Historic Boyhoods Part 19

Otsego Hall was built about the time when the young republic was stretching out for s.p.a.ce in which to grow. Mr. Cooper found this lovely lake, and built on the frontier. Beyond his home spread seemingly endless forests, filled with the wandering bands of the Indians of the Six Nations, and with all manner of wild animals. The Lake was the home of flocks of gulls, loons and wild duck, and more times than he could count young Cooper had seen a long file of Indian canoes steal swiftly across its upper bays. It was an ideal region for a boy of an adventurous turn of mind, fond of the outdoor world.

The heir of Otsego Hall was not such a boy of the wilderness as were Daniel Boone, Andrew Jackson or Abraham Lincoln. He did not have to fight his way in the rough new world as they did. Mr. Cooper was well-to-do, and intended that his son should take a proper place in the young nation. There was little he could learn at the local academy, and so he was soon sent to school at Albany, where he lived in the home of an English clergyman who was fond of denouncing the war of the Revolution and the new country, and so made James Cooper more of an ardent patriot than ever.

When he was thirteen he was sent to Yale College, and felt himself almost a grown man. He had been better prepared than most of his cla.s.smates, and so decided he did not need to study to keep up with them. Instead of working he devoted all his time to sport, and to wandering through the beautiful country about New Haven. He was learning a great deal about outdoor life, and storing his mind with pictures, but at the same time was learning little of the Latin and Greek which his teachers thought vastly more important. He got into sc.r.a.pe after sc.r.a.pe with other boys of his way of thinking, and finally in his third year a midnight frolic led to his being dismissed. Mr. Cooper took his son's side and argued with the faculty, but the boy had to leave. His father looked about for some means of taming his son's wild habits and decided to send him to sea for a time.

Nothing could have pleased James better. He wanted to see the world, and he was fond of s.h.i.+ps. He had no special ambition, but rather looked forward to serving in the navy. In the fall of 1806 he sailed from New York on the s.h.i.+p _Sterling_ bound for England with a freight of flour.

The voyage was a long and stormy one, and the boy, who was simply a sailor before the mast, got a good taste of life at sea. He enjoyed it thoroughly. When they reached England he went to London in his sailor's clothes, and knocked about that great city much like any other jack on sh.o.r.e. He made friends quickly, enjoyed any new adventure, and stored up a great stock of stories to take home.

The boy enjoyed his voyage before the mast so much that when he returned to New York he asked his father to get him a commission in the United States navy. Mr. Cooper was able to do this, and James was soon after sent as mids.h.i.+pman with a party of men to build a brig of sixteen guns on Lake Ontario. It took them a winter to build the s.h.i.+p, and during that time the party stayed at the tiny settlement of Oswego, a collection of some twenty houses. All around lay the unbroken forest stretching thirty or forty miles without a break. There was abundance of game, many Indians, and a splendid chance to live the frontier life that Cooper loved. He now knew the habits of the wild red men and whites, the lore of the woods, the perils and joys of the sea, and as he helped to build the gunboat he learned a thousand things that he was to turn to splendid uses later.

The boy had now grown to manhood, and yet no sign of his real work had appeared. He was not especially fond of books or history, his views of the charm of a soldier's life were much those he had spoken to Captain Kent at Otsego Hall. It seemed as though he were settled in the navy.

It is strange how chance determined the fate of young Cooper. About this time his grandmother asked him to take her name, and for a while he called himself Fenimore-Cooper. Then a little later he married, and his wife did not like the idea of his leaving her on long sea voyages. He seems to have been quite willing to give up the navy, and settle down at Otsego Hall as lord of the manor after his father's fas.h.i.+on. He liked the life of a country gentleman, and spent his time planting trees, draining swamps, planning lawns, and cultivating flowers and fruits. By the time he was thirty he had tried his hand at almost everything except writing.

It happened that as Cooper was one day reading aloud to his wife from an English novel he threw the book down, exclaiming, "Why, I believe I could write a better story myself!" His wife laughed, and asked him to prove it. He said he would, and thereupon sat down and began to lay out a plot. A few days later he was deep in work on the story, and he kept at it until he had finished a two-volume novel, which he called "Precaution."

His wife and friends liked it and urged him to publish it; so in November, 1820, appeared the first of that great series of native American stories which were to give the young nation a distinct place in English literature. Chance began them, but the first few books proved so successful that Cooper settled at once into the career of novelist.

The famous "Leather-Stocking Tales" followed, and the world made the acquaintance of the America of the Indian and the pioneer in "The Deerslayer," "The Last of the Mohicans," "The Pathfinder," "The Pioneers," and "The Prairie." Here he tells the romantic story of the conquest of the wilderness, and draws the portraits of the pioneer, the hunter, and the Indian. The same character, Harvey Birch, called Leather-Stocking, runs through them all, first as a youth in the novels that deal with the red men, with the great characters of Chingachcook and Uncas, then as a man in the dramas of the white men who blazed the trail westward through the forests, and settled the great prairies.

The story of Daniel Boone inspired him in these latter novels, and he tells of such scenes as the great prairie fire and the panther fight with the vividness of an eye-witness. "The Pioneers" is laid on the sh.o.r.es of Lake Ontario where he built the war-s.h.i.+p, and "The Deerslayer"

about the little lake near Otsego Hall.

He wrote great tales of the sea also, in one of which, "The Pilot," he took as his hero John Paul Jones, tales founded on his own knowledge of a sailor's life won at first hand; but it was the Indian tales that brought him greatest fame. Whether the pictures of the men of the Six Nations be accurate or not they made direct appeal to the imagination of the world, and Indian character will always stand as Cooper drew it.

Shakespeare and Scott have made English history for us, and Cooper has done the same thing for the history of the Indian.

Cooper said later that he might have chosen happier periods for his stories, more stirring events, and perhaps more beautiful scenes, but none which would have lain so close to his heart. He never forgot what had interested him so deeply in his boyhood, and when he wrote he went back to his boyhood memories. Little had he realized in those days how the words Captain Kent spoke in the garden would come true. He had drifted into writing before he realized what a great untrodden field lay before him.

The story of James Fenimore Cooper is an inspiration to every American.

It is the history of a man who loved his country deeply, and who was as fine-spirited a gentleman as he was a great author.

VII

John Ericsson

The Boy of the Gota Ca.n.a.l: 1803-1889

Among the Swedish country people there still lingers a primitive half belief in witches and goblins, and nymphs and elves of the forests and the sea. Many a simple mountaineer, returning home from some lonely trip, tells tales of prophetic voices he heard whispering in the wind or of gnomes who interrupted his slumbers in the woods. One such legend runs as follows.

A wealthy farmer named Ericsson, who owned many acres in the Swedish province of Vermland, had in his service a crippled lad whose business it was to tend the sheep. This work kept him away from people much of the time, and led him through the pine woods, beside the little tarns, or hidden inland lakes, and up and down the wild mountains where the fairy people dwell. He grew quite accustomed to meeting wood or lake nymphs in his wanderings, and became so friendly with them that they often gave him good advice, such as when to expect a storm, or where he might find the best grazing for his flock.

One day he was caught in the rain and when he found shelter in a deserted barn he was so wet and exhausted that he fell into a troubled sleep. While he slept a pixie came to him and whispered in his ear that in time to come a house should be built on that part of farmer Ericsson's land, and that two boys should be born there who should make the name of Ericsson known round the world.

The shepherd was much excited by the news, and as soon as he reached the Ericsson house he told the fairy's prophecy. The family were very much concerned and wrote the prophecy down in the family Bible, and also spread the story through the province. That was in the seventeenth century.

Near the end of the eighteenth century young Olof Ericsson married, and built him a home on that part of the family land where the old barn had stood. He had three children, a daughter named Caroline, and two sons, named Nils and John. One day the mother heard the old legend and identified the place with her husband's house, and so became convinced that her boys were to become world famous. They came of very good stock, and the family traced their ancestry back to the great Leif Ericsson, son of Eric the Red, who had been the Norse discoverer of America.

Olof and his wife Brita were devoted to their children. Olof was part owner of a mine at the town of Langsbaushyttan near which they lived.

The children had a governess for a time, and father and mother taught them what they could, but the most of their days were spent playing in the thick pine woods along the sh.o.r.e of the little Lake Hytt which lay in front of their house. Sometimes Olof took the two boys with him to the mine, and from almost the first visit a perfect pa.s.sion for machinery took possession of the younger boy John. After that he was always playing with pencils and paper, with bits of wood and metal, and spent hours drawing figures in the sand on the beach of the lake.

At about this period hard times befell Sweden. The small Northern country, half the size of Texas, with fewer people than the single city of London, never very rich, had trouble keeping her independence from Russia. Her king was a weakling, and lost part of his land. Then a gentleman of fortune, a man who had been a French lawyer's apprentice, and had risen to be a marshal, one whose sword had helped to carve out an empire for Napoleon, suddenly was elected King of Sweden. He brought the little country French support and better times, but meantime Olof Ericsson had lost his property and found that he must seek work at once to keep his family from starving.

Olof had lost his share in the mine and had been living in the depths of the pine forest choosing lumber for builders. He had encouraged his son John's talent for machinery, and now began to believe that the old prophecy might really come true. He had seen John, only ten years old, build a miniature sawmill and pumping engine at the mine, and had been as much astonished as any of the men there when his son proudly showed them the designs he had drawn for a new kind of pump to drain the mines of water.

Even when the little family had left the mining town and were living in the deep woods the boy continued working out his own inventions. He made tools for himself, using sharp pine needles for the points of a drawing compa.s.s he fas.h.i.+oned out of sticks, begging his mother for a few hairs from her fur coat to make paint brushes, and actually devising a ball and socket joint for a small windmill he was building. Everything he could lay his hands on he turned to some mechanical use, and all his thoughts seemed bent in that one direction.

The new King of Sweden was now planning to build a great s.h.i.+p ca.n.a.l at Gota to unite the Baltic and the North Seas, a scheme which had for a long time appealed to Swedish patriots as a protection against their great grasping neighbor, the Russian Bear. Through the influence of a friend, Count Platen, Olof Ericsson was given work in connection with the ca.n.a.l, and moved his family with him to a town called Forsvik. Here a great many soldiers were at work, for the ca.n.a.l was in charge of the army, and many skilled engineers were gathered to superintend the building.

Almost at the same time when Olof reported for work Count Platen and the other officers were surprised to see a small boy, not more than thirteen years old, come every day to watch the digging, to study the machinery, and to ask questions of every one in the place. He was a handsome boy, well built, with light, close-cut, curling hair, fair as Swedish boys almost always are, with clear blue eyes, and a very firm mouth and chin.

While other boys of his age were at school or playing he would stand on the bank of the ca.n.a.l, studying by the hour some piece of machinery.

Then on another day he would come with a pad of paper, some crude home-made drawing tools, and pencils, and perching himself on a pile of rocks or of lumber would draw the machinery as a skilled draughtsman might, and then work over his sketch, apparently adding to it or altering it to suit ideas of his own.

Count Platen watched the boy for several days, and then one morning went up to him. "May I see what you're doing?" he asked.

The boy, who had been absolutely absorbed in his work, looked up. "It's the sketch of a new pump to drain the ca.n.a.l," said he. "I made one for father's mine in Vermland, and I don't see why the same plan can't be used here. It'll do the work more quickly."

Count Platen looked at the drawing on the boy's lap, and listened intently while the young inventor explained how the machine should work.

He was astounded at the knowledge the boy had of engineering.

"You're Olof Ericsson's son, aren't you?" he asked finally.

The boy nodded. "Yes, I'm John Ericsson; I've an older brother Nils, who's fifteen."

"Is Nils as much of an engineer as you are?"

"He knows a good deal about it. Father taught us both, but I don't think he's as fond of machines as I am."

The Count laughed. It sounded strange to him to hear a small boy talk of machinery so eagerly. He could not doubt the boy's earnestness, however.

He had watched him for several days and had just examined his plans. The boy evidently meant what he said.

"Well, John, you're certainly a remarkable lad. I shouldn't wonder if you'd the making of a genius in you." He considered a few minutes, and then went on. "We need some engineers here to show these stupid soldiers what to do. How'd you like to try such a job?"

The boy jumped from his seat in his excitement. "I'd like it very much, sir. Do you mean to tell the men what to do, and to have real tools to work with?"

Count Platen smiled. "Yes, to have entire charge of a part of the work.

That's what I mean. I really think you could do it. How old are you, John?"

"I'll be fourteen very soon."

"Hm," mused the Count, "It seems absurd to put a boy of fourteen in charge of six hundred soldiers. And yet if he has the skill to do the work, why not? And there's small doubt that he has. Well, John, I'll see what can be done. Meet me here to-morrow morning."

The next day Count Platen found John anxiously awaiting him. He told the boy at once that his plan had proved successful, and that both John and Nils were to be enrolled as cadets in the mechanical corps of the Swedish navy, and that John was to be put in charge of part of the ca.n.a.l building. The boy was highly delighted; he knew that now he should have a chance to try in actual working some of the inventions he had planned on paper. As soon as he had thanked his kind friend the Count he ran home to tell his mother the news of Nils' and his good fortune.

It was a curious sight when the officer in command of the troops placed six hundred soldiers in charge of young John Ericsson. They were too well trained to laugh, but they were tremendously surprised when they saw that their future orders were to come from this small, curly-haired lad just barely turned fourteen. Olof Ericsson himself was scarcely less surprised than the men; he knew his son's great mechanical ability, but he could hardly believe that others had come to realize it so soon.