough to restock and sell to a man who wanted it
more than he did.

Then he started a furniture-factory, for he was an expert worker in
wood. But the bench for him was only by-play. As he worked, his mind
roamed the world.

He used glue in making the furniture. He bought his glue from a man who
had a little factory on the site of what is now the Park Avenue Hotel.
The man who made the glue did not like the business. He wanted to make
furniture, just as comedians always want to play Hamlet. Peter Cooper's
furniture-shop was in a rented building. The glue-man owned his site.
Peter Cooper traded his furniture-shop for the glue-factory, and got a
deed to the premises.

He was then thirty-three years old. The glue-factory was the foundation
of his fortune. He made better glue and more glue than any other concern
in America. Few men of brains would get stuck on the glue business.
There are features about it not exactly pleasant. The very difficulties
of it, however, attracted Cooper. He never referred to his glue-factory
as a chemical laboratory, nor did he call it a studio. He was proud of
his business. He made the first isinglass manufactured in America, and
for some years monopolized the trade.

But one business was not enough for Peter Cooper. Attached to the
glue-factory was a machine-shop which was the scene of many inventions.
Here in Eighteen Hundred Twenty-seven and Eighteen Hundred Twenty-eight,
Peter Cooper worked out and m