David Shipman (colonist) the author's youth, Shipman would often appear at the Cooper home, "Otsego Hall", to offer the family some of his latest products. Susan Fenimore Cooper wrote that "rude equipments, dogs, and rifle, had much attraction for the lads of the house". James Cooper referred to Shipman in his "Chronicles of Cooperstown" as "the 'Leather Stocking' of the region, ... could at almost any time, furnish the table with a saddle of venison". David Shipman (colonist) David Shipman (1730 – 1813) is generally considered to be the real-life inspiration for James Fenimore Cooper's character Natty Bumppo in the "Leatherstocking Tales" along
Oriental Tales about the stories: "They are meant to demonstrate virtuosity. Instead they demonstrate the dangers of imitation." The critic wrote that "the story of Wang-Fo, though rich in content, is 'faux-chinois', pretend-fantastic, coy. It is plainly a clumsy Western exercise in Chinese story telling", while "'The Man Who Loved the Nereids' is, in contrast, as radiant as Madame Yourcenar's mind. Clever, stylish, funny and original, an homage to Greek myth, it links the ancient and the modern worlds." Oriental Tales Oriental Tales () is a 1938 short story collection by the French writer Marguerite Yourcenar. The stories share a self-consciously mythological