[Footnote 13: "James Fenimore Cooper," by Thomas R. Lounsbury, page 5. To this, the only biography of Cooper, and an admirable work, the writer acknowledges his great obligations. On his death-bed Cooper instructed his family to publish no life of himself.]
In the autumn of 1806, at the age of seventeen, 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.