Cooper picked up a little "book learning" in a backwoods school and a little more in a minister's study at Albany. At thirteen he entered Yale; but he was a self-willed lad and was presently dismissed from college. A little later, after receiving some scant nautical training on a merchantman, he entered the navy as midshipman; but after a brief experience in the service he married and resigned his commission. That was in 1811, and the date is significant. It was just before the second war with Great Britain. The author who wrote so much and so vividly of battles, Indian raids and naval engagements never was within sight of such affairs, though the opportunity was present. In his romances we have the product of a vigorous imagination rather than of observation or experience. [Illustration: JAMES FENIMORE COOPER] His literary work seems now like the result of whim or accident. One day he flung down a novel that he was reading, declaring to his wife that he could write a better story himself. "Try it," challenged his wife. "I will," said Cooper; and the result was _Precaution_, a romance of English society. He was then a farmer in the Hudson valley, and his knowledge of foreign society was picked up, one must think, from silly novels on the subject. Strange to say, the story was so well received that the gratified author wrote another. This was _The Spy_ (1821), dealing with a Revolutionary hero who had once followed his dangerous calling in the very region in which Cooper was now living. The immense success of this book fairly drove its author into a career. He moved to New York City, and there quickly produced two more successful romances. Thus in four years an unknown man without literary training had become a famous writer, and had moreover produced four different types of fiction: the novel of society in _Precaution_, the historical romance in _The Spy_, and the adventurous romance of forest and of ocean in _The Pioneers_ and _The Pilot_. [Sidenote: YEARS OF STRIFE]