hat he
_thinks_ but does not _know_ that he was refused. If not refused it was
because he was not encouraged to propose.... Don't let this go any
further, however. I confess to think all the better of the General for
this discovery, for it shows that he had forty years ago both taste and
judgment in a matter in which men so often fail."[69]

In the twenty-third year of her age, Hannah Cooper was killed by a fall
from a horse, September 10, 1800. She and her brother, Richard Fenimore
Cooper, had set out on horseback to pay a visit at the home of General
Jacob Morris at Butternuts (now Morris), some twenty miles from
Cooperstown, and having arrived within about a mile of their
destination, the horse on which Miss Cooper rode took fright at a little
dog, which rushed forth barking from a farm house, and Miss Cooper was
thrown against the root of a tree, being almost instantly killed. Her
brother rode back to Cooperstown with the sad news.

A monument still stands near the public highway to mark the spot where
Miss Cooper met her death. She had many admirers, but the inscription on
this monument is said to have been written by her best beloved, Moss
Kent, referred to in Eliza MacDonald's letters.

Hannah Cooper's tomb in Christ churchyard, within the Cooper family
plot, is inscribed with some plaintive verses that her father composed
and caused to be carved upon the slab, with the singular omission of her
name, which was not added until many years afterward.

Miss Cooper was a perfect type of the kind of feminine piety most
admired in her day. She shared largely in the benevolences of her
father, and was often seen on horseback carrying provisions to the poor
people of the settlement. "She visited the prisoners in the jail
frequently, giving them books, and sometimes talked with them through
the grates of their windows, endeavoring to impress upon their minds the
truths of morality and religion. By her winning, tender and persuasive
conversation, their hard hearts, at times, were deeply affected."

This elder sister of the novelist was the first tutor of his childhood,
and he held her memory in great reverence. In the preface of a reprint
of _The Pioneers_ Cooper took occasion to deny a statement that in the
character of the heroine of his romance he had delineated his sister, a
suggestion in which he seemed to find a serious reflection upon his
fineness of feeling. "Circumstances rendered this sister singularly dear
t