Books: The Machine Age of Innocence

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THOSE WERE THE DAYS—Edward R. Hewitt—Duell, Sloan & Pearce ($3).

When Peter Cooper ran for President, on the Greenback ticket, he got 82,000 votes. But he was one of the most wonderful grandfathers who ever lived. His prosperous glue (and gelatin) factory, at Madison Avenue and sist Street in Manhattan, would have made him a fortune even if he had not invented the mercury vapor lamp, built the first American steam locomotive, or helped finance the Atlantic cable. His long white hair reached almost to his shoulders. He shaved himself with a razor used by George Washington. He wore a black frock coat, a black stock about his neck and, when he went visiting, had one of his grandsons trot along after him carrying an air cushion to ease his sharp old bones when he sat down.

Peter Cooper hired a professional mechanic to teach his grandsons how to use tools and make things, gave away money right & left (but advised them not to), and told them, out of the reminiscent wisdom of his 92 years, about General Washington's funeral parade along Broadway, with the General's military boots slung over the saddle of his war horse.

In Those Were the Days Edward Hewitt describes the life of the Coopers, his parents, grandparents, brothers, friends, in an autobiography which is unique: it is full of information about everybody but its author.

Bomby Boyhood. Peter Cooper's grandchildren were such hellions that the City of New York had to keep a policeman at Gramercy ' Park to watch them. Using some giant firecrackers and a small charge of gunpowder, they blew up the policeman's hut while he was inside. Later they eluded the police by sawing a hole through the iron railings around the park. Once they constructed a fiddle to frighten the neighbors. It had a box four feet long, three feet wide, and two feet deep, and a bow twelve feet long. It emitted an unearthly bellow.

When the snow melted on the street they took their sleds into the huge house—it had a frontage of 100 feet on Lexington Avenue and no on 22nd Street—and slid down the carpet on the stairs. They crashed right through the front door, nearly killed themselves and their mother. who was coming up the steps. She made them stay indoors all day. The family had a gymnasium, fitted up for the boys over the stable, hired an instructor to teach them gymnastics. The little Hewitts cut trap doors through the floor of their gymnasium to make a secret hideout. When the police called, as they often did, Mrs. Hewitt used to direct them to the gymnasium, knowing that the cops would never find the boys. They never did.

In the summer, on their farm at Ringwood, N.J., they built a 250-foot slide from the top of the orchard across the lawn, greased the slide with beeswax, and sailed down it "at great speed and with wild howls of glee." Ambassador Whitelaw Reid and Presidential Candidate Samuel J. Tilden tried it once when "both of them [were] rather well along in years." Says Author Hewitt: "It is a wonder that they were not hurt."