Peter Cooper / The Riverside Biographical Series, Number 4

y, Mr. Cooper, after expressing his thanks for their congratulatory good wishes, and observing that in

in life; during the second thirty years I was occupied in getting means for carrying out the modest plan which I had long formed for the

lly overlapped instead of separately succeeding one another), we may consider first Mr. Cooper's means and method of

New York city to Peekskill, where he remained until, at the age of seventeen, he returned to

the adventurous spirit of his boyhood. When only four years old, he climbed about the framework of a new house, and fell, head downward, upon an iron kettle, cutting his forehead to the bone. Later on, he was accidentally cut with a knife in the hands of a playmate. Later still, he cut himself dangerously with an axe. Again, he fell from a high tree, holding an iron hook with which he had been reaching for cherry-bearing branches, and man

isting his mother in doing the family washing, he made what was, perhaps, his first invention,-a mechanical arrangement for pounding the soiled linen. Again, after carefully dissecting an old shoe, to learn how it

rs in lottery tickets, and drew only blanks, of which experience he said many years later, "I consider it one of

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 littl