This book had a profound influence upon Cooper's fortunes. From beginning to end it was a blunder. It cannot receive even the negative praise of being a work in which the best of intentions was marred by the worst of taste. Its spirit was a bad spirit throughout. It was dreadful to think some of the things found in it; but it was more dreadful to say them. There was a great deal of truth in its pages, but if the views expressed in it had been actually inspired, the attitude and tone the author assumed would have prevented his making a convert. To some extent this had been true of "Homeward Bound." Greenough expostulated with Cooper, after reading that novel. "I think," he wrote from (p. 156) Florence, "you lose hold on the American public by rubbing down their shins with brickbats as you do." The most surprising thing connected with "Home as Found," however, is Cooper's unconsciousness, not of the probability, but of the possibility, that he would be charged with drawing himself in the character of Edward Effingham, and to some extent in that of John Effingham. The sentiments advanced were his sentiments, the acts described were in many cases his acts. The absence in a foreign land, the return to America, the scene laid at Templeton, with a direct reference to "The Pioneers," the account of the controversy about the Three Mile Point,--all these fixed definitely the man and the place. Variations in matters of detail would not disturb the truth of the general resemblance. Still Cooper not only did not intend to represent himself, he was unaware that he had done so. Nearly three years after in the columns of a weekly newspaper he stoutly defended himself against the imputation. It was useless. From this time forward the name of Effingham was often derisively applied to him in the controversies in which he was engaged.