The Project Gutenberg eBook, Home as Found, by James Fenimore Cooper

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Title: Home as Found

Author: James Fenimore Cooper

Release Date: November 20, 2003 [eBook #10149]

Language: English

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Home as Found.

Sequel to "Homeward Bound."

By J. Fenimore Cooper.

Complete in one volume.

1871.

"Thou art perfect."
PR. HON

Preface

Those who have done us the favour to read "Homeward Bound" will at
once perceive that the incidents of this book commence at the point
where those of the work just mentioned ceased. We are fully aware of
the disadvantage of dividing the interest of a tale in this manner;
but in the present instance, the separation has been produced by
circumstances over which the writer had very little control. As any
one who may happen to take up this volume will very soon discover
that there is other matter which it is necessary to know it may be as
well to tell all such persons, in the commencement, therefore, that
their reading will be bootless, unless they have leisure to turn to
the pages of Homeward Bound for their cue.

We remember the despair with which that admirable observer of men,
Mr. Mathews the comedian, confessed the hopelessness of success, in
his endeavours to obtain a sufficiency of prominent and distinctive
features to compose an entertainment founded on American character.
The whole nation struck him as being destitute of salient points, and
as characterized by a respectable mediocrity, that, however useful it
might be in its way, was utterly without poetry, humour, or interest
to the observer. For one who dealt principally with the more
conspicuous absurdities of his fellow-creatures, Mr. Mathews was
certainly right; we also believe him to have been right in the main,
in the general tenor of his opinion; for this country, in its
ordinary aspects, probably presents as barren a field to the writer
of fiction, and to the dramatist, as any other on earth; we are not
certain that we might not say the most barren. We be