Cooper found himself a
seaman before the mast in the ship Sterling, endeavoring to secure the
training necessary for entering the United States Navy; for to this
career it was decided he should devote himself. His entrance to the
navy as midshipman in 1808, his marriage to a Miss De Lancey at
Mamaroneck, Westchester County, N. Y., in 1811, his retirement from
the navy a few months after his marriage, and a somewhat migratory
life distinguished by a "gentlemanly" and unprofitable pursuit of
agriculture for eight years, represent the chief facts and conditions
of his career from the age of nineteen to the age of thirty.
Describing the last years of this period Professor Lounsbury says:
"His thoughts were principally directed to improving the little estate
that had come into his possession. (His father died in 1809.) He
planted trees, he built fences, he drained swamps, he planned a lawn.
The one thing which he did not do was to write."

On November 10, 1820, in New York, was published a novel in two
volumes, bearing the title "Precaution." Its author was James Fenimore
Cooper. He was thirty-one years old. He had had no special literary
training. But this novel was the beginning of the career of one of the
most prolific of American authors. Accident brought this career to
this apparently rather unsuccessful man. Reading to his wife one day a
novel dealing with English society, and displeased by it, he made the
remark, "I believe I could write a better story myself." His wife
challenged him; the challenge he accepted; the book followed.

There were no novelists at the close of the second and the beginning
of the third decade of our century. Hawthorne was a shy youth fitting
for college. John P. Kennedy, by whose side Cooper appears in the
picture of Washington Irving and his friends, was entering the
Maryland House of Delegates, and twelve years were to elapse before
the issue of his story of Virginia country life, "Swallow Barn."
Irving and Paulding were writing sketches. Charles B. Brown was dead.
Cooper was alone as a novelist.

Destiny thus found Cooper rather than Cooper his destiny. In the next
thirty years he wrote no less than seventy books, or important review
articles, and not a few of the books were published in two volumes.
So prolific a power of authorship is unique enough, and when
considered in the light of the absence of literary associations of the
first half of his life seems absolutely unique in the h