the expl'ite afore the whole tribe; or
if my inimy had only been a bear'"--and so on.

We cannot imagine such a thing as a veteran Scotch Commander-in-Chief
comporting himself in the field like a windy melodramatic actor, but
Cooper could. On one occasion Alice and Cora were being chased by the
French through a fog in the neighborhood of their father's fort:

"'Point de quartier aux coquins!' cried an eager pursuer, who
seemed to direct the operations of the enemy.

"'Stand firm and be ready, my gallant 60ths!' suddenly
exclaimed a voice above them; wait to see the enemy; fire low,
and sweep the glacis.'

"'Father? father!' exclaimed a piercing cry from out the mist;
'it is I! Alice! thy own Elsie! spare, O! save your daughters!'

"'Hold!' shouted the former speaker, in the awful tones of
parental agony, the sound reaching even to the woods, and
rolling back in solemn echo. ''Tis she! God has restored me my
children! Throw open the sally-port; to the field, 60ths, to
the field! pull not a trigger, lest ye kill my lambs! Drive
off these dogs of France with your steel!'"

Cooper's word-sense was singularly dull. When a person has a poor ear
for music he will flat and sharp right along without knowing it. He
keeps near the tune, but it is not the tune. When a person has a poor
ear for words, the result is a literary flatting and sharping; you
perceive what he is intending to say, but you also perceive that he
doesn't say it. This is Cooper. He was not a word-musician. His ear was
satisfied with the approximate word. I will furnish some circumstantial
evidence in support of this charge. My instances are gathered from
half a dozen pages of the tale called Deerslayer. He uses "verbal,"
for "oral"; "precision," for "facility"; "phenomena," for "marvels";
"necessary," for "predetermined"; "unsophisticated," for "primitive";
"preparation," for "expectancy"; "rebuked," for "subdued"; "dependent
on," for "resulting from"; "fact," for "condition"; "fact," for
"conjecture"; "precaution," for "caution"; "explain," for "determine";
"mortified," for "disappointed"; "meretricious," for "factitious";
"materially," for "considerably"; "decreasing," for "deepening";
"increasing," for "disappearing"; "embedded," for "enclosed";
"treacherous;" for "hostile"; "stood," for "stooped"; "softened," fo