In this romantic place he passed the most impressionable part
of his boyhood.
At the close of the eighteenth century, Cooperstown was one of the outposts
of civilization. Few clearings had been made in the vast mysterious
forests, which appealed so deeply to the boy's imagination, and which still
sheltered deer, bear, and Indians. The most vivid local story which his
young ears heard was the account of the Cherry Valley massacre, which had
taken place a few miles from Cooperstown only eleven years before he was
born. Cooper himself felt the fascination of the trackless forests before
he communicated it to his readers.
He entered Yale in 1802, but he did not succeed in eradicating his love of
outdoor life and of the unfettered habits of the pioneer, and did not
remain to graduate. The faculty dismissed him in his junior year. It was
unfortunate that he did not study more and submit to the restraints and
discipline of regular college life; for his prose often shows in its
carelessness of construction and lack of restraint his need for that formal
discipline which was for the moment so grievous to him.
After Cooper had left college, his father decided to have him prepare for
the navy.
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