he retained his cheerfulness to the very
end. Being asked one day in his ninetieth year, how he had preserved so
well his bodily and mental vigor, he replied:--

"I always find something to keep me busy; and to be doing something for
the good of man, or to keep the wheels in motion, is the best medicine
one can take. I run up and down stairs here almost as easily as I did
years ago, when I never expected that my term would run into the
nineties. I have occasional twinges from the nervous shock and physical
injury sustained from an explosion that occurred while I was conducting
some experiments with nitrogen gas years ago. In other respects my days
pass as painlessly as they did when I was a boy carrying a grocer's
basket about the streets. It is very curious, but somehow, though I have
none, of the pains and troubles that old men talk about, I have not the
same luxury of life--the same relish in the mere act of living--that I
had then. Age is like babyhood come back again in a certain way. Even
the memories of baby-life come back--the tricks, the pranks, the boyish
dreams; and things that I did not remember at forty or fifty years old I
recollect vividly now. But a boy of ninety and a boy of nine are very
different things, none the less. I never felt better in my life except
for twinges occasioned by my nitrogen experiment. But still I hear a
voice calling to me, as my mother often did, when I was a boy 'Peter,
Peter, it is about bed-time,' and I have an old man's presentiment that
I shall be taken soon."

He loved the Institute he had founded to the last hour of his
consciousness. A few weeks before his death he said to Reverend Robert
Collyer:--

"I would be glad to have four more years of life given me, for I am
anxious to make some additional improvements in Cooper Union, and then
part of my life-work would be complete. If I could only live four years
longer I would die content."

Dr. Collyer adds this pleasing anecdote:--

"I remember a talk I had with him not long before his death, in which he
said that a Presbyterian minister of great reputation and ability, but
who has since died, had called upon him one day and among other things
discussed the future life. They were old and tried friends, the minister
and Mr. Cooper, and when the clergyman began to question Mr. Cooper's
belief, he said: 'I sometimes think that if one has too good a time here
below, there is less reason for him to go to heaven. I have had a