Mark Twain’s Writing Rule #8

From, Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses

“There are 19 rules governing literary art in the domain of romantic fiction. (Some say 22.) In Deerslayer, Cooper violated 18 of them.”

Rule 8 (requires) that crass stupidities shall not be played upon the reader as "the craft of the woodsman, the delicate art of the forest," by either the author or the people in the tale. But this rule is persistently violated in the Deerslayer tale.

Support:

"…Cooper made the exit of the stream fifty feet wide, in the first place, for no particular reason; in the second place to accommodate some Indians.

He bends a ‘sapling’ to form an arch over this narrow passage, and conceals six Indians in its foliage. They are ‘laying’ for a settler's scow being hauled against the stiff current by rope…

The idea of the Indians is to drop softly and secretly from the arched sapling to the dwelling as the ark creeps along under it at the rate of a mile an hour, and butcher the family. It will take the ninety-foot dwelling a minute to pass under.

Now, then, what did the six Indians do?

It would take you thirty years to guess, and even then you would have to give it up, I believe. Therefore, I will tell you what the Indians did. Their chief, a person of quite extraordinary intellect for a Cooper Indian, warily watched the canal-boat as it squeezed along under him and when he had got his calculations fined down to exactly the right shade, as he judge, he let go and dropped. And missed the house!

That is actually what he did. He missed the house, and landed in he stern of the scow. It was not much of a fall, yet it knocked him silly. He lay there unconscious.

There still remained in the roost five Indians. The boat has passed under and is now out of their reach. Let me explain what the five did—you would not be able to reason it out for yourself.

No. 1 jumped for the boat, but fell in the water astern of it.

Then No. 2 jumped for the boat, but fell in the water still further astern of it.

Then No. 3 jumped for the boat, and fell a good way astern of it.

Then No. 4 jumped for the boat, and fell in the water away astern.

Then even No. 5 made a jump for the boat—for he was Cooper Indian.

In the matter of intellect, the difference between a Cooper Indian and the Indian that stands in front of the cigar-shop is not spacious.”