Margaret Cooper

“ Margaret Cooper sat on the opposite side of the church, but the line of vision was uninterrupted between them, and when—though very unfrequently—Stevens suffered his gaze to rest upon her form, it was with a sudden look of pleased abstraction, as if, in spite of himself, his mind was irresistibly drawn away from all recollection, of its immediate duties.
If a word is sufficient for the wise, a look answers an equal purpose with the vain. Margaret Cooper left the church that morning with a pleased conviction that the handsome stranger had already paid his devotion to her charms. ”

“ The sun never shone more brightly in the heavens; and as Margaret Cooper surveyed its mellow orange light, lying, like some blessed spirit, at sleep upon the hills around her, and reflected that she was about to behold it for the last time, her sense of its exceeding beauty became more strong than ever. Now that she was about to lose it for ever, it seemed more beautiful than it had ever been before.
This is a natural effect, which the affections confer upon the objects which delight and employ them. Even a temporary privation increases the loveliness of the external nature. ”

“ Margaret Cooper, whose habits previously had kept her from much intimacy with the village sage, was insensibly taken by his gentleness, the purity of his taste, the choiceness of his expression, the extent of his resources. She wondered how a mind so full should have remained unknown to her so long—committing the error, very common to persons of strong will and determined self-esteem, of assuming that she should, as a matter of inevitable necessity, have known everything and everybody of which the knowledge is at all desirable. ”

“ Margaret Cooper strove to do so, but she could not. Never did her mind seem such a perfect chaos—so full of confused and confusing objects and images. Her whole life seemed to pass in review before her. All her dreams of ambition, all the struggles of her genius! Were these to be thrown away? Were these all to be wasted? Was her song to be unheard? Was her passionate and proud soul to have no voice? If death is terrible to man, it is terrible, not as a pang, but as an oblivion; and to the soul of genius, oblivion is a soul-death, and its thought is a source of tenfold terror. ”

“ What but shame, remorse, humiliation, perhaps death!—alas! for Margaret Cooper, the love which had so suddenly grown into a precious divinity with her, was no divinity with him. He is no believer. He has no faith in such things, but like the trader in religion, he can preach deftly the good doctrines which he can not feel and is slow to practise. ”

“ The very hopelessness of Margaret Cooper's ambition, which led her to misanthropy, was the source of an ever-fertile and upspringing confidence. Thus it was that the favoring opinions which Alfred Stevens expressed—a favoring opinion expressed by one whom she soon discovered was well able to form one—accompanied by an assurance that the dream of fame which her wild imagination had formed should certainly be realized, gave him a large power over her confidence. Her passion was sway—the sway of mind over mind—of genius over sympathy—of the syren Genius over the subject Love. ”

“ And Margaret Cooper!—she the wild, the impassioned. A dreamer—a muse—filled with ambitious thoughts—proud, vain, aspiring after the vague, the unfathomable! What was her joy, now that she could speak her whole soul, with all its passionate fullness, to understanding ears! Stevens and herself had already spoken together. Her books had been his books. ”

“ She now first knew her weakness. She had felt the strength of love! Ah! the best of us may quail, whatever his hardihood, in the day when love asserts HIS strength and goes forth to victory.
Margaret Cooper sought her chamber, threw herself on the bed, and turned her face in the pillow to hide the burning blushes which, with every movement of thought and memory, seemed to increase upon her cheek. Yet, while she blushed and even wept, her heart throbbed and trembled with the birth of a new emotion of joy. ”

“ Keen was the emotion and bitter was the thought which worked in the mind of Margaret Cooper. She looked on the deportment of that young maiden, whose intellect at another day she would have despised, with envy and regret. Truer thoughts and feelings came to her as she listened to the innocent but fond dialogue between the unconscious pair. The hunter was pursuing an erratic life of enterprise and industry, then very common among the western youth. ”

“ Be not boastful of thy daughter's beauty, Sister Cooper, it is the beauty of goodness alone which dieth not.”
“But said I not, Brother Cross, of her wisdom, and her wit, as well as her beauty?” replied the old lady with some little pique. “I was forgetful of much, if I spoke only of the beauty of person which Margaret Cooper surely possesseth, and which the eyes of blindness itself might see.”
“Dross, dross all, Sister Cooper. The wit of man is a flash which blindeth and maketh dark; and the wisdom of man is a vain thing. ”

“ Margaret Cooper was beautiful after no ordinary mould. Tall in stature, with a frame rounded by the most natural proportions into symmetry, and so formed for grace; with a power of muscle more than common among women, which, by inducing activity, made her movements as easy as they were graceful ”

“ But the warning of Margaret Cooper would have been unnecessary. The girl was not only free from danger, but she was superior to it. She had the wholesome fear of doing wrong too strongly impressed upon her by education—she had too little confidence in herself—was too well assured of her own weakness—to suffer herself, even for a moment, to depart, in either thought or deed, from those quiet but stern proprieties of conduct which are among the best securities of the young. ”

“ It will be conjectured without difficulty that, with a nature so full of impulse, so excitable, as that of Margaret Cooper—particularly in the company of an adroit man like Stevens, whose purpose was to encourage her in that language and feeling of egotism which, while it was the most grateful exercise to herself, was that which most effectually served to blind her to his designs—her action was always animated, expressively adapting itself, not only to the words she uttered, but, even when she did not speak, to the feelings by which she was governed. ”

“ Margaret Cooper, like a large class of persons of strong natural mind and sanguine temper, was only too apt to confound the cause of virtue with its sometimes uncouth, harsh and self-appointed professors. ”

“ IT IS DANGEROUS WHEN THE WOMAN, THROUGH SHEER CONFIDENCE IN HER OWN STRENGTH, VENTURES UPON THE VERGE OF THE MORAL PRECIPICE. THEY VERY EXPERIMENTAL, WHERE THE PASSIONS ARE CONCERNED, PROVES HER TO BE LOST.
Margaret Cooper, confident in her own footsteps, soon learned to despise every sort of guardianship. The vanity of her mother had not only counselled and stimulated her own, but was of that gross and silly order, as to make itself offensive to the judgment of the girl herself. ”

“ He manages a canoe well, when himself; so go, Bourdon, while you can. I dare say you have a mother at home; or a sister perhaps a wife—”
“Neither,” interrupted the bee-hunter, with emphasis. “No one expects me; no one has a right to expect me.”
The color stole into pretty Margery's cheeks as she heard these words, and a ray of comfort gleamed on an imagination that, for the last hour, had been portraying the worst. ”

“ At the next instant Margery was joined; and the bee-hunter could not refrain from kissing her, in the excess of his pleasure.
"There is a dreadful howling of dogs," said Margery, feeling no offence at the liberty taken, in a moment like that, "and it seems to me that a whole tribe is following at their heels. For Heaven's sake, Bourdon, let us hasten to the canoes; brother and sister must think us lost!" ”

“ Now for the skin of her face, it’s all the same as a new topsail with a taut bolt-rope, being snug at the leeches, but all in a bight about the inner cloths,"
"Peace — I command you to be silent, sir!" said Elizabeth.
"Ay, ay, ma'am," returned the steward. "You didn’t say I shouldn't drink, though."
"We will not speak of what is to become of others," said Miss Temple, turning again to the hunter — "but of your own fortunes, Natty. It shall be my care to see that you pass the rest of your days in ease and plenty."
"Ease and plenty!" again repeated the Leather-Stocking ”

“ As Elizabeth turned in at her father’s gate she saw the wood-chopper stop at the cart, when she gave Benjamin up for lost. While they were hurrying up the walk, two figures, stealing cautiously but quickly under the shades of the trees, met the eyes of the ladies, and in a moment Edwards and the hunter crossed their path.
"Miss Temple, I may never see you again," exclaimed the youth; "let me thank you for all your kindness; you do not, cannot know my motives."
"Fly! fly!" cried Elizabeth; "the village is alarmed. Do not be found conversing with me at such a moment, and in these grounds." ”

“ I DO believe, Margery, was that man to see ME in the hands of the Pottawattamies, as I now see HIM, he would undertake something for my relief."
"But what can you, a single man, do when there are twenty against you?" asked Margery, a little reproachfully as to manner, speaking like one who had more interest in the safety of the young bee-hunter than she chose very openly to express.
"No one can say what he can do till he tries. I do not like the way they are treating that Chippewa, for it looks as if they meant to do him harm. He is neither fed, nor suffered to be with his masters ”

“ I fear that some of our young men have not regarded the covers with the attention that prudence requires."
"The thoughtless Mark hath not forgotten my admonitions! Boy, thou hast never lost sight of duty so far as to precede thy father?"
"One sees or thinks but little of the red-skins, when the whoop is ringing among the timbers of the palisadoes, mother," returned the boy, dashing his hand across his brow, in order that the drops of blood which were trickling from a furrow left by the passage of an arrow, might not be seen. ”

“ Marguerite was the only spectator of this silent but intelligible communion between these two young and pure spirits, and her soul was shaken by the unlooked-for commiseration of one so honored, and who was usually esteemed so happy.
"Thou hast the consciousness of our wrongs," she said, when the first burst of emotion had a little subsided. "Thou canst then believe that a headsman's child is like the offspring of another and is not to be hunted of men like the young of a wolf."
"Mother, this is the Baron de Willading's heiress," said Christine: "would she come here, did she not pity us?" ”

“ Oh! Miss Temple, how little have you known me!" he cried, dropping on his knees at her feet, and gathering her flowing robe in his arms as if to shield her from the flames. "I have been driven to the woods in despair, but your society has tamed the lion within me. If I have wasted my time in degradation, 'twas you that charmed me to it. If I have forgotten my name and family, your form supplied the place of memory. If I have forgotten my wrongs, 'twas you that taught me charity. No — no — dearest Elizabeth, I may die with you, but I can never leave you!" ”

“ As the cheek of the charming girl flushed with excitement, and her race became animated, Margery appeared marvellously handsome; more so, the bee-hunter fancied, than any other female he had ever before seen. But her words impressed him quite as much as her looks; for he at once saw the importance of such an event, to persons in their situation. The wind was rising on the lake, and it was ahead for the canoes; should the savages feel the necessity of making a harbor, they might return to the mouth of the Kalamazoo ”

“ Monsieur Le Quoi, I am your servant. Mr. Grant,” lifting his cap, “I feel indebted to your attention. Gentlemen, I make you acquainted with my child. Yours are names with which she is very familiar.”
“Velcome, velcome Tchooge,” said the elder of the party, with a strong German accent. “Miss Petsy vill owe me a kiss.”
“And cheerfully will I pay It, my good sir,” cried the soft voice of Elizabeth; which sounded, in the clear air of the hills. Like tones of silver, amid the loud cries of Richard. “I have always a kiss for my old friend. Major Hartmann.” ”

“ Will you repeat, dear sir, what you then thought of your enterprise, and what you felt?"
During this speech of Elizabeth, which was uttered with the fervor of affection, young Edwards rode more closely to the side of the Judge, and bent his dark eyes on his countenance with an expression that seemed to read his thoughts.
"Thou wast then young, my child, but must remember when I left thee and thy mother, to take my first survey of these uninhabited mountains," said Marmaduke. "But thou dost not feel all the secret motives that can urge a man to endure privations in order to accumulate wealth. ”

“ More than thirty years since a very near and dear relative of the writer, an elder sister and a second mother, was killed by a fall from a horse in a ride among the very mountains mentioned in this tale. Few of her sex and years were more extensively known or more universally beloved than the admirable woman who thus fell a victim to the chances of the wilderness. "I do not forget thy kindness," said Marmaduke, "nor that we are of one blood."
"But, my dear father," cried the wondering Elizabeth, "was there actual suffering? Where were the beautiful and fertile vales of the Mohawk? ”