The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1898-09-04
THE LEATHER-STOCKING TALES
Charm Found by a Mature Reader in
COOper's Stories.

1t is strange experience to grow to man.
hood without having read these books which
have been the delight of the boyhood days
of so many. When one has been brought
up in the midst of good library, with
taste for reading which developed at an age
when most boys scarcely know how to read,
the experience seems stranger still. And yet
l am not sorry that it has been my fate to
reserve these particular books which are
so closely associated with boyhood's read
ing for my maturer years. For by doing so
1 have found much of real value in them
and have been able to some extent to dis
Germ their literary merit.
AS I read 1 felt sure that the interest of
the ordinary boy must center around Indian
fights and hairbreadth escapes, and that
the boyish mind must gloat chiefly over
perilous adventures by lake and forest, and
not be fixed on that in which evidently the
author himself rex eled, the character of
Leather Stocking" And yet how admira-
bly, he has pictured that character from the
first page of "Deerslayer to the last of
1.-THE Prairie" Always the central figure,
not because he has forced himself into the
CENTER but because it is his place by right.
Always calm, dignifed, self-possessed, even
simple, honest and true, a faithful friend
brave men. the wisest among councillors,
just and prudent where all about him are
headstrong and cruel, and above all part
of the forest where he ranges, simple with
a simplicity untainted by statements"
crafty with a craft learnt of nature her
self; he stands forth a fearless type of
truth and loyalty In a life which makes
other men lawleSS and mean, and in that
character he goes to his grave full of years
and honors, the same simple Natty Bumppo
10 the end. What a pity that men do not
read this record of a brave. simple life and
take example Of one who eats when hungry
and drinks when thirsty, refusing to be
bound by the laws OF a conventional society
to which every day of his life he is superior.
And then his philosophy! Where, in the
writings of the sages of any time, is such
sistencies Of human character as in Natty
Bumppo's theory of ''gifts?" The red man
scalps and turks and exercises all manner
of cunning gifts. not because he is sneak.
but because to do SO is to use ''redskin
gifts; the white man with white gifts"
has another method Of warfare, another
because he is more human than the other,
but because his gifts are white"
And throughout these five volumes, writ
ten at various periods of a life prolific in
literary production, the character of this
humble :, woodsman Is maintained nal without
wonderful tribute to literary genius that
Cooper should have been thus able to keep
up the standard of one character through
the course of so many Volumes written.
many of them, nearly ten years apart. And
that one character study exhibited in
the words and deeds of Leather Stocking
certainly entities him to the high rank
which has ever been accorded him in the
literature of our soil far better than all
the excitements of adventure in the best
story he ever wrote If you want to come
face to face with a true American of the
last century, read the Leather Stocking
tales and see portrayed in the character of
Natty Bumppo the choicest of American
gifts" in the early days of our settlement.
washington, Ind. JOHN F. KIRK.