The Columbus dispatch. (Columbus, Miss.) 19??-1922, 1921-10-12
Kenmore COOPER

In the Indian Summer, that honeymoon OF the
year. one loves to recall the names of those who
made Nature a great white throne where men
might knee, or dream, or worship
It is good for all of u.s. no matter when or how.
to get away alone in the dim forests, and those
authors are dearest to US who lead on to where
the evening will fold its purple wings about the
trees; or where in the white hush of the morn
ing. the kisses of the breezes will awaken the
sleep of the flowers.
Isolation comes often as an anodyne softer than
night, or dreams in the night. The forest has a
voice which, thrilling, articuate, mighty, speaks
to the inmost soul of the glory Of God and of the
wonderful powers of His Omnipotence.
There is no tree which gathers to its grateful
branches the dew and the sunshine; no brook that
babbles of the lowlands and the summer sea; no
trailing vine that lifts its soft lips up to the
bearded lips of the oak; no swaying nest, vocal
with life and love- no flower that feeds its bee;
no spring that slakes some creatures thirst; no
bird that sits and sings for joy; no glad or grow
ing or happy thing in all the woods that has no
voice to tell something good or true-something
to make life brighter and drawer and better for
us all.
Cooper was the novelist of the woods. The
spired it. AS Byron loved the ocean; as Shelley
the placid lakes, where the blue of the waves and
the blue of the sky were deep together; as Poe
the midnight and the waning moon, so Cooper
loved the mighty woods, no matter whether spring
had peopled all its waiting places with bud and
blossom, or summer with wealth and teeming life
or autumn with crimson and gold, or winter with
its vanguard of snow, which could be seen creep
e+o fbo min tbo
les of the streams were mute, and a glaze as
of death had swept over all their dimples.
Cooper fascinates. Through five books he car
ries a single character-that of Natty Bumppo-
and the light that shines upon him is the light
which comes from some tree some stream, some
desoate trail, some hushed and thrilling ambush
ment some river that runs to the sea, some little
clearing where cabin stands, the blue smoke go
ing up to the blue skies as prayer to the good
God who guards alike the trapper in the wilder
ness and the king in his palace.
We do not believe that the fame of the great
American novelist is dying out, no matter what
some Eastern critics have lately said and written
Who is there TO take his place? What hand any
where yet lifted up can weave the web of romance (
as he has woven it about all the great lakes and
all the great tribes gone or decimated? It is .
true mat the pathway OF progress lies over the
graves OF Indians, and that the vices of cviiZa-
ton have made the remnant of the race a cruel, 4
beggarly, degraded few; but we seek only for
our qualification among the ideal creations of his
fancy, and not where the Squallid Diggers live :
on grasshoppers, and murder all alike-the old
and the young, the women and the children.
1t is Nature we want as revealed by one who
wOrshlped at her shrine, and who felt her beauty
and her glory enter into him as a divine love, >
purifying his imagination and giving to his prose
the music and tremOr Of d hymn Those who love
Nature in her visible forms will unite in the hope
hat the mantle Of this great man may yet find =
resting place upon the shoulders of some new
American Cooper, wonderful in his creations
as the great original