"'Hold!' shouted the former speaker, in the awful tones of
parental agony, the sound reaching even to the woods, and
rolling back in solemn echo. ''Tis she! God has restored me my
children! Throw open the sally-port; to the field, Goths, to
the field! pull not a trigger, lest ye kill my lambs! Drive
off these dogs of France with your steel!'"

Cooper's word-sense was singularly dull. When a person has a poor ear
for music he will flat and sharp right along without knowing it. He
keeps near the tune, but it is not the tune. When a person has a poor
ear for words, the result is a literary flatting and sharping; you
perceive what he is intending to say, but you also perceive that he
doesn't say it. This is Cooper. He was not a word-musician. His ear
was satisfied with the approximate word. I will furnish some
circumstantial evidence in support of this charge. My instances are
gathered from half a dozen pages of the tale called Deerslayer. He uses
"verbal," for "oral"; "precision," for "facility"; "phenomena," for
"marvels"; "necessary," for "predetermined"; "unsophisticated," for
"primitive"; "preparation," for "expectancy"; "rebuked," for "subdued";
"dependent on," for "resulting from"; "fact," for "condition"; "fact,"
for "conjecture"; "precaution," for "caution"; "explain," for
"determine"; "mortified," for "disappointed"; "meretricious," for
"factitious"; "materially," for "considerably"; "decreasing," for
"deepening"; "increasing," for "disappearing"; "embedded," for
"enclosed"; "treacherous;" for "hostile"; "stood," for "stooped";
"softened," for "replaced"; "rejoined," for "remarked"; "situation," for
"condition"; "different," for "differing"; "insensible," for
"unsentient"; "brevity," for "celerity"; "distrusted," for "suspicious";
"mental imbecility," for "imbecility"; "eyes," for "sight";
"counteracting," for "opposing"; "funeral obsequies," for "obsequies."