Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/77

 COOPER S LITERARY OFFENSES

11. They require that the characters in a tale shall be so clearly defined that the reader can tell beforehand what each will do in a given emergency. But in the Deerslayer tale this rule is vacated.

In addition to these large rules there are some little ones. These require that the author shall

12. Say what he is proposing to say, not merely come near it.

13. Use the right word, not its second cousin. &amp;lt;L4&amp;gt; Eschew surplusage.

15. Not omit necessary details.

1 6. Avoid slovenliness of form.

17. Use good grammar.

1 8. Employ a simple and straightforward style. Even these seven are coldly and persistently vio lated in the Deerslayer tale.

Cooper s gift in the way of invention was not a rich endowment; but such as it was he liked to work it, he was pleased with the effects, and indeed he did some quite sweet things with it. In his little box of stage-properties he kept six or eight cunning devices, tricks, artifices for his savages and woods men to deceive and circumvent each other with, and he was never so happy as when he was working these innocent things and seeing them go. A favorite one was to make a moccasined person tread in the tracks of the moccasined enemy, and thus hide his own trail. Cooper wore out barrels and barrels of moccasins in working that trick. Another stage-property that he pulled out of his box pretty frequently was his broken twig. He prized his broken twig above all the rest of his

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