[Illustration: OTSEGO HALL, COOPERSTOWN]
Cooper now adopted writing as a profession. In less than thirty years, he
wrote more than thirty romances, in most cases of two volumes each. When he
went to Europe in 1826, the year of the publication of _The Last of the
Mohicans_, he found that his work was as well known abroad as at home. Sir
Walter Scott, who met Cooper in Paris, mentions in his diary for November
6, 1826, a reception by a French princess, and adds the note, "Cooper was
there, so the American and Scotch lions took the field together."
LATER YEARS.--After Cooper's return from Europe in 1833, he spent the most
of the remaining seventeen years of his life in writing books at his early
home, known as Otsego Hall, in Cooperstown. Here in the summer of 1837
there occurred an unfortunate incident which embittered the rest of his
life and for a while made him the most unpopular of American authors. Some
of his townspeople cut down one of his valuable trees and otherwise misused
the picnic grounds on a part of his estate fronting the lake. When he
remonstrated, the public denounced him and ordered his books removed from
the local library.
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