From this wilderness the boy was sent at the age of thirteen to Yale College, where he remained three years, but was too restless and adventurous to devote himself diligently to study and was dismissed in disgrace at sixteen. For one year he shipped before the mast as a common sailor and for the next five years served as a midshipman in the United States Navy, making himself master of that knowledge and detail of nautical life which he afterwards employed to so much advantage in his romances of the sea. In 1811 Cooper resigned his post as midshipman, and married Miss Delancey, with whom he lived happily for forty years. The first few years of his married life were spent in quiet retirement. For some months he resided in Westchester County, the scene of his book “The Spy.” Then he removed to his old home at Cooperstown and took possession of the family mansion, to which he had fallen heir through the death of his father. Here he prepared to spend his life as a quiet country gentleman, and did so until a mere accident called him into authorship. Up to that date he seems never to have touched a pen or even thought of one except to write an ordinary letter. He was, however, fond of reading, and often read aloud to his wife. One day while reading a British novel he looked up and playfully said: “I could write a better book than that myself.” “Suppose you try,” replied his wife, and retiring to his library he wrote a chapter which he read to Mrs. Cooper. She was pleased with it and suggested that he continue, which he did, and published the book, under the title of “Precaution,” in 1820. No one at that time had thought of writing a novel with the scene laid in America, and “Precaution,” which had an English setting, was so thoroughly English that it was reviewed in London with no suspicion of its American authorship. The success which it met, while not great, impressed Cooper that as he had not failed with a novel describing British life, of which he knew little, he might succeed with one on American life, of which he knew much. It was a happy thought. Scott’s “Ivanhoe” had just been read by him and it suggested an American historical theme, and he wrote the story of “The Spy,” which he published in 1821. It was a tale of the Revolution, in which the central figure, Harvey Birch, the spy, is one of the most interesting and effective characters in the realm of romantic literature. It quickly followed Scott’s “Ivanhoe” into many languages.