par maun to Cupar!" The incident serves to affirm
Cooper's wide information and accurate memory.

[Illustration: THE WAGER SEAL.]

This winter of 1825-26 Cooper and his family made their home at 345
Greenwich Street, not many steps from 92 Hudson Street, where lived the
poet William Cullen Bryant, who often went around the corner for a walk
with his friend.

[Illustration: BRYANT.]

General Wilson wrote: "Soon after Bryant went to New York he met Cooper,
who, a few days later, said: 'Come and dine with me tomorrow; I live at
No. 345 Greenwich Street.' 'Please put that down for me,' said Bryant,
'or I shall forget the place.' 'Can't you remember three-four-five?'
replied Cooper bluntly. Bryant did remember 'three-four-five,' not only
for that day, but ever afterward."

During this spring Cooper followed a deputation of Pawnee and Sioux
Indians from New York to Washington, in order to make a close study of
them for future use. He was much interested in the chiefs' stories of
their wild powers, dignity, endurance, grace, cunning wiles, and fierce
passions. The great buffalo hunts across the prairies he had never seen;
the fights of mounted tribes and the sweeping fires over those boundless
plains all claimed his eager interest and sympathy, with the resulting
desire to place "these mounted tribes" and their desert plains beyond
the Mississippi in another Indian story. One of the chiefs of this
party--a very fine specimen of a warrior, a remarkable man in every
way--is credited with being the original of "Hard-Heart" of "The
Prairie," which an authority gives as Cooper's favorite book. On a
knoll, and within the glory of a western sunset, stood Natty, born of
the author's mind and heart, as he first appeared in this book. "The
aged trapper--a nobly pathetic figure contrasted with the
squatter"--looms up, colossal, against the gleaming radiance of
departing day; and full well he knows his own leaving for the long-home
is not far off--for the remarkable life of wondrous Leatherstocking
closes within these pages. Of other characters and the author Prof.
Matthews says: "He was above all things a creator of character.--He can
draw women.--The wife of Ishmael Bush, the squatter, mother of seven
stalwart sons and sister of a murderous rascal, is an unforgotten
portrait, solidly painted by a master." "The Prairie" was begun in the
winter of 1826, in the New York, Greenwich-Street home, while Cooper was
under the weather from