ps the most usual dishes. On
Sunday mornings, during the winter, our breakfast-tables were graced
with large tin milk-cans filled with stewed oysters; at the proper
season we were occasionally treated with green peas. As you may suppose,
a goodly number of waiters were needed in the hall. These were all
students, and many of them among the best and most esteemed scholars. At
nine the bell warned us to our rooms. At twelve it called us to a
recitation or a lecture. After dinner we recommenced our studies for the
third time, at four o'clock. During study hours the tutors would
frequently go the rounds, looking into our rooms to see that we were not
playing truant. Before supper, we all attended prayers in the chapel."

[Illustration: SILHOUETTE OF JAMES COOPER WHEN A STUDENT AT YALE.]

Although, from the necessity of his times, Chief-Justice John Jay was a
slave owner, his son, William--refined, benevolent, pleasing in manner,
but with a temper easily aroused by injustice--became an early, alert,
and strong advocate of the anti-slavery cause. This eminent jurist who
built his life upon the plan of his words, "Duties are ours and
consequences are God's" (as did also Cooper), was graphically addressed
and described by Cooper as "Thou most pugnacious man of peace."

[Illustration: OUTWARD BOUND.]

Leaving Yale to the more studious, no doubt the young man enjoyed this
brief period of home-life and the distinguished guests drawn by its
hospitality to Otsego Hall. Yet even this could not for long hold him
there. Perhaps he was influenced by what he heard from them of the great
outside world, and he, too, wished to see what it was like. As a
stepping-stone to a commission in the navy, Judge Cooper secured a berth
for his son, who shipped as a sailor before-the-mast in the _Stirling_,
of Wiscasset, Maine, John Johnston master and part owner. In the care of
a merchant, young Cooper went down to the docks to look about the ship
and sign the articles, and the next day he returned in his sailor's
garb. The _Stirling_ was taken into the stream, and his new comrades, a
mixture of nations,--four Americans, a Portuguese, a Spaniard, a
Prussian, a Dane, an Englishman, a Scotch boy, and a Canadian,--tumbled
aboard, not quite themselves; but by night they were in working trim.
The young commander was described as "kind and considerate of all
hands," and the ship as "carrying a motley crew." When "all hands" were
called to get the _Stirli