PRECAUTION.

A Novel.

By J. Fenimore Cooper.


"Be wise to-day. It is madness to defer;
To-morrow's caution may arrive too late."




W. C. Bryant's Discourse on the Life, Genius, and Writings of James
Fenimore Cooper,

Delivered at Metropolitan Hall, N.Y., February 25, 1852.



It is now somewhat more than a year, since the friends of JAMES FENIMORE
COOPER, in this city; were planning to give a public dinner to his honor.
It was intended as an expression both of the regard they bore him
personally, and of the pride they took in the glory his writings had
reflected on the American name. We thought of what we should say in his
hearing; in what terms, worthy of him and of us, we should speak of the
esteem in which we held him, and of the interest we felt in a fame which
had already penetrated to the remotest nook of the earth inhabited by
civilized man.