ead-baskets of fruit and flowers, uniting in the
dance _a la ronde_, as they came to a certain point in the procession;
and so went the reapers, mowers, gleaners, herdsmen, and dairy-maids in
Alpine costume, timing their steps to horn and cow-bell, and singing the
heart-stirring chorus _Ranz des Vachs_, or the "Cowherds of the Alps,"
the wild notes coming back in many an Alpine echo. The festival
concluded with a rustic wedding, the bride being dowered down to the
broom and spindle by the lady of the manor.

[Illustration: NOAH'S ARK, VEVAY, 1833.]

Such a holiday on the shores of Lake Leman, and the Pass of St. Bernard,
Cooper placed as a background for his plot based on the hard old
feudal-times law--that (in the canton of Berne) the odious office of
executioner or headsman was made a family inheritance. The efforts of
the unhappy father and mother to save their son from such a fate make up
the pathetic interest of "The Headsman," issued in 1833. The Hospice of
St. Bernard so well described in this book was visited by the author
the previous year.

[Illustration: HOSPICE ST. BERNARD.]

When the power to write first dawned on Cooper's mind there came also
and grew with it the desire to serve his native land in the field of
letters. Love of country and countrymen guided his ardent, generous pen
in "The Spy," "The Pioneers," "The Last of the Mohicans," and "The
Prairie," written before he went to Europe. European society he entered,
and was courted as literary men of reputation are courted there, but
always with the honest pride of being an American. Under these pleasant
conditions "The Red Rover," "The Traveling Bachelor," "The Wept of
Wish-ton-Wish," and "The Water Witch" were written. But "The Bravo" was
followed by such "a series of abuse in the public press" at home that
when Cooper returned, November 5, 1833, these onsets greatly surprised
him. His nature was roused by attack; but "never was he known to quail,"
wrote a famous English critic of him, and added: "Cooper writes like a
hero!" He believed the public press to be a power for life or death to a
nation, and held _personal_ rights as sacred; and challenged on these
lines he became a lion at bay. Excepting from his fine old personal
friends, staunch and true, he had a chilling reception. For saying, at
an evening party a few days after landing, that he had been sadly jolted
by the bad pavement and was surprised that the town was so poorly
lighted, he was s