| | 1 | Author: | Cooper
James Fenimore
1789-1851 | Add | | | Title: | Satanstoe, or, The Littlepage manuscripts  | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Modern English collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | It is easy to foresee that this country is destined to undergo
great and rapid changes. Those that more properly
belong to history, history will doubtless attempt to record,
and probably with the questionable veracity and prejudice
that are apt to influence the labours of that particular muse;
but there is little hope that any traces of American society,
in its more familiar aspects, will be preserved among us,
through any of the agencies usually employed for such purposes.
Without a stage, in a national point of view at least,
with scarcely such a thing as a book of memoirs that relates
to a life passed within our own limits, and totally without
light literature, to give us simulated pictures of our manners
and the opinions of the day, I see scarcely a mode by which the
next generation can preserve any memorials of the distinctive
usages and thoughts of this. It is true, they will have traditions
of certain leading features of the colonial society,
but scarcely any records; and, should the next twenty years
do as much as the last, towards substituting an entirely new
race for the descendants of our own immediate fathers, it is
scarcely too much to predict that even these traditions will
be lost in the whirl and excitement of a throng of strangers.
Under all the circumstances, therefore, I have come to a determination
to make an effort, however feeble it may prove,
to preserve some vestiges of household life in New York,
at least; while I have endeavoured to stimulate certain
friends in New Jersey, and farther south, to undertake similar
tasks in those sections of the country. What success
will attend these last applications, is more than I can say;
but, in order that the little I may do myself shall not be lost
for want of support, I have made a solemn request in my
will, that those who come after me will consent to continue
this narrative, committing to paper their own experience, as
I have here committed mine, down as low at least as my
grandson, if I ever have one. Perhaps, by the end of the
latter's career, they will begin to publish books in America,
and the fruits of our joint family labours may be thought
sufficiently matured to be laid before the world. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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