At a meeting of friends, gathered February 12, 1882, to celebrate his ninety-first birthday anniversary, Mr. Cooper, after expressing his thanks for their congratulatory good wishes, and observing that in his case "length of days had not yet resulted in weariness of spirit," added this review of his life:—

"Looking back, I can see that my career has been divided into three eras. During the first thirty years I was engaged in getting a start 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 benefit of my fellow men; and during the last thirty years I have devoted myself to the execution of these plans. This work is now done."

Accepting this division of his career, as convenient, though not strictly accurate (since the processes described really overlapped instead of separately succeeding one another), we may consider first Mr. Cooper's means and method of achieving personal success; and in this survey the conditions of his boyhood and early youth are primarily important.

While he was still very young, the family removed from a temporary residence of three years in New York city to Peekskill, where he remained until, at the age of seventeen, he returned to New York as an apprentice, to be, thenceforward, dependent upon his own exertions for a living.

The intervening period was spent in ways characteristic of the period and of the individual. He attended school for three or four "quarters," of which period, according to his later recollection, "probably half was occupied by 'half-day' school." Outside of this scanty formal instruction, there is ample evidence that he developed body and mind in varied work and play. He bore to the end of life the scars of youthful escapades, witnessing 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 managed to hook out one of his teeth. At another time he went for the nest of a hanging-bird, and had the fact that it was a hornet's nest indelibly impressed on his memory. Of course, he was nearly drowned three times,—such youngsters always have such escapes. In short, he was a thorough boy, adventuring all things, daunted by nothing, and protected from the results of his reckless endeavors by that Providence which watches over small boys.

But such a temperament finds play in useful work also. The boy learned every department of the hat-making business, beginning, when he was very young, with pulling the fur from the skins of rabbits. And, while assisting 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 was put together, he determined to make shoes and slippers for the family, and succeeded in turning out products of manufacture which were said to be as good as those to be found, at that day, in the regular trade.

He constructed a toy wagon, sold it for six dollars, managed to gather four dollars more, invested the ten dollars in lottery tickets, and drew only blanks, of which experience he said many years later, "I consider it one of the best investments of my life; for I then learned that it was not my forte to make money at games of chance."

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.