Peter Cooper

Peter Cooper is by Rossiter W. Raymond, and its contents list names chapters called Ancestry and Boyhood and Youth. The text says that at every stage of his progress, he followed the ideal of personal independence, the honest acquisition of property, the establishment of a home, and the rearing of a family.

The text says that at every stage he found himself hindered by lack of thorough knowledge, and that he invented perpetually and profusely. A passage records that he had first to spend thirty years in getting a start, then another thirty years in accumulating the means for further advance. A passage says the rivers were so low that Mr. Cooper was not satisfied of their capacity to furnish the needed quantity, so he investigated the Hackensack River watershed in New Jersey and subsequently submitted plans and models to the board of aldermen for a scheme to supply water to New York. A passage says the whole city mourned, with the flags on all public buildings at half-mast and the bells of all churches tolled.