Mr. George Palmer Putnam thus describes a meeting between Irving and Cooper, after the latter’s return from Europe:  “One day Mr. Irving was sitting at my desk, with his back to the door, when Mr. Cooper came in (a little bustling as usual) and stood at the office entrance, talking.  Mr. Irving did not turn (for obvious reasons), and Cooper did not see him.  I had acquired caution as to introductions without mutual consent, but with brief thought—­sort of instinct—­I stoutly obeyed the impulse of the moment, and simply said, ‘Mr. Cooper, here is Mr. Irving.’  The latter turned, Cooper held out his hand cordially, dashed at once into an animated conversation, took a chair, and, to my surprise and delight, the two authors sat for an hour, chatting in their best manner about almost every topic of the day and former days; and Mr. Irving afterwards frequently alluded to the incident as being a very great gratification to him.  Not many months afterwards, he sat on the platform and joined in Bryant’s tribute to the genius of the departed novelist.”

[Illustration:  BRYANT, WEBSTER AND IRVING.]

September 18, 1851, Irving wrote:  “The death of Fenimore Cooper is an event of deep and public concern.  To me it comes with a shock; for it seems but the other day that I saw him at Putnam’s, in the full vigor of mind and body, ‘a very castle of a man.’  He left a space in our literature which will not be easily supplied.  I shall not fail to attend the proposed meeting.”

It is recorded that “Yale never, in later years, saw fit to honor herself by giving Cooper his degree, but Columbia, in this instance more intelligent than either Harvard or Yale, in 1824, conferred on the author the honorary degree of A.M.”

When, in 1824, General Lafayette, as the Nation’s guest, landed from the Cadmus at Castle Garden, Mr. Cooper made one of the active committee of welcome and entertainment.  Of his part in the Castle-Garden ball, and his enthusiasm, a friend wrote:  “After working hard all day in preparations and all night in carrying them out, towards dawn he went to the office of his friend Charles King and wrote out a full and accurate report, which appeared in Mr. King’s paper the next day.”  Concerning this famous Castle-Garden ball, Cooper himself wrote:  “A tall spar was raised in the center, a vast awning of sail-cloth covered the whole, which was concealed by flags that gave a soft, airy finish—­all flooded by lights.  Music of the national air hailed Lafayette’s arrival.  The brilliant throngs and gay dancers over the floor fell into line like a charm, forming a lane, through which the old man passed, giving and receiving warm and affectionate salutations at every step to the small marquee in the midst, prepared for the ‘Guest of the Nation.’  He was like a father among his children.”  In various other ways Cooper paid tributes of courtesy to General Lafayette during this visit to America.

[Illustration:  THE LANDING OF LAFAYETTE, 1824.]