When he was between thirteen and fourteen years old, his father built a large malt-house at Newburg, and the son loaded with his own hands and carted to the site selected all the stone for the building. Collecting wild honey and shooting game in the forests around Peekskill were additional employments which combined pleasure with profit. But this life did not satisfy the ambition of the youth; and in 1808, at the age of seventeen, he left the paternal roof and apprenticed himself for four years to John Woodward, a leading coach-builder in New York, whose shop was located on the corner of Broadway and Chambers Street, then the northerly edge of the city, opposite a vegetable garden, the remnants of which, after the occupation of a large portion by city, county, and national buildings, now constitute the City Hall Park. The terms of his employment were his board and a salary of twenty-five dollars a year,--out of which he managed not only to pay all obligations, but also to lay by a little money. During this period he not only mastered the details of the trade, but learned in his hours of leisure other branches, such as ornamental wood-carving, and made several inventions, one of which was a machine for mortising hubs,--an operation performed by hand up to that time. Another invention over which the young apprentice dreamed, and of which he laboriously constructed a model, was an apparatus for utilizing, in the running of machinery, the swift current of the tide in the East River. III BUSINESS VENTURES AT the end of his apprenticeship, his employer offered to set him up in business as a coach-builder, lending him the necessary capital. Many years later, Mr. Cooper told the story thus:-- "I was about to accept his generous offer, when an incident occurred which changed my decision. Mr. Woodward had just completed one of the finest coaches ever built in New York, for a gentleman who was supposed to be one of the richest men in the city. But a day or two before the coach was to be delivered the gentleman died, and it was then found that he was insolvent. This made me hesitate. If I should accept my employer's kind offer and have such a misfortune happen to me in the sale of an elegant and expensive coach, I should consider myself a slave for life, since the law of imprisonment for debt had not then been abolished. So I changed my plans, and went to Hempstead, Long Island, to visit my brother." The visit to Hempstead became a prolonged residence. He obtained work at $1.50 a day (then regarded as high wages) in a factory making machines for shearing cloth, and after nearly three years had saved enough money to purchase the right for the State of New York to a patented machine for that purpose. He used to tell, in his old age, of his elation when he effected his first sale of a county-right, for which he received five hundred dollars from Mr. Vassar, of Poughkeepsie, afterwards the founder of Vassar College.