EDWARD EGGLESTON, IN 1897 
 
 From an oil painting by Irving R. Wiles, on the walls of 
 The Authors Club, New York 
 
The 
 
 First of the Hoosiers 
 
 Reminiscences of 
 EDWARD EGGLESTON 
 
 And of that Western life 
 which he, first of all men, 
 celebrated in literature and 
 made famous. & jgi 
 
 GEORGE 7 GARY 
 E G G L E vS T O N 
 
 Author of "A Rebel s Recollections," 
 "American Immortals/ "A Carolina 
 Cavalier," "Dorothy South" "The 
 Master oi Warlock," etc., etc., etc. 
 
 DRBXEL 
 Publisher A 
 
 RIDDLE 
 
 Philadelphia 
 
COPYRIGHT 1903 
 BY 
 
 A. J. DREXEL BIDDLE 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 ALL. RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 The Drexel Biddlc Press, Philadelphia 
 
to!)o lobcfc 
 
 not to 
 one ot t^em, but to all 
 lietiicate tji0 tribute to 
 memory &&&& 
 
 Carp OBggIe0ton 
 
 on lla&e 
 September, 1003* 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I The Author s Commission . . 9 
 
 II A Little Love Story and Other 
 
 Matters , 17 
 
 III The Hoosier Schoolmaster s First 
 
 School ..... 28 
 
 IV Vevay and the People of Southern 
 
 Indiana . . . . 52 
 
 V In the Real Backwoods . . 77 
 
 VI The Environment of the Hoosier 
 
 Boy 107 
 
 VII Madison and New Conditions . 129 
 
 VIII Two Great Educators. . . 140 
 
 IX The Formative Period . . 169 
 
 X The Virginian Influence . ; 189 
 
 XI Some Revelations of Character . 221 
 
 XII The Hoosier Schoolmaster s 
 Theory and Practice of 
 Teaching . . . 243 
 
 XIII A Pair of Young Tramps . . 255 
 
 S 
 
 550893 
 
Contents (continued) 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XIV The Wander Year . . " ." 261 
 
 XV The Story of "The Hoosier 
 
 Schoolmaster" . . . 277 
 
 XVI The Minnesota Preacher . . * 305 
 
 XVII The Editor and the Man of Let 
 ters 313 
 
 XVIII The First of Authorship . . 340 
 
 XIX The Christian Endeavor Episode . 350 
 
 XX The Historical Work of Twenty 
 
 Years . . . . . 358 
 
 XXI The Light Goes Out . .371 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Edward Eggleston, in 1897 . . Frontispiece 
 
 From an oil painting by Irving R. Wiles, on the walls of the 
 Authors Club, New York. 
 
 The Birth Place of Edward Eggleston, in 
 
 Vevay, Indiana ... 26 
 
 Old Schoolhouse in Vevay still standing . 52 
 
 Edward Eggleston, in 1857 78 
 
 Clifty Falls, near Madison, Indiana . . 104 
 
 A favorite haunt of Edward Eggleston. 
 
 The Railroad Cut near Madison, Indiana . 130 
 
 Edward Eggleston, in 1865 . . . 158 
 
 On the North Madison Road . > . 184 
 
 The Hanging Rock, near Madison, Ind., 212 
 
 A favorite haunt of Edward Eggleston from boyhood to old 
 age. 
 
 Edward Eggleston s House in Evanston, 
 
 Illinois now destroyed . . . . 238 
 
 Edward Eggleston, in 1875 . . . 266 
 
 Edward Eggleston, in 1896 ... 294 
 
 From a photograph made in the Century Club, New York. 
 
 Edward Eggleston, in Madison, Indiana, 
 
 January, 1899 . . 332 
 
 Edward Eggleston, from a photograph made 
 
 in Washington, 1901 . . . 358 
 
 7 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 The Author s Commission. 
 
 |HIS is a book about Edward Eg- 
 gleston; about the people, great 
 and small with whom he held close 
 relations during a life of singu 
 larly varied activity; about the things that 
 interested him, the causes in which his 
 superb enthusiasm was enlisted, the work 
 he did in the world, the spirit in which he 
 did it, and other matters that connect them 
 selves with him in the minds of those who 
 knew him best. 
 
 It is not a biography, in the ordinary 
 sense of that term, though it relates all of 
 fact concerning the life of its subject, that 
 a formal biography would include. It is 
 rather a study of the man, his work, and his 
 surroundings at various periods of his life, as 
 these things are remembered by the author. 
 
 9 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 One day in the early summer of 1902, 
 after Edward began fully to realize, as his 
 physicians did not, that the end of his life 
 was drawing near, he somewhat painfully 
 made his way through the woodlands, from 
 his Lake George Cottage to mine a few 
 hundred yards distant and for the last 
 time in his life sat down in my porch. He 
 was extremely feeble, I remember; it was 
 painful for him to walk, and even rising 
 from a chair or seating himself in one was a 
 matter of some difficulty. But his life long 
 cheerfulness of spirit endured, and he faced 
 death with a calm mind and quite uncom 
 plainingly. A year or two before the visit 
 of which I am now writing he had been 
 stricken in a way that threatened his early 
 end, and writing to me of the fact he had 
 said: 
 
 "I am content and happy. I have had 
 a life of enjoyable activity. I have been per 
 mitted to render some service to my genera 
 tion. I have lived. If the end is near I have 
 10 
 
The Author s Commission 
 
 neither reason nor disposition to complain. 
 On the contrary, I shall be happy to the 
 end and in the end." 
 
 As he sat there in my porch on the 
 occasion of his last visit, looking out upon 
 the calmly beautiful bay, he turned to me 
 and said : 
 
 " Geordie " he always had a pet name 
 for every one whom he loved, and from 
 boyhood this had been his pet name for me 
 "Geordie, after I die some of the pub 
 lishers may want to print a little book about 
 me. If they do, I want you to write the 
 book. You are the only person living who 
 has known me all my life, and you have 
 known me with a degree of sympathetic 
 intimacy impossible to any other. You have 
 known all my purposes and plans and ambi 
 tions; you have shared many of them and 
 you have understood even those that you 
 did not share. We were little children to 
 gether, boys together, young men together, 
 men of middle age together, and now we 
 11 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 are growing old together. Another thing: 
 in pretty nearly every article that has ever 
 been written concerning me there have been 
 mistakes made and misapprehensions, until 
 many persons who know me only through 
 my writings, actually think I was born in 
 poverty and reared in an ignorance like that 
 of the characters in u The Hoosier School 
 master," an ignorance from which I am 
 supposed to have escaped by my own exer 
 tions. If you write of me you will correct 
 all that. Anyhow, I want you to write the 
 book if any book is to be written." 
 
 Thus 1 received the commission which 
 I here endeavor lovingly to fulfil. In doing 
 so I shall not closely follow any preconceived 
 order of narrative or comment. Where the 
 mention of matters connected with one part 
 of Edward Eggleston s life brings to my 
 mind interesting matters relating to any 
 other part of it, I shall not hesitate to make 
 the transition for the sake of a better and 
 truer unity than any that a rigid adherence 
 
 12 
 
The Author s Commission 
 
 to the chronological order could possibly 
 secure. 
 
 On the title page of this volume I call 
 my brother "The First of the Hoosiers." 
 I do so because he was the very first to per 
 ceive and utilize in literature the picturesque- 
 ness of the Hoosier life and character, the 
 first to appreciate the poetic and romantic 
 possibilities of that life and to invite others 
 to share with him his enjoyment of its 
 humor and his admiration for its sturdy 
 manliness. 
 
 Other men of rare literary gifts have 
 followed in his footsteps in this richly flower 
 ing field, but he was the first to venture 
 upon it. He was the pathfinder. Until he 
 wrote " The Hoosier Schoolmaster," and 
 moved the readers of more than one nation 
 to laughter and tears, nobody had ever made 
 the smallest attempt to turn the Hoosier life 
 and character to any artistic account. 
 
 He selected that field for his work in 
 fiction with deliberation and earnest convic- 
 13 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 tion. He reminded me at the time that the 
 Dutch painters never produced anything of 
 value in art until they ceased to go to Italy 
 for their subjects and began to paint their 
 own homely Dutch interiors and landscapes 
 and people instead. It was his fixed convic 
 tion that whether in the graphic or in the 
 literary art no man can do his best work 
 \ unless he chooses for his subject a life which 
 I he thoroughly knows. 
 
 And Edward Eggleston knew the ruder 
 side of the Hoosier life and character all 
 the better for the reason that in his child 
 hood and youth he had been u in it but not 
 of it." He had seen it in perspective. He 
 always had something better in his own home 
 and associations, by which to measure the 
 rudeness that showed itself all about him. 
 
 The peculiarities of the Hoosier dialect 
 
 .interested him chiefly because of their wide 
 
 departure from the good English which 
 
 alone he heard at home. When he wrote 
 
 "The Hoosier Schoolmaster" he was in his 
 
 14 
 
The Author s Commission 
 
 early thirties, and had for years been a 
 dweller in great cities. But his memory of 
 the life, the character and the dialect that 
 had so intensely interested him in his boy 
 hood was vivid and accurate in an extreme 
 degree, and so effectively did he present 
 them in literature that "The Hoosier School 
 master," after being serially published in 
 many periodicals, outsold any novel of its 
 time in book form, and in new editions it 
 continues to sell better to-day than most new 
 books do. It attracted attention abroad 
 also. It was translated into French and 
 published in a noted French periodical. It 
 was translated into German, the translator 
 using what we call "Pennsylvania Dutch" 
 in lieu of the Hoosier dialect. Concerning 
 the French translation, the Rev. Washington 
 Gladden wrote in the Independent that he 
 had not yet seen it, but was eager for a 
 sight of it for the reason that he strongly 
 desired to know the classic Frencn form of 
 " Gee Whillicky Crickets!" 
 15 
 
the First of The Hoosiers 
 
 In making effective literary use of the 
 Hoosier life, character and dialect, Edward 
 Eggleston was as truly the pioneer as Bret 
 Harte was in doing the like for the mining 
 camps. It is in every way proper, therefore, 
 that I call him "The First of the Hoosiers." 
 
 16 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 A Little Love Story and Other Matters. 
 
 earliest recollection of my brother 
 or of myself either for that mat- 
 ter is "that of two little fellows 
 chasing fireflies on a lawn on the 
 bank of the Ohio river, five or six miles 
 below Vevay, Indiana. It was a sultry eve 
 ning, and the entire family sat out of doors. 
 Our father had stretched a thin silk hand 
 kerchief ov 7 er his tall hat so that we might 
 put our fireflies into the hat and see them 
 "lighten" under the thin silk. 
 
 That father was a man of far more than 
 ordinary gifts, both of intellect and of ac 
 quirement. The son of an old Virginia 
 planter family, and of a father who had been 
 a captain in Washington s army at York- 
 town, our father had taken his degree in 
 arts at William and Mary College at that 
 17 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 time a famous seat of learning. After that 
 he had studied law in the law school of 
 Judge Tucker, at Winchester. Upon his 
 graduation in law he had gone to the West 
 to see what use he might make of his natural 
 and acquired gifts in a region which was then 
 the promised land to young men of charac 
 ter and ability. 
 
 Settling himself at Vevay he soon 
 achieved a foremost place for himself at 
 the bar and in public life, serving with 
 marked distinction in the Indiana State 
 Senate. 
 
 But he did not permit his devotion to 
 the law or his public activities to divert him 
 from intellectual occupations of a finer kind. 
 He surrounded himself with books in Eng 
 lish and French, giving his leisure to the read 
 ing of philosophy, history and belleslettres. 
 
 The educated people of that region 
 held him in high esteem, while the unedu 
 cated cherished the fixed conviction that he 
 "knew everything." That, of course, was 
 
 18 
 
A Little Love Story and Other Matters 
 
 not true, but he knew much of science, as 
 well as of law, letters and history; and it 
 was his habit to explain things most fasci 
 natingly to his children whenever occasion 
 arose. I suppose he told us something 
 about insect life on that sultry August eve 
 ning when he let us imprison the fireflies in 
 his hat. If he did, I was too young to re 
 member the instruction. I recall only the 
 fun of it all. 
 
 The story of our father s marriage with 
 our mother is interesting enough to be told 
 here, particularly as it gives opportunity to 
 explain what manner of men and women 
 Edward Eggleston s forebears were on the 
 mother s side. Our maternal grandfather, 
 George Craig, \vas a Kentuckian, of early 
 pioneer stock descended from men who 
 sturdily bore their part in " the winning of 
 the West." His wife, Jane Lowry, was also 
 Kentuckian, of that Scotch-Irish blood which 
 played so large a part in the Revolution and 
 the Indian wars. 
 
 19 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 Together these two crossed the river, 
 setting their negroes free, and buying great 
 areas of fertile land in Indiana. George 
 Craig was a man of unusual intelligence and 
 indomitable energy. He had all of educa 
 tion that could be secured in the Kentucky 
 of his boyhood, and he soon came to be 
 the foremost man in all southeastern Indiana. 
 
 He built stoutly of stone, while those 
 about him were content with log cabins to 
 live in. He planted large orchards even 
 after he had reached the age of seventy 
 years. He maintained a nursery of young 
 trees, and was the first man in all that coun 
 try to produce improved varieties of apples 
 and other fruits by selection and careful cul 
 tivation. To this day there are grown in 
 that region apples that bear his name, be 
 cause it was he who originated the varieties. 
 The bar in the river is still Craig s bar; the 
 township in which he lived is Craig town 
 ship, and the country all about still bears 
 witness to an energy and intelligence that 
 20 
 
A Little Love Story and Other Matters 
 
 enabled that one man to scrawl George 
 Craig, his mark," all over the land. 
 
 His influence was in every way good 
 and for good. He had no patience with 
 clumsy, shiftless methods where better could 
 be devised. He built a great stone " dry 
 house," which I remember very well, though 
 it was burned while I was yet a boy. Its 
 upper story was for the storage of all farm 
 produce that frost might injure, and the en 
 trance to that story was reached, not by a 
 stairway, but by a gently inclined plane of 
 hewn beams, up which barrels might be easily 
 rolled. Below were other storage rooms for 
 farm implements for he would never toler 
 ate the practice, common among farmers 
 even yet, of leaving farm implements wher 
 ever they were last used. He insisted that 
 everything, from a rake or a plow to a hoe, 
 should be housed when not in use. 
 
 But the most interesting part of the 
 dry house was its basement. It was the 
 practice of the people of that region, when 
 
 21 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 they wished to make soap, or render out 
 lard, or preserve fruits, to hang a kettle out 
 of doors and build a fire under it. Our 
 grandfather regarded this as a shiftless pro 
 ceeding, and so, in the basement of his dry 
 house he built long stone furnaces, with big 
 and little kettles set into them, and, with 
 broad areas left bare for the purpose of 
 drying fruits upon them. Here every year, 
 at a minimum cost of labor, the lard from 
 some hundreds of hogs was rendered, the 
 soap for family use was made, the preserves 
 were put up, the apples and peaches dried, 
 and everything else done that required the 
 use of a kettle or a flat stone with fire 
 under it. 
 
 Not content with this, George Craig 
 sought convenience in handling the great 
 quantities of apples which he grew for ship 
 ment by flatboat to New Orleans. To that 
 end he built a very long structure, called the 
 apple house. It could be opened at both 
 ends, and a wagon road ran through it, on 
 
 22 
 
A Little Love Story and Other Matters 
 
 either side of which were great bins, into 
 which the apples were unloaded from the 
 wagons until the time should come for bar 
 reling and shipping them. 
 
 Such a man was an influence for good 
 in the community, and both by precept and 
 by example he taught his neighbors much of 
 thrift and energy that it was good for them 
 to learn. He had a family of boys and 
 girls of his own, numerous enough to satisfy 
 even President Roosevelt s idea of good 
 citizenship ; but he added several adopted 
 ones to the number. These were the chil 
 dren of the poorest of his neighbors, who 
 could scarcely put bread into the mouths 
 of their numerous broods. When George 
 Craig found one of these poverty-ham 
 pered children, who gave promise of abil 
 ity, he adopted the child and gave him 
 the best education that the schools of that 
 time and country afforded. In every case, I 
 believe, these adopted ones justified his 
 judgment and his generosity by becoming 
 
 23 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 successful men or women, and one of them 
 at least Sam Parker became the most dis 
 tinguished lawyer of his time in Indiana 
 and a State Senator of more than ordinary 
 influence. But for his adoption by George 
 Craig he would probably never have learned 
 even to read. 
 
 Edward s mother and mine was one of 
 George Craig s many daughters, and our 
 father met her in her father s house on the 
 bank of the Ohio five or six miles below 
 Vevay. He had gone thither to draw up 
 some deeds or upon some other such law 
 business, as he had frequently done before. 
 He was to stay over night, and during the 
 evening the shrewdly intelligent old pioneer 
 drew the highly educated and intellectual 
 young lawyer into a conversation of more 
 than ordinary interest. 
 
 In those days tallow candles were the 
 only artificial lights in use, and each family 
 manufactured them in tin moulds. These 
 moulds consisted of a group of candle- 
 
 24 
 
A Little Love Story and Other Matters 
 
 shaped tubes fastened together into a tin 
 plate at top. In our grandfather s house 
 one of these tubes had become detached 
 from the frame. 
 
 Our mother, then a girl of eighteen or 
 nineteen, wished to light a candle for some 
 purpose, but, by mistake, got the loose 
 candle-mould instead. She was a girl of 
 eager mind, and when she went to light her 
 candle, she became deeply interested in 
 something that the young lawyer was saying, 
 and for a time she stood holding the point 
 of the tin tube in the flame of a candle on 
 the table at her father s elbow. Presently 
 the young lawyer observed her and told her 
 of her mistake, to her great confusion. But 
 he observed also how deeply interested the 
 girl had become in what he was saying, and 
 was surprised that she should know or care 
 anything about the subject of his talk. So 
 for the first time he entered into conversa 
 tion with her, and found to his astonishment 
 that this western country girl was a young 
 25 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 woman of intellect, who had read a good 
 deal with rare discretion, and who was capa 
 ble of thinking soundly for herself. From 
 that time forward he sought to draw her 
 into conversation at every opportunity. His 
 admiration grew into a warmer sentiment, 
 and after a time she became his wife and a 
 sharer in all his intellectual pursuits. She 
 read his law books with the rest, and he 
 used to declare that he depended more upon 
 her counsel in dealing with perplexing law 
 points than upon that of any lawyer at the 
 bar. 
 
 My own reverent recollection of her 
 presents her to my mind as one of the wisest 
 as well as one of the gentlest of women. 
 
 The young couple took up their resi 
 dence in VeVay, in a brick house which our 
 father bought while it was in course of con 
 struction and himself finished. He built a 
 brick office for himself in the grounds, a 
 little way from the house. Years after his 
 death that office served Edward and me for 
 
 26 
 
THE BIRTH PLACE OF EDWARD EGGLESTON, IN VEVAY, INDIANA 
 
A Little Love Story and Other Matters 
 
 bedroom and general quarters. There was 
 held the debating society which Edward 
 organized. There we had our books, in 
 cluding a valuable collection of standard 
 works purchased by our widowed mother 
 with the proceeds of the sale of our father s 
 law library, in accordance with his dying in 
 structions. 
 
 The Vevay house, in which Edward was 
 born on the 10th of December, 1837, stood 
 in a square of ground about an acre in ex 
 tent or perhaps a little more. This our 
 father had planted in fruit trees, grape vines 
 and the like, making of it an ideal home in 
 which to bring up boys. It has since been 
 divided, and built over with other houses. 
 
 But at the time of the firefly frolic we 
 were living on the farm which our mother 
 had inherited from her father. This change 
 had been made for the sake of our father s 
 health, which had never been strong, and 
 was now growing feeble. 
 
 27 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 The Hoosier Schoolmaster s First School. 
 
 ROM the earliest days of its settle 
 ment until now, Indiana has taken 
 the lead among Western States in 
 all matters that concern education.. 
 But the beginnings of education there, as 
 in all newly peopled regions, were crude in 
 method and meagre in scope. There were 
 some fairly good schools in the little towns, 
 presided over by the " Yankee school 
 marms," whose missionary spirit early car 
 ried them across the mountains by toilsome 
 methods of travel, and brought into the 
 early West a culture that might otherwise 
 have been much longer delayed in its com 
 ing. But in the country districts the schools 
 were exceedingly rudimentary in character. 
 Their teachers were for the most part scant 
 ily furnished with learning on their own 
 
 28 
 
The Hoosier Schoolmaster s First School 
 
 account, and they knew nothing whatever of 
 the art or the science of teaching. Peda 
 gogy if the word had been brought to 
 their attention would have meant to them 
 nothing more than a new word to be " given 
 out" at spelling matches for the confusion 
 of the champion spellers of the neighbor 
 hood. 
 
 Any man who could " read, write, and 
 cipher to the rule of three" was thought to 
 be equipped for the mastery of a school, if 
 he had also a strong arm and a determined 
 will with which to maintain his mastery and 
 keep his pupils in subjection. 
 
 But one fact was significant, and it was 
 prophetic of that advancement in culture 
 which Indiana has since achieved. Poor as 
 the schools were, absolutely all the boys and 
 girls in the district attended them. This 
 was true even before the schools became 
 free, and while yet each pupil s tuition 
 must be paid for at rates varying, accord 
 ing to age, from fifty cents to two dollars a 
 29 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 quarter. If there was not much of educa 
 tion to be secured in the country districts in 
 those early days, at any rate everybody there 
 was determined to get all of it that could be 
 had. 
 
 It was under these conditions that Ed 
 ward Eggleston entered his first school, at 
 the age of six years. By dint of much en 
 treaty I secured a decision, at the hands of 
 the family conclave, permitting me also to 
 attend the school, under the protection of 
 our mother s " bound girl," who was, of 
 course, to be a pupil. 
 
 In those days almost every family in 
 tolerably comfortable circumstances had one 
 u bound girl " or more. These were usually 
 orphans who had been left destitute on the 
 death of their parents. Instead of sending 
 them to be reared in orphan asylums, of 
 which there were none in that self-reliant 
 land of promise, or sending them to the 
 poorhouse, which was apt to be an exceed 
 ingly poor house indeed, the public authori- 
 30 
 
The Hoosier Schoolmaster s First School 
 
 ties usually indentured such orphans to serve 
 during their nonage in families able and 
 willing to care for them. They became 
 members of the families in every such case, 
 and were never conscious of a condition of 
 subjection in that simple, democratic state 
 of existence where it was the custom of all 
 to work, and where each did the duty that 
 lay next to him or her, without a thought 
 that there could be aught of humiliation in 
 doing it, or any shame, except in neglect to 
 do it honestly and well. 
 
 The bound girl or bound boy always 
 went to school with the other children of 
 the family, whenever "school kept," as the 
 phrase went that is to say, whenever there 
 was a school open in the neighborhood, 
 which was usually during three months, or, 
 under favorable circumstances, during five 
 or six months of each year. The indentures 
 indeed required those to whom girls and 
 boys were bound, to give them at least three 
 months of schooling in each year; but the 
 31 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 requirement was wholly unnecessary as a 
 legal prescription in a generously-minded 
 community, where public sentiment and a 
 common moral sense impelled all parents, 
 guardians and masters to give to every child 
 the most and the best of education that 
 could be secured. 
 
 The school which Edward and I first 
 attended was in some respects interesting. 
 It was held in a log cabin a mile or so from 
 our house. The master was a very estimable 
 man named Benefiel, who had taught our 
 mother before us. He enjoyed an enviable 
 reputation for scholarship, which I have no 
 doubt was thoroughly well deserved. For 
 one thing the "rule of three" had set no 
 bounds to his mathematical acquirements. 
 It was wonderingly said of him that u he 
 knew the whole arithmetic," and it was 
 darkly whispered that in addition to that he 
 possessed certain occult knowledge which in 
 our time would be described as an acquaint 
 ance with elementary Algebra and the rudi- 
 
 32 
 
The Hoosier Schoolmaster s First School 
 
 ments of Geometry. I think I do not wrong 
 the good man s memory or betray any confi 
 dence in saying that I met him many years 
 afterward, when he was an old man and I a 
 college student, and that he then confessed 
 to me that even at the time of my earliest 
 school days he had been able to find out the 
 value of x in a simple equation. 
 
 But when Edward Eggleston was six 
 years old and I four, Mr. Benefiel "kept 
 school" upon the primitive plan that was 
 then everywhere accepted. 
 
 There was only one point of radical 
 difference between different schools in those 
 days; some of them were "loud schools" 
 and some were "still schools." Mr. Bene- 
 fiel s was a "loud" school. That is to say, 
 he required all his pupils to study their les 
 sons " out loud," in order that he might be 
 sure they were all studying. 
 
 Some of the pupils, as I now realize, 
 though I did not recognize the fact at the 
 time, were possessed of nervous systems. 
 33 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 These unfortunate ones were naturally and 
 sorely disturbed in their minds by the babel 
 of ceaselessly wagging tongues. In order to 
 drown the distracting sound of others voices, 
 these nervous ones were accustomed to raise 
 their own voices higher and higher, and to 
 shout louder and louder as the period of 
 study went on. 
 
 For my own part, being a little lad of 
 exceedingly robust physique, I mightily 
 enjoyed this tumult. But poor Edward, a 
 nervous and sensitive child, was tortured by 
 it into a condition of mental helplessness in 
 which he found it impossible to determine in 
 his own mind whether the letters " b-a-k-e-r " 
 in his spelling book spelled "lady" or 
 " shady." He would go over and over the 
 words with that conscientiousness which 
 lashed and tortured him well-nigh to the end 
 of his days, but all to no purpose. He 
 simply could not force attention upon his 
 mind in the midst of such a din. 
 
 I got off much more easily, as I remenv 
 
 34 1 
 
The Hoosier Schoolmaster s First School 
 
 her with a chuckle of delight even now, by 
 means of a device of my own. I made it a 
 practice merely to shout the vowel in the 
 accented syllable of each word, leaving the 
 rest of it to whatever fate chance might 
 decree for it. 
 
 Not many moons before he left us for 
 the long journey that each of us must make 
 alone, I talked with Edward about all this. 
 In the course of our conversation I said to 
 him : 
 
 u What a troublesome conscience you 
 had in your boyhood ! " 
 
 " Yes," he answered, with a laugh. 
 "And its most troublesome peculiarity was 
 its vicariousness. I have spent many sleep 
 less nights, Geordie, in repenting of your sins. 
 Since I grew old enough and wise enough to 
 leave them to your care I have slept better." 
 
 But in those long gone days, when he 
 
 and I were little fellows, in our first school, 
 
 Edward detected my trick of deceiving the 
 
 master, and it mightily disturbed his con- 
 
 35 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 science. He trudged homeward that day in a 
 solemn silence, which no word of mine could 
 induce him to break, though I tried hard to 
 divert his mind, in the conviction that his 
 silence was in some way prompted by his 
 knowledge of some misconduct of mine. I 
 was conscious of many things in my conduct 
 which would not bear close scrutiny. When 
 we reached home Edward was confronted 
 with a new conscientious scruple, worse even 
 than the first. He knew of no way by which he 
 could hope to save me from the consequences 
 of my sin of deception, except by report 
 ing the facts to our mother. But our father, 
 a Virginian of sternest virtue in all that 
 touched upon honor in conduct, had taught 
 him from infancy to regard all tale bearing 
 as unutterably mean and unworthy of " a 
 gentleman s son " for that appeal to the 
 law of noblesse oblige was always our father s 
 final resort of instruction. 
 
 Thus Edward dared not relieve his con 
 science by making a charge of deception 
 36 
 
The Hoosier Schoolmaster s First School 
 
 against me before the domestic tribunal pre 
 sided over by our mother. I think he must 
 have passed as nearly a sleepless night over 
 this matter of divided duty as it is possible 
 for a six year old boy to spend over any 
 trouble. 
 
 When morning came he had decided 
 upon his course of conduct. He asked 
 Jane, the bound girl, to walk well in front of 
 us on the way to school. Then he took my 
 little hand lovingly into his own scarcely 
 larger one and expounded his thought to 
 me. In his preternaturally old and wise 
 way, he set forth the fact that, in doing as 
 I had done, I had been deceiving the teacher. 
 
 I promptly admitted that. I even con 
 fessed that it had been my deliberate pur 
 pose to deceive him, and that I intended to 
 go on doing so. I do not suppose that my 
 four-year-old intelligence formulated the 
 thought in those words, but I very well re 
 member that my little baby soul was in revolt 
 against what I vaguely perceived to be the 
 
 37 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 injustice of requiring a poor little fellow 
 like me to stand shoulder to shoulder with 
 older boys and girls, some of them twenty 
 years old or more, and do like tasks with 
 them. I managed somehow to convey this 
 thought to Edward s mind, and I resolutely 
 went on with my device for equalizing mat 
 ters by cheating the master out of that 
 which I did not regard as his due. 
 
 I cannot remember now how Edward 
 settled this affair with his vicarious con 
 science. Neither could he remember, when 
 we laughingly talked of the incident at Lake 
 George one day, a year or two before his 
 death. 
 
 Let us return to the school. Discipline 
 in those days always took the form of physi 
 cal chastisement. On his way to school 
 every morning the master cut and trimmed 
 eight or ten stout beechen " switches," as 
 they were called ox goads would have been 
 a fitter name. They were about five feet 
 long and of a goodly diameter. These he 
 38 
 
The Hoosier Schoolmaster s First School 
 
 placed on two pegs in the wall just over his 
 desk all of them but one. That one he 
 kept always on his desk or in his strong 
 right hand for instant use when needed. 
 Thus armed for the day s work the master 
 felt himself equipped to compel good beha 
 vior and a due advancement in learning on 
 the part of his "scholars" for the words 
 "teacher" and "pupil" were not in school 
 use at that time. It was always " the master " 
 and "the scholars." 
 
 The belligerent method of instruction 
 extended to every matter that required cor 
 rection or any encouragement to endeavor. 
 If a boy misspelled a word, he instantly 
 received a sharp cut from the master s 
 switch. If he failed to get the right answer 
 to his "sum" he was encouraged to try 
 harder by two or three stinging blows. If 
 he whispered to a neighbor without first 
 saying to the master, "Please may I speak 
 to Johnny," the fault was treated with some 
 severity as a grave moral delinquency, and 
 
 39 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 punished by at least half a dozen lashes. 
 If one of the little boys, who was too young 
 to " take writin , crawled upon the bench 
 which fronted the long writing desk, and 
 thus turned his back upon the master, an 
 attack from the rear was sure to come 
 quickly. 
 
 In the case of more serious offences, 
 involving real moral delinquency, the offender 
 was summoned to the open space in front of 
 the master s desk, where he was required to 
 remove his coat, if he had one, and there he 
 was severely flogged. Not in Mr. BenefieFs 
 school, but in another which Edward and 
 I attended some years later in the little 
 city of Madison, I several times saw shirts 
 deeply stained with blood when these casti- 
 gations were over. 
 
 There were here and there schoolmas 
 ters disposed to experiment in what I may 
 properly call pedagogic penology. These 
 sought to give the element of variety to 
 school discipline, and to reduce the use of 
 
 40 
 
The Hoosier Schoolmaster s First School 
 
 the rod somewhat, by the substitution of 
 such devices as fools caps, dunces stools and 
 the like. One of them sometimes punished 
 a boy by making him stand on one leg till 
 he could stand no more, and then flogging 
 him for putting the other foot down. But 
 such experiments were usually unsuccessful, 
 at least in the country districts. The boys, 
 accustomed as they were to a severer method, 
 were apt to conclude that a master thus 
 gently minded was " afeard " to whip them, 
 and in most such cases they went into inso 
 lent revolt in an endeavor to see how far 
 they might defy an authority which they 
 deemed weakly irresolute. The struggle 
 between the master and the scholars was 
 continuous, and it was accounted by the 
 boys rather as an enjoyable than a regret- 
 able part of their school-boy life. 
 
 If the master assumed to u keep school" 
 on a holiday, the scholars all attended. But 
 they went to school earlier than usual, took 
 possession there, and "locked the master 
 
 41 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 out," barricading doors and windows and 
 standing upon their defence. Then ensued 
 a struggle, the master trying to force his 
 way into the school-house and the scholars 
 trying to keep him out. If he got in, he 
 flogged everybody concerned. If the scholars 
 were successful in their defence the master 
 secured peace upon terms that were quite 
 well understood in advance. He agreed to 
 "treat" the school to a bushel of apples and 
 to punish nobody for having participated in 
 the rebellion. Just why a bushel of apples 
 should have been so placative in a country in 
 which everybody had unlimited apples at 
 home, it is difficult to conjecture. Perhaps 
 it was because apples were about the only 
 thing available for the purpose, and because 
 their enforced contribution marked and sig 
 nalized victory on the part of the scholars. 
 It was an unequal contest in every way. 
 The scholars had the advantages of posses 
 sion, fortification and superior numbers. 
 But these odds were in a measure offset by 
 
 42 
 
The Hoosier Schoolmaster s First School 
 
 the inequality of the stakes, as it were. The 
 scholars risked a very painful punishment 
 upon the chance of getting only some apples. 
 
 Sometimes the master succeeded in car 
 rying the fort. Readers of "The Hoosier 
 Schoolmaster " will remember that Ralph 
 Hartsook did so. But usually the master 
 was forced to yield the victory to the insur 
 gent scholars. 
 
 The master s authority was by tradition 
 held to extend for half a mile from the 
 school-house in every direction. Any offence 
 committed within that distance, on the way 
 to or from school, was within the jurisdic 
 tion. When two boys had arranged to fight, 
 or when one boy had made up his mind to 
 thrash another, the two would walk by the 
 same road though their homes might lie in 
 opposite directions until the half mile line 
 was passed. Then the set-to would occur, 
 without the fear of the schoolmaster before 
 the eyes of the combatants. 
 
 Both Edward and I could read before 
 
 43 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 we entered our first school. Neither of us, 
 indeed, could ever remember a time when we 
 could not read or ride a horse, and neither 
 ever knew when or how he learned either art. 
 In our father s house the children " staggered 
 against books" in their infancy, as Dr. 
 Holmes puts the matter. But at school no 
 account whatever was taken of our ability 
 to read, nor were we permitted to practice 
 that art. It was the fixed rule of the master 
 that each scholar should " go through the 
 spelling-book three timesTTXvi^e on the book 
 and once off the book," before beginning 
 to read. "On the book " meant spelling 
 and pronouncing the words, with the book 
 before the eyes. u Off the book " meant 
 spelling from memory as the words were 
 given out. 
 
 In addition to the regular spelling les 
 sons of the day, the whole school was re 
 quired, as a final exercise each afternoon, 
 to stand in one long row, called "the big 
 spelling class," for competitive examination 
 
 44 
 
The Hoosier Schoolmaster s First School 
 
 in the art. If a word was misspelled by one, 
 it was passed to the next below, and so on 
 till some one succeeded in spelling it cor 
 rectly. The successful speller was said to 
 have " turned down " all who had failed, and 
 was entitled to take his place above them in 
 the line. At the close of the exercise the 
 scholar who stood at the head of the class 
 was assigned to the foot of it for the next 
 day, and a record was kept of the number 
 of times that each had " gone foot." Some 
 small distinction was supposed to have been 
 achieved by the scholar whose record at the 
 end of the term showed the greatest number 
 of goings to the foot. This was about the 
 only use made of the principle of rewards 
 in the country schools of that time. No 
 other word of praise was ever spoken by 
 the teacher. Indeed, he would have put 
 himself in serious danger of losing his place 
 had he indulged any impulse he might have 
 had to commend a pupil. It was at that 
 time held that commendation was sure to 
 45 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 spoil a child and breed vanity and conceit in 
 his mind. 
 
 The prominence given to spelling over 
 all other educational agencies at that time 
 was still further emphasized by frequent 
 "spelling matches." My brother has so 
 fully described these that I shall not here at 
 tempt to add anything to what he wrote 
 concerning them. His account of these con 
 tests led to their revival all over the country 
 as a novel and amusing form of social enter- 
 tainmeut. 
 
 One incident, however, I must relate. 
 In "The Hoosier Schoolmaster" one Jeems 
 or Jim Phillips is mentioned as the champion 
 speller. The text says of him: 
 
 "Jim Phillips was a tall, lank, stoop- 
 shouldered fellow, who had never distin 
 guished himself in any other pursuit than 
 spelling. Except in this one art of spelling 
 he was of no account. He could not catch 
 well or bat well in ball. He could not throw 
 well enough to make his mark in that famous 
 
 46 
 
The Hoosier Schoolmaster s First School 
 
 western game of Bull-Pen. He did not suc 
 ceed well in any study but that of Webster s 
 Elementary. But in that he was to use 
 the usual Flat Creek locution in that he 
 was a hoss. This genius for spelling is in 
 some people a sixth sense, a matter of intui 
 tion. Some spellers are born and not made, 
 and their facility reminds one of the math 
 ematical prodigies that crop out every now 
 and then to bewilder the world. Bud 
 Means, foreseeing that Ralph would be 
 pitted against Jim Phillips, had warned his 
 friend that Jim could spell like thunder and 
 lightning, and that it took a powerful 
 smart speller to beat him, for he knew a 
 heap of spelling book. To have spelled 
 down the master is next thing to having 
 whipped the biggest bully in Hoopole 
 county, and Jim had spelled down the last 
 three masters. He divided the hero-worship 
 of the district with Bud Means." 
 
 While " The Hoosier Schoolmaster " was 
 running as a serial story in Hearth and Home, 
 
 47 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 the local newspaper in Edward s native town 
 of Vevay, secured permission to publish it 
 in instalments. It so happened that in 
 naming his champion speller Jeems Phillips, 
 Edward had drawn upon unconscious mem 
 ory. For the actual champion speller of our 
 boyhood s days bore precisely that name 
 and in other ways answered closely to the 
 description given of him in the book. When 
 the chapters concerning him appeared in 
 the Vevay Reveille, Jeems Phillips s friends 
 began teasing him on the subject. He soon 
 worked himself into a rage, and mounting 
 his horse, rode into Vevay, with the avowed 
 purpose of " lickin that thar editor feller," 
 for he fully believed that the author of 
 "The Hoosier Schoolmaster" was engaged 
 in editing the local newspaper. The actual 
 editor succeeded at last in convincing him 
 that the author of the story lived in far-off 
 New York. Going further, he explained to 
 Jeems that so far from having put an affront 
 upon him, Edward had been greatly cele- 
 
 48 
 
The Hoosier Schoolmaster s First School 
 
 brating his attainments as a speller, and that 
 he ought to feel pride rather than anger on 
 such an occasion. This view of the matter 
 commended itself to the vanity of Jeems 
 Phillips. From that day forth he gloried in 
 the new celebrity conferred upon him. He 
 was the only man in that region who had 
 been "put into a book," the only one who 
 had sufficiently distinguished himself to de 
 serve literary celebration. Thenceforth no 
 gibe on that subject could ruffle him. Every 
 mention of it ministered to his self-satisfac 
 tion. 
 
 In the spring of 1900, Edward and I 
 revisited our native town together, and while 
 there we heard the sequel to the story. 
 When well advanced in years Jeems Phillips 
 had married, and at the wedding he wore a 
 gorgeous red and yellow flowered waistcoat. 
 He gave it out that this highly impressive 
 garment had been sent to him as a wedding 
 present by the author of "The Hoosier 
 Schoolmaster." When he had pretty well 
 
 49 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 worn it out, he cut the cloth into bits and 
 sold them as souvenirs to his admiring 
 friends, who firmly believed the story of that 
 waistcoat s origin. 
 
 During his later life, after his twenty 
 years of minute investigation and scholarly 
 study of the forces that had moulded life con 
 ditions in America, Edward thought he" saw 
 the reason for the excessive attention given 
 to spelling in the early forties. It was, he 
 thought, an instinctive effort to repair a pre 
 vious neglect. He pointed out the fact, 
 made obvious by the old writings he had 
 studied so closely, that the original settlers 
 in America and their immediate children 
 spelled much better than did the men and 
 women of the second generation. This fact 
 he attributed to the compulsory neglect of 
 education by a generation engaged in sub 
 duing the wilderness. In the same way, dur 
 ing the strenuous time of the "winning of 
 the West," there had been little opportu 
 nity for education, and, when a little later 
 50 
 
The Hoosier Schoolmaster s First School 
 
 the people of the West began to realize 
 their deficiency, they set to work to repair 
 it in the persons of their children. As that 
 deficiency showed itself more glaringly in 
 the matter of spelling than in any other, it 
 was altogether natural that the new genera 
 tion should give great and even excessive 
 attention to the acquirement of that one art. 
 If the reader is curious to know how 
 excessively bad the spelling of an otherwise 
 well educated and accomplished person can 
 be, he is advised to read Mrs. Ravenel s very 
 charming and interesting collection of the 
 letters of Eliza Pinckney born Eliza Lucas. 
 No better educated or more variedly accom 
 plished gentlewoman than Mrs. Pinckney 
 lived in all the land in the Colonial times. 
 Yet she spelled "hot" with two u t"s, al 
 ways wrote " sopose " for suppose, and 
 spelled generally in the erratic fashion that 
 these two examples would suggest. 
 
 51 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Vevay and the People of Southern Indiana 
 
 H 
 
 OW long our attendance upon Mr. 
 Benefiel s school continued I am 
 unable to say with certainty, but I 
 think it lasted throughout the win 
 ter and spring months. During the next 
 three years we were only twice placed in 
 school, and then only for brief periods. The 
 schools we then attended were what the Eng 
 lish call u Dames schools." Each of them 
 was taught by a lady, and the pupils were all 
 little children. I remember that one of these 
 ladies was a worthy German woman who 
 could speak but little English, and that so 
 brokenly that we found it difficult to under 
 stand her. Whether or not Edward learned 
 anything in those two schools I do not 
 know. I am very sure I did not. But the 
 companionship of children of our own age, 
 
 52 
 
Vevay and the People of Southern Indiana 
 
 without the terror of the flogging system 
 overshadowing it, was good for both of us. 
 
 For the rest, our mother taught us lov 
 ingly and well at home, though she had two 
 younger children and our father, whose 
 health was rapidly declining, to care for. 
 She was always a duty loving woman, and a 
 brave one, who faced adverse conditions with 
 courage and cheerfulness. 
 
 We two boys lived much out of doors 
 during that period of three years, and we 
 were very happy. Indoors we helped when 
 any entertainment was in preparation, by 
 attending to pigs or fowls that were roasting 
 in front of the great cavernous kitchen fire 
 place for at that time no such thing as a 
 cooking stove was known. The fowls and 
 pigs to be roasted were hung by strings 
 from the ceiling, and it was our duty to keep 
 the strings twisted so that the roasts should 
 continually revolve. We were expected also 
 to baste the meats with their own juices, 
 from the dripping pans below. 
 
 53 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 For outdoor employments we had only 
 to convoy the cows to and from the pasture 
 twice a day, and in the autumn to throw 
 corn to the hogs in the pen. Of these ani 
 mals there were a hundred or so on the 
 farm. During the summer they ran wild in 
 the woods on a high hill, growing lean and 
 healthy under conditions that were natural 
 to them. In the autumn they were driven in 
 and confined in a great pen, enclosed by a 
 rail fence. Here they were fed upon un 
 limited corn, in order to fatten them quickly. 
 Edward and I mightily rejoiced in throwing 
 corn to them and listening to their crunch 
 ing of the grains as they ate. So great was 
 our enjoyment of this sport that we often 
 sacrificed our own breakfasts rather than 
 leave the neighborhood of the pig-pen. 
 
 "Hog killing time" meant even more 
 than Christmas did to us. It came in De 
 cember, when the weather was sharply cold. 
 The slaughtering was usually done on the 
 river beach, where a great bonfire was made 
 54 
 
Vevay and the People of Southern Indiana 
 
 and filled with stones, while casks were sunk 
 into the sand and filled with water. When 
 the stones were at white heat they were cast 
 into the water-casks until the water boiled. 
 Then the hogs, as soon as they had been 
 thoroughly bled, were thrust into the boiling 
 water and, upon being withdrawn, were 
 scraped clean of hair, and afterwards dressed 
 for curing. 
 
 As the bonfire was lighted about four 
 o clock in the morning, while it was still 
 dark, and as we boys were always permitted 
 to get up in time to see it lighted, the occa 
 sion took upon itself in our eyes the charac 
 ter of a mad revel. Then, too, the farm 
 hands who did the killing and dressing 
 always gave us the tails of the hogs, and we 
 roasted them in the coals of the bonfire. 
 We devoured them without bread, and gen 
 erally our impatience was such that we ate 
 them half raw. But the trichina spiralis had 
 never been heard of in that early time, and 
 our half savage outdoor life had given us 
 55 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 digestions fit to wrestle with worse enemies 
 to health than underdone pig tails. 
 
 When Edward was nine years of age 
 our father died. He approached the end 
 slowly, knowing how inevitable it was. But 
 with the calm mind of a brave man, he recog 
 nized the truth and set his house in order 
 for the coming event. He was especially 
 concerned for the health of his children. 
 He had himself been frail from boyhood, 
 and he was now about to die, while yet a 
 young man in his thirties. He firmly be 
 lieved that his impaired constitution and his 
 early death were the consequences of exces 
 sive study and neglect of the outdoor life. 
 To guard his children against a fate like his 
 own, he carefully instructed our mother with 
 reference to our bringing up. He enjoined 
 her to guard us against overstudy and seden 
 tary habits, and asked her particularly to see 
 to it that, during boyhood s years, we should 
 be sent to the country every summer to 
 work on a farm for our board. So much of 
 56 
 
Vevay and the People of Southern Indiana 
 
 compensation he desired us to receive in 
 order that our sense of justice might not be 
 offended. But he desired that we should at 
 no time be permitted to receive money 
 wages, lest we acquire in youth that money 
 loving spirit which he feared was to become 
 the bane of our country. 
 
 These injunctions were carried out with 
 the good-health results he had expected from 
 them, so far as I was concerned. But Ed 
 ward s health was weak from the first, and 
 even the annual summer on a farm did not 
 serve to repair the frailty of his constitu 
 tion. Perhaps it saved him from an early 
 decline, however, and certainly he enjoyed 
 farm life and the light tasks exacted of us 
 with quite all the zest that boys of this later 
 time feel in their summer sports of a less 
 useful kind. 
 
 The great dread in Edward s case was of 
 pulmonary consumption, the malady of which 
 our father had died. Throughout his boy 
 hood Edward suffered with what I suppose 
 
 57 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 to have been chronic bronchitis, though the 
 doctors called it phthisic, which I take to be 
 only another spelling of phthisis, or con 
 sumption. It was not, indeed, until after he 
 had passed middle life that he completely 
 threw off this trouble and ceased to feel ap 
 prehension for his lungs. 
 
 During the year after our father s 
 death our mother let the farm, now greatly 
 reduced in size, to a tenant, and removed 
 with her four children to the house in Vevay 
 in which Edward and I had been born. 
 The schools there were much better than 
 any that existed in the country. One of 
 them, which Edward attended for a time, 
 when his health permitted and that was 
 never for long at a time was held in a long, 
 one-storied, red brick school-house, that is 
 still standing, though used now as a dwell 
 ing. The school was taught successively by 
 several men, some of them students "work 
 ing their way " through college. Another 
 school, and a good one in its way, was kept 
 
 58 
 
Vevay and the People of Southern Indiana 
 
 by the Presbyterian minister and his wife, 
 who in that way eked out the slender salary 
 allowed them by the Home Missionary So 
 ciety. 
 
 This gentleman, Mr. Hiram Wasson, 
 was a New Englander, college bred, with 
 some general culture, and possessed of the 
 gift of making his pupils like him as well as 
 respect him. He had a gentle, sunny natute, 
 with a spice of pleasant humor in it, which 
 he was not too dignified to employ in the 
 school. His wife was a typical New England 
 school teacher a profession for which she 
 had been trained and she, too, had quali 
 ties that won the pupils. 
 
 The school was held in the Presbyterian 
 church, of which Mr. Wasson was pastor. 
 With the cleverness which all New England 
 men are supposed to possess, Mr. Wasson 
 fitted up the church for its double use, by 
 hinging a narrow board to the back of each 
 pew. These boards were provided with 
 supports below, and when raised they served 
 
 59 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 the purposes of desks. On Friday evening 
 the supports were removed, the boards hung 
 down the back of the pews, arid the place 
 was ready for use as a church. 
 
 Mr. Wasson never flogged. His nature 
 was far too gentle for that brutality, and his 
 ingenuity was quite equal to the task of 
 maintaining discipline without resort to it. 
 He invented a number of devices by which 
 to punish when punishment was necessary. 
 These devices were always good-natured, 
 and usually there was a touch of humor in 
 them, so that they amused and interested the 
 school instead of offending its sentiment of 
 justice. 
 
 It was in this school chiefly that Edward 
 and I were taught during the two or three 
 years of our stay in Vevay at that time. 
 Something educationally much better was 
 to come some years later, when, after an 
 absence of considerable duration we returned 
 to our native town, and fell under the wise 
 government and instruction of a gifted 
 60 
 
Vevay and the People of Southern Indiana 
 
 woman, Mrs. Julia L. Dumont, a born edu 
 cator, and the wisest one, man or woman, 
 that I have ever known. She was, indeed, a 
 Dr. Arnold in petticoats. Of her and her 
 influence upon Edward s character and mind 
 I shall write more fully in a later chapter. 
 At the time with which this present chapter 
 concerns itself, Edward Eggleston was still 
 a little boy, acquiring only the rudiments of 
 education. His health was so uncertain that 
 his school attendance rarely, at any period 
 of his boyhood, continued for more than a 
 few weeks without interruption. But when 
 too ill to go to school, he worked diligently 
 at home, and a good deal more than kept up 
 with his classes. 
 
 Vevay was in some respects a peculiar 
 town, and life there was quite different in 
 many ways, from life in Southern Indiana 
 generally. The town lies on the bank of 
 the Ohio river, about sixty or seventy miles 
 below Cincinnati. It is built on a plain, or 
 two plains rather, having different levels. 
 61 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 The part nearest the river is subject to over 
 flow at times of very high water, while the 
 main part of the town, lying upon the higher 
 plain near the hills, is not troubled in that 
 way even at the times of the greatest freshets. 
 
 Vevay is framed in hills of considerable 
 height and great beauty. In our boyhood 
 these hills were clad from foot to crest in a 
 dense growth of original beech forest. The 
 trees have since been cut away in great part, 
 unfortunately, but the town, which was 
 attractive half a century ago, is now the 
 most beautiful one I have anywhere seen in 
 America. 
 
 Vevay was originally settled by a com 
 pany of thrifty Swiss immigrants, near the 
 beginning of the nineteenth century. These 
 and their descendants gave to the place and 
 the country immediately surrounding it, a 
 character quite different from that of other 
 small Ohio river villages. They were an 
 energetic people for one thing, and for 
 another they had brought with them from 
 
 62 
 
Vevay and the People of Southern Indiana 
 
 Switzerland a healthy disposition to enjoy 
 life. They built stoutly and with a good 
 deal of attention to the beauty of their 
 homes and their surroundings, as well as to 
 their convenience and comfort. 
 
 Whether in town or in the country their 
 houses were as spacious as their means would 
 permit them to build, and they were always 
 made either of brick or of wood, stoutly 
 framed. So far as I can learn not one of 
 those people ever contented himself either 
 with a log cabin or with a slightly built 
 wooden house. Not one of them neglected 
 to give what he could of tasteful ornamen 
 tation to his dwelling. 
 
 In the country these people always re 
 served a considerable space from agricul 
 ture for house grounds. In the town they 
 sought spacious "lots," sometimes of half 
 an acre or more, in which to build. These 
 grounds they planted with fruit trees, grape 
 vines, on ornamental arbors, flowering shrubs 
 and beds of dainty flowers. These things 
 63 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 and the climbing rose bushes and honey 
 suckles that were trained up the walls, 
 quickly robbed a home place of its raw 
 newness, while in the case of homes that had 
 been established in the earlier days of the 
 town, the aspect was as calmly reposeful as 
 that of any old English manse. There was 
 everywhere scrupulous cleanliness and ex 
 quisite neatness which extended to every 
 detail of gardening, pruning and the like. 
 The region had been an untouched wilder 
 ness when the Swiss settlers first went thither, 
 about 1802. They made it literally " blos 
 som like a rose." 
 
 They were a hardy race, too long lived 
 and life-enjoying in their comfortable, unpre 
 tentious ways. The fifth child born in that 
 region after the Swiss settlement was made 
 still survives at the age of ninety odd years. 
 When Edward and I revisited the town, in 
 the spring of 1900, we found her enjoying 
 life like any youngster. She was known to 
 everybody as " Aunt Lucy Detraz," and was 
 
 64 
 
Vevay and the People of Southern Indiana 
 
 always one of the most esteemed and best 
 beloved women in the community. When 
 Edward and I visited her for the last time 
 we found her sitting bolt upright doing 
 some exquisite needlework, without glasses 
 to aid a vision which good health had pre 
 served unimpaired. She greeted us cheerily, 
 saying to us gray-haired veterans, in response 
 to Edward s question whether she remem 
 bered us or not : 
 
 " Of course I remember you boys. I 
 ought to, for I gave each of you the first 
 bath you ever had after coming into this 
 world, and dressed you in the first clothes 
 you ever wore." 
 
 The Swiss settlers chose the site of 
 Vevay for their abiding place because of its 
 real or fancied resemblance to their native 
 region in Switzerland. They gave the town 
 its Swiss name and, when Indiana became a 
 State, they called their county Switzerland. 
 Both names have survived. 
 
 But further than that, they sought to 
 65 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 transplant to their home in the new world 
 the industry they had pursued in the old. 
 They cleared the rich plains, or " bottoms," 
 as Western nomenclature has it, and planted 
 them with vineyards. Thus, nearly half a 
 century before Nicholas Longworth estab 
 lished the wine growing industry near Cin 
 cinnati, it was flourishing around Vevay, 
 under the skilled hands of a people who had 
 been born among the vines. 
 
 When Edward and I were boys the vine 
 still constituted the principal crop of the 
 Swiss and their descendants. Later came 
 the great " temperance" wave, which not 
 only discouraged the making, selling or 
 drinking of any liquid that had alcohol in 
 it, but presently brought the making of 
 wine into something like actual disrepute. 
 As this sentiment grew in intensity, one 
 after another of the repute-loving Switzers 
 yielded to it, destroying his vines and turn 
 ing his attention to crops of other kinds. 
 
 As an illustration of the character of 
 66 
 
Vevay and the People of Southern Indiana 
 
 the people who constituted a considerable 
 part of Vevay s population during Edward s 
 boyhood, I may be permitted to relate here 
 one incident of this transformation. Just 
 below the town lived one of the most thrifty 
 of the Swiss. His vineyards and orchards 
 were extensive, and his house a large brick 
 structure, having one wing built expressly 
 for use as a ball-room, stood in ample orna 
 mental grounds. With him lived his old 
 mother, one of the original Swiss born and 
 Swiss bred settlers. The old lady protested 
 stoutly against the destruction of the vine 
 yards, saying that she had been born and 
 reared among vineyards, as all her ancestors 
 had been, and that she intended to die with 
 the vines within sight. But the popular 
 sentiment in condemnation of wine grow 
 ing was becoming daily more intense. It 
 was beginning to be the current opinion that 
 wine growing was not a respectable pursuit, 
 and that the wine grower belonged in one 
 class with the keeper of a liquor shop. The 
 67 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 son and master of the house smarted under 
 such condemnation and was determined not 
 to endure it longer. His old mother was 
 much too feeble ever to leave the house, even 
 for the purpose of taking a few steps on the 
 ground. But she liked to sit at a window 
 and look out upon the vineyards. The son, 
 therefore, made a careful survey from every 
 window of the house in order to learn pre 
 cisely how much of the vine lands could be 
 seen from each. That done, he destroyed 
 all of the vineyards that lay beyond the 
 range of the old lady s vision, preserving 
 every vine that could in any way be seen 
 from the house. Thenceforth he marketed 
 as fruit the grapes borne by such vines as 
 had been spared. He thus saved his repu 
 tation from the aspersions even of the most 
 intemperate "temperance" propagandists, 
 while tenderly sparing his old mother s feel 
 ings. She died in the belief that her whole 
 life to its end had been passed in the midst 
 of vineyards. 
 
 68 
 
Vevay and the People of Southern Indiana 
 
 By the time that Edward and I were old 
 enough to know our surroundings, the Swiss 
 people had ceased to be in a majority even 
 in the town, while very few of them or their 
 descendants lived more than a few miles 
 away. Among our school fellows in Vevay the 
 Swiss names Detraz, Grisard, Dufour, Du- 
 mont, Tardy, Courvoisseur, Danglade, Thie- 
 baud (which was corrupted in its pronun 
 ciation into Kay-bo), Moreraud, Le Clerc, 
 Malin, Golay, Bettens, Minnit, Violet, Du- 
 prez, Medary, Schenck, Girard and others 
 of Swiss origin, abounded. But even in the 
 town a large part of the small population of 
 1500 or 1800 was by that time of other than 
 Swiss origin, while in the country generally, 
 outside of Vevay, there were almost no peo 
 ple of Swiss extraction. 
 
 Southern Indiana, with its rich lands, 
 and its easy access to markets by means of 
 the river, in days when railroads had not 
 begun to be, had been peculiarly attractive 
 to settlers from every quarter. There were 
 
 69 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 a number of Virginians there who, disliking 
 slavery, had set their negroes free and were 
 seeking to rebuild their fortunes in a new 
 country which promised to grow rapidly. 
 There were, in greater numbers, Kentuck- 
 ians who, like our maternal grandfather, 
 had crossed the river to aid in the winning 
 of a new West, and had mightily thriven 
 there. There were a good many Scotch 
 men, too, who, by their sturdy morality, 
 speedily made themselves influential for 
 good in the community. There were Penn- 
 sylvanians and a small sprinkling of New 
 Englanders. Finally, there was a consider 
 able number of people from North Caro 
 lina and elsewhere in the South, who had be 
 longed to the u poor white" class. 
 
 These latter were always unthrifty, 
 though they had virtues of their own. They 
 drank too much whiskey when they could 
 get it. They neglected their crops in order 
 to go fishing and hunting, or frolicking at 
 each other s houses. Very few of them 
 
 r 
 
 70 
 
Vevay and the People of Southern Indiana 
 
 manifested either disposition or capacity to 
 improve their condition, even in a country 
 which afforded abundant opportunity to 
 every man. They were renters, nearly always, 
 very few of them ever managing to become 
 the owners of land, though fertile fields 
 were to be had at small cost and on long 
 credits. In hunting and fishing they were 
 tirelessly energetic, but in work of a more 
 profitable kind they were indolent and care 
 less. They tilled their corn enough to make 
 it yield half a crop perhaps of which one- 
 third went to pay the rent but with that 
 they were content. Any sort of shelter was 
 good enough to satisfy their ideas of a home, 
 and as for comforts in the house, they were 
 too well used to the absence of such things 
 to miss them or care for them. 
 
 But these people were perfectly honest, 
 and except when in their cups, they were 
 law-abiding. In anger and under stimulus 
 of whiskey they sometimes, but rarely, 
 committed crimes of violence, but meaner 
 71 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 offences against the law were almost unknown 
 among them. They were brave, and in 
 tensely pugnacious under provocation, but 
 otherwise they were a kindly, good-natured 
 folk, and generous to a fault when they had 
 anything with which to be generous. 
 
 It was among a population thus diverse 
 in origin that the Hoosier dialect had its 
 origin. Its variations from correct speech 
 were the conglomerate product of many 
 varieties of ignorance. In a large degree 
 they were the result of misdirected efforts 
 to speak with more than ordinary accuracy. 
 Uneducated persons who observed that their 
 educated neighbors always said "get" and 
 "yet" and "kettle" and the like instead of 
 "git" and " yit " and "kittle," accepted the 
 principle of pronunciation thus suggested, 
 and misapplied it. In their anxiety to pro 
 nounce correctly, they said "led" for "lid," 
 "set" for "sit," and so on through an entire 
 class of words. In the same way, finding 
 that the educated people around them never 
 
 72 
 
Vevay and the People of Southern Indiana 
 
 spoke of a " nuss," but said " nurse " instead, 
 the illiterate adopted the practice of saying 
 "furse" when they meant "fuss." 
 
 When "The Hoosier Schoolmaster" 
 was in press for publication in book form, 
 its author had it in mind to print with it as 
 a preface, a somewhat extensive study of this 
 dialect. He wrote for that purpose an 
 essay of rare scholarship and abundant 
 interest, and after it was in type, he aban 
 doned his purpose and suppressed what he 
 had written on the subject. His reason for 
 doing so did not seem to me at the time to 
 be adequate, nor does it seem so now. It is 
 set forth as follows in the brief preface 
 which was actually printed: 
 
 " It has been in my mind to append 
 some remarks, philological and otherwise, 
 upon the dialect, but Professor Lowell s 
 admirable and erudite preface to the Biglow 
 Papers must be the despair of every one who 
 aspires to write on Americanisms. To Mr. 
 Lowell belongs the distinction of being the 
 73 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 only one of our most eminent authors, and 
 the only one of our most eminent scholars 
 who has given careful attention to American 
 dialects. But while I have not ventured to 
 discuss the provincialisms of the Indiana 
 backwoods, I have been careful to preserve 
 the true usus loquendi of each locution, and 
 I trust my little story may afford material 
 for some one better qualified than I to criti 
 cise the dialect." 
 
 That hope has never been fulfilled. No 
 scholar has yet undertaken the philological 
 task suggested. But " The Hoosier School 
 master" has exercised a still more valuable 
 influence upon American letters. It has 
 been the direct inspiration of the many 
 recent Indiana writers who, in prose and 
 verse, have created a Hoosier literature of 
 enduring worth. Indeed, it is scarcely too 
 much to claim for that pioneer work that it 
 gave a broader impulse than even that, that 
 it set the example of utilizing local conditions, 
 and depicting provincial character, in ways 
 74 
 
Vevay and the People of Southern Indiana 
 
 that are now common to the writers of fic 
 tion in every quarter of the country. Before 
 "TheHoosier Schoolmaster" appeared, only 
 Bret Harte had in any considerable degree 
 departed in that direction from the beaten 
 paths of prose fiction, and his work had to 
 do with phenomenal social conditions, the 
 result of accident, as it were, and quite radi 
 cally different from those that existed in 
 other parts of the country, and that the suc 
 cess of "The Hoosier Schoolmaster" first 
 taught our novelists to use as material. 
 
 It should be explained that the dialect 
 and the manners that were associated with 
 it, were found chiefly in the remoter country 
 districts. But some traces of them were dis 
 coverable even among those well-to-do farm 
 ers and landowners whose thrift and ambi 
 tion, even as early as the forties, had dotted 
 the region along the Ohio river with spacious 
 brick dwellings most of them with stately 
 colonnaded porticoes in front and ornamented 
 lawns surrounding them. Association always 
 75 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 does that much for a dialect. Henry Ward 
 Beecher never cured himself of the provin 
 cial New England pronunciation of "new" 
 and "dew," and of "house," "cow," and 
 the like. It has taken the efforts of three 
 generations of highly cultured school teachers 
 in New England to root out the slighter 
 provincialisms of speech which even the 
 educated classes there had adopted in child 
 hood from the less cultivated and more 
 numerous class. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 In the Real Backwoods. 
 
 BOUT the year 1850 Edward and I 
 were brought into closer contact 
 with the backwoods life of South 
 ern Indiana than ever before, and 
 his recollection of things observed at that 
 time furnished no small part of his materials 
 when in later years he came to the task of 
 writing "The Hoosier Schoolmaster" and 
 "The End of the World." 
 
 In Decatur county there lived Captain 
 William Lowry, our mother s uncle. He 
 was a veteran of the war of 1812, and as a 
 young man he had "located" a large tract 
 of government land in that region, becom 
 ing its owner by virtue of the land war 
 rant given to him by the government in 
 reward of his military service. To this 
 domain he had made large additions by pur- 
 77 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 chasing the land warrants of other dis 
 charged volunteers. He thus became the 
 largest landowner, and in the end the most 
 prosperous man in all that region. 
 
 When he settled there about 1818 he 
 had no white man for neighbor within twenty 
 miles of him. Indians were all about, but 
 the pioneer knew how to deal with them in 
 peace-procuring ways. Literal wolves often 
 howled at his house by night, but the ener 
 getic pioneer and soldier never at any time 
 confronted the metaphorical "wolf at the 
 door." He conquered his worst enemy 
 when he cleared the dense forests from such 
 lands as he meant to convert into fields, and 
 from the beginning he relied upon himself 
 for the satisfaction of all his own and his 
 family s needs. As the region settled some 
 what, he became its most influential citizen, 
 the one to whom every one in misfortune 
 appealed for counsel and assistance, the one 
 whose word went furthest in the decision of 
 all questions of local public concern. 
 
 78 
 
EDWARD EGGLESTON IN 1857 
 
In the Real Backwoods 
 
 His family grew rapidly, as it was the 
 custom of families in that time and country 
 to do. But under the primitive way of 
 living then practiced, the multiplication of 
 children was a help rather than a hindrance 
 to prosperity. 
 
 And Captain William Lowry never de 
 parted from that primitive way of living. 
 To the end of his days he and his boys and 
 girls produced for themselves everything 
 that they needed to eat, drink and wear, 
 with the exception of salt, coffee, tea, and, 
 toward the end, a calico gown now and 
 then as a bit of finery for the women folk. 
 On the farm itself the cotton and wool 
 needed for clothing were grown, carded, 
 spun, woven and fashioned into garments. 
 The blankets on the beds, as well as the 
 quilts and sheets and pillow-cases these lat 
 ter made always of home-grown linen were 
 produced in like manner. The "sugar 
 camp " a vast grove of sugar maple trees- 
 yielded all the sugar and molasses used on the 
 
 79 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 place. From the orchards came, besides a 
 great store of apples, an abundance of cider 
 and vinegar, apple butter, peach butter, dried 
 fruits, and a product which I have never seen 
 or heard of elsewhere, but which I regarded 
 as a rare delicacy in my boyhood, namely 
 cider molasses. The dairy yielded milk, 
 cream, cheese and butter in lavish abundance. 
 The poultry yards produced more than the 
 home demand called for, but the surplus was 
 never sold. Much of it was given away in my 
 time to less fortunate folk who, either by 
 reason of the poverty of unthrift, or because 
 of their misfortune in living in the village 
 near by, were unable to supply themselves 
 with such things. Beef, pork, bacon and 
 mutton were all products of the farm. The 
 grain was ground in near-by water mills, the 
 miller taking toll for grinding it. 
 
 I think in all his life this "uncle Will" 
 
 of ours never had a servant or a hired helper 
 
 of any kind in his house. All the work of 
 
 the household was done by the members of 
 
 so 
 
In the Real Backwoods 
 
 the family working together in willing co 
 operation, making something of a frolic out 
 of much of the work, and not one of them 
 ever having work enough to do to bring 
 weariness as its reward. 
 
 The house was a generously hospitable 
 one. There was rarely a time when there 
 were not some of the numerous relatives 
 staying there, as all of them so loved to do, 
 and the place was a kind of Mecca to them 
 all. Strangers were entertained, too, when 
 ever their paths led them into that region, 
 but no presence, whether of visiting kins 
 folk, or of passing strangers, was ever suf 
 fered to make the smallest difference in the 
 family life. Whether there were many guests 
 or none in the house there was always an 
 abundantly laden table and beds in plenty. 
 There was -singing in the evening, and, if 
 the weather was cold, there was always a 
 gathering of children, and often of young 
 men and maidens, around the great wood 
 fires where nuts were cracked and apples 
 
 81 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 roasted, while one or more of the girls 
 played a merrily humming accompaniment 
 on her spinning wheel. Some of the girls 
 liked spinning some did not. Those who 
 liked it did it ; those that did not, let it alone. 
 That was the spirit in which all things were 
 done in the house and ^on the farm. 
 
 Something I know not what induced 
 our mother, about 1850, to close our home 
 in Vevay and send Edward and me to this 
 pioneer home to live for a year or more. 
 Edward remained on the farm for only a 
 brief time, after which he went to the neigh 
 boring village of Milford, or Clifty, in 
 order that he might " clerk" in a store there 
 and pursue his studies under tuition of a 
 .young man in the store who had had some edu 
 cational advantages. But as the village lay 
 only about a mile away, Edward was often 
 at the farm, and saw much of its peculiar 
 and interesting life. He saw much else, too, 
 during that year, which he afterwards turned 
 to literary account. 
 
 82 
 
In the Real Backwoods 
 
 At the time of our stay there, Decatur 
 county was completely and typically a "back 
 woods" region. Only a small part of the 
 scattered population had attended even such 
 schools as existed in the country districts of 
 Southern Indiana. Only here and there 
 chiefly in Greensburg, the county seat, was 
 there a young man who had spent a year in 
 boarding school. The majority of the men 
 and women in that primitive and sparsely 
 settled country were illiterate, or very nearly 
 so, not so much by any fault of their own as 
 because they had lacked opportunity. The 
 only school-house I can now remember in all 
 the region round about, was one which our 
 great-uncle, Captain Lowry, had built on the 
 outskirts of his own farm, to be used rent 
 free by any wandering schoolmaster who 
 might succeed in securing " scholars " enough 
 to justify him in keeping school. This 
 happened only occasionally. It happened 
 once during our year in Decatur county. 
 At that time a man named Higgins opened 
 
 83 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 a pay school there, and taught it for 
 three months. He eked out the meagre 
 income derived from the school by teaching 
 a singing school every Saturday afternoon 
 and Sunday morning. 
 
 There was an abundance of volume in 
 his voice, I remember, but his only knowl 
 edge of music consisted of an ability to sing 
 by " numeral notes," a system then much in 
 vogue in the remoter parts of the country. 
 Instead of a musical scale, there were two 
 parallel lines between which numbers were 
 printed. One stood for do, two for re, three 
 for mi, four for /<?//, and so on to eight, 
 which stood for do again. If a numeral was 
 printed above or below the parallel lines it 
 indicated that it was to be sung an octave 
 above or below. Instead of soprano, bass, 
 alto and tenor, the four parts were tenor, 
 treble, counter and bass, the word tenor sig 
 nifying the "air" of the tune, to be sung by 
 soprano voices. That use of the word was 
 logical and etymological at any rate. 
 
 84 
 
I n the Re&l Backwoods 
 
 The singing school was maintained by 
 subscription just as more pretentious operas 
 and concerts are at present. And like our 
 opera, its sessions constituted important 
 social functions. All the young men of the 
 neighborhood subscribed the price fixed 
 upon. The young women were deemed to 
 contribute their sufficient share merely by 
 gracing the sessions with their presence. 
 The little boys and girls also came without 
 charge. 
 
 The singing school was in many ways a 
 minister to culture of the backwoods kind, 
 to social intercourse and to courtship and 
 marriage. Young men in that region never 
 escorted young women to singing school or 
 to church ; but when the exercises in either 
 case were at an end, every young man who 
 could screw his courage up "to the sticking 
 point," would mount his horse, ride up to 
 the side of the damsel he wished to cultivate, 
 and stammeringly ask her " May I see you 
 safe home? " 
 
 85 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 There was good reason for trepidation, 
 indeed. For the " eternal feminine " was as 
 strongly self-assertive in those young women 
 of the backwoods as it is in any belle of 
 our day, while their disposition to assert 
 themselves in rather free and easy ways was 
 not curbed by any excessive regard for 
 the nicer courtesies of life. If a young 
 man s attentions were unwelcome to the girl 
 chosen for their object, or if the girl hap 
 pened to be pretty and inclined to coquetry, 
 she was apt to bring a rude and well worn 
 wit to bear for his discomfiture. When, in 
 the conventional phrase, he asked u May I 
 see you safe home ? " she would answer " Yes, 
 if you ll ride on ahead and sit on our front 
 fence till I get there." There were other 
 formulae sometimes used on either side, but 
 the one given will serve as a sufficient 
 example. 
 
 For the most part the girls graciously 
 accepted the proffered escort, unless the 
 man offering it happened to be especially dis- 
 
 86 
 
In the Real Backwoods 
 
 agreeable, or unless, by superior prompti 
 tude, his offer of escort had anticipated that 
 of some other and more favored youth, upon 
 whose present coming the girl counted with 
 hope and confidence. 
 
 Even in this unvarnished society there 
 were well understood conventions govern 
 ing social intercourse. Upon arriving at her 
 home the girl s behavior toward her escort 
 very nicely marked the extent of her favor, 
 or the lack of it. If she thanked him for 
 his attention, and dismissed him with a 
 prompt " good-day," it meant that he had 
 had his trouble for his pains, or something 
 like that. If she were a trifle more gracious, 
 and bade him call again, it signified that she 
 liked him well enough, but was, as yet, at 
 least a trifle indifferent to any attractions he 
 might possess. If she invited him to u have 
 dinner with us," the fact involved at least so 
 much of " encouragement " as might justify 
 him in further attempts to win her favor. 
 Of course, the tone and manner in each case 
 
 87 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 modified the general significance of the 
 words, as they always do when maidens are 
 at the age of choosing and are dealing with 
 possible or probable suitors. Such- things 
 "come by nature" to women of the back 
 woods as surely as to women of the drawing- 
 room. 
 
 The sturdy virtues of manliness, honesty 
 and industry among men, and a proud self- 
 respect among women, were strongly marked 
 in this typically western, backwoods com 
 munity. But many petty superstitions sur 
 vived among them, and even the more intel 
 ligent of them were credulous in strange 
 ways. The scientific habit of mind was 
 completely lacking. The weather warnings 
 of patent medicine almanacs were accepted 
 as confidently as the advertised nostrums 
 themselves were taken, in spite of the fre 
 quent failure of both. Young women swal 
 lowed chickens hearts whole with incanta 
 tions that were believed to smooth the path 
 way of true love. Such physicians as lived 
 
 88 
 
In the Real Backwoods 
 
 in those parts found annoyingly successful 
 rivals in practice in the persons of ignorant 
 old crones, such as Edward described in 
 Granny Sanders, whose simples, gathered 
 at the right time of the moon, were firmly 
 believed to work well-nigh miraculous cures. 
 Still more confident was the popular faith in 
 the pretensions of certain claimants to occult 
 powers. I remember hearing a weird and 
 awe-inspiring tale of the success of one of 
 these in curing disease without so much as 
 seeing his patient. The story was told to 
 me in the dense forest, during a coon hunt 
 at midnight. It was related that some man 
 in chopping wood had split his own foot 
 nearly in two ; that after hours of effort, the 
 physician who had been called in declared 
 that he could in no way stop the hemorrhage, 
 and that the man must bleed to death ; that 
 thereupon a messenger was sent at midnight 
 to wake the occult healer and invoke his 
 assistance ; that the man of mysterious 
 powers, without rising from his bed, had 
 
 89 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 bidden the messenger return, for that the 
 bleeding was now stopped; and finally, that 
 it did cease at precisely the time of the healer s 
 declaration of the fact. 
 
 Let us not laugh too derisively over the 
 credulity of a simple, unlearned people as 
 illustrated in this story. Let us reflect that 
 even in our highly scientific time, in our most 
 advanced communities, there are scores of 
 thousands of educated men and women who 
 not only believe in healings equally absurd, 
 but are almost belligerent in their assertion 
 of their faith, and quite lavish in their gifts 
 of money for the building of marble temples 
 in which to teach and propagate their doc 
 trine of "absent treatment" by faith alone. 
 A foolish credulity seems quite as prevalent 
 among the educated people of an enlightened 
 time as among those who lacked the knowl 
 edge and the intellectual training which are 
 supposed to eradicate such credulity from 
 the mind. Superstition is, perhaps, a matter 
 of mental constitution rather than of mental 
 90 
 
In the Real Backwoods 
 
 condition as affected by education. Years 
 after he had finished his work of portraying 
 the rude ignorance of the Hoosiers, Edward 
 Eggleston wrote "The Faith Doctor," to 
 show forth the worse credulity of men and 
 women who had not the Hoosiers plea of 
 ignorance to excuse their weakness of mind. 
 
 In this interior county the Hoosier dia 
 lect was far more generally employed than 
 in the regions along the Ohio river. In the 
 river counties there was a considerable num 
 ber of educated families in which the speech 
 of the children was jealously guarded against 
 contamination. In Decatur there were no 
 such families, the best educated people there 
 except for a doctor here and there, and 
 possibly a preacher or two were such as 
 had received nothing more than the training 
 of the country schools, supplemented in a 
 very few cases by a year or less in some 
 country boarding school. 
 
 The people were all Americans nearly 
 all Hoosiers by birth. The few who, like 
 91 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 Captain Lowry, had been born in Kentucky, 
 had lived so long in Indiana as to be in no 
 marked way unlike their Hoosier-born neigh 
 bors in manner and speech. There were no 
 foreigners there, and no persons of imme 
 diate descent from foreigners, to influence 
 the dialect. There was, indeed, no modify 
 ing influence of any kind to serve as a cor 
 rective. The schoolmaster, Higgins, already 
 mentioned, made some effort in that direc 
 tion, but it was badly misguided. He taught 
 us to give full orthoepic force to the "w" 
 in "sword," and the " t " in "often" and 
 "soften," to pronounce the word "only" 
 with a short "o," and "Niagara" as if it 
 had been spelled " Nee-ogg-ara." The Yan 
 kee schoolmistress, with her trained intelli 
 gence, was bravely combating the dialect and 
 the ignorance, of which it was a symptom, in 
 the river towns. But she had not yet ap 
 peared in the interior. 
 
 In such homes as that of Captain Lowry 
 it was the custom to subscribe for one or 
 
 92 
 
In the Real Backwoods 
 
 two weekly story papers. The favorites 
 were the Cincinnati Dollar Times, the Saturday 
 Evening Post of Philadelphia, and the Flag of 
 Our Union, published in Boston. The serials 
 and short stories published in these periodi 
 cals were of no particular value, but they 
 were at any rate quite harmless, and they 
 were entertaining to simple minds. It was 
 the practice to have them read aloud by the 
 evening fireside, after which the papers con 
 taining them were loaned to such of the 
 neighbors as could read them but were too 
 poor to subscribe. 
 
 There was no library of any kind any 
 where in all that region, and I cannot remem 
 ber that, during our stay of a year in Decatur 
 county, I ever saw in any house a book, other 
 than school text books, with the exception 
 of a paper-bound temperance novel by T. S. 
 Arthur. 
 
 The only educative influence that was 
 brought to bear was that of the preachers, 
 chiefly Methodists. It would be difficult to 
 93 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 exaggerate the service to civilization ren 
 dered by the itinerant circuit riders of that 
 peculiarly militant church, at a time when, to 
 quote from "The Hoosier Schoolmaster," 
 the West " bade fair to become a perdition 
 as bad as any that Brother Sodom ever 
 depicted." 
 
 These traveling Methodist preachers 
 were, in many cases, men of scanty educa 
 tion, but they knew by heart the message 
 they were charged to deliver, and they were 
 mightily in earnest. Their speech might be 
 ungrammatical at times, but their zeal was 
 white hot with the fervor of conviction, and 
 their eloquence lost nothing of effectiveness 
 by reason of the rudeness of their rhetoric 
 or the inaccuracy of their diction. Each of 
 those men firmly believed that he had been 
 called of God to this service, and each felt 
 as the Apostle did " Woe is me if I preach 
 not the gospel." 
 
 The itinerant system, too, was peculiarly 
 well adapted to the time and country. It 
 94 
 
In the Real Backwoods 
 
 effectually prevented the Methodist preach 
 ers from forming local ties of any kind or 
 creating local prejudices that might impair 
 their effectiveness. It, and the poverty 
 which accompanied it, kept them foot-loose 
 of all worldly things, and made of their 
 ministry the one concern of their lives. 
 Their work was essentially missionary in 
 character, and its effectiveness was as pro 
 nounced as had been that of the Jesuit mis 
 sionaries, of an earlier time, among the In 
 dians and half-breeds. 
 
 The theology of these men was often 
 harsh, and it was always rude and literal in 
 its interpretations, but it was such as the 
 people to whom they preached could under 
 stand and accept. They believed in the 
 literal inspiration of the Scriptures, and they 
 interpreted the Bible, in its English version, 
 which alone they knew, with absolute confi 
 dence that every word was true, and that 
 every word meant precisely what it appeared 
 to mean. They believed in an actual hell, 
 
 95 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 of fire and brimstone, and they preached 
 that doctrine as a truth which could not be 
 doubted, and need not be argued. God had 
 said it, and there was an end of discussion. 
 They believed in a personal devil, and in his 
 constant presence at every elbow as the 
 tempter to sin. 
 
 The effect of the preaching of these 
 earnest men as a morally educative force in 
 a rude and ignorant community, was of 
 necessity very great. Even when it influenced 
 men s minds chiefly through fear, it prompted 
 them to good conduct as one of the neces 
 sary means of keeping out of an eternal hell 
 of quenchless fire. 
 
 But the preachers were educators in 
 other ways. They were themselves better 
 educated than men in that community gen 
 erally were, for though many of them began 
 their work with exceedingly meagre school 
 ing behind it, they were subject, as preachers, 
 to the ceaseless and perfectly fearless admoni 
 tion of older ministers, and especially of 
 96 
 
In the ReaJ Backwoods 
 
 their " Presiding Elders," whose duty it was 
 to give minute attention to the conduct, 
 methods and training of the ministers under 
 their jurisdiction. Their admonitory super 
 vision was supported by adequate ecclesiasti 
 cal authority, and their advice was accepted 
 as a command. 
 
 Sometimes ludicrous results occurred. 
 I remember one case related in my presence 
 by an old Presiding Elder. He said that 
 upon one occasion, when going down the 
 Ohio river on a steamboat, he had for com 
 panion a youthful minister whose bringing 
 up had been of the rudest kind. The two 
 were assigned to a single stateroom, and the 
 Presiding Elder, observing in the young man 
 a regrettable neglect of personal cleanliness, 
 gently reproved him. Among other things he 
 told the uncouth youth that he should brush 
 his teeth every morning. The young man 
 meekly accepted the chiding as a godly ad 
 monition, and in the morning when the two 
 arose, he said to his mentor, " I m going to 
 97 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 begin at once, and this morning I have 
 used your tooth-brush. When we go ashore 
 I ll buy one for myself." 
 
 "No," answered the older man, scarcely 
 able to suppress a laugh, "you may spare 
 yourself that expense. In recognition of 
 your effort to profit by my suggestions, I ll 
 make you a present of that tooth-brush." 
 
 The Presiding Elders gave attention 
 also to the studies of the younger men, for 
 certain studies were marked out for them by 
 ecclesiastical authority, with a view to the 
 repair of their educational deficiencies. Chief 
 among these studies was English grammar, 
 through the diligent study of which it was 
 hoped that every young minister would 
 presently learn to use a better English than 
 that which he had learned from association. 
 This result was not always realized. I well 
 remember that one able and even eloquent 
 preacher, past middle life, and sufficiently 
 prominent to be assigned successively to the 
 charge of the best churches in the larger 
 
 98 
 
In the Real Backwoods 
 
 towns, always said that u John the Baptist 
 had went out into the wilderness." 
 
 One who had served long as Presiding 
 Elder, used to tell of a minister who, when 
 called to account for his persistently ungram- 
 matical speech, tearfully expressed regret, 
 and added : " Brethren, I can t help it. For 
 years I have carried a grammar in my hat, 
 but for the life of me I can t get it into my 
 head." 
 
 Notwithstanding these occasional fail 
 ures of the system, the young preachers 
 generally improved rapidly under this educa 
 tional system, so that as a rule the pulpit was 
 an exemplar of a much better rhetorical 
 usage than any that the people heard else 
 where; more important still, these preachers 
 were expected to read the weekly denomina 
 tional newspapers, together with a book now 
 and then, so that their intellectual field of 
 vision became somewhat larger than that of 
 the majority of the people to whom they 
 preached. 
 
 99 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 At the time of Edward Eggleston s 
 stay in Decatur county, there survived in 
 that region a band of outlaws, with whose 
 doings Edward became acquainted through 
 the arrest and trial of some of them. In 
 earlier days it had been the practice of these 
 men to follow travelers on the highway, and 
 rob and sometimes kill them in secluded 
 places along the road. In aid of their nefa 
 rious business, they leagued with themselves 
 a number of roadside innkeepers. Soon 
 after the luckless traveler established himself 
 at an inn, two or three of the gang, pretend 
 ing to be strangers in those parts, w r ould 
 ride up and ask accommodations for the 
 night. That done, the robbery was easily 
 managed, and the victim, stripped of every 
 valuable possession, including his horse, was 
 left to pursue his journey penniless and on 
 foot. 
 
 Popular indignation over such occur 
 rences led to a lynching or two, and the 
 bolder operations of the gang were brought 
 100 
 
In the Real Backwoods 
 
 to an end. The former highwaymen degen 
 erated into burglars and petty thieves. But 
 during Edward Eggleston s stay in Milford, 
 or Clifty, as the little village in Decatur 
 county was variously called, the band was 
 reorganized for predatory purposes, by a 
 man of considerable education, great shrewd 
 ness and, to all appearance, conspicuously 
 blameless life. Its headquarters in the older 
 highway robbery times had been in the ad 
 joining county of Ripley. But the new 
 master of the organization lived at Clifty, 
 and, under his directions, its operations were 
 carried on mainly in Decatur county. 
 
 The secret organization was at last dis 
 covered and broken up. Some of its mem 
 bers, unable to give bail, were tried, con 
 victed and sent to the penitentiary. Some 
 failed of conviction for. lack of sufficient 
 evidence. These were forced to leave the 
 county and the State under threats of lynch 
 ing. The highly moral leader of the gang 
 gave bail, forfeited it and disappeared. He 
 
 1U1 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 was the original of Dr. Small in "The 
 Hoosier Schoolmaster." 
 
 Edward was only a boy at the time of 
 the discovery of this gang, and the shock 
 of this revelation of depravity on the part 
 of men whom he had been accustomed to 
 see in the guise of good citizens, so afflicted 
 his sensitive mind that for a time he fell ill. 
 It was altogether natural that, when he came 
 to write his first novel of Hoosier life, he 
 should draw upon this memory of his boy 
 hood for the materials of his plot. 
 
 It was during that year, in the real back 
 woods, too, that he made his most fruitful 
 observations of Hoosier life, Hoosier char 
 acter and the Hoosier dialect. For there, for 
 the first and only time in his life, he encoun 
 tered these things in their purity, unmixed 
 with anything higher or better. He learned 
 to know how much of human goodness, 
 how much of manly and womanly virtue 
 there may be among people of homely ap 
 pearance, uncouth manners and rude speech. 
 
 102 
 
In the Real Backwoods 
 
 He here saw human nature undisguised by 
 the artificialities of culture, and learned to 
 respect it and love it for what it is, rather 
 than for anything it pretends to be. 
 
 How valuable all this was to him as a 
 preparation for the work he was destined to 
 do in life, will be best seen by the reader 
 who realizes the unity of that work. In his 
 novels of the Hoosier life, and the early life 
 of Minnesota, Edward Eggleston was 
 minutely depicting certain phases of that 
 "Life in the United States " which in later 
 years he chose as his special field of histori 
 cal research and historical writing. In those 
 later novels, whose scenes were in other 
 fields, he was inspired by a like purpose to 
 show forth phases of American life which 
 had come under his close personal observa 
 tion. In his novels quite as truly as in 
 "The Beginners of a Nation" and "The 
 Transit of Civilization," he was writing his 
 tory of that kind which most strongly ap 
 pealed to his mind history which concerns 
 103 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 itself far less with public events than with 
 the life forces, the manners, circumstances, 
 influences and ways of thinking among the 
 people, out of which not only public events 
 but institutions themselves have grown. In 
 his view every detail of the popular life and 
 thought was of importance, every circum 
 stance that had influenced men s lives and 
 men s minds was worth recording. These 
 things he held to be the seeds of history, 
 and in all his work, whether fiction or formal 
 history, it was his endeavor to study these 
 seeds, to recall their sprouting, and to dis 
 cover in their growth the origin of the insti 
 tutions, the habits, the customs, the life of 
 our later time. 
 
 This thought is not mine but his, though 
 I present it with less of reserve than his 
 modesty exacted of him when he first com 
 municated it to me. 
 
 This he did in a letter written to me 
 from Europe early in 1880. In it he told 
 me that he purposed to devote the next ten 
 104 
 
In the Real Backwoods 
 
 years of his life to the writing of a series of 
 books which together should constitute a 
 " History of Life in the United States." 
 
 In that letter concerning his plans and 
 purposes, he said something like this to me : 
 
 u After all this work will not differ in 
 essentials from what I have been doing hith 
 erto. The historical form is more ambitious 
 or perhaps you will say more pretentious 
 but, as I look back over my work in fiction, 
 I begin to see clearly that every chapter of it 
 was inspired by the same purpose that actu 
 ates me now. My interest in my work has 
 been that of a student intent upon tracing 
 the forces of life in America to their origins, 
 and showing how men and women lived and 
 thought and felt, under conditions that 
 existed before those of to-day came into 
 being. So that I am not making a new de 
 parture now or entering a new field. I have 
 been writing history all the time in my novels. 
 I am going now to write the same kind of 
 history, in a somewhat different form." 
 105 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 I cannot offer the foregoing passage as 
 a quotation. But the facts recorded in it 
 deeply impressed me at the time, and I am 
 certain that my paraphrase of the words is 
 substantially accurate, though made only 
 from memory. The thought that underlies 
 them seems to me a fruitful one, helpful to 
 every reader who would justly understand 
 the purpose of a life work that has gained 
 for its author a high place in the esteem and 
 affection of his fellow men. 
 
 106 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The Environment of the Hoosier Boy. 
 
 D 
 
 URING our year in Decatur county 
 our mother was married to the 
 Rev. Williamson Terrell, a Metho 
 dist minister of ability and some 
 culture. After a few months Edward and I 
 were summoned to our new home in New 
 Albany, where Mr. Terrell was pastor of the 
 principal church. 
 
 Edward s health was now so much 
 strengthened by his year of backwoods life 
 that he resumed his studies in a rather pre 
 tentious but fairly good " Collegiate Insti 
 tute," presided over by one Ayer or Ayres. 
 The boy had acquired a speaking acquaint 
 ance with French while living as a child 
 among the Swiss in Vevay. This language 
 he took up again at the Collegiate Institute, 
 and there he began the study of Latin and 
 107 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 algebra and geometry, having completed his 
 mastery of arithmetic under tuition of the 
 young store-clerk at Clifty. 
 
 As usual his ambition and his almost 
 preternatural energy in study outran his 
 strength and quickly exhausted it. He 
 quitted school after a month or two, but in 
 that time he had learned enough of Latin 
 to read Caesar, and as soon as the first 
 severity of his illness was past he returned 
 to his studies, with only himself for his 
 master. Almost all his education was got in 
 that way, indeed. He rarely attended any 
 school for more than a few weeks, or a few 
 months at most, before falling ill. But ex 
 cept while the attack of illness was at its 
 worst, he never ceased to study. 
 
 When he could no longer attend school, 
 and when a wise exercise of parental author 
 ity imposed certain sharp limitations upon 
 his hours of self-imposed study, he joined 
 with me in a number of boyish occupations 
 of a time-killing character. I was at that 
 108 
 
The Environments of the Hoosier Boy 
 
 period of my life neither disposed nor accus 
 tomed to waste the hours out of school in 
 the drudgery of study. I had a faculty of 
 quick perception and a positively glutinous 
 memory, so that half an hour s work over 
 my books each evening was quite all I needed 
 to enable me to maintain a good standing in 
 my classes. Had I been ambitious of dis 
 tinction in school another half hour of study 
 each evening would easily have placed and 
 kept me at the very head of all my classes. 
 I was content, however, with a place in the 
 upper half of them, and I gave all the rest 
 of the hours out of school, and the whole of 
 every Saturday, to recreation. In company 
 with a chum of mine, I moulded and burnt 
 miniature bricks each bearing the initials 
 of the two young manufacturers, in relief, 
 upon its surface. Edward would have noth 
 ing to do with this " mud-pie making " as he 
 called it; but when Charley Van Dusen and 
 I advanced a step, and, from being brick- 
 makers, became architects and builders, Ed- 
 
 109 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 ward interested himself in our work, helping 
 us to construct Greek and Roman temples 
 out of our little bricks, and incidentally 
 teaching us something of the achievements 
 of the ancients in art and architecture. He 
 related to us also, pretty nearly all he knew 
 of classical mythology, adopting a method 
 which I remember was puzzling and painful 
 to my more prosaic mind. Thus, when we 
 would wander on a Saturday out among the 
 " knobs," as the hills near New Albany were 
 called, Edward would sit down in the woods, 
 by a waterfall, and say to me something like 
 this : 
 
 "We are in a spirit-haunted woodland 
 now; let me tell you about it. The reason 
 that waterfall is so beautiful is that a water 
 nymph lives there and controls every drop 
 of the water. When we mortals are here she 
 allows nothing to be seen except what we see 
 now; but when there are no mortals about, 
 she gathers around her the wood sprites, 
 and exhibits to them glories that are too 
 no 
 
The Environments of the Hoosier Boy 
 
 great and too sacred for human eyes to look 
 upon." Then he would go on relating some 
 Greek legend, making it local and telling it 
 not as legend but as fact known to him. In 
 my boyish literalness, I remember, his words 
 puzzled me greatly. I could not believe 
 that Edward was lying, though my fear that 
 he was doing so, was strengthened by a 
 complete and constitutional disbelief in the 
 occult, the supernatural and the mystical. 
 That incredulity had been fostered in my 
 mind by the teachings of my father and my 
 mother, who, in fear that we should imbibe 
 superstition from the ignorance about us, 
 had taken pains from our very infancy to 
 guard against such influences. Ghost stories 
 had always been forbidden in our nursery, 
 and even fairy stories were permitted only 
 when accompanied by an explanation of their 
 character. 80 when Edward localized his 
 Greek legends and placed them in modern 
 settings of scene and circumstance, I was 
 grievously puzzled by a conflict between un- 
 111 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 belief in the supernatural on the one hand, 
 and my profound faith in Edward s truthful 
 ness on the other. After several repetitions 
 of this experience, I made up my mind that 
 in telling these stories Edward was lying, 
 and I was mightily troubled by a fear that 
 he would be damned for doing so. 
 
 In later years Edward was fond of re 
 lating an experience of his own and mine 
 encountered at this time an experience 
 which gave us our first lesson in commercial 
 morality as it is sometimes practiced. 
 
 Among other things that we did at that 
 period, was the manufacture of mussel-shell 
 lime. We hit upon this by accident, and at 
 first sought only a domestic use for our pro 
 duct. It was a nearly impalpable powder, 
 and we found it to be a superior metal 
 polish. 
 
 One day Edward was seized with the 
 
 thought that we might make a little pocket 
 
 money a rare thing with us out of our 
 
 discovery by putting it on the market. To 
 
 112 
 
The Environments of the Hoosier Boy 
 
 that end he consulted a certain peripatetic 
 scissors-grinder who was accustomed to pass 
 our way once or twice a w r eek. He showed 
 him experimentally how, by a little rubbing 
 with our shell lime, a knife or pair of scissors 
 could be made to "look like new," and 
 asked for the scissors-grinder s advice as 
 to means by which to market our product. 
 Edward was shrewd enough to withhold 
 from the man all information as to our pro 
 cesses of manufacture, but at that point un 
 happily his sagacity ceased. 
 
 The scissors-grinder eagerly offered to 
 become our agent. 
 
 "You boys furnish me the stuff," he 
 said, " and I ll sell it. I can put it into every 
 house in town. But what shall we call it? 
 We must have a good name for it. That 
 means a lot." 
 
 So Edward began cudgeling his brains 
 
 for a name. Finally, as he looked across the 
 
 street, his eye caught sight of some Venetian 
 
 window blinds, which had been newly painted 
 
 113 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 of an intenser and grassier green than was 
 usual, and he suggested that we should call 
 our powder "Venetian Polish." To this 
 suggestion the scissors-grinder added an 
 other. u A thing ought to be called French," 
 he said, " if you re going to sell it. Let s call 
 it French Venetian Polish. " 
 
 Edward s conscience was not geographi 
 cal in its tendencies, and so the suggestion 
 was accepted. He and I made a consider 
 able quantity of the "French Venetian 
 Polish," packed it in pasteboard boxes of 
 our own manufacture, and delivered it to the 
 scissors-grinder for sale on commission. He 
 sold it readily enough on its merits, but he 
 not only pocketed the total proceeds of the 
 sales, but managed to discover what the 
 "French Venetian Polish" was made of and 
 how it was made. After that he made it for 
 himself, and the only good thing we two 
 boys got out of our discovery was experi 
 ence. 
 
 After six months or so of our resi- 
 
 114 
 
The Environments of the Hoosier Boy 
 
 dence in New Albany, Mr. Terrell s pastorate 
 came to the end appointed for it under the 
 itinerant system, and he was transferred to 
 the charge of Wesley Chapel, in Madison, 
 to which city the family removed. 
 
 As illustrative of the life and thought 
 of that time, I may explain that an assign 
 ment to the pastorate of Wesley Chapel 
 was a matter of some perplexity to the eccle 
 siastical authorities. Wesley Chapel was the 
 most fashionable Methodist church, in the 
 wealthiest and most fashionable city in all 
 Southern Indiana. The church, though call 
 ing itself a chapel, was suspected, if not of 
 popish, inclinations, at least of a tendency 
 toward Episcopalian formalism. Wesley 
 Chapel had set up a choir, not to monopo 
 lize the singing, but to lead and guide it, 
 and the fact was regarded with grave doubt 
 as an innovation of very dangerous tendency. 
 Although the appointment to the pastorate 
 of Wesley Chapel was justly regarded as 
 financially, socially and in other ways the 
 115 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 very best within the gift of the bishop who 
 presided over that Conference, there were 
 not many ministers willing to accept it, and 
 still fewer to whom the bishop was willing 
 to entrust it. As the congregation was com 
 posed of some of the best educated people 
 in the little city, the clergyman assigned to 
 its pastorate must be a man of ability and 
 intellectual attainments. As the church in 
 sisted upon maintaining a choir, and was 
 suspected of a strong though still dormant 
 longing for an organ, there were many of 
 the ministers who felt conscientious scruples 
 of a very grave nature about accepting a 
 pastorate which might seem at least to com 
 mit them to tolerance, if not to approval of 
 such ritualistic departures from the sim 
 plicity of Methodist doctrine and practice. 
 On the other hand, there were some minis 
 ters in the Conference who would have been 
 pleased to be assigned to Wesley Chapel, in 
 order that they might use all they had of 
 ecclesiastical authority and pastoral influence 
 
 116 
 
The Environments of the Hoosier Boy 
 
 for the suppression of the choir and the 
 restoration of Methodist simplicity within 
 that erring church. These wanted to "make 
 a row," and the wise bishops did not want a 
 
 "row." 
 
 In our more enlightened time it is diffi 
 cult to understand the intellectual attitude 
 of half a century ago, upon matters of this 
 kind. But no history of that time would be 
 even approximately complete if it did not 
 include some attempt, at least, to illustrate 
 this point. 
 
 Roman Catholics were at that time both 
 feared and hated. They were accounted 
 idolaters and worshipers of graven images, 
 and whatever in the remotest degree savored 
 of Roman Catholic practice was looked upon 
 as a thing of devilish inspiration. I remem 
 ber that I once suffered a period of enforced 
 and rather severe penance for the grave 
 offence of having strayed into a Catholic 
 church one week-day afternoon, to hear the 
 vesper music. And I remember hearing one 
 117 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 dear old lady publicly censured for having 
 expressed the belief that some, at least, of 
 the Roman Catholics might be admitted to 
 heaven. The preacher who censured her a 
 Baptist, I think he was explained the matter 
 very logically, and with all the narrowness 
 and intolerance that logic chopping usually 
 breeds in half-instructed minds. He began 
 by saying that idolatry was, of course, a sin 
 quite unpardonable of God, if not renounced 
 and repented of; that Roman Catholics were 
 clearly idolators ; that they must therefore, 
 of necessity, be damned unless they repented 
 and became Protestants; and that in express 
 ing the hope that some of them might be 
 saved through the tender mercies of God, 
 the gentle-spirited old lady had been dis 
 loyal to the very fundamentals of faith, and 
 had lent her countenance to the heathen prac 
 tice of worshiping idols. 
 
 There was one Episcopal church in Madi 
 son. The other Protestant churches re 
 garded it as merely a slightly modified form 
 118 
 
The Environments of the Hoosier Boy 
 
 of the Roman Catholic communion. It had 
 stained glass windows. It had an allegorical 
 painting on the window over the altar. It 
 had a pipe organ. Its rector read the service 
 in a white gown and preached in a black 
 one. Worse than all, that church had a 
 gilded cross surmounting its steeple. Was 
 not the cross a sign and symbol of Roman 
 Catholicism? Was it not, in fact, one of 
 the "graven images" which Roman Catholic 
 idolaters wickedly worshiped? Were not 
 Methodist girls, and girls of Baptist and 
 Presbyterian families strictly forbidden to 
 use the cross as an ornament when they manu 
 factured for themselves out of crushed rose 
 petals, a chain of beads? 
 
 I suppose that at that time there was 
 not in all the land, and I am certain there 
 was not in Southern Indiana, a single Meth 
 odist church which would have permitted 
 the playing of any musical instrument at its 
 services, or the use of the cross in the 
 church, or on the person of any of its con- 
 
 119 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 gregation. That which is properly the uni 
 versal symbol of Christianity, and is now 
 everywhere recognized as such, was then 
 held to be a Roman Catholic device for the 
 betrayal of human souls into the devil s pos 
 session. 
 
 And the narrowness of mind which 
 prompted such views, and which excluded 
 everything of ornament from the architec 
 ture and the furnishing of churches, and 
 every ministry of taste and beauty from their 
 services, went much further than this in its 
 pestilent and nagging interference. I remem 
 ber with what bitterness the clergyman under 
 whose ministrations we sat in our early boy 
 hood, denounced the " putting on of gold 
 and costly apparel," even exhorting wives 
 and widows to strip off their wedding rings, 
 as "shackles that would bind them to the 
 devil," to quote the phrase I remember hear 
 ing that fervent preacher use in a burst of 
 excited eloquence on this theme. I remem 
 ber, too, with what destructive oratorical 
 
 120 
 
The Environments of the Hoosier Boy 
 
 onslaughts the preachers used to denounce 
 the sinful wearing of "artificials" by which 
 they meant artificial flowers in women s 
 bonnets. In one case a middle-aged and 
 most sedate widow, who was growing thin 
 of visage under the burden of caring for a 
 family on an all too meagre income, was 
 rather cruelly called to account in the pres 
 ence of the congregation for having filled 
 out the hollow sides of her poke bonnet 
 with a little white and black niching. She 
 had done so, she explained, merely to hide 
 the increasing hollowness of her cheeks, and 
 to that plea the preacher replied that in try 
 ing to do that she had been guilty of the sin 
 of wilful deception. 
 
 In Madison, and in other places at the 
 time of our removal to Madison, the rigid 
 puritanism that we had known before had 
 been somewhat softened by increasing cul 
 ture, but in many ways it still reigned and 
 ruled with the strong hand. Sabbatarianism 
 especially was rampant and very exigent in 
 
 121 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 its demands, particularly among the Metho 
 dists. It was held to be sinful to take a 
 bath on Sunday, or to shave, or to brush 
 one s shoes on that day. To buy or sell the 
 very simplest thing on Sunday was rigor 
 ously forbidden. No cooking of any kind 
 was permitted all that must be done on 
 Saturday and cold meals alone were per 
 mitted on what we were taught to regard as 
 the Sabbath. 
 
 As a healthy and very active boy I fell 
 into the habit, during one glorious June in 
 Vevay, of walking out into " God s first tem 
 ples," the woodlands, during the scant inter 
 vals between religious services. At this the 
 " preacher in charge " was gravely disturbed. 
 He made it the occasion of a pastoral visit 
 to my mother, at that time a widow, trying 
 to bring up her children in the u nurture and 
 admonition of the Lord." After that I was 
 forbidden to indulge my sinful love of nature 
 and compelled to pass my Sunday afternoons 
 in pretending to read "Smiley on Class 
 122 
 
The Environments of the Hoosier Boy 
 
 Meetings," "Baxter s Saints Rest," and 
 somebody s " Plan of Salvation." I say 
 "pretending to read" these books, for my 
 sense of justice was deeply wounded by the 
 requirement, and finding myself helpless to 
 resist it in any other way, I deliberately 
 cheated it. Thus I \vas saved from the sin 
 of breathing the Sunday air in the glorious 
 forest, and induced to practice a pious de 
 ception instead. 
 
 My helpless little soul was often thus in 
 blind revolt against teachings that I could 
 neither understand nor reconcile with the 
 little I possessed of reason. Thus, when the 
 Vevay boys went in swimming on Sunday 
 and one of them was drowned, it was ex 
 plained by our preacher that the poor fel 
 low s death undoubtedly followed by his 
 damnation was decreed by the Almighty 
 as a just punishment of his sin. This decla 
 ration sorely puzzled my mind. I asked my 
 self why if going in swimming on Sunday 
 was a sin deserving death the other boys 
 
 123 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 in the party were not punished in like 
 manner. Carrying this thought a little 
 further, I argued that, if the results were to 
 be taken as an indication of the Divine view 
 of the matter, the weight of the evidence 
 was overwhelmingly in favor of swimming 
 on Sunday; for only one of the ten boys 
 had been drowned, while the other nine had 
 received proof of God s approval by being 
 permitted to enjoy their bath without any 
 punishment or any ill consequences what 
 ever. Thus, it seemed to me, the Divine 
 verdict was nine to one in favor of the inno 
 cence of Sunday bathing in the river. I 
 firmly believed, of course, in the direct 
 supervision of human affairs by Providence, 
 and so I could not doubt that this poor fel 
 low s drowning was decreed as a punish 
 ment for something, but in view of the 
 escape of the other nine boys, I could not 
 think that he was thus terribly and irretriev 
 ably punished for an offence which brought 
 no punishment at all to his comrades. He 
 
 124 
 
The Environments of the Hoosier Boy 
 
 must have committed some other sin, I 
 argued. 
 
 Puzzled to the point of bewilderment, I 
 dared not suggest my doubts to any grown 
 person. I knew that such a course would 
 bring to me not enlightenment or explana 
 tion, but a terrible rebuke, with some species 
 of penance added for the purification of my 
 soul. So I spoke only to Edward on the 
 subject. He was about eleven or twelve 
 years old at the time, but my faith in his 
 wisdom was boundless. No counsel not 
 even that of the preacher could have meant 
 so much to me as his words always did. 
 
 I laid the case before him, therefore, to 
 his profound grief and sorrow. He had 
 accepted as indisputable every line and word 
 of our religious teaching, and his conscience 
 was a relentless tyrant, governing his soul 
 and controlling his conduct in every par 
 ticular. It did so, indeed, to the very end 
 of his life, but enlarged knowledge and a 
 sounder thinking, as he grew older, wrought 
 125 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 in him an enlightenment of mind which set 
 him free from the bondage of narrow dog 
 matism to which as a boy he submitted him 
 self, in full confidence that all the things he 
 had been taught were direct revelations of 
 God s will and purposes. 
 
 I wish to make this point clear. In all 
 his life, I think, Edward Eggleston never 
 permitted himself to do any act that his 
 conscience forbade, or to leave undone any 
 duty that his conscience enjoined. But while 
 in childhood the dogmas in which he had 
 been trained gave law to his thought, his 
 intellect, as he grew older, asserted its right 
 to question the authority of those dogmas, 
 and he did so with utter fearlessness, and 
 with the same conscientious courage that had 
 in childhood led him to obey at whatever 
 cost. 
 
 I do not remember many things so well 
 
 as I remember the way in which he dealt with 
 
 my doubts and questionings on this occasion. 
 
 Adopting the views at that time taught us 
 
 126 
 
The Environments of the Hoosier Boy 
 
 from the pulpit, he suggested that my doubts 
 were directly inspired by the devil for the 
 destruction of my soul, and perhaps also of 
 his, for my presentation of the matter, he 
 frankly confessed, had awakened the spirit 
 of doubt in his own mind. He could not 
 resolve the matter, but our best course, he 
 suggested, would be to pray that we might 
 not be led into temptation, and then put the 
 matter out of our minds. The insight, the 
 critical acumen, and the enlightenment which 
 guided his thought so wisely in after life, 
 had not yet come to the boy of a dozen 
 years old. 
 
 If details of this character seem trivial 
 to any reader, my answer is that they are 
 necessary to the just fulfilment of the two 
 purposes with which this work is written. 
 Those purposes are first to trace the develop 
 ment of Edward Eggleston s mind, and 
 second to present the completest picture I 
 can of the life, the ideas and the tendencies 
 of the time in which he was born and reared, 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 as a part of that "culture history," that his 
 tory of life in the United States which he 
 made the theme of all his literary work, the 
 object of all his studies. 
 
 128 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Madison and New Conditions. 
 
 T the time of our removal to Madi 
 son that town was in many respects 
 the most important city in Indiana. 
 It was distinctly the wealthiest of 
 all of them, and the busiest. 
 
 A little while earlier Madison had been 
 indisputably the largest of Indiana cities. 
 It still disputed with Indianapolis and New 
 Albany the supremacy in population, a claim 
 the census of 1850 negatived, while in point of 
 business though signs of decline and decay 
 were beginning to appear Madison still 
 held an undisputed lead. The census of 
 1850 showed the population of the little city 
 to be 8012. A foot-note to the census report 
 places it at 12,000 in 1852, though upon 
 what authority does not appear. At that 
 time its people " claimed" a population of 
 129 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 20,000 or more. Then, as now, ambitious 
 cities had the faculty of growing with extra 
 ordinary rapidity during the years when there 
 was no census taking to correct the figures 
 of the "claims." 
 
 Madison lies on the Ohio river, about 
 ninety miles below Cincinnati, and about 
 forty miles above Louisville. In those days 
 the river was the one great highway, both of 
 travel and of commerce. It was the endeavor 
 of both to reach the river in the shortest, 
 speediest and least expensive way possible. 
 The enterprise of the early investors in 
 Madison had wisely availed itself of this 
 fact. They had secured the building of one 
 of the earliest railroads in the State the 
 very earliest I think from Madison to In 
 dianapolis. With this artery of commerce 
 leading into the interior, Madison quickly 
 became the most important commercial city 
 in the State. All the merchants in all the 
 little towns in the interior purchased their 
 goods, of every kind, from the wholesale 
 Itt 
 
THE RAH 
 
Madison and New Conditions 
 
 houses in Madison. All the produce of all 
 the farms was sent to Madison, to be for 
 warded thence by river to distant markets, 
 and all the travel followed the same route. 
 In addition to the daily, and at times twice 
 daily, steamboats of the Louisville and Cin 
 cinnati Mail Line, Madison had daily packet 
 lines of her own, some to Cincinnati and 
 some to Louisville. There were frequent 
 steamboats, stopping there, too, on their 
 way from Cincinnati to New Orleans or St. 
 Louis. Still again, there were multitudi 
 nous flatboats, taking cargoes at the busy 
 little city for cheap transportation to New 
 Orleans. The "levee" was a busy place, 
 and the street fronting it was solidly built 
 up with forwarding and commission houses, 
 grain, flour and feed stores, establishments 
 for the sale of provisions and boat stores, 
 and other things of like kind. Streets farther 
 from the river front were filled with whole 
 sale houses. 
 
 Very naturally, the seat of so thriving a 
 131 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 commerce became a centre of manufactur 
 ing industry also. There were several con 
 siderable foundries and machine shops there ; 
 an extensive shipyard ; two great breweries ; 
 several flour mills of large capacity ; many 
 cooper-shops, planing mills, starch factories, 
 lath works and a score or more of shops for 
 minor manufacturing. 
 
 Greatest of all the town s industries in 
 importance was pork packing. During the 
 Crimean war Madison was indeed the most 
 important seat of the pork packing industry 
 in all the world. 
 
 As wealth abounded in the town, luxury 
 was there also. Residences were built, some 
 of which would be accounted fine even in 
 our large cities of to-day, and life there took 
 on aspects of ease and serenity which strongly 
 impressed the minds of us two Hoosier 
 boys, who had seen nothing of the kind be 
 fore. The city was beautiful, with its broad, 
 well shaded and smoothly graveled streets, 
 and with well ornamented grounds surround- 
 132 
 
Madison and New Conditions 
 
 ing all the best houses. In brief, I may say 
 truly that Madison, with its population of 
 eight or ten thousand souls, wore the aspect 
 of a real city, as no other town north of the 
 Ohio and west of Cincinnati could then pre 
 tend to do. It alone looked like a city 
 assuredly prosperous, and nowhere shabby 
 with any appearance of raw newness. It 
 alone of all the towns in Indiana had great 
 banking houses of its own to support its 
 commerce and its industries. Notable among 
 these banking houses at that time was that 
 of Winslow, Lanier & Co., which, when the 
 trade of Madison fell into decay, removed 
 to New York and became a recognized 
 financial power in the metropolis. 
 
 As has been said already, Madison was 
 just beginning to decline in trade and impor 
 tance at the time of our removal to the city, 
 and the decay proceeded rapidly during our 
 stay there and afterwards. Other railroads 
 were building from Indianapolis to Cincin 
 nati and Louisville, while still others were 
 
 133 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 stretching their lines toward St. Louis, 
 Chicago, and from Indianapolis eastwardly 
 to connect with railroads leading to New 
 York, Philadelphia and Baltimore. 
 
 All these lines tended to rob Madison 
 of its business. They diverted its trade to 
 other and greater centres. They deprived 
 the little city of the one advantage it had 
 possessed. They took away its one reason 
 for being, as a commercial and industrial 
 town. 
 
 The decay was rapid. The imposing 
 row of commission houses and their kind 
 that fronted the river, were closed in a suc 
 cession so rapid as to be almost startling. 
 The wholesale houses farther from the river, 
 which had enjoyed a great trade in dry 
 goods, groceries, hardware, iron and nails, 
 crockery, cordage and other staples of com 
 merce, presently followed the example thus 
 set. Within a year after we boys first knew 
 the town, scarcely one of these establishments 
 remained actively open. The few that still 
 
 134 
 
Madison and New Conditions 
 
 maintained a pretence of being in business 
 did so chiefly because their owners had made 
 comfortable fortunes, liked Madison as a 
 place of residence, and enjoyed having in 
 their stores and offices pleasant places in 
 which to pass the daylight hours in converse 
 with their friends. 
 
 But if Madison thus ceased to be a 
 thriving seat of commerce and industry, ft 
 continued to be the chief centre of the cul 
 ture, the intellectual activity, and the social 
 refinement of Southern Indiana. I have 
 before me as I write a long list, which I for 
 bear to copy, of men who made Madison or 
 its near neighborhood their home at that 
 time, and who were conspicuously distin 
 guished in State and nation for their abili 
 ties, their culture and their intellectual 
 achievements. 
 
 Add to all these things the fact that the 
 
 little city is surrounded by scenery of rare 
 
 beauty and interest, and that it lies in a 
 
 region richer, I think, than any other in all 
 
 135 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 that part of the country, in geological forma 
 tions of a kind likely to awaken the interest 
 and enthusiasm of an eager boy, and the 
 reader will understand how great a part his 
 new surroundings played in the development 
 of Edward Eggleston s mind and character. 
 
 Another advantage which our removal 
 to Madison brought to Edward was a closer 
 contact than he had ever before enjoyed with 
 a man whose high character and richly 
 dowered intellect made association with him 
 a circumstance of the utmost consequence to 
 such a boy as Edward was. 
 
 For what has need to be said concerning 
 that gifted man and his influence, another 
 chapter must be opened. Meanwhile I com 
 plete this one by saying that the only school 
 Edward attended during our stay in Madi 
 son, was one in which education was con 
 ducted upon the old and very brutal " knock 
 down and drag out" system. 
 
 There were two boys schools of that 
 kind in the town, each presided over by a 
 136 
 
Madison and New Conditions 
 
 man of adequate scholarship, but of almost 
 demoniacal ferocity in discipline. As there 
 was no other school in the town sufficiently 
 advanced in its curriculum, Edward and I 
 were sent to one of these. 
 
 Neither of us was ever made the victim 
 of the brutality which dominated the school. 
 I rejoice in that fact now, because I firmly 
 intended then, and I am sure I should have 
 carried out my purpose, to kill the teacher 
 if he should ever horsewhip either Edward 
 or myself in the bloodthirsty way in which 
 he daily flogged other boys. It is a comfort 
 to me that I escaped the deliberately antici 
 pated necessity of committing homicide. 
 
 After the usual month or two of attend 
 ance upon this school, Edward fell ill again 
 made so, as he assured me in later years, 
 chiefly by the nervous distress he suffered 
 from the daily and hourly sight of the brutal 
 ities inflicted upon his schoolmates. 
 
 Long years afterward after he had 
 made his own name famous Edward visited 
 137 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 Madison, and while there declined the most 
 important reception tendered to him, solely 
 because he had learned that the teacher of that 
 school " the keeper of that shambles" Ed 
 ward called him, was still living and was to 
 be one of the guests upon the occasion. 
 
 "I simply couldn t face that man, Geor- 
 die," he said to me when telling me of the 
 matter. " The very thought of him filled 
 me with the old-time terror." 
 
 Fortunately there presently came to 
 Madison a system of graded schools, which 
 at once made an end of the two " English and 
 classical academies " that had so long sur 
 vived as evil relics of the savage age in 
 pedagogy. 
 
 The graded school system was fortu 
 nately organized and presided over by an 
 educator of rare wisdom and humane mind, 
 a Mr. Barnes. I know not whether he still 
 lives or not, but to him, or to his memory as 
 the case may be, I rejoice to pay a tribute of 
 deserved gratitude. 
 
 138 
 

 
 Madison and New Conditions 
 
 Edward did not at any time attend the 
 graded schools in Madison. His health did 
 not permit that, but after his customary 
 fashion he diligently prosecuted his studies 
 on his own account and made more rapid 
 progress than he would have made had he 
 been one of a class in school. 
 
 139 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Two Great Educators. 
 
 HE man referred to in the preced 
 ing chapter as exercising a pecu 
 liarly wholesome influence upon 
 Edward Eggleston s mind and 
 character at this period of his boyhood, was 
 Guilford Dudley Eggleston. 
 
 I have never known a man who more 
 perfectly satisfied the highest ideals I can 
 form of manhood in its perfection than this 
 somewhat distant kinsman of ours did. He 
 was the son of our father s first cousin, 
 Judge Myles Gary Eggleston, who was in 
 his time one of the most learned and most 
 distinguished jurists in all the region west 
 of the Alleghenies. Our cousin Guilford 
 had been educated in the best schools and 
 colleges of his time, and, being a man of 
 sufficient means, he had employed his abun- 
 J40 
 
Two Great Educators 
 
 dant leisure in adding to his scholarship all 
 that wisely directed reading, conscientiously 
 liberal thinking, and more of travel and 
 contact with intellectual men than was com 
 mon at that time, could bring to a man of 
 superior intellectual and moral character. 
 
 Better still, he was a man of unusual 
 spiritual qualities that fascinated all with 
 whom he came in contact and made him one 
 of the best beloved of men. Sunny in 
 temper, inimitably kindly and affectionate, 
 abounding in healthful animal spirits, full of 
 a humor that seemed to caress while it 
 amused, he was an optimist who brought 
 about the good that he so confidently hoped 
 for. 
 
 From our earliest childhood this kins 
 man of ours had been Edward s ideal man 
 and mine. His comings to our home were to 
 us the gladdest of all happenings. From 
 the moment of his coming to the hour of his 
 departure we were in an ecstatic state of 
 limitless joy. He made himself our com- 
 141 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 panion, our ceaseless entertainer, and, with 
 out our knowing the fact, our wisest teacher. 
 
 Our return to Madison brought Edward 
 directly and constantly under this man s 
 influence and guidance. Edward was only 
 about fourteen years old at the time, but his 
 intellectual activity was already remarkable. 
 Apart from his studies, he was reading vora 
 ciously in departments of literature and his 
 tory which usually offer no attraction to 
 boys of that age. When Col. Michael C. 
 Garber, editor of the Madison Courier, 
 offered a prize for the best essay that might 
 be submitted to him for publication, Edward 
 easily secured the award and immediately 
 set himself down to read and love the poems 
 of William Cullen Bryant, a good edition 
 of which constituted the prize he had won. 
 
 He had already become enamored of 
 Longfellow, but Pope had been, until that 
 time, his favorite poet, perhaps because, in 
 the " Essay on Man," the little poem on Soli 
 tude and some others, Pope strongly ap- 
 
 142 
 
Two Great Educators 
 
 pealed to the philosophical side of the medi 
 tative boy s nature. 
 
 He was fond of reading Burke, too, and 
 Addison and Steele. He even read the 
 elder Mill and Bentham, and much else of 
 like character. 
 
 But his reading was self-directed, and 
 not always wisely so. His habit of believing 
 "that which is written" sometimes misled 
 him through the influence of unsound writers 
 and untrustworthy thinkers. 
 
 Our kinsman interested himself to cor 
 rect this, and to guide both the studies and 
 the intellectual exercises of the boy into 
 profitable channels. He chose Edward s 
 books for him, lending many from his own 
 well-equipped library, some of them books 
 to which otherwise the boy would not have 
 had access. 
 
 Better still, this wise and most gentle 
 
 mentor taught Edward how to think. He 
 
 was at pains to correct the habit of too 
 
 ready acceptance, to awaken in his pupil that 
 
 143 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 intellectual independence without which read 
 ing is apt to be worse than profitless. He 
 taught the boy to doubt, to question, to 
 compare, to investigate, and to reason. He 
 "breathed into his nostrils the breath of 
 life." 
 
 And while thus educating the boy s 
 mind, he was at equal pains to train his 
 character. He laughed him out of a certain 
 unwholesome asceticism which the ignorant 
 dogmatism of a narrow religious teaching 
 had bred in him. In a word, the wholesome 
 influence of this man did more than all else 
 at that time to bring moral and intellectual 
 health to the boy, to enliven his life and 
 strengthen all that was best in his nature, 
 while repressing and correcting every ten 
 dency to morbidity of mind or spirit. 
 
 Speaking of this period of his boyhood 
 in later life, Edward once said: 
 
 " I didn t suspect that Guilford was try 
 ing to teach me or even to influence me. I 
 never found that out until after I became a 
 
 144 
 
Two Great Educators 
 
 man of middle age. At the time I thought 
 he was merely trying, in his genial fashion, to 
 make himself entertaining." 
 
 Edward was destined soon to be sepa 
 rated for a time from this close companion 
 ship with a mind and character so rare, but 
 the separation brought him under another 
 influence of like kind which was not less 
 profitable to him. 
 
 After two years in Madison Mr. Terrell 
 accepted an appointment under the Ameri 
 can Bible Society, which required him to 
 travel almost continually. Presently, there 
 fore, the family was removed again to the 
 old home in Vevay, and there Edward and I 
 attended the newly established High School, 
 presided over by Mrs. Julia L. Dumont, the 
 wisest woman and the most successful teacher 
 I have ever known. Elsewhere in this vol 
 ume I have called her a Dr. Arnold in petti 
 coats, but she was more even than that. 
 Her gift of mastery over young minds was 
 an inspiration, her sympathy with youthful 
 
 145 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 thought and feeling was a sixth sense. Indeed 
 her gift and her practice of encouraging 
 pupils, was looked upon by many parents at 
 that time as dangerous in tendency. To 
 those who had been trained in the severities 
 of an older and ruder time, praise for a pupil 
 seemed a perilous throwing down of the 
 bars of discipline. It was feared also that 
 commendation might breed vanity and self- 
 conceit of a kind to endanger the salvation 
 of souls. 
 
 The graded school system was less suc 
 cessful in Vevay than had been hoped, and 
 Mrs. Dumont who taught solely because 
 she loved the work and not at all because 
 she needed to do so, opened a little school 
 of her own, sharply limiting it to ten boys 
 "My ten boys" she called us. 
 
 How she conducted school, what 
 methods she employed and what results she 
 attained, Edward has himself related in 
 print, in a fashion which I cannot hope to 
 improve upon by any writing of my own. 
 146 
 
Two Great Educators 
 
 His account of this gifted teacher was 
 part of an article published in Scribner s 
 Monthly, now The Century Magazine, 
 for March, 1879. I am indebted to the 
 courtesy of the Century Company, and of 
 Dr. Richard Watson Gilder, the editor of 
 the magazine, for a generous permission to 
 copy here so much of the article as I wish. 
 I copy all that part of it which relates to 
 Mrs. Dumont. 
 
 "We had one teacher who was, so far 
 as natural genius for teaching goes, the best 
 of all I have ever known. Mrs. Julia L. 
 Dumont is, like all our Western writers of 
 that day, except Prentice, almost entirely 
 forgotten. But in the time before railways, 
 when the West, shut in by the Alleghenies, 
 had an incipient literature, Mrs. Dumont 
 occupied no mean place as a writer of poetry 
 and prose tales. Eminent litterateurs of the 
 time, from Philadelphia and Cincinnati, used 
 to come to Vevay to see her; but they them 
 selves these great lights of ancient Ameri- 
 
 147 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 can literature away back in the forties are 
 also forgotten. Who remembers Gallagher 
 and the rest to-day? Dear brethren, who, 
 like myself, scratch away to fill up magazine 
 pages, and who, no doubt, like myself, are 
 famous enough to be asked for an autograph 
 or a sentiment in an album sometimes, let 
 us not boast ourselves. Why, indeed, 
 should the spirit of mortal be proud? We 
 also shall be forgotten the next generation 
 of school girls will get their autographs 
 from a set of upstarts, who will smile at our 
 stories and poems as out of date puerilities. 
 Some industrious Allibone, making a ceme 
 tery of dead authors, may give us in his dic 
 tionary three lines apiece as a sort of head 
 stone. Oh, let us be humble, and pray that 
 even the Allibone that is to come do not 
 forget us. For I look in vain in Allibone 
 for some of the favorite names in our West 
 ern Parnassus. It was not enough that the 
 East swallowed that incipient literature, it 
 even obliterated the memory of it. * * 
 148 
 
Two Great Educators 
 
 " Among those who have been so swiftly 
 forgotten as not even to have a place in Alii- 
 bone, is my old and once locally famous 
 teacher, Mrs. Dumont. We thought her 
 poem on The Retreat of the Ten Thous 
 and admirable, but we were partial judges. 
 Her story of Boonesborough was highly 
 praised by the great lights of the time. But 
 her book of stories is out of print,* and her 
 poems are forgotten, and so are the great 
 lights who admired them. I do not pretend 
 that there was enough in these w 7 ritings to 
 have made them deserve a different fate. 
 Ninety-nine-hundredths of all good literary 
 production must of necessity be forgotten ; 
 if the old trees endured forever there would 
 be no room for the new shoots. 
 
 "But as a schoolmistress Mrs. Dumont 
 deserves immortality. She knew nothing of 
 systems, but she went unerringly to the goal 
 by pure force of native genius. In all her 
 early life she taught because she was poor, 
 but after her husband s increasing property 
 149 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 relieved her from necessity, she still taught 
 school from love of it. When she was past 
 sixty years old, a school-room was built 
 for her alongside her residence, which was 
 one of the best in the town. It was here 
 that I first knew her, after she had already 
 taught two generations in the place. The 
 4 graded schools had been newly intro 
 duced, and no man was found who could, 
 either in acquirements or ability, take prece 
 dence of the venerable schoolmistress; so 
 the High School was given to her. 
 
 " I can see the wonderful old lady now, 
 as she was then, with her cape pinned awry, 
 rocking her splint-bottom chair nervously 
 while she talked. Full of all manner of 
 knowledge, gifted with something very like 
 eloquence in speech, abounding in affection 
 for her pupils and enthusiasm in teaching, 
 she moved us strangely. Being infatuated 
 with her, we became fanatic in our pursuit 
 of knowledge, so that the school hours were 
 not enough, and we had a lyceum in the 
 150 
 
Two Great Educators 
 
 evening for reading compositions and a club 
 for the study of history. If a recitation be 
 came very interesting, the entire school would 
 sometimes be drawn into the discussion of 
 the subject; all other lessons went to the 
 wall, books of reference were brought out 
 of her library, hours were consumed, and 
 many a time the school session was prolonged 
 until darkness forced us reluctantly to ad 
 journ. 
 
 u Mrs. Dumont was the ideal of a teacher 
 because she succeeded in forming character. 
 She gave her pupils unstinted praise, not hypo 
 critically, but because she lovingly saw the 
 best in every one. We worked in the sunshine. 
 A dull but industrious pupil was praised for 
 diligence, a bright pupil for ability, a good 
 one for general excellence. The dullards 
 got more than their share, for, knowing how 
 easily such an one is disheartened, Mrs. 
 Dumont went out of her way to praise the 
 first show of success in a slow scholar. 
 She treated no two alike. She was full of all 
 151 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 sorts of knack and tact, a person of infinite 
 resource for calling out the human spirit. 
 She could be incredibly severe when it was 
 needful, and no overgrown boy w 7 hose mean 
 ness had once been analyzed by Mrs. Dumont 
 ever forgot it. 
 
 " I remember one boy with whom she 
 had taken some pains. One day he wrote an 
 insulting word about one of the girls of the 
 school on the door of a deserted house. 
 Two of us were deputized by the other boys 
 to defend the girl by complaining of him. 
 Mrs. Dumont took her seat and began to 
 talk to him before the school. The talking 
 was all there was of it, but I think I never 
 pitied any human being more than I did that 
 boy as she showed him his vulgarity and his 
 meanness, and as, at last, in the climax of 
 her indignation, she called him * a miserable 
 hawbuck. At another time, when she had 
 picked a piece of paper from the floor with 
 a bit of profanity written on it, she talked 
 about it until the whole school detected the 
 
 152 
 
Two Great Educators 
 
 author by the beads of perspiration on his 
 forehead. 
 
 "When I had written a composition on 
 The Human Mind, based on Combe s 
 Phrenology, and adorned with quotations 
 from Pope s Essay on Man, she gave me to 
 read an old Encyclopedia Britannica, con 
 taining an article expounding the Hartleian 
 system of mental philosophy, and followed 
 this with Locke on the Conduct of the 
 Understanding. She was the only teacher I 
 have known who understood that school 
 studies were entirely secondary to general 
 reading as a source of culture, and who put 
 the habit of good reading first in the list of 
 acquirements. 
 
 " There was a rack for hats and cloaks 
 so arranged as to cut off a portion of the 
 school from the teacher s sight. Some of 
 the larger girls who occupied this space took 
 advantage of their concealed position to do 
 a great deal of talking and tittering, which 
 did not escape Mrs. Dumont s watchfulness. 
 153 
 
The Fi. sc oi The Hoosiers 
 
 But in the extreme corner of the room was 
 
 the seat of Drusilla H , who had never 
 
 violated a rule of the school. To reprimand 
 the others while excepting her would have 
 excited jealousy and complaints. The girls 
 who sat in that part of the room were de 
 tained after school and treated to one of 
 Mrs. Dumont s tender but caustic lectures 
 on the dishonorableness of secret ill-doing. 
 Drusilla bore silently her share of the 
 reproof. But at the last the schoolmistress 
 said : 
 
 " Now, my dears, it may be that there 
 is some one among you not guilty of mis 
 conduct. If there is, I know I can trust you 
 to tell me who is not to blame. 
 
 " Drusilla never talks, they all said at 
 once, while Drusilla, girl like, fell to crying. 
 
 "But the most remarkable illustration 
 of Mrs. Dumont s skill in matters of disci 
 pline was shown in a case in which all the 
 boys of the school were involved, and were 
 for a short time thrown into antagonism to 
 154 
 
Two Great Educators 
 
 a teacher whose ascendency over them had 
 been complete. 
 
 "We were playing townball on the 
 common, at a long distance from the school 
 room. Townball is one of the old games 
 from which the more scientific but not half 
 so amusing national game of baseball has 
 since been evolved. In that day the national 
 game was not thought of. Eastern youth 
 played field-base, and Western boys town- 
 ball, in a free and happy way, with soft balls, 
 primitive bats, and no nonsense. There were 
 no scores, but a catch or a cross-out in town- 
 ball put the whole side out, leaving the others 
 to take the bat or paddle, as it was appro 
 priately called. The very looseness of the 
 game gave opportunity for many ludicrous 
 mischances and surprising turns, which made 
 it a most joyous play. 
 
 " Either because the wind was blowing 
 
 adversely, or because the play was more than 
 
 commonly interesting, we failed to hear the 
 
 ringing of Mrs. Dumont s bell at one o clock. 
 
 155 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 The afternoon wore on until more than an 
 hour of school time had passed, when 
 some one suddenly bethought himself. We 
 dropped the game and started, pell-mell, full 
 of consternation, for the school-room. We 
 would at that moment have preferred to face 
 an angry schoolmaster, with his beechen rod, 
 than to have offended one whom we rever 
 enced so much. The girls all sat in their 
 places ; the teacher was sitting, silent and 
 awful, in her rocking-chair; in the hour and 
 a half no lessons had been recited. We 
 shuffled into our seats and awaited the storm. 
 It was the High School, and the boys were 
 mostly fifteen or sixteen years of age, but 
 the schoolmistress had never a rod in the 
 room. Such weapons are for people of 
 fewer resources than she. Very quietly she 
 talked to us, but with great emphasis. She 
 gave no chance for explanation or apology. 
 She was hopelessly hurt and offended. We 
 had humiliated her before the whole town, 
 she said. She should take away from us the 
 156 
 
Two Great Educators 
 
 morning and afternoon recess for a week. 
 She would demand an explanation from us 
 to-morrow. 
 
 " It was not possible that a company of 
 boys could be kept for half an hour in such 
 a moral sweat-box as that to which she treated 
 us without growing angry. When school 
 was dismissed we held a running indigna 
 tion meeting, as we walked toward home. 
 Of course, we all spoke at once. But after 
 awhile the more moderate saw that the 
 teacher had some reason. Nevertheless, one 
 boy* was appointed to draft a written reply 
 that should set forth our injured feelings. I 
 remember in what perplexity that committee 
 found himself. With every hour he felt more 
 and more that the teacher was right and the 
 boys wrong, and that by the next morning 
 the reviving affection of the scholars for the 
 beloved and venerated schoolmistress would 
 
 *The " one boy " thus commissioned was Edward Eggleston, though his 
 modesty forbade him to say so. He was recognized as morally and intellec 
 tually the superior of all of us the captain of the school in all matters involv 
 ing brains or character, AUTHOR. 
 
 157 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 cause them to appreciate this. So that the 
 address which was presented for their signa 
 tures did not breathe much indignation. I 
 can almost recall every word of that some 
 what pompous but very sincere petition. It 
 was about as I give it here: 
 
 Honored Madam : 
 
 In regard to our offence of yesterday, we beg that you 
 will do us the justice to believe that it was not intentional. 
 We do not ask you to remit the punishment you have inflicted 
 in taking away our recess, but we do ask you to remit the 
 heavier penalty we have incurred, your own displeasure. 
 
 "The boys all willingly signed this 
 except one, who was perhaps the only con 
 scious offender in the party. He confessed 
 that he had observed that the sun was get- 
 ing a little slanting while we were at play, but 
 as his side had the paddles, he did not say 
 anything until they were put out. The un 
 willing boy wanted more indignation in the 
 address, and he wanted the recess back. 
 But when all the others had signed he did 
 not dare leave his name off, but put it at the 
 bottom of the list. 
 
 158 
 
EDWARD EGGLESTON IN 1865 
 
Two Great Educators 
 
 "With trembling hands we gave the 
 paper to the schoolmistress. How some 
 teachers would have used such a paper as a 
 means of further humiliation to the offenders ! 
 How few could have used it as she did ! The 
 morning wore on without recess. The les 
 sons were heard as usual. As the noon hour 
 drew near Mrs. Dumont rose from her chair 
 and went into the library. We all felt that 
 something was going to happen. She came 
 out with a copy of Shakespeare, which she 
 opened at the fourth scene of the fourth act 
 of the second part of King Henry IV. 
 Giving the book to my next neighbor and 
 myself, she bade us read the scene, alter 
 nating with the change of speaker. You 
 remember the famous dialogue in that scene 
 between the dying king and the prince who 
 has prematurely taken the crown from the 
 bedside of the sleeping king. It was all 
 wonderfully fresh to us and to our school 
 mates, whose interest was divided between 
 the scene and a curiosity as to the use the 
 159 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 teacher meant to make of it. At length the 
 reader who took the king s part read: 
 
 O my son ! 
 
 Heaven put it in thy mind to take it hence, 
 That thou mightst win the more thy father s love, 
 Pleading so wisely in excuse of it. 
 
 " Then she took the book and closed it. 
 The application was evident to all, but she 
 made us a touching little speech, full of 
 affection, and afterward restored the recess. 
 She detained the girls after we had gone, to 
 read to them the address, that she might 
 show them what noble brothers they had. 
 Without doubt she made overmuch of our 
 nobleness. But no one knew better than 
 Mrs. Dumont that the surest way of evoking 
 the best in man or boy is to make the most 
 of the earliest symptoms of it. From that 
 hour our schoolmistress had our whole hearts ; 
 we loved her and reverenced her ; we were 
 thoughtless enough, but for the most of us 
 her half-suspected wish was a supreme law. 
 
 " So, after all, it does not matter that the 
 
 360 
 
Two Great Educators 
 
 world no longer reads her stories or remem 
 bers her poems. Her life always seemed to 
 me a poem, or something better than a 
 poem." 
 
 At the risk of seeming intrusive, I ven 
 ture to add to Edward s reminiscences of 
 Mrs. Dumont, one of my own. I do so 
 because the incident I have to relate addi 
 tionally illustrates Mrs. Dumont s peculiar 
 gift of seeing, in each case, to what motive 
 the strongest appeal could be made. 
 
 Until I came under her instruction, I 
 had not been able to learn to write. All my 
 previous teachers had failed to teach me 
 even the rudiments of that art. One after 
 another of them had abandoned the effort 
 in disgust, convinced that there was a natu 
 ral inaptitude on my part which no effort 
 could overcome. In addition to the instruc 
 tion given me in ordinary schools, I had been 
 placed successively under the tuition of sev 
 eral peripatetic writing masters who had 
 come our way, but all to no purpose. Do 
 161 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 what they would I could not learn to write. 
 I could not myself read my own manuscript 
 after it had "grown cold." The pen, as my 
 teachers made me hold it, was as unwieldy in 
 my grasp as a cord-wood stick or a fence 
 rail. I could do nothing with it. 
 
 My latest writing master was still in 
 town, achieving distinction by teaching all 
 the young people, and some of their elders, 
 to make u hair lines "for their up strokes 
 and heavily shaded ones for down strokes, 
 and to decorate their paper with elaborately 
 meaningless "flourishes." He had made a 
 positively desperate attempt to teach me to 
 write. He had tied up my fingers with blue 
 ribbons to compel me to hold my pen cor 
 rectly. He had written the word u miserable " 
 across each page of my copy-book empha 
 sizing his criticism by even more elaborate 
 flourishes than usual. He had called me 
 "dunce," " booby " and other pet names of 
 like sort, and finally he had dismissed me 
 from his school, sending my mother a letter, 
 162 
 
Two G r e a t Educators 
 
 in which he assured her that it was useless to 
 make any further effort to teach me an art 
 which I was wholly incapable of learning. 
 
 I suppose that Mrs. Dumont had been 
 informed of all this. At any rate, when I 
 asked her to excuse me from all writing 
 exercises, she assumed a look of admiring 
 astonishment and asked: 
 
 "Why, has Mr. Wilson (the writing 
 master) taught you to write so well that you 
 can learn no more? He must be a wonder 
 ful teacher!" 
 
 Only the pride and resolution of a 
 sturdy boy kept back the tears as I answered, 
 in deep humiliation : 
 
 u No, Mrs. Dumont, I can never learn 
 
 to write." 
 
 " Who says that? " she asked, quietly. 
 
 u Mr. Wilson and and every teacher I 
 ever had." 
 
 u Let me look at your hand, George," 
 she gently said, and I held it out for inspec 
 tion. She seemed to study it closely, manip- 
 
 163 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 ulating the lingers one after another. Then 
 she said: 
 
 u I hear that you are the best marble 
 player in town. Is that so ? " 
 
 My pockets at that moment were bulg 
 ing with a multitude of marbles which I had 
 recently won, and I pleaded guilty to a 
 degree of skill in that sport which made it 
 risky for any boy to try conclusions with me 
 in a game of " keeps." 
 
 "And yet Mr. Wilson says you cannot 
 learn to write ? Perhaps he called you a 
 booby, too?" 
 
 u Yes," I answered, " and a dunce. " 
 
 " Perhaps he tied up your fingers in 
 blue ribbons to make you hold the pen in 
 his way? " 
 
 I was well nigh appalled by this exhibi 
 tion of mind reading, but I managed to 
 answer that he had done precisely as she 
 had said. 
 
 "Well, now, George," she said, in her 
 peculiarly caressing voice, "you and I are 
 164 
 
Two Great Educators 
 
 going to find out who is the booby in this 
 case you, who can learn anything you please, 
 or a writing master who doesn t know that 
 a boy who can play marbles can be taught to 
 write. Now, I ll tell you what you and I are 
 going to do. I am going to teach you to 
 write a clear, legible arfd sensible hand ; and 
 two weeks from to-day don t forget to 
 remind me of the date two weeks from to 
 day you are going to write a letter to Mr. 
 Wilson. I will dictate it, and you shall 
 write it and sign it. When he gets it he 
 too will know who the booby is." 
 
 That wise woman s battle was won. No 
 teacher had ever talked to me in any such 
 way as that. None had ever so aroused my 
 ambition. In that hour I made up my mind 
 that I would learn to write, and to write well, 
 if I had to give all my nights and days to the 
 task. Mrs. Dumont believed in me; her faith 
 should not be disappointed. She had only 
 to tell me what to do and how, and I would 
 do it, even if it involved physical torture. 
 165 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 And how wisely she set to work to 
 teach me ! First of all she told me that all 
 "flourishing" in writing was a silly thing, 
 not only useless but positively harmful, in 
 that it interfered with legibility. Secondly, 
 she ridiculed the idea, beloved of writing 
 masters, that the up strokes should be " hair 
 lines," and the down strokes heavily shaded. 
 
 " Why is not one part of a letter as im 
 portant as any other part?" she asked. 
 Then she explained to me that the object 
 one has in view in writing is to set down the 
 words in such a way that other people may 
 read what you have written; that absolute 
 legibility is the first and chief virtue of a 
 handwriting, and that the only other thing 
 to be sought after is facility the ability to 
 write rapidly and easily. 
 
 This instruction gave me a totally new 
 conception of the art I was set to learn, and 
 a very helpful conception it was, particularly 
 after I observed how beautiful my teacher s 
 handwriting was in its absolute simplicity. 
 166 
 
Two Great Educators 
 
 " Now, to begin with," she said, when I 
 took my first writing lesson at her hands, 
 "you are to hold the pen in the way that 
 seems most natural to you the way which 
 best enables you to make the marks you 
 intend." 
 
 I welcomed this permission and grasped 
 my pen in a peculiarly awkward way. 
 
 "You do hold a pen rather queerly," 
 she said. " But never mind that now. We ll 
 correct that little by little as we go on. At 
 present you are going to learn to write legi 
 bly, giving no heed to anything else." 
 
 To my utter astonishment I could read 
 the lines I wrote for my first lesson. With 
 in three or four days my handwriting began 
 to look like Mrs. Dumont s own, and by 
 the end of the appointed two weeks this 
 resemblance had become so close that the 
 two were distinguishable only by the greater 
 certainty and precision of form that marked 
 hers. 
 
 Then came the letter to Mr. Wilson. 
 167 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 It ran somewhat as follows for I think I 
 remember almost verbatim a missive which 
 it gave me boundless joy to write at my 
 teacher s dictation: 
 
 " Dear Sir : 
 
 I am writing this letter at the dictation of my teacher, 
 Mrs. Dumont. Mrs. Dumont thinks you should be pleased 
 to see that, after two weeks of instruction, I have learned to 
 write a legible and sensible hand, and that I am not quite 
 so hopeless a booby as you thought me." 
 
 I begged permission to insert the word 
 " intelligent" before the word u instruction," 
 but my teacher said me nay. 
 
 " He will be sufficiently taught by the 
 letter as it stands," she explained. 
 
 168 
 
u 
 
 m 
 
 iXvJ 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 The Formative Period. 
 
 NDER the influences described in 
 the last preceding chapter, Ed 
 ward s mind developed rapidly. 
 His extensive reading of the best 
 books, and, still more, his intimacy with two 
 such minds as Guilford Eggleston sand Mrs. 
 Dumont s, could not fail to aid and hasten 
 the intellectual and moral development of 
 a boy so gifted and so earnest as he. 
 
 The results are easily enough under 
 stood, but they were somewhat paradoxical. 
 Edward at one and the same time grew 
 much older and much younger than he had 
 been. In his thinking he became more 
 mature than before ; in his spirit he grew 
 far more boyish than he had ever been. 
 
 Under spur of the ascetic religious 
 teaching he had received from the pulpit 
 
 169 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 utterances of men whose oratorical exag 
 gerations he took in their literal sense, Ed 
 ward had become positively morbid in his 
 conscientiousness, during his early youth. 
 As an illustration, I remember that at one 
 time when he had attained the ripe age of 
 eleven he suddenly began a rigid suppres 
 sion of conversational gifts which were ex 
 tremely good in one so young. Often he 
 would remain silent for hours. When he 
 talked at all he stripped his sentences of 
 every word that could be spared, and spoke 
 only of serious and solemn things. His 
 natural impulse to lightness in conversation 
 was repressed. His humor, which was 
 always the delight of his companions, was 
 kept under a restraint as severe as if he had 
 been a monk in a season of "retreat." 
 
 Against all this the thoughtless young 
 ster who writes these lines out of a gray- 
 haired memory violently revolted. I wanted 
 my brother back. I wanted to hear him 
 talk. I wanted the smiles on my own 
 170 
 
The Formative Period 
 
 face that his- humor always engraved there. 
 I wanted to be in touch with his natu 
 rally genial and jovial spirit again. So I 
 challenged him to tell me why he had sud 
 denly become so restrained in speech. For 
 answer he opened the New Testament and 
 showed me the passage which reads: 
 
 " But I say unto you, That every idle 
 word that men shall speak, they shall give 
 account thereof in the day of judgment." 
 
 After the fashion of that time he had 
 taken that passage literally, as he took, and 
 as the preachers insisted upon taking every 
 other passage of the Scriptures. And by 
 "idle words" he understood the text to 
 mean all unnecessary words. 
 
 In those days well-ordered young per 
 sons were carefully taught to say "yes, 
 ma am " and " no, ma am," "yes, sir" and 
 "no, sir"; but Edward s spiritual eye was 
 fixed upon " the day of judgment," and in 
 fear of that he resolutely dropped the 
 "ma am" and "sir," as "idle words" for 
 171 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 which, if he spoke them, he must give an 
 account at that dread time. 
 
 In brief, Edward was beset in his boy 
 hood by that " lust after perfection," of 
 which he afterwards pointed out the evil 
 consequences in his novel of New York life, 
 u The Faith Doctor," calling it "the realest 
 peril of great souls." 
 
 Indeed, his condition of mind and soul 
 for a time was the original from which in 
 later, maturer, and more enlightened years, he 
 drew the portrait of Phillida, the devotee 
 heroine of that novel. 
 
 The influence of Guilford Eggleston 
 and Mrs. Dumont corrected all this, and 
 Edward learned of them a wiser and a- more 
 wholesome philosophy of life than that which 
 the half-baked theology of that time had 
 taught him. He learned of them a better 
 gospel than that of asceticism. He grew 
 healthier of mind, and with that change 
 came a greater bodily health. He was still 
 lacking in physical robustness, but he had 
 172 
 
The Formative Period 
 
 learned that it was his right to enjoy and to 
 exercise such physical capacities as were his. 
 The first result of this was that his 
 health did not break down under school 
 work as it had so often done before, though 
 he was studying harder and reading more 
 than he had ever done. The tonic adminis 
 tered to his mind was potent also in strength 
 ening his body. Feeling now that he might 
 indulge, without sin, those impulses of physi 
 cal activity which nature implants in all 
 boys for their good, Edward entered upon 
 our sports with a spirit that quickly made 
 him monarch of the playground. Others 
 of us could outrun him. Some of us could 
 throw or bat or catch a ball with greater 
 precision than he could. But we were a 
 careless, heedless crew, while he brought his 
 conscience to bear upon our playground 
 games as earnestly as he had ever done in 
 more important things. To him it seemed 
 that, having accepted a place on one or the 
 other side of a game, he was in duty and 
 173 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 conscience bound to do his very best for the 
 success of his side. We would sometimes 
 "miss" through heedlessness or a lack of 
 sufficient care in the performance of our 
 parts; he never did. If he missed at all it 
 was because he could not avoid doing so by 
 the most conscientious endeavor. If one of 
 us missed catching or batting a ball that our 
 known skill made it possible to catch or bat, 
 our comrades jeered at us as "butter rin 
 gers," or more seriously quarreled with us 
 for carelessness. But if Edward missed it 
 was understood that the catch or bat stroke 
 was beyond his utmost power to achieve. 
 
 As a consequence of this conscientious 
 ness in play, he soon came to be the first 
 boy selected whenever we "chose up" for a 
 game. We all knew that there were more 
 skilful players than he among us; but we 
 also knew that we could trust his conscien 
 tiousness of endeavor to give better results 
 in the game than our superior but carelessly 
 exercised skill could hope for. 
 174 
 
The Formative Period 
 
 His moral supremacy was even more 
 marked. In that school-boy republic all 
 were equal in their rights, of course, and 
 there was never the smallest hesitation on 
 the part of any of us in the formation or the 
 expression of an opinion. We stoutly in 
 sisted upon freedom of speech and majority 
 rule. But Edward s speech, though no freer 
 than that of any other, always carried greater 
 weight, and, if his opinion was pronounced, 
 he constituted a majority in every case. 
 
 " Seems to me we ought to do so and 
 so," one of the boys would say, " but Ed. 
 Eggleston says not, and of course he knows 
 best." 
 
 "Of course he does," the rest of us 
 would answer, and that settled the matter. 
 It was a case of MacGregor s seat being the 
 head of the table. 
 
 This supremacy of personal influence 
 was not gained by self-assertion, for there 
 was no boy in the school less given than Ed 
 ward was to assume the rights of a dictator. 
 175 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 It was solely the result of our confidence in 
 his superior judgment, and, still more im 
 portant, his absolute conscientiousness. With 
 us the wish was often father to the thought; 
 with him it never was. With us desire 
 might influence conviction; with him, we 
 knew, personal preference played no part at 
 all. And so his judgments were always final 
 and conclusive, however clamorously we 
 might contend against them in arguing the 
 matter in hand before the decision was ren 
 dered. 
 
 I remember that we were once engaged 
 in a hot discussion of this kind when Mr. 
 Dumont, the husband of our teacher, and a 
 lawyer of great distinction, drove up in his 
 buggy. He stopped the horse and held up 
 his hand for silence, and the silence instantly 
 came. 
 
 "Boys," he said, "I have a suggestion 
 to make to you. In the days of my young 
 manhood I used to attend town meetings. 
 The people were disposed to squabble some- 
 
 17G 
 
The Formative Period 
 
 times, just as you boys were doing a moment 
 ago. To prevent that the town meeting 
 always chose one man to be moderator, 
 and gave him authority to keep order and 
 decide debates. You boys ought to have a 
 moderator." 
 
 Instantly one of the boys called out: 
 
 "Oh, we don t need a moderator, Mr. 
 Dumont. We jabber and chatter as much 
 as we please, but we know all the time that 
 when Ed. Eggleston gets ready he ll decide 
 the question, and that ll end it." 
 
 Edward was meanwhile using his influ 
 ence in behalf of our culture in other ways. 
 He organized a debating society to meet in 
 that little red brick building in our grounds 
 which had formerly been our father s law 
 office, and which now served Edward and 
 me as bedroom, study room and general 
 headquarters. 
 
 Of this association he was promptly 
 made chairman, and although he was not yet 
 sixteen years old, he set to work to make of 
 177 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 the club something more than an ordinary 
 debating society. It was he that dictated 
 our choice of subjects for debate, and having 
 chosen them, he pointed out to each of the 
 debaters the books that ought to be read in 
 preparation for an intelligent discussion of 
 the subject in hand. Many of these books 
 were drawn from our mother s library by 
 all odds the richest in Vevay in the list of its 
 standard books with the single exception of 
 Mrs. Dumont s collection, which was held 
 always open to our freest use. But Edward 
 borrowed for our reading everything else 
 that could be had, and which could, by any 
 possibility, help to enlighten our minds. 
 The Presbyterian minister had a hundred 
 books or so which he freely placed at our 
 disposal, and, upon learning what we were 
 doing, Guilford Eggleston wrote to Edward, 
 commanding him to write each week, stating 
 the contemplated subjects of debate, in order 
 that he might select and send to Vevay all 
 the books in his own library that might 
 178 
 
The Formative Period 
 
 in any wise bear upon the subject under 
 discussion. 
 
 This wise and most generous mentor 
 went even further than that. Crippled as 
 he was at the time, by reason of an accident 
 involving his ankle, he made a special jour 
 ney to Vevay in order that he might talk to 
 our debating club and show us how to make 
 
 o 
 
 the most profitable use of our time in read 
 ing. Full of wisdom and discretion as he 
 was, he was equally full of good spirits, and 
 a matchless sympathy with boyish ambitions 
 for self improvement. He talked to us, not 
 from a superior height, but upon a level, 
 and perhaps no service that Edward ever 
 did to his comrades was so greatly good as 
 bringing Guilford Eggleston to talk to us. 
 
 In these endeavors to carry his com 
 rades along with him in his apprenticeship 
 to culture, Edward was mindful of the weaker 
 ones in a specially tender fashion. There was 
 one boy in the town who did not belong to 
 the school, because he was not sufficiently 
 
 179 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 educated to enter it. He was the son of an 
 Irish laborer, but he had inherited none of 
 his father s wit or shrewdness. His sisters 
 had successfully passed through Mr. Was- 
 son s school, and stood well as young women 
 of education and refinement; but poor John 
 had a certain intellectual deficiency which 
 sadly stood in his way. We boys did not 
 think of him even as a possible member of 
 our coterie. But one day he met Edward 
 and said to him: 
 
 " I love verses. Have you got any verses 
 in your club ?" 
 
 Edward answered that we had not as yet 
 taken up poetry, but that he would act upon 
 the suggestion at once and introduce some 
 exercises that should involve verse. Then 
 he summoned the rest of us and proposed 
 that we should elect John a member of our 
 circle. We instantly and almost clamor 
 ously objected. That boy was not of our 
 kind not in our class, we argued. 
 
 That is precisely the reason why we 
 180 
 
The Formative Period 
 
 should take him into our society," Edward 
 rejoined. " Fie needs our association as no 
 one of us boys needs it." 
 
 So, under the orders of our master 
 mind we took John into our society, and 
 Edward so rearranged our programs as to 
 include in each of them the recitation or the 
 reading of a certain proportion of inspiring 
 verse. 
 
 I saw John three years ago and talked 
 with him. He is an elderly man now, and, 
 while still a rather uneducated person, he is 
 a good citizen, a good husband and a good 
 father. He said to me : 
 
 " It was mighty good of you boys to 
 take me in, and that was the turning point 
 with me. Somehow, after you let me into 
 the club, I felt that I mustn t go wrong, and 
 I didn t. I remembered the verses Edward 
 used to say, about 
 
 So live, that when thy summons comes to join 
 The innumerable caravan which moves 
 To that mysterious realm where each shall take 
 His chamber in the silent halls of death, 
 
 181 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 Thou go not like the quarry slave at night, 
 Scourged to his dungeon, but sustained and soothed 
 By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave 
 Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 
 About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. 
 
 "You boys made a man of me when 
 you let me join that club. I m not much of 
 a job for such fellows to turn out, but any 
 how you made me the man I am, and God 
 only knows what I should have become if 
 you hadn t let me in." 
 
 Here surely was one of Edward Eggles- 
 ton s sheaves, of a kind which no man need 
 be ashamed to offer to the Supreme Master 
 of the Universe in proof of his harvest s 
 worthiness. 
 
 One of the results of Edward s larger 
 enlightenment at this time was that I suffered 
 at his hands the only thrashing I ever got 
 from any boy. I was accustomed to fight 
 my way through all difficulties, as the man 
 ner of Hoosier boys was. I can remember 
 only a very few of my schoolmates with 
 whom I did not, at one time or other, settle 
 182 
 
The Formative Period 
 
 a controversy by a bout with bare knuckles; 
 but as I was unusually strong, uncommonly 
 nimble, and much given to ready aggressive 
 ness in conflict, it had never happened to 
 me to get so much the worst of any battle 
 as to be compelled to cry u nough" the 
 accepted form of surrender at that time. 
 
 In his earlier boyhood, Edward had 
 adopted the non-combatant teaching of the 
 Sermon on the Mount, and had resolutely 
 abided by it, with the result that I had been 
 obliged to thrash several fellows bigger than 
 myself by way of avenging assaults made 
 upon him, which he would not himself resist. 
 But under his new instruction Edward so 
 far abandoned the practice of non-resistance 
 as to give me, on one occasion, the one good, 
 sound thrashing that I so greatly needed for 
 the chastening of my spirit. 
 
 The way of it was this. Edward and I, 
 with a school-fellow, Will Campbell, remained 
 on the ice one day, after the game of shinny 
 was done, and after all the other boys had 
 
 183 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 gone home. For some reason which I can 
 not recall, I was in a querulous, cantankerous 
 mood, and strongly disposed to pick a quar 
 rel with Will Campbell. Will was the gen- 
 tlest-natured boy in the town. I think he 
 could have whipped me easily in a stand-up 
 fight, as he was a year or so my senior and 
 very athletic, but he was by nature averse to 
 quarreling. So on this occasion he accepted 
 my taunts meekly so meekly that I wanted 
 to whip him for not whipping me. At last 
 I threatened to strike him with my shinny 
 stick. Thereupon Edward fiercely turned 
 upon me and said: 
 
 "George, if you strike Will I ll thrash 
 you." 
 
 Now I perfectly well knew that he meant 
 what he said. I also perfectly well knew 
 that if I chose to resist, I was greatly more 
 than a match for my half-invalid brother, and 
 could easily and quickly dispose of any effort 
 he might make to overcome my superior 
 strength and agility. But I knew also that 
 184 
 
The Formative Period 
 
 should Edward attack me, I would offer no 
 manner of resistance. I could no more 
 think of striking him than of striking my 
 mother. 
 
 Still his words constituted what we boys 
 called a u dare," and it was an accepted say 
 ing among us that u anybody who will take a 
 dare will steal a sheep." 
 
 I did not really want or intend to strike 
 Will Campbell with my shinny stick; but in 
 saying what he did, Edward had in effect 
 " dared" me to give the blow, and by all the 
 principles of school-boy ethics I was bound 
 to meet the "dare" halfway. So I struck 
 Will, not violently, and not even in a fashion 
 that could inflict the least pain, but with just 
 sufficient force to make the blow good as an 
 acceptance of the challenge. 
 
 Instantly Edward skated to the shore 
 and deliberately began taking off his skates. 
 Mine were already off, and as I was much 
 fleeter of foot than he, I might easily have 
 run away. But had I done that, I should 
 
 185 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 have incurred intolerable disgrace in the eyes 
 of all the boys in town. So I stood my 
 ground, and presently Edward, in righteous 
 wrath, assailed me. As I made no resist 
 ance, he soon had me on my back, while he 
 sat astride my chest, vigorously boxing my 
 ears and calling to me to say " nough." 
 That I refused to do, and to this day I am 
 unable to guess how the affair would have 
 ended, if Will Campbell had not generously 
 come to my assistance, dragging Edward 
 away. 
 
 But while I had resolutely refused to the 
 very end to cry " nough," I was sufficiently 
 conquered to answer all the moral purposes 
 that my brother had had in view. Recog 
 nizing the generosity of Will Campbell s act 
 in coming to my assistance, I held out my 
 hand to the boy and said: "I hope I didn t 
 hurt you, Will ! I didn t mean to." 
 
 He grasped my hand warmly dear, 
 great-hearted fellow that he was and so the 
 "incident was closed," as the diplomats say. 
 186 
 
The Formative Period 
 
 If the incidents related in this chapter 
 seem to any reader trivial, it must be ad 
 mitted that in themselves they are so. But 
 they are related, as everything else in this 
 most irregularly constructed book is, by way 
 of illustrating the life conditions that helped 
 in the development of Edward Eggleston s 
 mind, and at the same time showing forth 
 the native characteristics of a person who was 
 destined later to make his mark as a force in 
 American life and letters. 
 
 When the school year was over, Edward 
 served for a time as a clerk in a store, kept 
 by Mr. William Shaw, a Scotchman of high 
 and singularly lovable character, and his son, 
 a man like unto himself, who is still in active 
 life. I do not know but that I should in 
 clude Edward s association with these two 
 men of exceptional high-mindedness and 
 purity as another of the forces that helped, 
 at the formative period of his life, to mould 
 him into the man that he afterwards became. 
 I know that to the hour of his death he 
 
 187 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 lovingly cherished the memory of his asso 
 ciation with these two and with their fami 
 lies, as among the most precious of his recol 
 lections. 
 
 In some way, too, he found time at this 
 period to work gratuitously in the printing 
 office of the local newspaper, where he not 
 only learned to set type, but practiced his 
 writing gift by contributing now and then to 
 the newspaper s columns. When he did that 
 he set up his thought in type without pre 
 viously putting it on paper. All the while 
 he maintained his comradery with Mrs. 
 Dumont who, though she had ceased to be 
 his teacher, continued to be not only his 
 revered friend, but also his mentor in all 
 that pertained to his reading and thinking. 
 
 188 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 The Virginian Influence. 
 
 OTHING in the way of formative 
 influences could have been better 
 than the life of these years was as 
 a preparation for what was to fol 
 low in Edward Eggleston s moral and intel 
 lectual development. Nor could any sequel 
 to these years have been better for him than 
 that which came. 
 
 Our father s relatives in Virginia had 
 long urged that Edward should go to them 
 for a prolonged visit, and in June, 1854, 
 when he was sixteen years of age, he and 
 our only sister, four or five years his junior, 
 set out upon this first pilgrimage to the old 
 home of our people. The thirteen months 
 of their absence constituted the first separa 
 tion that had ever occurred between Edward 
 and myself. His stay in Virginia had an 
 189 
 
The First of The.Hoosiers 
 
 important educational influence upon his 
 mind, and his letters thence influenced me 
 in a way that few other things have ever 
 done. 
 
 Our father s only brother, a childless 
 man of middle age, was master of the old 
 home plantation in Amelia county, which 
 had been the family seat since 1635. There 
 all our race had been nurtured for many 
 generations. Adjoining that plantation was 
 another Eggleston seat of like age in family 
 possession. This was " Egglestetton," which 
 had been the home of Major Joseph Eggles 
 ton, of revolutionary fame, the cherished 
 second in command of Light Horse Harry 
 Lee. At the time of Edward s stay in Vir 
 ginia, this was the home of Major Joseph 
 Eggleston s descendants. These two planta 
 tions had been one at first, constituting a 
 princely domain. But when the father of 
 Major Joseph Eggleston and his brother, 
 our great-grandfather, had come of age, the 
 vast plantation had been divided between 
 190 
 
The Virginian Influence 
 
 them. Since that time neither half of it had 
 suffered any further division, so that Edward 
 found there in effect two ancestral homes 
 open to him with a welcome. But he dwelt 
 in neither of them for any considerable 
 time. He went instead to live mainly with 
 our uncle by marriage, Mr. Chastain Cocke, 
 a planter and statesman, whose home was 
 in the adjoining county of Powhatan. 
 
 Chastain Cocke was a man of unusual 
 ability and of extraordinary character. I 
 knew him well a little later, and I have cer 
 tainly never known any other man whom I 
 have reckoned his superior in those high 
 qualities of manhood which there are still 
 some of us left to revere in the name of 
 chivalry. 
 
 Never in all his life did Chastain Cocke 
 knowingly do a wrong or an injustice to any 
 human being, great or humble, black or 
 white, man, woman or child. Never in all 
 his life did he fail in an obligation or delay 
 its fulfilment one hour beyond the appointed 
 191 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 time, no matter how free he might be to 
 delay, or how much of trouble it might cost 
 him to meet his duty on time. I remember 
 one occasion when he impressed this lesson 
 of good faith on my mind in a striking way. 
 His health was very frail at the time, and 
 the weather was excessively bad, with a dis 
 tressing sleet storm on, which quickly ren 
 dered the clothing of any one venturing out 
 a coat of icy mail. 
 
 He called me to him immediately after 
 breakfast, and said to me: 
 
 "This is terrible weather, my boy, but 
 you are robust and fearless, and I am sure 
 you want to oblige me." 
 
 I promptly assured him that nothing 
 could delight me more than to render him 
 any possible service, and that, as for bad 
 weather, I rather rejoiced in braving it than 
 shrank from its discomforts. 
 
 U I am sure of that," he said, "and I 
 thank you. I want you to pick out the 
 sturdiest horse in my stables this morning, 
 
 192 
 
The Virginian Influence 
 
 mount him and ride to - ," naming a plan 
 tation thirty miles away. " When you are 
 ready I ll give you your commission." 
 
 I knew the horse I wanted an untamed 
 stallion, seventeen hands high, with the tem 
 per of a maniac and the physical endurance 
 of a locomotive. Mounted upon that beast s 
 back, booted and spurred, and additionally 
 equipped with a black-snake whip for dis 
 ciplinary purposes, I departed on my mis 
 sion, which was simply to pay to my uncle s 
 friend at the other end of the journey a few 
 hundred dollars which happened to be due 
 on that day, on a purchase of land. 
 
 When I reached my destination, after 
 galloping a trifle of the superflous enthus 
 iasm out of that superb horse, the gentle 
 man to whom I had been sent to make the 
 payment, said to me : 
 
 " Has your uncle gone quite daft ? Why 
 
 should he make you ride thirty miles through 
 
 a sleet storm like this, merely to pay me 
 
 money which he knows I don t want, and 
 
 193 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 which I couldn t go out in such weather to 
 pay out again, even if I had pressing debts 
 to meet, as I have not? Tell him for me, 
 please, never to do such a thing again. And 
 now that you re safe here, I m going to 
 keep you until the weather grows reasonable 
 again." 
 
 I agreed to deliver the message, but de 
 clined the hospitality laughingly, on the 
 ground that if that demoniacal horse were 
 left standing in a stable until the next morn 
 ing, I might not be able to ride him at all. 
 My real reason for setting out on my return 
 immediately after dinner, was that I knew how 
 anxious my good uncle would be about me 
 until I should report all well at home again. 
 
 When I stalked into the supper room 
 that evening at 8 o clock, with all my gar 
 ments frozen stiff, my uncle welcomed me 
 warmly enough to thaw them out; but he 
 bade me go to my room, sending a negro 
 boy with me, and saying : 
 
 "I will not take another mouthful of 
 194 
 
The Virginian Influence 
 
 supper until you return. The rest can go on 
 with their me.al. Nelson," (addressing the 
 head dining room servant), "take my plate 
 away. Lay a little table for your Mas 
 George and myself, and send word to Patty 
 (the cook) to prepare the very best supper 
 she can for us two." Then turning to his 
 wife, my father s sister, with that courtesy 
 with which he never failed to treat her whom 
 he had made queen of his household, he 
 said: 
 
 " Mary, my dear, you ll preside at our 
 little table, I m sure. But meanwhile please 
 make your supper, for it isn t well for you to 
 have your meals disturbed." 
 
 When we were seated at a cosy little 
 table before the fire, for I was still shivering 
 with cold after my sixty miles ride in the 
 storm, I delivered the messages that had 
 been given to me. In response my uncle 
 said, with exceeding emphasis: 
 
 u George, I should have made that ter 
 rible journey myself to-day if I had not had 
 195 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 your young man s vigor and your good will 
 to act as my substitute. Of course I knew 
 that Mr. - - did not care to have that 
 money paid to-day; but all rjiy life I have 
 made it a rule to pay every dollar I owed on 
 the precise day on which it was due, no mat 
 ter if it cost me two dollars for every one 
 dollar owed. The result of that is that my 
 name is good in every bank in Richmond 
 for any sum that I may happen to want. 
 Let me commend that rule to you. Remem 
 ber always that when you promise to pay 
 money on the 21st of a given month, your 
 creditor is entitled to expect it on that day, 
 and not on the 22d. He may have obliga 
 tions of his own to meet, and he may have 
 counted upon your prompt payment as his 
 means of meeting them. No man need 
 undertake an obligation unless he wishes to 
 do so. But having undertaken it, he is in 
 honor bound to fulfil it, no matter what 
 happens. Now, you haven t said a word 
 about it, but I know that you had to swim a 
 
 196 
 
The Virg inian Influence 
 
 swollen river twice to-day, in order to make 
 this payment for me. I did not hesitate to 
 ask you to do that in redemption of my 
 honor, because I knew the loyalty of your 
 affection. But if I had not had you for a 
 substitute, I should have made the journey 
 myself, swimming the river as a necessary 
 part of the proceeding." 
 
 How true it was that Chastain Cocke s 
 name was good in any Richmond bank for 
 any sum that he might ask for, and all be 
 cause of his life-long habit of meeting every 
 obligation in the hour of its falling due, is 
 best illustrated by the record of a certain 
 trying experience. 
 
 Besides his home plantation in Virginia, 
 he had two cotton plantations in Mississippi. 
 The two used a single gin house, and one 
 year that gin house burned, destroying the 
 whole of his cotton crop. It became neces 
 sary for him to borrow a large sum of money 
 to cover his domestic and plantation ex 
 penses until another crop should come in. 
 
 197 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 The bank in Richmond readily advanced 
 the money. 
 
 About that time a friend of his own, a 
 man of old family and high repute, who was 
 an inveterate and incurable visionary, asked 
 Chastain Cocke to endorse his paper in 
 order that he might raise the money necessary 
 to carry out one of his many wild schemes. 
 My uncle refused, upon the ground that he 
 could not regard the project as a sound one. 
 But his friend was so sure of its safety that 
 he forged Mr. Cocke s endorsement upon a 
 note for five thousand dollars. He fully in 
 tended to take up the note before it should 
 fall due, so that nobody should ever know 
 of the forgery and nobody should be harmed 
 by it. 
 
 As usually happens in such cases, the 
 enterprise failed, and one day my uncle re 
 ceived notice that a note for five thousand 
 dollars, signed by his friend and endorsed 
 by himself, would fall due within three days, 
 and that, as the drawer of the note had given 
 198 
 
The Virg inian Influence 
 
 notice of his inability to pay, the bank must 
 look to Mr. Cocke to meet the obligation. 
 
 This news came like a thunder clap out 
 of a clear sky to my uncle. He had never 
 before heard of the note in question, but he 
 promptly went to Richmond and, visiting 
 the bank, asked to see the paper. A glance 
 at it revealed the entire situation to him. 
 But the guilty man was the representative 
 of an old and highly honored family. He 
 had a wife and daughters who must suffer 
 lasting disgrace should this thing become 
 known. So my uncle decided that no expo 
 sure should be made, if by any self-sacrifice 
 he could avoid that misfortune. He said to 
 the bank officer: 
 
 u I had not expected to be called upon 
 to pay this note. I have made no prepara 
 tion for the emergency. I am already in 
 debt to the bank." 
 
 Here the bank officer interrupted him 
 to say : 
 
 "That makes no difference whatever, 
 
 199 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 Mr. Cocke. You can take up this paper 
 with your own note at whatever time you 
 may choose to make it payable three months 
 hence, or three years if you prefer." 
 
 Chastain Cocke did that generous thing. 
 In order to save the wife and daughters of 
 his erring friend from the disgrace which 
 exposure would have brought upon them, 
 he deliberately executed his note for five 
 thousand dollars which he did not owe, and, 
 upon going home, cast into the fire the 
 evidence of his friend s misconduct. 
 
 But this was not destined to be the end 
 of the matter. A little later my uncle was 
 summoned to serve upon the grand jury of 
 his county. Under Virginian law every grand 
 juryman was required to pledge himself, 
 under oath, to report to the grand jury any 
 and every criminal act of which he might 
 have had cognizance within a prescribed 
 period. This note forgery came within the 
 period fixed upon by the statute, and if 
 Chastain Cocke had taken the oath of a 
 
 200 
 
The Virginian Influence 
 
 grand juryman he must have reported the 
 facts. This he was in no wise minded to 
 do, so he asked to be excused from grand 
 jury service. The court declined to excuse 
 him, whereupon he said: "Then I must 
 respectfully decline to serve." 
 
 The Judge answered: 
 
 " But, Mr. Cocke, you have no option 
 in this matter. The court orders you to 
 serve, and you must." 
 
 " But I cannot, if the court please, with 
 out violating what I deem to be an obliga 
 tion of sacred honor, and surely you do not 
 wish to compel me to do that. You cannot 
 compel me, indeed, for under no compulsion, 
 no matter what the penalty may be, will I 
 take the grand juror s oath to-day." 
 
 Feeling that it would not do to excuse 
 so prominent a citizen while refusing to 
 excuse others, the Judge pleaded earnestly 
 with him, finally asking him to state his 
 reason for refusing to serve. To that Mr. 
 Cocke replied : 
 
 201 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 "It so happens that I know of a felony 
 committed within this jurisdiction within 
 the last six months. I alone am the victim 
 of that crime, but should I reveal it other 
 and altogether innocent people women and 
 young girls must suffer cruel and lasting 
 disgrace. I have accepted the role of victim. 
 I have made a sore pecuniary sacrifice in 
 order to conceal the facts of this matter 
 facts which concern nobody on earth but 
 myself from public knowledge. I have 
 destroyed all evidence in the case. I cannot 
 serve on this grand jury without swearing to 
 reveal those facts, and so, with the profound- 
 est respect for the court, I must positively 
 and peremptorily decline to serve." 
 
 The judge was terribly troubled. He 
 walked back and forth upon the bench in 
 agonizing distress of mind. Finally he 
 turned to Mr. Cocke and said : 
 
 "My duty compels me to insist upon 
 your service. If you refuse, it will be my 
 duty to fine you to the full extent of your 
 
 202 
 
The Virginian Influence 
 
 property, and to imprison you until such 
 time as you shall yield. Mr. Cocke, you 
 simply must serve." 
 
 To this my uncle answered : "It grieves 
 me to subject your honor to any embarrass 
 ment. But I simply cannot serve as a grand 
 juryman to-day, and I will not. Your honor 
 knows far better than I do, for I am not a 
 lawyer, what your duty is, and I have no 
 doubt that you will discharge it, even if it 
 strips me of all earthly possessions and con 
 demns me to pass the remainder of my days 
 in jail. You, sir, are too much a man of 
 honor not to understand me when I say to 
 you that in my judgment I cannot serve as a 
 grand juror to-day without making such a 
 sacrifice of honor as would be impossible 
 to you, and is equally impossible to me. 
 Finally, and once for all, with the utmost 
 respect for the court, I positively decline to 
 serve, and as a citizen accustomed to submit 
 to the law, I await your sentence." 
 
 Again the judge paced backwards and 
 
 203 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 forwards in the space in rear of the bench. 
 After a time he turned to the clerk and 
 asked: 
 
 "Mr. Clerk, what is Mr. Cocke worth, 
 over and above his debts?" 
 
 The clerk told him. Then he paced his 
 beat again for a time, after which he paused 
 and said : 
 
 "Mr. Cocke, you must." 
 
 "Your honor, I cannot," was the smiling 
 answer of the man who, for the sake of his 
 honor, stood ready to forfeit not only all 
 his earthly possessions, but his liberty be 
 sides. 
 
 Then suddenly the judge turned to the 
 clerk, saying : 
 
 " Mr. Clerk, enter it as the judgment of 
 this court that Mr. Chastain Cocke shall 
 pay a fine of one dollar and be imprisoned 
 for the space of one minute in the county 
 jail. And, Mr. Clerk, enter upon the min 
 utes that in the deliberate judgment of this 
 court, I am not fit to be a judge." 
 204 
 
The Virginian Influence 
 
 My uncle bowed to the decision, and 
 moved off toward the sheriff to submit him 
 self to arrest. But the u body of the county," 
 represented by the citizens there assembled, 
 were not so submissively minded. Chastain 
 Cocke was their senator in the State Legisla 
 ture. He was a Whig, and both the county 
 and the senatorial district were strongly 
 Democratic. But that never made any dif 
 ference when Chastain Cocke announced 
 himself as a candidate for either house of the 
 Legislature. He was always elected by a 
 majority that sent party divisions out of 
 sight, and he might have been elected to 
 Congress in the same way, had he seen in 
 Congress any opportunity to serve his con 
 stituents well. 
 
 Court day always brought the whole 
 "body of the county" to the county seat, 
 and when it was noised abroad that Chastain 
 Cocke was in controversy with the court all 
 the citizenry that could gain entrance forced 
 their way into the court room. When sen- 
 
 205 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 tence was pronounced, they all precipitately 
 left the building and assembled on the green 
 outside. When the sheriff came out with 
 his prisoner, whom he was commanded to 
 incarcerate for the space of one minute, he 
 found his way toward the jail obstructed by 
 a mob that included all the best citizens of 
 the county, and practically all other able- 
 bodied dwellers in that political division. 
 
 These men clamorously insisted that 
 their honored fellow-citizen should not be 
 taken to the jail. In the enforcement of 
 their prohibition they had armed themselves 
 with guns, axes, crowbars and whatever else 
 they could secure in the way of offensive or 
 defensive weapons. 
 
 Seeing the situation, my uncle asked the 
 sheriff for a box on which he might stand to 
 address the mob. Securing that elevated 
 position he made an impassioned appeal to 
 the populace. He begged them to let the 
 law take its course. He reminded them 
 that, as their senator, he was himself a law- 
 206 
 
The Virginian Influence 
 
 giver, and that it would be a peculiar shame 
 to him if the law should be defied and over 
 ridden in his behalf. He explained*to them 
 that the judge was absolutely right, except 
 that he ought to have imposed a severer 
 penalty. He assured them that, in sub- 
 mitting to the prescribed imprisonment oi 
 one minute, he should feel no humiliation oi 
 disgrace. He earnestly begged his fellow- 
 citizens to let the sheriff carry out his orders 
 in vindication of the majesty of the law. 
 
 It was all to no purpose. The people s 
 mind was made up. No sooner had he 
 stepped down from his goods-box platform 
 than one of the oldest and most honored 
 men of that community mounted it. With 
 his thin but long gray locks floating in the 
 wind, and the bare top of his head exposed 
 to the glaring sun, the old man seemed like 
 an angel of authority as he lifted his spare 
 and tremulous hand to command silence. 
 When the hush came, the old man, with his 
 hand still raised to heaven, said: 
 
 207 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 " Thou, God, seest us! Thou only can 
 search hearts and judge them." Then turn 
 ing to the sea of uplifted faces all about 
 him, he said: "Fellow citizens: Resolved, 
 That Chastain Cocke shall never be im 
 prisoned for one second in any jail of which 
 this community is the owner. Those in favor 
 of that resolution say aye ! " 
 
 It was needless, but he added: "If any 
 are opposed they will say no !" 
 
 Then turning to the sheriff he said : 
 
 " Mr. Sheriff, you have heard the unani 
 mous verdict of this community. That ver 
 dict, as you very well know, is final and 
 irrevocable." 
 
 There was nothing for the sheriff to do 
 but return to the court and report that he 
 had been prevented "by force of arms" 
 from executing the decree of imprisonment. 
 Thereupon the judge said : 
 
 "The court regards the detention of 
 the prisoner for several minutes in the cus 
 tody of the sheriff as the full equivalent of 
 
 20S 
 
The Virginian Influence 
 
 the imprisonment ordered. Mr. Clerk, call 
 the cases on the calendar." 
 
 These incidents are related here in de 
 tail in order to show under what influences 
 Edward Eggleston fell at this peculiarly 
 receptive period of his life. Mr. Chastain 
 Cocke was exceptional in his ability and in 
 the courage with which he confronted duty ; 
 but his principles, his theories of conduct, 
 were only such as all the better class of men 
 in that community at that time accepted and 
 acted upon. Our father s brother at the old 
 homestead, and our cousin who represented 
 another branch of the family at Egglestetton, 
 obeyed the same law of honorable obligation 
 quite as unquestioningly as he did. So did 
 all the better men of Virginia with whom 
 Edward was at this time brought into close 
 relations, and the influence of such men upon 
 
 *I have already made use of this incident in a novel, transferring it to 
 another time and calling the actors in it by fictitious names. But surely, is 
 more than half a century has passed since the occurrence, and after everybody 
 concerned in it has passed away, there can be no reason why I should not tell 
 the story in iti nakedness without disguise or concealment, except such as is 
 involved in the suppression of the offender s name. AUTHOR. 
 
 209 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 his character and his point of view, was un- 
 tellably important as a formative influence. 
 
 In his earlier boyhood the only appeal 
 made to him had been to a sense of religious 
 obligation to act for the safety of his own 
 soul. He was now taught that there were 
 obligations altogether independent of reli 
 gious duty, obligations of mere manhood and 
 self-respect, that must be fulfilled even if it 
 should be demonstrated that there was no 
 God in the Universe, no judgment day, and 
 no future life of rewards and punishments. 
 Here was a new thought and a mightily 
 uplifting one the thought, namely, that 
 every man owes it to himself to maintain 
 a certain standard of conduct, quite irrespec 
 tive of his responsibility to the Deity or to 
 any other tribunal than that of self-respect 
 and conscience and honor. Not in fear of 
 punishment, not in dread of a day of judg 
 ment, not upon any selfish or cowardly 
 account, but solely as a matter of self-respect, 
 of soul-cleanliness, one must meet his obliga- 
 
 210 
 
The Virginian Influence 
 
 tions unflinchingly and discharge them in 
 utter disregard of cost or of personal 
 consequences of any kind. That was the 
 new gospel that Edward learned in Virginia, 
 and, as he afterwards said, no boy ever stood 
 more pressingly in need of such a lesson for 
 the correction of the false and futile teach 
 ings of his earlier life. 
 
 Under the former teaching no man was 
 expected to be scrupulous in the performance 
 of duty unless he "professed religion" and 
 held himself subject to the requirements of a 
 formulated creed. Under the new teaching 
 Edward learned that conduct which Mat 
 thew Arnold truly says is "two-thirds of 
 life" is wholly independent of religious 
 belief and that obligation rests upon a sense 
 of right and wrong altogether apart from 
 any theological belief or any scheme of 
 rewards and punishments. 
 
 Still another influence to which Edward 
 Eggleston was subjected at this time was 
 that of Mr. William H. Harrison, school- 
 211 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 master at the Wigwam. This was for more 
 than a generation a noted boarding-school 
 for boys, as wholesome in its influences as 
 the Gunnery in Connecticut was. The mas 
 ter of it was a man of great ability, great 
 learning and a character as white and clean 
 as that of any child. Edward quickly learned 
 to love Mr. Harrison, and Mr. Harrison 
 quickly learned to love Edward. The two 
 not only worked together in the orderly 
 course of school employments, but they came 
 presently to think together, to discuss to 
 gether those larger questions of life and con 
 duct which lie beyond and above school work. 
 The half year that Edward spent under 
 Mr. Harrison s tuition was the last of his 
 school life. Fie had made himself master of 
 Latin, French and mathematics as few col 
 lege graduates of that time ever did, and 
 he had laid a secure foundation in Greek, 
 upon which he afterwards built, after his 
 custom, by a course of self-directed study. 
 Up to this time he had owed comparatively 
 
 212 
 
The Virginian Influence 
 
 little to schoolmasters. He never after 
 wards increased that debt. 
 
 One other thing. In the old Virginia 
 houses which were his homes at this time, 
 there were always well-stocked libraries. 
 These included next to nothing of strictly 
 modern literature, but they were rich in all 
 the classics of our language, and Edward 
 diligently read them through, as I did in my 
 turn a little later. It used to be said of him 
 afterwards that he could never be tempted 
 to change his quarters and pay a prolonged 
 visit in any house until he had read clear 
 through the library of the house he was in. 
 
 I think the glamour of that easy-going, 
 restful and exquisitely self-poised Virginian 
 life did not appeal to Edward at all so 
 strongly as it did to me when a year or two 
 later I was brought into contact with it. To 
 me it was the complete realization of romance, 
 the actual embodiment of poetry, a dream 
 life of exquisite perfection. It was a hun 
 dred years behind the times, but for that 
 
 213 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 very reason it fascinated my mind as nothing 
 else has done, before or since. It violated 
 all the maxims of prudence that had lain at 
 the basis of my education, but I was over 
 joyed to be rid of allegiance to these. It 
 ran counter to all I had learned of strenuous- 
 ness, but I was weary of strenuousness, 
 and I welcomed the restfulness of this 
 dreamy life of perfect peace. It was not so 
 with Edward. He believed, with intense 
 sincerity, in a life of endeavor, of action, of 
 absolute earnestness. The idleness of the 
 Virginian life was grateful enough to him as 
 a sort of vacation, but as a life to be led in 
 definitely it offended his sense of human 
 obligation, and he could in no wise reconcile 
 himself to it as a permanent mode of exist 
 ence. 
 
 More important still, that life was 
 founded upon slavery, and Edward s mind 
 revolted against slavery with an antagonism 
 that nothing could overcome or weaken. 
 
 In Virginia, of course, he saw the insti- 
 
 214 
 
The Virg inian Influence 
 
 tution in its least offensive and most pleasing 
 aspect. Slavery there was almost purely 
 patriarchal in its character. The relatives and 
 friends with whom he associated had inherited 
 their servants for. they never spoke of them 
 as slaves precisely as they had inherited their 
 acres and their family traditions and their 
 family debts, and all the rest of it. They 
 treated the relation of master and servant 
 as one of mutual obligation. They strongly 
 felt their responsibility for the welfare of 
 their black dependents. They never thought 
 of buying or selling negroes. It was not 
 even respectable to do so, except in the case 
 of a criminal negro, who must either be 
 u sold off south " or sent to the State prison. 
 The negroes in Virginia at that time were, 
 without question, better compensated for 
 their labor than any other laboring class has 
 ever been anywhere on earth. Not only were 
 they the best housed, the best clothed and 
 the best fed of laborers, but they were secure 
 of tender care in infancy, in illness and in 
 215 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 old age, as no other laboring people ever 
 were before or since. 
 
 Thus slavery presented its most attrac 
 tive side to the Hoosier boy s mind. But it 
 was slavery, nevertheless, and he would none 
 of it. Instead of being won by its pleasing 
 patriarchal presentment, he was repelled 
 actively where before his sentiment of hostil 
 ity to the institution had been mainly senti 
 mental and passive. 
 
 Edward was not a fanatic on this sub 
 ject, though he felt strongly concerning it. 
 He did not make himself offensive in dis 
 cussing the matter, as so many people at that 
 time thought it their duty to do. He did 
 not thrust his opinions upon those about 
 him, but he stoutly held and did not conceal 
 them. 
 
 In all this he found much of sympathy in 
 Virginia. The better class of Virginians of 
 that time lamented slavery as an inherited 
 curse of which they would gladly have rid 
 themselves if they had known how. They 
 
 216 
 
The Virginian Influence 
 
 felt, as Thomas Jefferson had felt, a strong 
 desire to set the negroes free; but they saw, 
 as he did, that it would not do to "arm 
 these people with freedom and a dagger;" 
 that to set them free without providing them 
 with some means of earning a living, would 
 be to inflict a curse upon them and to set 
 society on its head, as it were. It was in 
 fear of this that Virginian law forbade the 
 freeing of negro slaves within the State. So 
 many of the Virginians of that time were 
 soul-weary of the institution that but for 
 such laws a considerable proportion of the 
 negroes would have been set free by act of 
 their owners, or by provisions like those that 
 John Randolph had written into his will. In 
 the past many Virginians had done this by 
 way of freeing themselves and their children 
 from the incubus of slavery. Conspicuous 
 among these had been Virginia s great chan 
 cellor, George Wythe, who, inheriting a large 
 estate, actually impoverished himself in set 
 ting free the negroes that had come to him 
 
 217 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 from his fathers, and in providing them with 
 the means of earning a livelihood. Many 
 scores of other Virginians had taken their 
 negroes to the West and settled them on 
 little farms there, at cost of impoverishment 
 to themselves. John Letcher, the governor 
 of Virginia during the Civil War, had for 
 years openly advocated the abolition of 
 slavery, not so much for the sake of the 
 negroes as for the salvation of the young 
 white men of Virginia from influences which 
 he regarded as evil. Despairing of general 
 emancipation, he proposed and stoutly advo 
 cated the division of the State, and the erec 
 tion of its western half into a free State. 
 His abolitionism was the chief factor in 
 making him governor. 
 
 The desire for emancipation at the time 
 of Edward s stay in Virginia, was very gen 
 eral. But there were insuperable obstacles 
 in the way of the realization of that desire. 
 The planter who wished to free his slaves 
 must take them beyond the borders of the 
 
 218 
 
The Virginian Influence 
 
 State and there provide them with little farms. 
 In the greater number of cases this was 
 impossible. There was an hereditary debt 
 upon almost every plantation, and the land, 
 without the negroes, would not sell for 
 enough to cover that debt and pay the ex 
 pense of the deportation of the blacks. 
 
 It was a time of relentless anti-slavery 
 agitation at the north, and the southern 
 people, including those who most earnestly 
 desired emancipation, bitterly resented what 
 they believed to be an unjust and unwar 
 ranted interference with their domestic affairs 
 on the part of people not concerned with 
 them. They looked upon such agitation as 
 an impertinence that gravely threatened their 
 wives and children with all the horrors of a 
 servile war. But for a rational, intellectual 
 and moral condemnation of the system, such 
 as Edward Eggleston freely avowed, they 
 had no resentment and no word of censure. 
 It commanded their sympathy rather than 
 their hostility. 
 
 219 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 But it forbade Edward to avail himself 
 of an opportunity. Our childless uncle 
 wished to adopt him and educate him, first 
 at the University of Virginia, and afterwards 
 at one of the great German seats of learn 
 ing. But eager as the boy was for pre 
 cisely such educational opportunities, his 
 conscience impelled him to decline the offer, 
 on the ground that it would make of him 
 the beneficiary of slave labor, a sharer in 
 the profits of a system which he regarded as 
 morally wrong. 
 
 Having come to this decision, the boy 
 felt himself bound to return to his native 
 State, Indiana, and he did so, thus making a 
 final end of his schooling, which might other 
 wise have included a course at the Univer 
 sity of Virginia and some years of study at 
 Heidelberg or Jena. 
 
 220 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Some Revelations of Character. 
 
 D 
 
 URING Edward s stay in Virginia 
 the family was removed again to 
 Madison, chiefly because I had 
 been sent there so that I might 
 attend the High School the Vevay schools 
 offering no further opportunities for me, 
 now that Mrs. Dumont was compelled by in 
 creasing years and by ill health to give up 
 teaching. 
 
 I remember an occurrence soon after 
 Edward s return from Virginia, which illus 
 trates his self-sacrificing character, and which 
 is, therefore, worth relating. I had always 
 been a notable swimmer, and to me swim 
 ming seemed scarcely more difficult as an art 
 than walking. One evening Edward and I 
 went to the river for a bath. We pushed 
 out from shore and continued on our course 
 221 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 till we neared the middle of the river. Then 
 suddenly Edward said to me : 
 
 "Geordie, I m exhausted. I must sink 
 here and drown. Don t try to save me. 
 That would only involve you, too, in my 
 drowning. Leave me here and swim ashore 
 if you have strength." 
 
 I do not think I ever knew anything 
 more heroic than that, though afterwards I 
 had an experience of four years of strenuous 
 war, abounding in heroic deeds. I was im 
 pressed by his calm courage, and touched 
 by his impulse of self-sacrifice. But I 
 laughed aloud at the foolishness of his pro 
 posal. I had swum five times across that 
 river without touching bottom, and I could 
 have swum ten times or twenty times across 
 it with scarcely an effort. The little space 
 of a quarter mile or so that lay between us 
 and the shore seemed to me ridiculously of 
 no consequence. Laughing and jeering for 
 my brother s encouragement, I commanded 
 him to place his hands on my shoulders, and 
 222 
 
Some Revelations of Character 
 
 he did so, all unwillingly, lest he imperil my 
 life by what he deemed an overtaxing of my 
 strength. I swam ashore with him as easily 
 as I might have walked a block and laid him 
 on the sands to rest and recover his breath. 
 When that was done I asked him: 
 
 "What sort of a brother do you take 
 me for, anyhow? Did you seriously think I 
 would leave you to drown out there in the 
 river, and make no effort to save you?" 
 
 I saw that he was weeping, so I said no 
 more in my bantering way. Presently he 
 recovered himself and said to me, taking my 
 hand : 
 
 " Geordie, it was God who taught you 
 how to swim like that." 
 
 My theology has always been badly 
 crippled, but in that moment I rejoiced that 
 God or long practice had given me a skill in 
 swimming sufficient to save my brother s 
 life. 
 
 It was soon after this that Edward organ 
 ized a little club of us boys, called the u XII," 
 223 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 for the reason that it was our purpose to 
 limit the membership to twelve persons. 
 Edward had been reading the autobiography 
 of Benjamin Franklin, and in the formation 
 of our club he had had the Junta in mind. 
 
 The club never reached its membership 
 limit in our time, at least, though I believe it 
 still exists, with somewhat changed purposes 
 and a much larger membership than that at 
 first contemplated. It was a secret society, 
 and like most other associations of the kind, 
 its secrets were few and of no consequence. 
 It had its passwords and its hailing signs, 
 and all the rest of the semi-masonic equip 
 ment. For curiosity s sake, I practiced the 
 old hailing signs in the streets of Madison in 
 1900, and received ready responses from the 
 younger generation of XII s who still pre 
 serve the organization. 
 
 Our meeting place when the little society 
 was formed, was Edward s room and mine, 
 in East Street. The purpose of the society 
 was self-improvement by debate, essay 
 
 224 
 
Some Revelations of Character 
 
 writing, the systematic reading of books, and 
 especially conversation. As an illustration 
 of the prejudice of that time I may relate 
 that after a hot debate we refused to admit 
 one boy to the club solely because he was a 
 Roman Catholic in religion. Obviously our 
 narrow-mindedness needed all of enlighten 
 ment that we sought in organizing the XII. 
 Half a century later Edward remembered 
 this incident with regret and humiliation. 
 " What a lot of young bigots we were," he 
 said to me one day at Lake George, "when 
 we voted to exclude George Griffin on 
 account of his religion ! We ve all outgrown 
 that since, but I can t forget that we were 
 once capable of such prejudice." Then, 
 after a pause, he added : 
 
 "We ought, all of us, to be immortal, 
 Geordie; we shall need an eternity in which 
 to repent of our errors." 
 
 About this time there arose the question 
 of my education beyond what the schools of 
 Madison could give me. Our mother, out 
 225 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 of her scant possessions, had many years 
 before contributed one hundred dollars to 
 the endowment of the Indiana Asbury Uni 
 versity, at Greencastle, and had become pos 
 sessed, in return, of a perpetual scholarship 
 in that institution. This scholarship entitled 
 her to send one student to the University 
 free of all charge for tuition. I had gone as 
 far as the High School in Madison could 
 take me in the direction of a liberal educa 
 tion. But then, as now, the High School 
 course was completely out of accord with 
 college requirements. In mathematics I was 
 fully equipped to enter the Junior class at 
 college. In certain other studies, notably 
 chemistry and physics, I was fit to pass the 
 Senior examination for graduation. But I 
 knew almost no Latin and no Greek. The 
 Greek did not so greatly matter, as the col 
 leges at that time were accustomed to regard 
 that language as a " lame duck," to be brought 
 up after entrance. But I must know enough 
 of Latin to read at sight, to conjugate the 
 226 
 
Some Revelations of Character 
 
 principal verbs, to decline the nouns and 
 adjectives, and to convert simple English 
 sentences into correct Latin. 
 
 A sudden ambition had seized me to 
 u go to college," as the phrase went. Indeed 
 there was nowhere else for me to go, there 
 being no school in Madison which offered 
 any advance upon the curriculum that I had 
 mastered. But I was wholly unprepared, so 
 far as the Latin requirement was concerned, 
 and the case seemed hopeless to everybody 
 except Edward. He had used himself to 
 the performance of astonishing things in 
 the way of study, and he was in no way 
 appalled by the false magnitude given by the 
 curriculums to requirements of study. He 
 had often himself done in a week or two 
 what the schools set down as a year s work, 
 and he saw no reason why I should not do 
 the same, particularly as my gift of quick 
 acquisition was marked, while my memory 
 was positively phenomenal in its readiness 
 and its tenacity. Indeed the ease with which 
 227 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 I learned whatever I was set to learn, had up 
 to this time been the chief obstacle in the 
 way of my education. I had never in my life 
 studied diligently, for the simple reason that 
 I had never found it necessary to do so in 
 order to keep up with my classes. Edward 
 knew this, and he reckoned with it as the 
 chief factor in the situation. He went to 
 our mother with the proposal that I should 
 enter college at the beginning of the term 
 two or three weeks away. Our mother 
 pointed out my lack of instruction in Latin. 
 
 "I know all that," Edward said. " But 
 I ll take care of that. If you consent to his 
 going to college, I will undertake to prepare 
 him for his examinations." 
 
 Edward was at that time not yet eighteen 
 years of age, but the maturity of his wisdom 
 was such that everybody about him looked 
 up to him as to a counsellor whose words 
 were weighty far beyond those of any other. 
 I think our mother hearkened to them with 
 quite all the submissiveness that she had ever 
 228 
 
Some Revelations of Character 
 
 shown to the injunctions of our father, whom 
 she had revered with the utmost devotion 
 that a loving wife can feel. 
 
 Having gained our mother s consent, 
 Edward came to me. 
 
 "Now, Geordie," he said, "you have 
 never studied in your life. You have always 
 stood at the head of your classes when you 
 chose to do so, but usually you haven t cared 
 for that. Now, for the first time in your life, 
 you are going to work in earnest. You are 
 going to learn in two weeks all the Latin that 
 the schools teach in two years. You can do 
 it, and I am going to make you do it. You 
 shall enter college with flying colors, but in 
 order to do so you ve got to work in a way 
 that you never did before." 
 
 I was eager for this thing, and I wel 
 comed the work. Our breakfast was served 
 at eight o clock. At six every morning Ed 
 ward waked me. He allowed me precisely 
 twenty minutes for a cold bath and for 
 dressing. That left one hour and forty min- 
 
 229 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 utes for paradigms, and not until I could 
 recite them perfectly did he allow me to go 
 to breakfast. After the morning meal he 
 allowed me half an hour for exercise which 
 consisted of sawing and splitting wood and 
 milking the cow. Then he held me to my 
 Latin again until the noon-day meal. And 
 after dinner he made me " buckle down to 
 study," as he phrased it, until supper time. 
 After supper he permitted me to go swim 
 ming, but at eight o clock he had me at work 
 again over my Latin, and he kept me at it 
 until eleven. Then I went to bed and to 
 sleep. 
 
 Eight days of this accomplished the 
 purpose. At the end of that time I knew 
 all the principal paradigms, could read 
 any ordinary Latin at sight, and could trans 
 late any simple English sentence into fairly 
 correct Latin. 
 
 Then Edward called a halt. There were 
 still seven days ahead of me before I must 
 offer myself for my entrance examinations. 
 
 230 
 
Some Revelations of Character 
 
 But, wise teacher that he was, Edward decreed 
 that these seven days should be given to rest 
 and recreation. "The only thing that I m 
 afraid of," he said, "is that your nerves may 
 play you a trick after this debauch of study. 
 So you and I are going to spend the next 
 seven days in the woods out yonder on the 
 hills. You aren t even to think of Latin 
 until the time of your examination arrives." 
 
 Then we went away to the hills, and for 
 a week we gathered trilobites and otherwise 
 interested ourselves in that study of geology 
 which some of the preachers of that ignor 
 ant time tried in vain to forbid to us as a 
 "Godless science." 
 
 The region around Madison was geo 
 logically rich in an extreme degree, and 
 thanks to the stupidity of engineering at the 
 time when our railroad was built, the hills in 
 rear of us had been cut through with a 
 great gash a hundred and fifty or two 
 hundred feet deep, where now a tunnel 
 would take the place of the cut. The 
 
 231 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 geological formation tempted us, and both 
 Edward and I were sufficiently self-in 
 structed in geology to take advantage of 
 our opportunities. Edward had read to 
 me "The Old Red Sandstone" and u The 
 Testimony of the Rocks " and the " Vestiges 
 of Creation," and together we had studied 
 the best of the school geologies of that 
 time. Better still though we did not then 
 know how much better it was we had 
 passed many months of delightful days 
 among our native hills, trying to find out for 
 ourselves what nature had written in the 
 rocks and trees and plant life for our instruc 
 tion as to the purposes and methods of crea 
 tion. We had questioned God as to his 
 ordering of the Universe, reverently seeking 
 an answer, but in doing so we had offended 
 against the theological Zeitgeist. Then, as 
 now, then as always since ever the founda 
 tions of the world were laid, theology claimed 
 for itself a close monopoly of truth. It 
 held facts to be heretical in so far as they 
 
Some Revelations of Character 
 
 might seem to contradict dogmas. It sought 
 to set limits to human inquiry and to impose 
 restraints upon thought. 
 
 To me these things made little differ 
 ence. I was born a skeptic, a doubter, an 
 inquirer. There was a hole in my head, I 
 think, at that point where the phrenologists 
 locate the bump of veneration. I had been 
 born with an eager desire to know, and in 
 the gratification of that desire I had never 
 in the least cared whether a fact found out 
 squared itself with any theory or flatly con 
 tradicted it. My attitude of mind, though 
 I did not then know r it, was purely scientific. 
 
 Not so Edward s. He was still under 
 strong bonds to theology, and in his modesty 
 of mind he had not yet realized his own in 
 tellectual superiority to those half educated 
 "pastors and masters" who sought at this 
 time to bind his soul with shackles. 
 
 A strenuous effort was made by those 
 pastors and masters to stop Edward and me 
 from the study of geology. The only effect 
 
 233 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 of this upon me was to stimulate further 
 and more fearless study. "The preachers," 
 I said to Edward, "are afraid of science. 
 Why? Isn t it because the facts contradict 
 their teachings and their theories ? I confess 
 I don t know, but I am going to find out if 
 I can." 
 
 Then Edward underwent a period of 
 sore wrestling over his obligations toward 
 my soul, which entity, if it exists, I gravely 
 fear was never worthy of his concern for its 
 welfare. After thinking the matter out, he 
 came to me one day and said something like 
 this : 
 
 " After all, we know that God calls these 
 men to preach ; presumably he inspires them 
 with impulses of what to preach. We are 
 mere boys. Have we a right to think for 
 ourselves in opposition to what these divinely 
 commissioned teachers tell us is the truth?" 
 
 For answer I said: 
 
 "Are they all of them called to 
 preach? Are they all of them divinely 
 
 231 
 
Some Revelations of Character 
 
 inspired as to their teaching? I saw one of 
 them at camp meeting, the other day, fall 
 into a foolish passion because the points of 
 his only standing collar didn t coincide on 
 the two sides of his mouth. He had been 
 appointed to preach that afternoon and he 
 had his sermon ready, but he gave it up and 
 lied about it, saying he was ill, and let some 
 body else preach in his stead, simply because 
 he couldn t get that collar right. Was that 
 man God-commissioned to preach? Or was 
 he collar-commissioned not to do so, because 
 there was a girl out there in the audience 
 whom he wanted to marry?" 
 
 Edward w r as at this time reading Theo 
 dore Parker and William Ellery Channing and 
 Emerson, and his mind was opening in a way 
 that sadly distressed the ministers who were 
 watching his development with a foreshadow 
 ing that its course did not tend to orthodoxy 
 and that this gifted boy was destined to be 
 come a power in the world perhaps a 
 power dangerous to their dominance. 
 
 235 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 During his sojourn in Virginia Edward 
 had been brought for a time into intimate 
 personal relations with Dr. Josiah Clark 
 Nott, the author of "Types of Mankind," 
 "Indigenous Races of the Earth," and other 
 learned works in Ethnology. The strangely 
 old boy of 17 or 18, and the strangely young 
 thinker of fifty odd, had become inseparable 
 companions, and Edw r ard had learned from 
 Dr. Nott the primary lesson of science 
 absolute fearlessness of thought and inquiry. 
 These two the man sorely stricken in health 
 and feeble far beyond his years, and the 
 eager-minded boy spent days and nights 
 together, often sitting up in converse until 
 morning broke upon them. From that asso 
 ciation Edward had brought away much of 
 the scientific spirit, and he now haltingly and 
 timidly applied it as he and I wandered over 
 the hills about Madison, and studied nature 
 at first hand in that wonderful railroad cut 
 of which I do not know the like for geo 
 logical opportunity anywhere. 
 236 
 
Some Revelations of Character 
 
 I shall never forget a seance that my 
 brother and I had about that time with the 
 Presiding Elder of our district. The good 
 old man was sorely troubled about us, and 
 especially about our geological studies. He 
 explained to us that geology was a science 
 which " sought to leave God out of the 
 story of creation," and when Edward ven 
 tured to suggest that Bishop Upshur s chron 
 ology was not inspired, and might possibly 
 be wrong, the dear, devout old gentleman 
 met the plea with a proposal of "earnest 
 prayer for the salvation of a young soul from 
 the labyrinth of pseudo-scientific doubt." I 
 remember his phrase all the more accurately 
 for the reason that at the time I had only 
 the vaguest possible notion of what it meant, 
 and also because he did not include my soul 
 as an entity worth praying for. The old gen 
 tleman prayed over Edward very earnestly, 
 and he tearfully urged us to give up our 
 pursuit of what he called " that godless and 
 infidel science." 
 
 237 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 For three days our little geological 
 hammers remained idle. Then we visited 
 McCormack and got new light. 
 
 McCormack was a somewhat out-of-the- 
 way personage, who dwelt in Madison and 
 had a singularly miscellaneous workshop and 
 laboratory there. He bore the reputation of 
 being half-crazy a reputation chiefly based, 
 I now think, upon the fact that he knew more 
 and thought more freely and more daringly 
 than it was at that time permitted to men to 
 know and to think. He was an inventor. He 
 had constructed a device of air-pumps and 
 the like, that enabled him to walk upon ceil 
 ings, and he had gone all the way round the 
 world giving exhibitions of ceiling-walking. 
 He had brought back with him enough 
 money to satisfy all his needs, and he was 
 now devoting himself to scientific and 
 mechanical research. Edward and I were 
 accustomed to spend many hours in this 
 queerly constituted person s workshop, some 
 times helping him in his work, sometimes 
 
 238 
 
Some Revelations of Character 
 
 doing work of our own there which we 
 were always welcome to do and some 
 times merely listening to McCormack s talk. 
 Among other things he had a complete 
 series of Indiana rock specimens, each care 
 fully dressed in such fashion as best to show 
 its formation and structure. " I think God 
 made these rocks," he said to us one day. 
 " Some people don t seem to think so. Any 
 how, it can do you boys no harm to find out 
 how they were made." 
 
 Then we got out our hammers and 
 went geologizing again, and one day, as we 
 stood together in the Great Rock railroad 
 cut, Edward said : 
 
 " Geordie, I can t help thinking we do 
 right to study this. Anyhow, the rocks 
 haven t any interest to tell us lies." 
 
 "And they make no mistakes," I an 
 swered. 
 
 "No; but we may make mistakes in 
 interpreting them," he said. 
 
 " I don t think that ought to stand in 
 239 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 our way," I replied. " If we are so afraid 
 of misunderstanding that we dare not try to 
 understand at all well, Edward, the fact 
 seems to me to be this : some people who 
 know very little have set themselves up as 
 knowing " 
 
 " Please, Geordie, don t ! That thought 
 has been trying to undermine my faith, and 
 it has very nearly succeeded." 
 
 14 Your faith in what ? " I asked. " Surely 
 your faith in God needn t suffer because you 
 suspect incapacity on the part of those who 
 perhaps unwarrantably assume to be his 
 authorized interpreters." 
 
 Edward made no answer then. Forty 
 years later he picked up a trilobite one day, 
 and said to me : 
 
 " Do you remember how hard it once 
 was for me to distinguish between truth 
 and the teachings that assumed authority 
 between the teachings of God and those of 
 men who professed to know his ways and 
 his purposes? " 
 
 240 
 
Some Revelations of Character 
 
 "Yes," I answered. " I remember. You 
 then called atrilobite an antediluvian creature. 
 You would hardly give the Noah s ark story 
 that much credit now." 
 
 " No," he answered, " and yet nine- 
 tenths of the American people believe that 
 story even now, nine-tenths of them believe in 
 miracles, and really suppose that the world is 
 only six thousand years old, that Adam and 
 Eve were historical personages and all the rest 
 of it. It will be a hundred years and more be 
 fore the average American citizen finds out 
 even those things that are the commonplaces 
 of thought to all educated men. Only the 
 other day I read a very labored book, whose 
 author, a devout Kentucky clergyman, sought 
 to prove that negroes are pre-Adamites and 
 have no souls." 
 
 " He sent it to you ? " I ask~d. 
 
 "Yes, with a request for my opinion, 
 as usual." 
 
 "What did you say to him?" 
 
 " I said I thought he must be right in 
 
 241 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 believing that negroes have no souls, inas 
 much as there is absolutely no reason to 
 think that negroes have any advantage over 
 white men in that respect." 
 
 In tracing the influences that helped to 
 develop the mind of a man like Edward 
 Eggleston, it seems to me equally a duty to 
 set forth those influences that stood in the 
 way. It is for this reason that parts of this 
 chapter are written. 
 
 242 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 The Hoosier Schoolmaster s Theory and 
 Practice of Teaching . 
 
 T is a curious fact that the author of 
 "The Hoosier Schoolmaster" was 
 never a schoolmaster at all. About 
 the time of which these chapters 
 treat, Edward Eggleston did indeed apply 
 for a first-class teacher s license under the 
 Indiana school laws. Pie easily passed the 
 examination, secured the license and was ap 
 pointed to the principalship of a school in 
 the suburbs of Madison. Then he set him 
 self to work on Greek and within two weeks 
 had so broken down his health by overstudy 
 that he was obliged to resign his appoint 
 ment and go off again in search of health. 
 
 That, I believe, was his only experience 
 in teaching, at least in any formal way. But 
 he was always a teacher and a source of in- 
 
 243 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 spiration. One of his pupils at that school, 
 who is now a person of prominence, said to 
 me at the Authors Club, not long ago, point 
 ing to Edward s portrait by Wiles: 
 
 " That man taught me how to study, 
 and, better still, why to study. To him I 
 owe it that I am educated." 
 
 I shall never forget how he followed up 
 my Latin preparation for college. 
 
 u Now Geordie," he said, " they reckon 
 Greek a lame duck, and they make provision 
 for it. But it is a lame duck sort of provi 
 sion, and I don t want you to have anything 
 to do with it. They have a preparatory Greek 
 course, under an adjunct professor. He 
 gives you a part of a paradigm to learn each 
 day the present tense of the indicative 
 mood to-day, and the imperfect to-morrow. 
 Don t have anything to do with that class. 
 Simply say you will be prepared in two weeks 
 to pass your entrance examinations in Greek, 
 and then set to work to prepare yourself pre 
 cisely as you have done in Latin. Remem- 
 214 
 
Hoosier Theory and Practice of Teaching 
 
 her that a mastery of the paradigms is every 
 thing. Find some fellow just as lame in 
 Greek as you are and get him to join you. 
 If it costs you more by a dollar or two a 
 week to room with him, don t let that stand 
 in the way. I am earning that much as a 
 grocery clerk, and I ll pay the difference. 
 You and he should shut yourselves up in 
 your room during every hour that college 
 requirements leave free, and continually prod 
 each other with Greek conjugations. The 
 lesson prescribed by the professor for the 
 first day will be the present, active, indicative 
 of Tupto. Instead of that you must both 
 of you learn the whole conjugation of that 
 verb before you go to your breakfast 
 sausages, and then, before you present your 
 selves at your first lecture, you must per 
 fectly know how to conjugate the irregular 
 verb erkomai from start to finish. If you 
 and your workfellow w r ork half as well in 
 your Greek as you have done with me in 
 Latin, before the two weeks are over you ll 
 
 245 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 know how to decline every Greek noun and 
 adjective and how to conjugate every regu 
 lar and nearly every irregular Greek verb, 
 and in doing that you ll acquire vocabulary 
 enough to enable you not only to pass your 
 entrance examinations without any thanks to 
 your adjunct professor s laborious teachings, 
 but to take the lead in your class. But one 
 thing more I want you and that other fellow 
 to do. I have written out a vocabulary for 
 you to learn. It includes between 300 and 
 400 words, with their primary meanings. I 
 want you to commit it absolutely to memory, 
 so that whenever and wherever any one of 
 those words may occur you ll know what it 
 means in a general way at least." 
 
 I had not dreamed that Edward knew 
 so much of Greek. He had never had a 
 lesson in that language in his life, but I 
 found his method of study the very best I 
 ever knew. Afterwards, when it became 
 necessary for me to earn my own college 
 expenses by tutoring some boys during vaca- 
 
 246 
 
Hoosier Theory and Practice of Teaching 
 
 tion, for their entrance examinations, I fol 
 lowed the same plan with satisfactory results. 
 I gravely wonder to-day that no teacher in 
 our secondary schools has ever hit upon a 
 like method. Perhaps other and more con 
 ventional methods are easier to the teacher 
 as they certainly are to the pupil who 
 doesn t want to study very hard. Perhaps- 
 well it doesn t matter. I only know that by 
 the methods devised by the mainly self-edu 
 cated boy, Edward Eggleston, I learned in 
 eight days to read simple Latin at sight, and 
 in two weeks to read easy Greek in the same 
 way, to conjugate nearly every verb, regular 
 and irregular, to decline every noun and ad 
 jective, and to turn simple English sentences 
 into approximately correct Greek, almost 
 without effort. 
 
 I sometimes wonder if there ought not 
 to be a divine call to teach, as there is sup 
 posed to be a divine call to preach. Cer 
 tainly Edward Eggleston, at the age of less 
 than eighteen, knew better how to teach 
 
 247 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 Latin and Greek than do the most skilful 
 teachers in our most pretentious preparatory 
 schools to-day. Our boys spend several 
 years, at an expense of half a thousand dol 
 lars a year, in learning what Edward Eggles- 
 ton, while still under eighteen years of age, 
 taught in a week or two to a not exception 
 ally bright pupil. 
 
 Let me record it here as my well-con 
 sidered conviction, that if there were any 
 means of selection among the pupils of our 
 great preparatory schools, one year s tuition 
 would be ample, instead of the four years 
 now given to High School work, to prepare 
 the best quarter of their number for college 
 or for the undertaking of professional study. 
 Our schools are at present organized on the 
 basis of the capacity and the willingness of 
 the duller three-fourths. That other fourth 
 the one that is alone really worth consider 
 ing, the one that is alone worthy to enter 
 college or a professional school is crippled 
 and practiced in indolence from beginning to 
 
 248 
 
Hoosier Theory and Practice of Teaching 
 
 end, by having the incapacities of its duller 
 classmates set up as the standard and meas 
 ure of its achievement. Why isn t there a 
 school in all our land in which a really bright 
 and earnest boy can prepare himself for col 
 lege or for professional study in one year 
 instead of four? And why isn t there a col 
 lege in which a boy of real capacity is per 
 mitted to master the four years course in 
 one year or two, as any boy of real capacity 
 and industry easily might? 
 
 The fundamental defect lies in tradition, 
 but it is reflected also in the teaching. To 
 the youth who is really taught the higher 
 algebra, all the rest of mathematics follows 
 as a matter of course; and a few weeks, or 
 at most a few months, of competent teaching 
 would enable him to complete that part of 
 his course. To the youth who knows his 
 paradigms and is master of a reasonable 
 vocabulary in Greek or Latin, a very few 
 months at most should suffice for all needed 
 preparation for final examinations. 
 
 249 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 Unhappily our educational system is 
 founded upon different conceptions. Our 
 courses of study are marked out for the 
 duller rather than the brighter pupils. They 
 are arranged with far greater reference to 
 the ease and comfort than to the earnest 
 work of professors and tutors. 
 
 Is there any profession in the world in 
 which men do so little for their money as in 
 that of teaching? The schoolmaster gives 
 five or six hours a day to his work during 
 five days in the week a total of 25 or 30 
 hours a week. What other profession lets 
 one off so easily? Then, too, the school 
 master has a world of holidays that no other 
 professional man enjoys. All his Saturdays 
 and Sundays are his own for rest. Labor 
 day, election day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, 
 New Year s, Washington s birthday, Lin 
 coln s birthday, Decoration day and the 
 Fourth of July are free days to him. In 
 addition, he has a vacation at Christmas, 
 another at Easter, and one of three months 
 
 250 
 
Hoosier Theory and Practice of Teaching 
 
 or longer in the summer. What lawyer, 
 doctor, clergyman, newspaper writer or man 
 of letters, commands or expects such leisure? 
 And it is all paid for by the parents of boys 
 and girls who must be educated. If teachers 
 would work as continuously, as industri 
 ously, and as intelligently as men of all other 
 professions do and must do, the academic 
 course could be completely mastered within 
 a year, or two years at most, and a year or a 
 year and a half of earnest work would amply 
 suffice for the mastery of any college curricu 
 lum appointed in this country. 
 
 This is saying nothing whatever with 
 respect to the needless and time-wasteful 
 expansion of the curriculum. Granting that 
 everything required is desirable and it is a 
 large granting an earnest student under an 
 earnest teacher ought to master the school 
 course in two years at most, and the college 
 course in two years more. A really bright 
 boy, if his teacher knows how to teach, 
 should be able to do it within half that time. 
 
 251 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 Daniel Webster was graduated from college 
 at 19 years of age; Edward Everett at 17, 
 and the other great men of our land at about 
 the same age. To-day the requirements are 
 such that the student who enters college 
 must be a year or two older than these men 
 were when they left it with their degrees. 
 Is this an advance in education or the reverse 
 a gain or a loss? Is it desirable that the 
 boy shall spend the first twenty-five years of 
 his life in preparation for a problematical 
 twenty-five years more of activity? Are we 
 not making a fetich of mere scholarship ? Are 
 we not giving an excessive period of youth 
 to mere acquirement, both by wasting the 
 time appointed for acquirement, and by ex 
 acting a needless amount of acquirement? 
 Bearing in mind the facts that life is short 
 and that the object of education is so to 
 train the mind as to get its best results in 
 active ways, is not our entire educational 
 system wrong at both ends? Does it not 
 require more of mere acquirement than is 
 
 252 
 
Hoosier Theory and Practice of Teaching 
 
 actually needful, and does not the indolence 
 of teachers exact a larger expenditure of 
 time than is really necessary for such acquire 
 ment? 
 
 These are questions which we must seri 
 ously think about if we really care for the 
 future of our country and of mankind. 
 There is a professional impulse on the part 
 of those who teach, to exact more and more 
 of those who learn. It is a natural impulse, 
 and, properly directed, a wholesome one. 
 But is it not capable of abuse, and is it not 
 in fact abused? Is not mere scholarship 
 unduly exalted in our time, and does not 
 achievement pay the penalty? Was not a 
 Daniel Webster graduated at 19, an Edward 
 Everett at 17, worth more to the world than 
 Daniel Webster and Edward Everett gradu 
 ated at twenty-five with vastly more of mere 
 learning, would have been? 
 
 For specialists in scholarship of course 
 there can be no limit set to needful acquire 
 ments ; but for the men who are to do the 
 253 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 world s great work in one or another depart 
 ment of active endeavor, it seems easily pos 
 sible to exact too much, and to waste need 
 less years in preparation that does not pre 
 pare. Still more obvious is it that diligence 
 in teaching and the use of enlightened 
 methods might greatly shorten the period of 
 preparation, no matter what the require 
 ments may be. 
 
 254 
 
D 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 A Pair of Young Tramps. 
 
 URING this time, after Edward s re 
 turn from Virginia, he and I began, 
 or rather resumed, a course of 
 tramping that had a most beneficial 
 effect upon his health. 
 
 Before and after he "chucked me into 
 college," as he boyishly described the per 
 formance, we accustomed ourselves, in my 
 vacation times, to prolonged walks, some 
 times extending over several weeks of time. 
 If there was anything to be seen, anywhere 
 within pedestrian reach, we went to see it, 
 adopting the most primitive travel methods, 
 and enduring very cheerfully all the hard 
 ships incident to such methods. We slept 
 in hay mows, or under straw stacks, or, upon 
 occasion, in fence corners, We sometimes 
 got a breakfast or a dinner at some hospita- 
 255 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 ble farmer s house, where our tender of 
 money in payment for we always carried a 
 little money and never failed to offer pay 
 for our food and lodging was usually re- 
 jected with that scorn which the Western 
 farmer at that time felt for the man who 
 would " charge " for a meal or a night s 
 lodging. In the main, however, we ate corn 
 bread and bacon from our pockets. 
 
 On these journeys Edward reduced 
 everything to system, after his habitual man 
 ner. He had a big bull s-eye silver watch, 
 which kept good enough time for all our 
 purposes, and by it he regulated our tramp- 
 ings. We would set out in the morning to 
 cover a prescribed distance. Edward would 
 mark off the miles into relays and estimate 
 very carefully how long it should take us to 
 cover each subdivision of the distance. It 
 was his usual practice to reduce our periods 
 of walking to fifteen minutes each, with one 
 minute s rest at the end of each quarter 
 hour, and three minutes rest at the end of 
 256 
 
A Pair of Young Tramps 
 
 each hour. But country miles are apt to be 
 erratic in their length, and so sometimes we 
 were delayed much longer on our road than 
 we had expected, while sometimes instead 
 we would arrive at our destination some 
 hours earlier than we had planned. These 
 things were never suffered to interfere with 
 our program. If we got to our night s desti 
 nation before the time appointed that meant 
 an extra period of rest. If we were half an 
 hour or an hour late, we accepted that as 
 proof that the country people had mistaken 
 the length of their miles. In either case we 
 were a happy and contented pair of boys. 
 
 About that time Bayard Taylor pub 
 lished in a newspaper a series of articles con 
 cerning the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, 
 which he had recently visited. I don t know 
 how we happened to get hold of those fasci 
 nating papers, but we did so, and straightway 
 the impulse seized us to visit that wonder of 
 nature. 
 
 With three or four pounds of bacon and 
 257 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 two pones of corn-bread to the good, we set 
 out on our journey. A few miles below 
 Madison we got two fence rails, attached our 
 clothing to the further ends of them, and 
 swam the river. That night we slept in a 
 barn. The next morning we were arrested, 
 charged with aiding or planning to aid in the 
 escape of a runaway negro who had disap 
 peared, but of whose existence we had never 
 heard. As the negro was presently found in 
 a barn in a state of helpless intoxication, we 
 boys were promptly discharged, but with a 
 warning that Hoosiers were not wanted south 
 of the river. A boat was placed at our ser 
 vice, in which we recrossed the stream, and 
 after that we walked back to Madison, com 
 pelled to take Bayard Taylor s word for the 
 existence of the Mammoth Cave, and for all 
 its wonders. 
 
 But, in brooding over the matter, I be 
 came dissatisfied with this solution of the 
 problem. I do not think I cared particularly 
 for the Mammoth Cave, but it was my habit 
 253 ^ J 
 
A Pair of Young Tramps 
 
 of mind to resent and resist any balking of 
 my purposes, whatever they might be, by the 
 arbitrary will of others. It seemed to me that 
 to go to the Mammoth Cave had become an 
 imperative duty which Edward and I owed to 
 our own self-respect. I happened to know 
 that a well-to-do neighbor of ours was just 
 then getting in his year s supply of wood, so 
 early in the morning I went to him and took 
 the contract to saw, split and cord up his 
 wood for a certain price per cord. I had 
 sawed and split and corded wood all my life 
 as a contribution of service to the domestic 
 economy of our household, but never before 
 had I done so for money. I was gravely 
 apprehensive that if the present state of facts 
 should become known in the family some 
 form of prohibition would be interposed. 
 So I kept the matter secret. By this and 
 some other work that I secured, and by the 
 sale of such school text-books as I had done 
 with, I secured, altogether, the sum of six 
 dollars and seventy-five cents, 
 
 259 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 With so much money in hand, I went to 
 Edward and announced that he and I were 
 going upon our contemplated travels. Fifty 
 cents apiece paid our deck passage to Louis 
 ville on a steamboat. There we bought 
 crackers, smoked herrings and cheese, and, 
 thus provisioned, we set out to walk the few 
 miles that lay between the city and the cave. 
 
 The great cavern was a disappointment 
 to us. Perhaps we lacked something of that 
 creative imagination with which Bayard Tay 
 lor had seen and described it. At any rate, 
 we felt rather ill-repaid for our journey, par 
 ticularly as Edward managed to lose the re 
 mainder of our money before we got back 
 to Louisville, so that we had to tramp the 
 extra fifty miles or so of our homeward 
 journey from that city to Madison. 
 
 All this occurred before the time when 
 Edward undertook to prepare me for my 
 college examinations. It is related here as a 
 part of what the lawyers call the res gesta of 
 Edward Eggleston s youth. 
 260 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 The Wander Year. 
 
 N the spring of 1856 Edward s health 
 broke down completely. He had 
 hemorrhages, supposed to be from 
 the lungs, and the decision of the 
 doctors was that he was doomed to die pres 
 ently of consumption. 
 
 Our mother took him on a voyage to 
 St. Louis in the hope that the journey might 
 restore his health. It did nothing to promise 
 recovery or even betterment, but on the way 
 the boy fell in with a number of other people 
 afflicted as he was, who were going to Min 
 nesota at that time the new land of promise 
 for consumptives. 
 
 He made up his mind to go thither also. 
 Our mother could barely and with difficulty 
 furnish him with passage money up the river, 
 but he bravely undertook to look out for 
 
 261 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 himself after he should land in Minnesota, 
 and, with very little hope for health, as he 
 wrote me at the time, he set out. 
 
 He used to relate that on the way up 
 the river the captain of his steamboat, who 
 was commodore of the line, took sufficient 
 interest in him to give him advice. 
 
 " Now, some o these fellers," he said, 
 "has got only a little o your trouble, an 
 mebbe the climate o Minnesota will help 
 em to live on for a few months or a year or 
 so. But you ve got it too bad for that. Take 
 a fool s advice an go right back home, so s 
 you can pick out the place you want to be 
 buried in. If you ain t got money enough for 
 that, I kin arrange for passes. But the one 
 thing fer you to do is to go home jest as 
 quick as you kin." 
 
 Years afterward Edward had occasion to 
 travel frequently on this old captain s steam 
 boat and the two became devoted friends 
 the one being a Methodist preacher and the 
 other a bluff steamboat man who, for lack 
 
 262 
 
The Wander Year 
 
 of an adequate supply of other adjectives, 
 sprinkled an entirely meaningless profanity 
 through his sentences. Edward, throughout 
 his life objected, on principle, to all " dead 
 heading " of the clergy, and to all "dis 
 counts" made to preachers on the ground 
 of their calling. He insisted that these prac 
 tices constituted a pauperizing of the clergy, 
 and would himself have none of it. He 
 even wrote humorously on the subject years 
 afterward in the Century Magazine, ridicul 
 ing such " dead-heading " with caustic con 
 tempt, and insisting that a clergyman owed 
 it to his own self-respect to pay his way like 
 any other citizen. But he never succeeded 
 in paying his passage on any boat of the line 
 which this old captain owned and controlled. 
 When he raised the point of principle in a 
 controversy over the matter one day, the 
 captain replied : 
 
 u Well, now, it s been my rule all my 
 life never to charge fare to a corpse, an 
 you re a corpse, though you don t look like 
 
 263 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 one. The first time you traveled with me 
 I tole you you hadn t more n a month to 
 live. Well, that month s gone many a month 
 ago, an so you re dead or else I m a liar, an 
 I never yet allowed even a preacher to call 
 me that. You can t never pay no fare on no 
 steamboat that I own without callin me a 
 liar, so that s the end of that." 
 
 " And think of it," Edward said to me 
 one day long after the old captain had been 
 gathered to his fathers, " at that time I was 
 deeply apprehensive for the future welfare 
 of that dear old man s soul, just as if God 
 didn t know what stuff men are made of." 
 
 Edward landed in Minnesota then a 
 new territory just beginning its settlement 
 in May, 1856. He was a mere boy of 
 18 years. He was absolutely without ac 
 quaintance there and absolutely penniless. In 
 the search for bread-winning work he must 
 match his frail physique against the robust 
 ness of hundreds of stalwart youths who 
 had gone west to conquer fortunes for them- 
 
 2G4 
 
The Wander Year 
 
 selves. The contest was an unequal one, but 
 the frail boy s " grit " stood him in good 
 stead, and its recognition on the part of the 
 gloriously brave " frontier conquerors," as 
 he loved to call them, was ready and gen 
 erous. 
 
 He did whatever work there was to do. 
 He became chain carrier to a surveying party, 
 and with his readiness in learning, he quickly 
 picked up a knowledge of the art and sci 
 ence of surveying, which later enabled him 
 to take command of a surveying party on 
 his own account. But, his health failing 
 again, he had to abandon that employment 
 and go to bed for a time. 
 
 At one time he became the driver of 
 three yoke of oxen hitched to a prairie 
 breaking plow. At another time he took 
 the agency for a soap-making recipe and 
 peddled it over the county. When taunted 
 with this experience in after and more dis 
 tinguished years his reply was ready: 
 
 " It was the best soap recipe I ever saw, 
 
 265 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 and soap was a good deal needed in that 
 country. I am prouder of my soap recipe 
 selling than I am of my preaching there; for 
 the soap was above criticism, while the ser 
 mons certainly were not." 
 
 He engaged in other occupations also, 
 by way of earning a living, both at this time 
 of his first stay in the far northwest, and 
 during his later career as a preacher there, 
 when frequently failing health obliged him, 
 now and again, to give up his pastorates and 
 engage in other work. Of these occupations 
 he used afterwards to say: "Some of them 
 may have been undignified, but they were all 
 honest and they brought me a living when 
 I had need of it." 
 
 Was it not in that spirit that this great, 
 free nation of ours was built up in a wilder 
 ness in which the gospel of work played a 
 larger part than any more abstruse teaching 
 could have done? 
 
 After a few months of outdoor life, the 
 boy s health was so far improved that he 
 
 266 
 
&F: 
 
 EDWARD EGGLESTON IN 1875 
 
The Wander Year 
 
 determined to return to his home and resume 
 his studies with a view to that ministry of 
 the gospel to which he looked forward as his 
 appointed career. He had earned enough 
 by hard work on the prairies to feed and 
 clothe himself there, but he had no sur 
 plus money with which to pay his way home. 
 So he wrote to me, asking me to send him 
 thirty dollars out of his share in our slender 
 estate. 
 
 I sent him the money by express, in the 
 form of thirty silver dollars. 
 
 But mails were slow in those days, and 
 his letter had been long in coming. A day 
 or two after I had sent off the money Ed 
 ward himself appeared travel worn but in 
 better health than I had ever seen him. 
 
 He had a stirring story to tell. After 
 writing me the letter asking for money for 
 his home-coming, he had been seized with a 
 sudden enthusiasm to bear a part in behalf 
 of freedom in the bloody struggle then 
 going on in Kansas. So, without waiting to 
 267 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 receive the money for which he had written 
 to me, he had strapped a knapsack upon his 
 back and set out to walk from Minnesota to 
 Kansas. His path being hopelessly blocked 
 in Iowa, he turned about and decided to 
 make his way homeward, well-nigh penniless 
 and on foot, across a country which at that 
 time was almost wholly without inhabitants. 
 For three hundred and sixty-five miles he 
 traveled across desert wastes, living upon 
 such food as he could here and there find, 
 sleeping upon the prairie under the stars and 
 among the wolves, and often going without 
 water for more than a day at a time. 
 
 Finally, he had reached a railroad, and 
 found that by the expenditure of two dol 
 lars more than he had in possession he 
 could pay his fare to Lafayette, Indiana, 
 where a step brother lived. Not having the 
 two dollars he laid the case before an entire 
 stranger, of a disposition so kindly that he 
 willingly advanced the money. To return it 
 promptly was Edward s first concern on 
 268 
 
The Wander Year 
 
 reaching home, and in aid of that purpose 
 I undertook to tutor a stupid and rather dis 
 agreeable boy through his coming first term 
 in college, taking him as my room-mate in 
 spite of his disagreeableness, on condition 
 that he would make advance payment of 
 the two dollars which alone I was to get 
 for seeing to it that he should pass his 
 examinations at the end of the next and now 
 approaching term. We had relatives in the 
 town who would gladly have furnished the 
 money, or it might somehow have been 
 squeezed out of the sadly embarrassed estate, 
 but I preferred to secure it by my own ex 
 ertions, as an expression of my joy in having 
 my brother back again as my comrade. 
 
 The comradeship was not to be for 
 long. I must almost immediately return to 
 college, and Edward was fixed in his deter 
 mination to secure a preacher s license and 
 begin his career as a Methodist circuit rider. 
 Until this time he had cherished the hope of 
 taking a college course, but repeated experi- 
 269 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 ment in close application to study had finally 
 convinced him that this was impossible, that 
 he must live in the open air during the greater 
 part of his waking hours, and that whatever 
 of study he might attempt must be done in 
 full recognition of this necessity. 
 
 He was not yet nineteen years old, but 
 his mind was mature far beyond his years, as 
 it always had been. He was already and 
 very greatly the superior in education of most 
 of the young Methodist preachers of that 
 time, and of most of the college graduates, 
 too, for that matter, if in education we in 
 clude travel, experience, and the educative 
 influence of a varied contact with men. Why, 
 then, should he not begin his work without 
 further delay ? 
 
 That question was promptly answered. 
 The church authorities were glad to ordain 
 him, and he was eagerly ready for work. He 
 was assigned to a circuit in extreme south 
 eastern Indiana, as its junior minister, with 
 ten different preaching appointments. 
 
 270 
 
The Wander Year 
 
 For six months he " rode circuit," spend 
 ing the greater part of his days on horse 
 back and eating and sleeping wherever he 
 might be invited to eat and sleep among the 
 hill people. 
 
 This life gave him few opportunities for 
 reading or study, for in those days when 
 " the preacher" came to any house it was ex 
 pected that he should hold prayers with the 
 family, gently lecture and admonish the 
 children, and make himself agreeable as the 
 centre of a local society of which every 
 member was invited to breakfast, dine, sup 
 or spend the evening in his supposedly up 
 lifting company. There was no seclusion, 
 no privacy for him in any house. More than 
 half the time he was expected to occupy the 
 same room and even the same bed with the 
 boys of the family. Nowhere was he free 
 from converse that contributed not at all to 
 his culture or to his intellectual growth. 
 To " entertain the preacher" meant not only 
 to provide him with lodging and meals, but 
 
 271 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 also to keep his mind continually occupied 
 with an entirely unimproving conversation 
 which consumed his time to no purpose. 
 
 To meet these conditions Edward 
 adopted a plan of his own, of which he 
 wrote to me at college, in gleeful exultation. 
 He had been bred to expert horsemanship 
 from his earliest infancy, and could both ride 
 and control the least tractable of horses. 
 But he wanted time and opportunity for 
 reading and study, so he wrote to me: 
 
 u I have bought a good, strong, and very 
 lazy horse, without enough spirit in him to 
 think of going at any gait faster than a walk 
 unless whipped or spurred into involuntary 
 exertion of a strictly temporary character. 
 The distance between appointments is con 
 siderable, and with such a horse I have abun 
 dant excuse for starting early and arriving 
 late. By taking all day to make journeys 
 that might easily be accomplished in a few 
 hours, I get all day instead of a few hours 
 for my study. I throw the reins on my 
 272 
 
The Wander Year 
 
 horse s neck and let him jog on at his favor 
 ite speed of two or three miles an hour. 
 Then I get out a book and devote my time 
 to profitable reading or study. As I cannot 
 carry my Greek or Latin dictionaries with 
 me, I must do without them. But I find 
 that to be not altogether a disadvantage. It 
 compels me to think for my vocabulary, and 
 to study context in a way that I should never 
 do if I had a dictionary at hand. I have 
 just finished reading the Oedipus Tyrannis in 
 this way, and while the lack of lexicon refer 
 ence has doubtless cost me some of the nice 
 ties of scholarship, I am not sure that the 
 loss hasn t been more than made good by 
 increased fluency, and by the compulsion of 
 the memory to retain what it has once grasped 
 in the way of word meanings. Sometimes I 
 encounter a word the meaning of which I 
 cannot in any wise make out. But presently 
 I encounter it again in a different connec 
 tion, where the context serves instead of a 
 dictionary. Then I go back to the former 
 273 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 passage and read it in the new light. I 
 wonder if it might not be possible to teach 
 at least the dead languages in that way, after 
 the declensions and conjugations were learned. 
 And I am not sure that it wouldn t be the 
 best way in the end, at least so far as intel 
 lectual discipline is concerned." 
 
 He himself afterward applied this method 
 to the learning of other languages with con 
 spicuous success. Knowing his Greek, Latin 
 and French pretty well to begin with, he 
 decided in his own mind that whenever he 
 should have need to read any passage in any 
 language, he could and would do it; and to 
 the end of his days he did precisely that, 
 often to the great advantage of his studies 
 in historical research. 
 
 But at this time of his early circuit riding, 
 he did not confine himself wholly or even 
 chiefly to scholarly study. He read volumin 
 ously, mainly in lines that were suggested by 
 his profession. He read Wesley and Whit- 
 field and Thomas a Kempis. But he found 
 
 274 
 
The Wander Year 
 
 time also to read a world of history and 
 biography particularly biography which, he 
 always contended, was "history cut in thick 
 slices." He read everything, in fact, upon 
 which his preternaturally eager mind could 
 lay hands, and, youth-like, he was specially 
 attracted to poetry of an uplifting sort. 
 Such poetry he sometimes used in his ser 
 mons, as he did also the more inspiring pas 
 sages of Scripture. 
 
 "The practice is dangerous, however," 
 he wrote to me, " in this hill country. Not 
 long ago I quoted a part of the twenty-third 
 Psalm, not thinking it necessary to mention 
 its source. A few days later a good brother 
 said to me : That was a mighty pretty part 
 of your sermon about green pastures and 
 still waters and all that. But why don t you 
 preach that way all the time? Alas, I had 
 not only made myself a plagiarist of King 
 David, but had set up the choicest utter 
 ances of the sweet singer of Israel as a 
 standard of rhetoric for myself." 
 775 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 Notwithstanding the out of door life of 
 a circuit rider, Edward studied himself into 
 illness again within six months and had to 
 abandon the work. After a few months of 
 rest at home, he turned his face again toward 
 Minnesota, where alone, since his infancy, he 
 had enjoyed that measure of health which 
 permits a man to take his working part in 
 life. 
 
 276 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 The Story of "The Hoosier Schoolmaster." 
 
 ETWEEN the time of Edward s 
 return from his first stay in Minne 
 sota and that of his second jour 
 ney thither, I had some experiences 
 of my own which mightily interested and 
 amused my brother. These experiences are 
 to be very briefly related here, partly because 
 they reflect what still survived of the " Hoos 
 ier" life in the hill country, very near to the 
 higher civilization along the river, but still 
 more because Edward s amused recollection 
 of what I told him about them at the time, 
 prompted him many years afterwards to 
 write " The Hoosier Schoolmaster." 
 
 Soon after the beginning of my second 
 year in college a controversy arose between 
 the faculty and the student body, in which I 
 thought then and I think now that the stu- 
 
 277 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 dents were absolutely right and the faculty 
 altogether wrong. But the faculty were in 
 authority and threatened the suspension of 
 all the students, with expulsion quickly to 
 follow, if we should persist in our refusal to 
 accept the harsh and wholly unjust terms 
 offered to us. We persisted and all of us, 
 except forty-one who submitted at the last 
 moment, were sent home. In justice to 
 the students thus dismissed, many of whom 
 have since won high places for themselves 
 as men of character and brains, it should 
 be stated here that the Board of Trus 
 tees, after hearing both sides of the mat 
 ter, decided that the students were right, 
 and ordered their readmission to their classes 
 without conditions of any kind. At the 
 same time the Board asked the president and 
 certain members of the faculty for their 
 resignations. 
 
 I did not avail myself of the reinstate 
 ment, for the reason that I had, in the mean 
 while, accepted charge of a school on Riker s 
 278 
 
The Story of f The Hoosier Schoolmaster* 
 
 Ridge, a few miles from Madison, in the hill 
 country. The neighborhood was at that 
 time the most primitive one in all that region, 
 though it lay so close to the chief city of 
 southern Indiana. The people there were 
 partly Pennsylvania Dutch, partly Hoosiers. 
 They were very good and kindly people, as 
 I remember them, but scantily educated and 
 still somewhat disposed to cling to the old 
 school tradition of "no lickin no larnin ," 
 which is emphasized as an axiom in "The 
 Hoosier Schoolmaster." The advent, there 
 fore, of a schoolmaster still under seventeen 
 years of age, to manage a school in which the 
 majority of the pupils were his seniors, was 
 looked upon with doubt and well-founded 
 apprehension. The fact that I was a college 
 student, and that my education was vastly 
 superior to that of any one in the neighbor 
 hood, was readily recognized. 
 
 "But how s that boy ever agoin to 
 manage sich a school as ours?" they asked. 
 
 "Why, they s a dozen boys in that 
 279 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 school any one of em able to lick him with 
 their right hands tied behind em." 
 
 That was true enough. It was true, 
 also, that one of the big boys had won dis 
 tinction by "licking" the last three masters. 
 He was the original of Bud Means in "The 
 Hoosier Schoolmaster," though rather gen 
 tler of disposition than Bud was. Still he 
 had always cherished the conviction that the 
 schoolmaster is the natural enemy of the big 
 boy, an enemy to be "licked" upon the 
 smallest provocation. It was confidently 
 predicted, therefore, by the trustees of the 
 school, and by the school itself, and by all 
 the neighbors, that " school won t be a week 
 old before Charley G will give the mas 
 ter a lickin ." 
 
 Curiously enough it was only through 
 Charley G - s willing assistance that I was 
 able to govern the unruly school at all. 
 Charley was a young man of twenty-one, six 
 feet high, and as powerful almost as a young 
 bull, which animal indeed he resembled in 
 
 280 
 
The Story of f The Hoosier Schoolmaster 
 
 perfect symmetry of form and perfect com 
 mand of his muscles. He was not only able 
 to "lick" me or any other master that the 
 school might get; he could "lick" any boy 
 in the school with no apparent effort what 
 ever, and every boy there knew the fact, 
 some of them by bitter experience. 
 
 / But Charley was two years older now 
 than he had been when he drove the last 
 schoolmaster out of the neighborhood. Man 
 hood had come to him, and with it ambition. 
 He had decided to become a ship carpenter, 
 and in his preliminary investigations regard 
 ing the opportunities that trade offered to a 
 young man engaging in it, he had shrewdly 
 observed two facts : first, that the men who 
 became " boss " ship carpenters, or even sub- 
 bosses, were only those who had learned 
 certain mathematics that lay far beyond the 
 arithmetic; secondly, that sub-bosses were 
 paid twice or thrice the wages of ordinary 
 hands, while boss ship carpenters usually 
 grew well-to-do and lived in fine houses. 
 
 281 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 So, when the boy-master came to the 
 school the first master he had ever had who 
 could teach algebra, geometry and trigonom 
 etry, the ambitious young man felt that his 
 opportunity had come. He came to me by 
 night or rather asked me to go to him 
 after the first day of school during which, 
 as he afterwards told me, he had carefully 
 "sized me up" as to good fellowship and 
 teaching capacity and laid his ambitions 
 before me. He told me what mathematics 
 he must learn in order to equip himself for 
 his chosen career, and asked me, with eyes 
 eagerly scanning mine for the real answer, 
 whether I thought it possible for him to mas 
 ter so much during the months for which I 
 had been appointed to the school. 
 
 I asked in return how much he knew of 
 arithmetic which, I explained to him, was the 
 foundation of the mathematical superstruc 
 ture he wished to build. For answer he said 
 simply : 
 
 "Try me, and find out for yourself." 
 282 
 
The Story of "The Hoosier Schoolmaster" 
 
 It was ten o clock at night, and I was, 
 by invitation, staying over night in his 
 father s house, where nine o clock was the 
 customary bedtime for everybody. So I 
 answered : 
 
 " I ll examine you in arithmetic to-mor 
 
 row." 
 
 " No, do it now, please," he said. " I m 
 ready for all night and I can t sleep till I 
 know about it. You see the old man gives 
 me this six months of schooling, and he ll 
 never give me any more. So I want to know, 
 just as quick as possible, what I can do." 
 
 Seeing the young man s eagerness for 
 education, and sympathizing with it, I set to 
 work at once to test his knowledge of arith 
 metic. Before midnight I told him he was 
 prepared to go forward, and added : 
 
 " I can teach you all you need of algebra, 
 geometry and trigonometry, within the next 
 six months, if you aid me by trying very 
 hard to learn. I ll gladly do my part. The 
 rest depends upon you." 
 283 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 He promised, and that was our com 
 pact. Nothing whatever had been said about 
 school government, or the maintenance of 
 order, but I soon learned by observation 
 that Charley G - had thought out all that. 
 He wanted to learn ; I was to teach him ; he 
 did not intend that any school trouble should 
 interfere with that program. A day or two 
 later a boy tried to disturb the school by 
 drawing his pencil over his slate so as to 
 make it squeak in a nerve-distressing way. 
 I rebuked him. Presently he did it again, 
 and I again admonished him. Five minutes 
 later he ventured upon a third offence. Be 
 fore I could decide what to do, Charley 
 G - rose quickly, crossed the aisle, seized 
 the offender s ear and vigorously twisted it 
 till the fellow writhed in pain. 
 
 " You heard the master," was all he said. 
 
 If a thunderbolt had entered the school 
 room there could not have been greater 
 astonishment. Charley G - on the side 
 of the master ! And even helping him main- 
 
 2Si 
 
The Story of r The Hoosier Schoolmaster" 
 
 tain discipline and order! It was unbeliev 
 able. But further proof of it came quickly. 
 There was a little fellow the smallest in the 
 school whose quaint ways were very endear 
 ing. His name was Ebenezer Ledgerwood, 
 but he was called u Needy." There was a 
 hulking, cowardly brute there, whose one 
 employment on the playground seemed to 
 be to persecute the peculiarly inoffensive 
 and lovable child. I inflicted severe punish 
 ments of my own devising by way of stop 
 ping this brutality of persecution. The 
 more I punished the more the hulking brute 
 persecuted the helpless little fellow. 
 
 Finally, I put aside all my prejudices 
 against corporal punishment, and gave the 
 big fellow a thrashing with a stout gad, 
 promising him a worse one if he should 
 repeat the offence. That day at the noon 
 recess the fellow set to work to " take it out " 
 of Needy Ledgerwood. I was looking and 
 hearing through a window blind. Charley 
 
 G- was at the bat in a game of town-ball, 
 
 28S 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 He threw down the bat, seized the persecu 
 tor, and, seating himself on one of several 
 bundles of shingles that had been left lying 
 around when the new school-house was fin 
 ished, turned the fellow across his lap, hold 
 ing him by the nape of his neck and pinion 
 ing his legs by throwing one of his own 
 across them. Then he called for shingles, 
 and they were quickly brought by boys who 
 were accustomed to do Charley G s bid 
 ding. These shingles, one after another, he 
 wore out as implements of spanking, until a 
 dozen or more of them were gone. And 
 that the spanking was effective was abun 
 dantly proved by the howls of pain it called 
 forth from the victim. Finally, Charley 
 G - stood the fellow up, slapped his jaws 
 with a vigor that suggested the possibility 
 of broken bones, and then releasing him, 
 said: 
 
 "Now take a hint from that. I ll do 
 you up a great deal wuss next time. And 
 don t you go whining to the master about 
 286 
 
The Story of "The Hoosier Schoolmaster" 
 
 this. If you do, it ll be a good deal wuss 
 for you. I m a takin this here job off the 
 master s hands." 
 
 Screened by a Venetian blind, I had seen 
 and heard all that had happened. But I 
 thought it best to let well enough alone, so 
 I gave no sign then or afterwards that I 
 knew anything about it. But I had no fur 
 ther occasion to exercise discipline over the 
 boys of that school. They quite understood 
 that Charley G - was "a takin this here 
 job off the master s hands," and they ordered 
 their conduct accordingly. 
 
 The girls were my only problem. They, 
 
 of course, had no fear of Charley G s 
 
 big fists, and they were disposed to defy me. 
 In order to govern them I took a leaf out of 
 Mrs. Dumont s book. I put them on their 
 honor. I explained to them that of course 
 I should never think of punishing a girl. 
 That would be unworthy of my manhood. 
 But I added that I trusted them to behave 
 as girls should who expected to be "ladies" 
 287 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 after a while. I frankly declared that if they 
 should break every rule and disobey every 
 command, my instinct of courtesy toward 
 them, as girls and young women, would for 
 bid me to attempt any sort of control. 
 
 This was a new view to their minds, and 
 
 
 
 for a time they doubted my sincerity. They 
 tested it by disobeying, in small annoying 
 ways, but finding that no angry outbreak on 
 my part followed, they at last settled down 
 to the belief that I meant what I had said, 
 and finding no "fun" in baiting a teacher 
 who had trusted them to do as they pleased, 
 they ceased to trouble me. I think that a 
 sense of honor and a sort of public opinion 
 in the school helped a good deal in securing 
 this result. It was felt to be " mean " to dis 
 obey the teacher when he had declared that 
 no punishment of any kind should be meted 
 out to the disobedient, and each girl was 
 conscious of the fact that her schoolmates, 
 boys and girls alike, would so regard her 
 conduct in such a case. 
 
 288 
 
The Story of "The Hoosier Schoolmaster" 
 
 Much that was humorous occurred in 
 the conduct of the school, particularly the 
 odd doings and sayings of "Needy" Led- 
 gerwood, who afterwards served Edward as 
 a model in his portraiture of Shocky in " The 
 Hoosier Schoolmaster." 
 
 All these things I related to Edward on 
 my weekly visits to Madison, for I usually 
 went home on Friday afternoon and returned 
 on Monday morning in time for school. 
 Sometimes, however, I remained at Riker s 
 Ridge over Saturday, in order to help Char 
 ley G , who was working night and day 
 
 over his mathematics. He worked so well 
 and with so much intelligence that before the 
 period of my school teaching ended, he had 
 quite fully accomplished his ambition and 
 was ready to enter upon the learning of his 
 trade in full confidence that he knew enough 
 of the mathematics to warrant his hope of 
 some day becoming a master shipwright. I 
 hope he achieved that ambition, though I 
 have never heard, I bear him in friendly 
 118 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 remembrance, not only because of the way 
 in which he helped me to govern an unruly 
 school, but still more because of the sturdy 
 manliness of his character, and the unfalter 
 ing friendship he manifested for me. 
 
 Let me skip over the years here in order 
 to show what things of vastly more import 
 ance grew out of this school-teacher experi 
 ence of my own. 
 
 Late in 1871 Edward resigned from the 
 editorship of the Independent, and presently 
 undertook the not very hopeful task of gal 
 vanizing a moribund weekly periodical, 
 Hearth and Home, into new life. That paper 
 had been established by the advertising 
 firm of Pettingill & Bates, with Donald G. 
 Mitchell and Harriet Beecher Stowe as its 
 editors, and that most gifted of juvenile 
 writers, Mrs. Mary Mapes Dodge, or Mary 
 E. Dodge as she then wrote the name, in 
 charge of the children s department. The 
 publication had been a failure almost from 
 the beginning, partly perhaps because Mr, 
 290 
 
The Story of f The Hoosier Schoolmaster 
 
 Mitchell and Mrs. Stowe knew little or 
 nothing of the art of editing a newspaper, 
 while Mrs. Dodge, the only one of the trio 
 who had a genius for such work, held a sub 
 ordinate instead of a controlling position. 
 
 But apart from that Hearth and Home 
 was foredoomed to failure because of a mis 
 directed purpose. It was meant to be a 
 country gentleman s periodical, while at that 
 time there were almost no country gentle 
 men in the sense in which the term is here 
 used in America. It addressed itself largely 
 to a class which at that time scarcely at all 
 existed, though it is fairly numerous now 
 the leisure class that amuses itself with ex 
 pensive horticulture for pleasure only, rejoices 
 in greenhouses and gardens of exotic plants, 
 and dallies with amateur botany in the same 
 spirit in which it indulges a taste for litera 
 ture by reading the best magazines. 
 
 The mistake was soon made manifest by 
 the failure of the periodical to repay the 
 lavish expenditures of its publishers, and 
 291 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 presently it was sold to Orange, Judd & Co., 
 publishers of the American Agriculturist. Of 
 the original editors only Mrs. Dodge re 
 mained in its service, and I think it entirely 
 just to say that it was only the exceeding 
 charm of the children s department which 
 she made, that had enabled the paper to re 
 tain the few thousands of circulation which 
 it had when Edward Eggleston took edito 
 rial control of it. 
 
 I was appointed managing editor under 
 him, not by his request, for he detested 
 nepotism, and the appointment was not one 
 that: I needed or desired, but by voluntary 
 act of the publishers, who thought my pres 
 ence as his lieutenant would free his mind of 
 many worries and perhaps in other ways aid 
 him in the difficult task of rescuing the paper 
 from its slough of despond. 
 
 That task was one of very great per 
 plexity. " First of all," I remember saying 
 to Edward, u we must find out what is the 
 matter with the paper." 
 
 292 
 
The Story of "The Hoosier Schoolmaster" 
 
 He quickly answered : 
 
 " Oh, I know what s the matter. With 
 the exception of Mrs. Dodge s admirable 
 children s pages, all that is is wrong. Write 
 that up in your hat, Geordie, for ready refer 
 ence. We must change everything radically 
 everything but the children s pages. There 
 is the horticultural department now. It occu 
 pies several pages that might be better used 
 in other ways. I want you to kill it, not by 
 a blow, for that would break the hearts of 
 the publishers and shock some subscribers, 
 perhaps, but kill it by slow suffocation. In 
 rearranging the make-up I want you to put 
 that horticultural section between two sec 
 tions devoted to better things ; then I want 
 you to expand each of those two sections so 
 as to squeeze the horticulture more and more 
 each week till nothing is left of it except 
 perhaps a picture of a new rhododendron 
 or chrysanthemum, with a paragraph of de 
 scriptive text. In the agricultural depart 
 ment, I wish you would do all you can to 
 
 293 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 discourage the portraits of plows that now 
 stand for pictures there, and in the house 
 hold department, please do the like with 
 skillets, frying pans and patent egg-beaters. 
 But all this is a work of negation and elimi 
 nation. We must do some constructive 
 work at once. We must get some literature 
 for the paper, with good names attached. 
 I ve already engaged (here he named a num 
 ber of popular writers) to furnish matter, 
 and you must be constantly on the lookout 
 for others. You must get some good, inter 
 esting descriptive articles that will lend them 
 selves to really artistic illustration, and then 
 you must yourself select the artists to illus 
 trate them. The art superintendent well, 
 never mind that, choose the artists yourself. 
 "Now another thing. We are going to 
 print some stories in this paper, and I want 
 you to get some good ones single number, 
 short stories mainly, but if you strike a really 
 good three-number story, take it. There ll 
 be a howl from the publishing office, of 
 
 294 
 
EDWARD EGGLESTON 
 From a photograph made in the Century Club, New York, 1896 
 
The Story of f The Hoosier Schoolmaster" 
 
 course, because one of the publishers has 
 always taken high moral ground or high 
 immoral ground, whichever it is against all 
 novels and stories. Of course we must put 
 stories into the paper, not only for the sake 
 of its success, but because the story is the 
 most effective of all literary forms in teach 
 ing truth, conveying interesting information 
 and uplifting men s minds and souls. I 
 sometimes think the day is coming when 
 pretty nearly all of instruction and all of in 
 spiring thought will be given in the story 
 form, as they once were in the form of verse. 
 Anyhow, we must have some good short 
 stories at once, and presently perhaps we 
 shall print a novel as a serial." 
 
 It will scarcely be believed of many in 
 the early years of the twentieth century, that 
 so late as the end of the third quarter of the 
 nineteenth, there still survived a bitter preju 
 dice against novels as demoralizing literature, 
 and that even short stories were looked upon 
 with doubt and suspicion. Yet even in 1902 
 295 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 thirty years after that time a very distin 
 guished clergyman in New Jersey, within 
 half an hour s ride of New York, was bitterly 
 assailed by members of his church, who 
 sought his removal from the pastorate for 
 the sole offence of having done some noble 
 literary work, including a novel or two. The 
 case made such a stir that the metropolitan 
 newspapers gave columns to an account of 
 it, and to the discussion of it which fol 
 lowed. 
 
 To us who were grown men in the early 
 seventies, the lapse of time seems very short 
 between those years and these, but in fact it 
 covers about a third of a century of con 
 stant intellectual broadening. If there still 
 are some in the twentieth century who deem 
 novel writing a grave breach of clerical 
 ethics, shall we feel wonder that thirty odd 
 years ago there were many who frowned 
 upon fiction as a thing of immoral tendency, 
 while a little earlier still, novel reading was 
 earnestly denounced from many pulpits, and 
 
 296 
 
The Story of f The Hoosier Schoolmaster" 
 
 usually classed with Sabbath-breaking and 
 sometimes even with blasphemy? 
 
 It was only a few weeks later, and while 
 we were still wrestling with the problem of 
 how to lift Hearth and Home out of the mire 
 of stagnation, when one evening about ten 
 o clock, Edward came to my house full of 
 enthusiasm over a project he had formed. 
 
 "Geordie," he began at once, "I am 
 going to write a three-number story, founded 
 upon your experiences at Riker s Ridge, 
 and call it The Hoosier Schoolmaster." 
 
 Then he set forth his theory of art 
 that the artist, whether with pen or brush, 
 who would do his best work, must choose 
 his subjects from the life that he knows. 
 He cited the Dutch painters, and justified 
 his choice of what seemed an unliterary 
 theme, involving rude characters and a 
 strange dialect perversion, by reference to 
 Lowell s success with the Biglow papers. 
 
 He had no notion, at the outset, of 
 making more than a three-number story of 
 
 2 ( J7 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 "The Hoosier Schoolmaster," and he wrote 
 the first instalment of it with very little, if 
 any, notion of what was to follow. But that 
 first instalment achieved instant and astonish 
 ing success. I think I never knew a piece of 
 work to be so quickly talked about. News 
 stand sales increased at once, and new sub 
 scriptions began to burden every mail. 
 Many newspapers in the West asked and 
 secured permission to copy the story, pub 
 lishing each instalment two weeks after its 
 appearance in Hearth and Home. It was 
 deemed good advertising policy to give such 
 permission freely, and it proved to be so. 
 
 Before writing the second instalment the 
 author changed his plan, enlarging it. Instead 
 of a three-number story, he decided to let the 
 tale take its own course so far as length was 
 concerned. From beginning to end he wrote 
 the story with the printers close at his heels, 
 each instalment appearing in print before the 
 next was written, and sometimes before it 
 was begun. 
 
 298 
 
The Story of f The Hoosier Schoolmaster" 
 
 Ordinarily this would be an unwise and 
 even an unsafe way of producing a story, 
 but in this case it proved quite otherwise, 
 chiefly perhaps because the author knew his 
 subject so well and was in love with it. 
 
 He had only once before attempted 
 fiction for grown people, and that only in 
 the form of a short magazine story. How 
 that attempt came to be made is best told 
 in a letter recently written to me by Dr. 
 Richard Watson Gilder, editor of the Cen 
 tury Magazine. At the time to which the 
 letter refers Dr. Gilder was Dr. Holland s 
 chief editorial assistant in the conduct of 
 Scribner s Monthly, now the Century Magazine, 
 and Edward Eggleston was an editor of the 
 Independent, and a contributor of critical 
 articles to Scribner s Monthly. 
 
 Dr. Gilder writes : 
 
 " By the way, I remember, as if it were yesterday, the 
 Friday on which I went to the Independent office and told 
 Edward that I would stop in on the following Monday and 
 get from him a Thanksgiving story. He said : But I have 
 never written stories for grown up people. I said, simply, 
 
 299 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 Monday morning I ll be here, and when I called on Mon 
 day morning he handed me the manuscript of Huldah, the 
 Help. This was an immediate success. We were not so 
 particular then about allowing articles to be copied, and 
 this must have appeared in a hundred newspapers. Its 
 success, I think, was a large element in his decision to write 
 fiction for adults. I had never seen any child stories of his, 
 but the geniality of his literary criticisms, which we were 
 publishing in the magazine, convinced me that he had it in 
 him to write stories." 
 
 Dr. Gilder s judgment in a matter of 
 that kind was that of an expert, as his re 
 markable success in the conduct of his maga 
 zine, and especially in the discovery of new 
 writers of capacity and new themes for maga 
 zine use, has since abundantly proved. But 
 he was at that time a rather young man, en 
 thusiastic, optimistic perhaps, and Edward s 
 intimate friend. These facts prompted Ed 
 ward to take Mr. Gilder s judgment with a 
 good deal of allowance and to hesitate before 
 attempting to follow up the success achieved 
 by "Huldah, the Help, "with other ventures 
 in fiction. 
 
 "That success is not conclusive," he said 
 to me one day when I referred to it as con- 
 300 
 
The Story of f The Hoosier Schoolmaster" 
 
 vincing. " It may have been accidental a 
 lucky hit, a thing that happened to satisfy a 
 passing fancy. I may be a man of one story 
 they say every man has one story in him." 
 
 But to Mr. Gilder s urgency and mine 
 there was presently added another, which 
 he regarded with a profounder deference, 
 namely that of Charles F. Briggs the 
 " Harry Franco " to whom Lowell had dedi 
 cated " The Fable for Critics." Mr. Briggs 
 was at that time an old man, but his faculties 
 were still unimpaired. He had at one time 
 been famous as a novelist and critic. He 
 had ceased to write novels, and only now and 
 then wrote a short story. But his critical 
 acumen was never so great or his critical 
 judgment so sound as at the time of which 
 I am writing. 
 
 Referring to " Huldah " and its success, 
 Mr. Briggs told Edward very earnestly that 
 he must write novels. Edward replied that 
 he had no confidence in his fitness to under 
 take anything so ambitious, particularly as 
 301 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 " Huldah " was absolutely the only bit of fic 
 tion for adults he had ever ventured upon. 
 
 "Nonsense," replied Mr. Briggs, in his 
 pleasantly dogmatic way. "Nonsense! Any 
 man who can write stories for children can 
 write novels successfully." 
 
 Edward .often afterwards said that it 
 was this very positive judgment of the vet 
 eran writer which led him to think seriously 
 of novel-writing as a possible career for him 
 self, and when the occasion for writing "The 
 Hoosier Schoolmaster" arose, his mind was 
 so well used to the idea that he felt no shrink 
 ing from the task. 
 
 The success of "The Hoosier School 
 master" in winning circulation to Hearth and 
 Home was so great and so immediate, that the 
 publishers besought its author to go on 
 writing stories of Western life, and he did 
 so, leaving the work of editing to his man 
 aging editor, and after awhile surrendering 
 his post of editor entirely, leaving me to 
 succeed him. All that will be recorded later 
 302 
 
The Story of f The Hoosier Schoolmaster* 
 
 in this volume. At present we have to do 
 only with "The Hoosier Schoolmaster." 
 
 When the serial publication was ended 
 it was decided to bring the story out in book 
 form. But an unwise economy in the publi 
 cation office forbade its proper presentation. 
 It had been "set" in brevier type for the 
 newspaper a type much too small for book 
 use, but it was decided to save the cost of 
 resetting, or a part of it, by "overrunning" 
 the lines that is, transferring the type from 
 one line to another in order to make the lines 
 long enough for book page use. The saving 
 was trifling, and the result of it was that 
 the volume was a thin, uncomely one, with 
 smaller type than is fit for use in a book. 
 
 In spite of this parsimonious treatment, 
 however, the popularity of the book was 
 phenomenal, its sales running up to fifty 
 thousand copies in a few months, and con 
 tinuing year after year. A year or two ago 
 a new edition was made, with good paper, 
 proper type and better illustrations than 
 303 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 those used before, and in this worthier dress 
 the book continues to sell like a new and 
 popular novel, nearly a third of a century 
 after its first publication. It has been trans 
 lated into Dutch, Danish, French and Ger 
 man, and a large pirated edition has been 
 sold in England. 
 
 Such is the story of "The Hoosier 
 Schoolmaster." It is proper to explain, how 
 ever, that while the original impulse to write 
 it grew out of my boyish experiences as a 
 schoolmaster on Riker s Ridge, the story is 
 indebted to those experiences for nothing 
 more than that vague suggestion, but is 
 altogether an original creation. Riker s 
 Ridge was not Flat Creek, nor did it in any 
 important way resemble Flat Creek. Char- 
 Icy G - and Needy Ledgerwood did in 
 some remote degree suggest Bud Means and 
 Shocky, as Edward always believed, but in 
 neither case is the resemblance close enough 
 to suggest the most distant portraiture or 
 even a close drawing from a model. 
 304 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 The Minnesota Preacher. 
 
 T the time of Edward Eggleston s 
 return to Minnesota, a great horde 
 of young men from all parts of the 
 Union were hurrying thither. Their 
 purpose was to make a living and possibly 
 to achieve fortune. The only fortune he 
 sought was the privilege of living, the abil 
 ity to go on breathing in spite of the condi 
 tion of his lungs. Beyond that he had no 
 hope or expectation, no desire, even, except 
 to do well and faithfully the work in the world 
 to which he believed that God had called 
 him. To that end he at this time made a 
 great renunciation. From boyhood the itch 
 of writing had been strong upon him, and 
 during the six months of his ministry in 
 southern Indiana his writings, chiefly for the 
 denominational newspapers, had attracted 
 305 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 wide attention by their vigor of utterance 
 and their shrewd insight into the moving 
 impulses of human nature. His ambition 
 to become a writer was greatly encouraged 
 by the plaudits of his elders, whom he mod 
 estly regarded as his betters, as well as by 
 the approval of readers unknown to him 
 personally. But the thought of " consecra 
 tion " was dominant in his soul. It was a 
 doctrine much insisted upon, in theory at 
 least, among the Methodist clergy at that 
 time, and Edward was disposed to apply it 
 in practice, as he always applied every con 
 viction of duty to the conduct of life. He 
 had somewhere read the story of a young 
 Catholic monk, whose artistic gift was so 
 great that his ecclesiastical superior, dis 
 covering it, strenuously sought to drive him 
 back to the world, offering to secure his 
 absolution from all his vows, and command 
 ing him to quit the cloister and exercise the 
 great gifts that God had bestowed upon him. 
 The struggle in the young monk s soul was 
 306 
 
The Minnesota Preacher 
 
 a terrible one, but at last, according to the 
 legend, his conscience conquered. He de 
 stroyed his pictures, burned his brushes, 
 emptied his paint tubes, and resolutely put 
 ambition behind him as a temptation of the 
 devil. 
 
 Without for a moment believing him 
 self to be possessed of literary genius, Ed 
 ward Eggleston had definitely found out 
 that he could write acceptably for print, and 
 the ambition to do so was strong within him. 
 He believed it to be a temptation of the 
 devil, designed to impair his " consecration," 
 and to win his soul away from God. 
 
 This view was very generally held at 
 that time and for long afterward. When 
 "The Hoosier Schoolmaster" was in the 
 heyday of its popularity, one of Edward s 
 former mentors, an old clergyman of high 
 intelligence and considerable culture, wrote 
 to him in admiration of the book, but ended 
 by admonishing him as earnestly as Wolsey 
 did Cromwell to "fling away ambition." 
 307 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 "The literary life," he wrote, "is tempting 
 you, I fear, to your destruction. In your 
 very success I scent danger for your soul. 
 These things lead away from God. No man 
 can serve two masters. I question if true 
 consecration is compatible with the literary 
 work you are doing." 
 
 This conviction of the necessity of con 
 secration had been strong in Edward s mind 
 during youth and early manhood, and it had 
 exercised a decisive influence upon his career 
 at many points. His extraordinary subjec 
 tion to his own conscience a subjection 
 which endured to the end of his life led him 
 in youth to govern himself resolutely by 
 teachings which most others accepted in 
 theory, but with far less disposition to inter 
 pret them literally or to apply them rigidly 
 to personal conduct. Long before "The 
 Hoosier Schoolmaster" was written Edward 
 had learned to interpret his own duty, not 
 less conscientiously indeed, but with a broader 
 understanding of what his duty was, so that 
 308 
 
The Minnesota Preacher 
 
 in doing his work as a writer he felt no fear 
 that he was going wrong. But during his 
 early ministry this matter sorely troubled 
 him. He not only restrained the impulse to 
 write, but when, upon occasion, he produced 
 literary work that he thought worthy, he 
 became alarmed over the pleasure he felt 
 in it, and resolutely destroyed his manu 
 script. 
 
 " It was just as well so," he used to say 
 in later life. 
 
 " The world lost nothing by the destruc 
 tion of those manuscripts, and neither did 
 I. Possibly both the world and I would 
 have profited if I had destroyed many others 
 that I have published instead.*" 
 
 I was not personally brought into con 
 tact with the life in Minnesota at that time, 
 and I cannot presume to describe it. Nor 
 is it necessary that I should, as Edward s 
 own vivid impressions of it are recorded or 
 reflected in the novel entitled "The Mystery 
 of Metropolisville." 
 
 309 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 In addition to the young men who at 
 that time went to Minnesota Territory to 
 win fortunes by work and to " grow up with 
 the country," there was a great company of 
 speculators there who wooed fortune in less 
 laborious ways, by starting what we have 
 since learned to call "boom towns" and 
 reaping a great harvest of wealth from land 
 speculation. These mapped out paper cities 
 with pretentious names, put forth alluring 
 prospectuses, and sold corner lots out on 
 the unbroken prairie at fabulous prices to 
 over-confiding new comers. 
 
 A little while earlier the total popula 
 tion of that entire region had been less than 
 100,000 souls/ At the rate of immigration 
 then prevailing it was confidently predicted 
 that Minnesota would become a populous 
 State within an incredibly brief time. It was 
 as easy as reciting the multiplication table 
 or the alphabet, to show the new comer how 
 certainly vast wealth must be his within a 
 year or two if he had sense enough to invest 
 310 
 
The Minnesota Preacher 
 
 what money he had in lots in this or that 
 projected " city," for the present covered 
 with prairie grass, but destined almost im 
 mediately to rival St. Louis and Chicago in 
 population, wealth and business. 
 
 Some of these projectors of "cities" 
 were honest visionaries, deluded by their 
 own imaginings; but the greater number of 
 them were mere gamblers upon the credulity 
 of others. Their projects were greatly aided 
 by the operations of another class of specu 
 lators who were busily projecting railroads 
 in every direction, and so vehemently promis 
 ing the early construction of those highways 
 of commerce that they often got high prices 
 for the merest " tips" as to the course which 
 a projected railroad was to follow, or a con 
 fidential hint as to where a "junction" was 
 to be located and the prairie-grass city be 
 come a great railroad centre. 
 
 Behind all this speculation and serving 
 it as a foundation was the undoubted fact 
 that Minnesota s soil and climate were par- 
 311 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 ticularly well adapted to wheat growing on a 
 magnificent scale, and that her other unde 
 veloped resources were many and great. It 
 was certain now that the territory must 
 speedily become a State, and that its agricul 
 ture was destined soon to make the State 
 rich. It was easy to exaggerate all this, and 
 it was exaggerated by the speculators to such 
 an extent that, if all their confident prophe 
 cies had been fulfilled, Minnesota would to 
 day be the most populous and the wealthiest 
 State in the Union. To the unwary at that 
 time the speedy winning of great riches 
 seemed to depend only upon foresight in 
 choosing the right place in which to invest 
 in lots that already bore ridiculously high 
 prices. To such foresight the projectors 
 were always ready to help the new comer by 
 nods and winks and confidential "tips." 
 
 Curiously enough, as Edward Eggles- 
 ton used often to point out, in the midst of 
 a vast and universal speculation which par 
 took largely of the nature of gambling, and 
 
 312 
 
The Minnesota Preacher 
 
 often of "crooked" gambling at that, there 
 was never any prevalence of actual, recog 
 nized gambling, such as constituted a lead 
 ing feature of early fortune-hunting settle 
 ments elsewhere in the West. Roulette and 
 faro did not flaunt themselves in men s faces 
 in the Minnesota of those early days. Saloons 
 were not prominent in the towns. Drunken 
 ness was rare, and it was never the habit of 
 men there to make walking arsenals of them 
 selves and to L o about playing the role of 
 braggarts and ruffians. Crimes of violence 
 were no more frequent in that newly-peopling 
 region than in old and well-ordered commu 
 nities. 
 
 These conditions are faithfully reflected 
 in the one novel Edward Eggleston devoted 
 to early life in Minnesota, and his explana 
 tion of them was partly by reference to the 
 character of the immigration that peopled 
 Minnesota, coming as it did largely from 
 New England and the older States of the 
 middle West, and partly by the shrewd sug- 
 
 313 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 gestion that the lawlessness and violence in 
 other pioneer communities have been greatly 
 exaggerated for the sake of picturesqueness, 
 by those who have written of them. 
 
 Yet in the Minnesota of that time the 
 young Methodist preacher found need enough 
 for his ministry and occasion enough for all 
 his zeal. 
 
 He began his work there in the re 
 moter regions along the Minnesota River 
 "the frontier of the frontier," he called it. 
 His congregations were composed about 
 equally of Indians, white settlers, hunters, 
 trappers and half-breed voyageurs. His cir 
 cuit covered a vast area, over which he 
 traveled on foot, winter and summer, shod 
 in Indian moccasins, and living out of doors 
 almost as continually as the Indians them 
 selves did. 
 
 His zeal in the work presently attracted 
 
 the attention of the church authorities, and 
 
 his abilities strongly commended him to 
 
 them. Before he w r as twenty-one years of 
 
 314 
 
The Minnesota Preacher 
 
 age he had married at twenty he was 
 placed in charge of one of the largest 
 churches in St. Paul, the capital and chief 
 city of the newly-admitted State. He was 
 afterwards stationed in accordance with the 
 itinerant system successively in St. Peter s 
 Stillwater and Winona. Often he fell ill, 
 and was unable to accept a pastoral appoint 
 ment. 
 
 Once, on the occasion of an Indian out 
 break, he enlisted in the volunteers, mounted 
 his horse and set out to help defend the 
 border. In later life he was fond of telling, 
 in an amused way, of how this soldiering 
 episode ended for him. After a long and 
 hurried march, which the frail youth endured 
 only by making heavy drafts upon his in 
 domitable spirit, the commander of his com 
 pany came to him and said: 
 
 " Parson, you re a good fellow, but 
 
 you re not strong enough for a soldier. 
 
 Now, I ve got more men than horses here, 
 
 and I want you to quit as a man and let me 
 
 315 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 nave your horse for a strong young fellow 
 to ride." 
 
 Edward agreed to an arrangement so 
 obviously for the good of the service, though 
 humiliating to himself. He turned his steed 
 over to the " strong young fellow," and set 
 out to walk back to the settlements. "Thus 
 ingloriously," he used to say, "did my mili 
 tary experience end. I don t know whether 
 I was honorably discharged or not, but I 
 suppose it amounted to that, as the State 
 afterwards voluntarily paid me for my 
 horse." 
 
 During the nine years of his life in 
 Minnesota Edward made much of intellec 
 tual growth. Wherever he went and what 
 ever the condition of his health might be he 
 carried on his studies with tireless industry 
 and dogged persistence, ceaselessly pursuing 
 that systematic self-instruction to which he 
 was indebted all his life for his education. 
 During this time he read voluminously, in 
 general literature and philosophy, in several 
 
 313 
 
The Minnesota Preacher 
 
 languages. Little by little, too, he outgrew 
 the narrowness of view that had led him 
 to suspect his writing impulse as an in 
 stigation of the devil. He wrote a good 
 deal now and published a little, for he had 
 grown keenly self-critical in his literary 
 work. 
 
 Very naturally his writing at that time 
 was chiefly on more or less religious subjects ; 
 but by the year 1866 he had begun to write 
 occasionally for secular periodicals, particu 
 larly The Little Corporal, a very widely circu 
 lated juvenile paper, published in Chicago. 
 So marked was his success in this work, that 
 when, in that year, his greatly impaired 
 health compelled him to give up the ministry, 
 he was invited to become associate editor of 
 The Little Corporal. He finally quitted Min 
 nesota and removed to Evanston, a suburb 
 of Chicago, where he purchased the queerly 
 constructed house shown in the illustration, 
 making it his home for several years after 
 wards. 
 
 317 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 The Editor and the Man of Letters. 
 
 IS removal to Evanston in the spring 
 of 1866 may be said to mark the 
 beginning of Edward Eggleston s 
 career as a secular writer. It also 
 marked the end of his life as a Methodist 
 minister; for while he retained his standing 
 in the Minnesota Conference for several 
 years afterwards, he never again accepted an 
 "appointment" at the hands of his Bishop. 
 And, except for his five years pastorate of 
 the wholly independent and creedless Church 
 of Christian Endeavor, in Brooklyn, some 
 years later an episode of which a fuller ac 
 count will be given in a subsequent chapter 
 he never again had charge of a church of 
 any kind. 
 
 While editorially connected with The 
 Little Corporal Edward gained a considerable 
 318 
 
The Editor and the Man of Letters 
 
 reputation as a writer for children. It was at 
 that time that he wrote for his paper the 
 widely popular series of "Chicken Little 
 Stories," and other tales for children, after 
 wards collected and published as "The Book 
 of Queer Stones." In 18G9, while these 
 stories were still running in the paper, he 
 brought out his first book, a tender little 
 tale for children, entitled " Mr. Blake s 
 Walking Stick." It was immediately suc 
 cessful, and to this day nearly thirty-five 
 years after its publication it remains a favor 
 ite among the little folk. 
 
 The attractiveness of these books for 
 young children is due to a certain rollicking 
 good fellowship which runs through them, 
 and to that never-failing sympathy with 
 childhood which was always a dominant 
 trait of their author s character. Even after 
 he grew prematurely old in physique, Ed 
 ward Eggleston never saw a child without 
 making love to it, and quickly winning its 
 heart in return. He had no touch or trace 
 319 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 of forbidding dignity when talking with chil 
 dren. He never talked down at them, but 
 made himself always their companion, and 
 spoke to them with spiritual eyes on a level 
 with their own. He held that one should 
 make a playmate, not a plaything of the child, 
 and he did so himself with a sincerity that 
 never failed of its purpose. Indeed, there 
 was always much of the sound-hearted boy 
 in him to the end, even when he was not 
 dealing with children. It was exceedingly 
 winning. 
 
 In 1867 he took upon himself, in addi 
 tion to his work on The Little Corporal, the 
 chief editorship of The National Sunday School 
 Teacher. That periodical was the outgrowth 
 and exponent of the great and highly organ 
 ized Sunday School movement which at that 
 time interested the entire country, and in 
 which John Wanamaker, Dwight L. Moody 
 and others were Edward Eggleston s enthusi 
 astic fellow workers. He was also active as 
 a leader and effective as a speaker, in the 
 
 320 
 
The Editor and the Man of Letters 
 
 Sunday School Institutes and conventions 
 which were then so largely attended in all 
 parts of the country. 
 
 All this while he was writing a good 
 deal for a leading daily newspaper in Chicago, 
 and thus acquiring a trenchant editorial 
 style which served him well in later years. 
 
 More important, so far as his own 
 career was concerned, is the fact that about 
 1869 he became general western correspon 
 dent of the New York Independent, writing 
 over the signature of " Penholder." In that 
 seething time of new adjustments in politi 
 cal affairs, and new thought in statesmanship, 
 theology and philosophy, the Independent was 
 a notable force. It was owned by Henry 
 C. Bowen, and edited by Theodore Tilton, 
 with Oliver Johnson, Charles F. Briggs, Dr. 
 William Hayes Ward, Dr. Joshua Leavitt 
 and other strong men on its staff, while at 
 every point of importance its correspondents 
 were selected men of the highest intellectual 
 quality. 
 
 321 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 Edward Eggleston s work as a corre 
 spondent attracted the attention of Mr. 
 Bowen and Mr. Tilton, and in May, 1870, 
 they invited him to join the staff of the 
 paper as Book Editor and editorial writer. 
 Accepting the place he removed to Brook 
 lyn. He entered upon his new work with con 
 science and enthusiasm, and his health being 
 now good, he brought all of his superb 
 energy to bear upon it. 
 
 During the next year Theodore Tilton 
 fell into controversy with the proprietor of 
 the paper. The trouble grew indirectly out 
 of the unfortunate affair between Tilton and 
 Henry Ward Beecher. That matter had 
 not yet come to a head, but it had begun to 
 color all of Tilton s thought and to influence 
 all his conduct. It is not my purpose to 
 revive here a scandal that without doubt 
 served for the time being gravely to impair 
 the morals of a community in which it was 
 daily and hourly discussed, even before it 
 got into the courts and the newspapers. I 
 
 322 
 
The Editor and the Man of Letters 
 
 mention it only because it is necessary to do 
 so in explanation of what occurred. 
 
 Theodore Tilton was always a radical of 
 radicals. It was he who wrote in a pros 
 pectus that the Independent would be "as 
 radical as truth and justice can make it." 
 During the anarchistic reign of the Com 
 mune in Paris after the Franco-Prussian 
 War, he openly advocated the cause of the 
 Commune, and even after all the facts of its 
 riotous career were known, he ceaselessly 
 defended it not apologizing for its deeds 
 of violence, arson and homicide, but justify 
 ing them as the righteous proceedings of 
 liberty-loving men fighting against privilege 
 and oppression. 
 
 His thinking was equally extreme on 
 other subjects and his utterance was daring to 
 the limit of audacity. I knew him well at that 
 time. I was associated with him in the editor 
 ship of a daily newspaper which he con 
 ducted while yet editing the Independent. I 
 greatly liked him for his liberal qualities, 
 323 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 and, in common with all who knew him, ad 
 mired his extraordinary brilliancy of intellect. 
 I saw much of him, in the office and in his 
 home, and he often consulted me with re 
 spect to his troubled personal affairs. 
 
 In answer to his demands I frequently 
 gave him what I believe to have been good 
 advice. He never followed it, but in this 
 close personal contact I learned to know, 
 better than most, what his mood was, and 
 by that mood he was governed in nearly 
 everything that he did. It was the mood of 
 Sampson when he pulled the pillars down, 
 and under its impulse he wrote and printed 
 many articles in the Independent which awak 
 ened apprehension. Finally, on October 1, 
 1870, he wrote one which both shocked and 
 alarmed the proprietor of the Independent 
 and its readers. The editorial in question 
 was entitled " Love, Marriage and Divorce," 
 and was obviously the outcome of his brood 
 ing over his own domestic relations. A pas 
 sage in it ran as follows : 
 324 
 
The Editor and the Man of Letters 
 
 " The Divine moralist who preached the Sermon on the 
 Mount, when He said Be ye therefore perfect, even as your 
 Father in Heaven is perfect, held up an ideal of human 
 character impossible of mortal attainment - the despair of 
 flesh-clogged souls. In like manner, in the few and frag 
 mentary notes which his biographers have saved of his utter 
 ances on marriage, he holds up an ideal, the highest ever 
 conceived beautiful to struggle after, but impossible to at 
 tain. He did not rest marriage on the mere legal union of 
 two persons whom the law, uniting, enacts to be one flesh ; 
 but, transcending this lie and hallowing it, he taught a 
 spiritual union which should be so subtle in its willing bond, 
 so exclusive in its mutual allegiance and so reverent of its 
 married mate that the brief indulgence of a single vagrant 
 fancy was an infidelity to such wedlock. 
 
 "Who can abide this test ? Judged by so immaculate 
 a morality there is none good, no not one. 
 
 Having thus suggested the futility of 
 Christ s teaching, and the uselessness of all 
 strivings to obey it, the article argued that, 
 with human nature what it is, the teachings 
 of the Divine moralist justify divorce in the 
 case of that lesser and lower marriage to 
 which alone, as Tilton contended, human 
 beings can attain. 
 
 The reckless audacity of this utterance, 
 together with other things, precipitated the 
 crisis that had long been drawing near. Two 
 325 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 weeks after its publication Theodore Tilton 
 ceased to be editor of the Independent, and 
 Edward Eggleston was chosen to succeed 
 him in that office. 
 
 Edward s contract of employment as 
 editor-in-chief of the Independent was for a 
 term of years, and he entered upon the 
 work with a feeling that at last his oppor 
 tunity in life had come to him. He had 
 control of the tools with which high aspira 
 tions of service to his time and country and 
 to humanity, might be wrought into high 
 achievements. The Independent was one of the 
 greatest and most influential organs of opin 
 ion in all the land. Its province embraced 
 the whole field of thought and affairs. It 
 dealt with politics, religion, literature and art, 
 all with a strong hand. In each its control 
 afforded to a strong man an enviable oppor 
 tunity to impress his convictions upon men 
 in a way to give them effect, and with the 
 assistance of such a staff of other strong men 
 as he had working with him, it would be 
 326 
 
The Editor and the Man of Letters 
 
 difficult to imagine a position more alluring 
 to a man of Edward s gifts and temperament. 
 
 But after seven months in the place a 
 difference of opinion arose between him and 
 the owner of the paper as to the political 
 course it should pursue in a certain crisis, 
 and, as the question was one involving his 
 conscience, Edward asked and secured the 
 privilege of resigning without waiting for 
 the expiry of the six months notice which 
 the contract required him to give. 
 
 It scarcely needs saying that the neces 
 sity of doing this was a sore disappointment 
 to hopes which had been exceedingly dear 
 to him. But on a point of conscience he 
 had never been accustomed to falter, and he 
 did not falter now. He abandoned a posi 
 tion which was ideally well adapted to his 
 purposes and aspirations. He surrendered 
 what he regarded as the greatest opportu 
 nity likely ever to come to him and retired 
 to his Brooklyn home to await such further 
 opportunities as life might offer. 
 
 327 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 These were not long in coming. His 
 reputation as an editor had been fully made, 
 and as soon as it became known that he 
 was foot-loose, the publishers of Hearth and 
 Home approached him with an offer which 
 he presently accepted. 
 
 Then followed the struggle referred to 
 in a former chapter, to rescue the paper 
 from its moribund condition. This he did 
 in the only way in which it could be done, 
 namely by improving the character of the 
 paper. He began by ridding it of every 
 incapable who had been clinging, barnacle- 
 like, to its staff, and putting better men in 
 their places. Recognizing Mrs. Dodge s re 
 markable gifts, he insisted upon giving her 
 a freer hand than she had ever been allowed 
 before, especially in the way of wise expen 
 diture for good matter and good pictures. 
 Process picture making was unknown then. 
 Every illustration must be drawn on wood 
 and engraved by hand, so that illustration 
 was expensive. But Edward insisted that 
 
 328 
 
The Editor and the Man of Letters 
 
 no economy should be permitted to inter 
 fere with the execution of Mrs. Dodge s 
 plans for her department. Indeed, he set 
 his face against all economies that might in 
 any way interfere with the supreme purpose 
 of making the paper successful by making 
 it worthy of success. I remember that, after 
 I became his managing editor, and reported 
 that I found in my possession a great mass 
 of accepted manuscripts, mostly the work of 
 amateurs a legacy from the former admin 
 istration he bade me go through them, 
 throwing out every one that in the least fell 
 short of the new standard he had set up. I 
 reminded him that the publishers were under 
 obligation to pay for all articles already ac 
 cepted. His reply was quick and resolute: 
 " Report them for payment. Then throw 
 them into your waste paper basket. It is 
 bad enough to have to pay for such stuff; it 
 would be calamitous to print it. We can t 
 afford to print a single unworthy article, at 
 least until we have printed enough of the 
 
 329 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 best to give the paper a character and a 
 reputation." 
 
 As editor of the Independent, and in other 
 relations, he had long been in close touch 
 with pretty nearly all the writers in the coun 
 try who might be made available, and he 
 personally saw or wrote to all of them. 
 Thus, in a brief time he drew into the 
 paper s service a staff of capable writers, 
 many of them widely known. He charged 
 me in the meanwhile to be always keenly on 
 the lookout for new writers of capacity. 
 "The best thing an editor can do for his 
 publication," he said, "is to develop a new 
 writer, and let him make his name in connec 
 tion with the paper." 
 
 One of our "finds" at this time was 
 very notable. As the Christmas season 
 approached, we found ourselves short-handed, 
 and sought for some one to help us out. 
 We found him in Philadelphia. He had 
 been engaged in newspaper work for several 
 years, and was familiar with methods, princi- 
 
 330 
 
The Editor and the Man of Letters 
 
 pies and details. But he had attained to no 
 editorial position sufficiently attractive to 
 forbid his acceptance of the offer Edward 
 made him for a temporary engagement on 
 Hearth and Home. He came to us to do 
 general utility work. He was a modest, un 
 assuming man, but not lacking in that suffi 
 cient self-confidence which prompts and en 
 ables strong men to do capable work. 
 
 His name was Frank R. Stockton. 
 
 He had not been with us a week before 
 Edward had discovered his quality, and 
 changed his very temporary engagement 
 into a permanent one. He remained with 
 us until, upon the establishment of St. 
 Nicholas, he went with Mrs. Dodge, to assist 
 in making the really wonderful success which 
 that periodical so quickly achieved. His 
 later career as one of the foremost and most 
 popular writers of his time, is known to all 
 who read or care for books. 
 
 Edward followed "The Hoosier School 
 master" with "The End of the World "- 
 
 331 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 another memory of the Hoosier life as he 
 had known it in boyhood. In it he dealt 
 somewhat with that strange episode in the 
 religious life of the country, the Millerite 
 craze. He had himself seen all this in his 
 boyhood. He remembered with what fanatic 
 faith men accepted guess-work interpreta 
 tions of the peculiarly incomprehensible 
 prophecies of Daniel; how the leaders of 
 that movement worked out from Daniel s 
 figures the very day on which the end of the 
 world was to come, and proved it all as they 
 might have proved any other "sum" in 
 arithmetic. He remembered how busily be 
 lieving women toiled to get their white ascen 
 sion robes ready in time ; how recklessly 
 men left their fields untilled in anticipation 
 of the coming day of judgment; how crazily 
 men and women became excited as the ap 
 pointed time drew near, some of them 
 actually going mad; and how shrewdly 
 sharpers played upon credulity and bought 
 for a trifle the possessions of the deluded 
 332 
 
EDWARD EGGLESTON 
 In Madison, Indiana January 1899 
 
The Editor and the Man of Letters 
 
 ones. He remembered, as I do, the table 
 oil-cloths, covered with "the figures of 
 prophecy," which some manufacturer was 
 enterprising enough to put upon a market 
 eager for them, and which remained in prac 
 tical domestic use long after the excitement 
 that had made them marketable died out. 
 It is a pity that nobody at that time was far- 
 seeing enough to preserve one of those oil 
 cloths as a historic curiosity. Nobody seems 
 to have done so, however, as Edward s offer 
 of a hundred dollars for a single specimen, 
 though long continued and widely advertised, 
 brought no response. 
 
 It was characteristic of Edward that he 
 regarded even this credulity and fanaticism 
 with respect, as he looked back upon that time 
 and made literary use of it. In our parents 
 house he, as a boy of five or six years old, 
 heard nothing but contempt and ridicule for 
 the craze while it was in progress. Our 
 father would not permit the subject to be 
 seriously discussed in the presence of his 
 
 333 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 family. Our mother used smilingly to ridi 
 cule the folly of making ascension robes out 
 of cotton cloth that cost a few cents a yard. 
 And when she found that one in whom she 
 felt any interest had been infected by the 
 insanity, she would gently set forth a higher 
 conception of God s ways and purposes 
 than that which the doings and teachings of 
 the Millerites implied. Yet in his mature 
 years Edward always insisted upon regarding 
 the human weakness which rendered such a 
 fanaticism possible, with respectful pity 
 rather than with contempt. In " The End of 
 the World" he laughed, indeed, at the follies 
 it involved; but he said: 
 
 "The intellectual attitude of those peo 
 ple, if it can be called an intellectual atti 
 tude, was entirely logical. If a man believes 
 in prophecy at all, he must believe that it is 
 intended to let men know what is going to 
 happen. If the prophecies of the Old Tes 
 tament were inspired revelations of the future, 
 as nearly everybody at that time believed, 
 
 334 
 
The Editor and the Man of Letters 
 
 the Power that inspired them must have in 
 tended men to find out what they meant. 
 The Millerites believed that their leader had 
 found this out, and they studied his inter 
 pretation only to find it so plausible that 
 their minds could find no flaw in it. They 
 were more logical and more consistent than 
 the clergymen who preached against their 
 delusion. After all, perhaps the fundamental 
 mistake lay in believing in prophecy, but that 
 mistake, if it is a mistake, was made, not by 
 the Millerites only, but equally by those who 
 opposed their doctrine." 
 
 It was always Edward Eggleston s habit 
 to think honestly and fearlessly. If in his 
 youth his views had been narrow and puri 
 tanical, it was only because there were no 
 other views possible under the circumstances 
 in which he was placed, to one who thought 
 honestly and resolutely accepted that which 
 he believed to be truth, making obedience 
 to it the unfaltering rule of his life, no mat 
 ter at what cost of self-restraint and self- 
 335 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 sacrifice. He was taught that the Bible was 
 unquestionably the one only revelation of 
 God s thought to man. The only form in 
 which he knew the Bible in his boyhood was 
 the accepted English version, and he was 
 taught to take that literally. The absolutely 
 necessary result of such teaching to a boy 
 of his character, was asceticism, puritanism 
 something akin in spirit to monasticism in 
 its least enlightened forms. 
 
 But it was equally inevitable that a mind 
 such as his, exercising itself in absolute obe 
 dience to a conscience that loved truth above 
 all else, should outgrow these trammels of 
 the intellect and shake them off. 
 
 At the time of which I am now writing 
 Edward had done this in a very great de 
 gree. He had grown liberal. His enlarged 
 knowledge had given him better points of 
 view. His habit of looking with open eyes 
 in his search for truth, had enabled him to 
 make the most of those points of view. 
 His extensive reading, in literature, philoso- 
 333 
 
The Editor and the Man of Letters 
 
 phy and history, had taught him new prin 
 ciples of interpretation. His large and 
 varied contact with men of every kind and 
 class, from the trapper and half-breed on the 
 frontier to the finest scholars and thinkers 
 of his time, had enlarged his conceptions, 
 not only of human kind, but of human life 
 and its relations. 
 
 One other fact must be considered. 
 The liberalization of thought and the en 
 largement of knowledge which he shared, 
 were not his alone, but the common posses 
 sion of all men who were accustomed to 
 think. He was living in a more enlightened 
 time than that of his boyhood. Even in 
 those regions in which his childhood had 
 been passed, the schoolmaster and the news 
 paper, and the circulating library, had been 
 doing their work and doing it well. The 
 narrow teachings that had been drilled into 
 him in boyhood were no longer heard any 
 where in the land. The harsh rigidity of 
 life had been relaxed during that wonderful 
 337 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 quarter of a century since he had first gone 
 to school. 
 
 In theology Edward had grown both 
 liberal and unsettled as to his beliefs a 
 change which was destined to be progres 
 sive and continuous. He was still religious 
 by habit and sentiment, but all dogmatism 
 had gone out of him. He was tolerant of 
 everything but intolerance, and he was gen 
 erously disposed even to look upon that 
 with pity rather than condemnation in his 
 mind. 
 
 He still retained his membership in 
 the Minnesota Conference, partly from a 
 feeling of good fellowship and partly be 
 cause he felt a keen sympathy with the preach 
 ers out there in the good work they were 
 doing for morality and the amelioration of 
 life. But he had become so unorthodox in 
 his beliefs that one of them threatened him 
 about this time with a heresy prosecution 
 because he wrote in one of his novels that it 
 is only a theological quibble which denies 
 338 
 
The Editor and the Man of Letters 
 
 to marriage an equal rank with baptism and 
 the eucharist as a sacrament. 
 
 While Edward was writing "The End 
 of the World," he left the work of editing 
 the paper mainly to me, and when the second 
 novel achieved a success approximately as 
 great as that of " The Hoosier Schoolmas 
 ter," he decided to give up editorial tasks 
 entirely, and devote himself exclusively to 
 literary work. He resigned his place as 
 editor, and I succeeded him in it. 
 
 339 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 The First of Authorship. 
 
 |NDER Edward s wise direction 
 Hearth and Home had by this 
 time gained reputation and influ 
 ence as a publication of conse 
 quence, not only because of the good litera 
 ture it presented, but still more because of 
 the ability of its editorial columns. In these 
 all matters of importance all public affairs 
 of large consequence, all questions of educa 
 tion and all matters that in any vital way 
 concerned the welfare of the people were 
 discussed with care and thought, not only 
 by Edward himself, and by the able editorial 
 staff he had gathered about him, but also by 
 other writers of unusual strength. Among 
 these contributing editorial writers whose 
 writing was so frequent as to render them 
 almost members of the staff, were Helen 
 
 340 
 
The First of Authorship 
 
 Hunt, Mrs. L. I. G. Runkle, Rebecca Hard 
 ing Davis, George E. Waring, Jr., Asa Gray, 
 Edward Everett Hale, MaryG. Humphreys, 
 and several others. 
 
 It was Edward s practice to write com 
 paratively little himself on the editorial page. 
 He rarely contributed more than one article 
 in that department to any one number. It 
 was his conviction that a variety of minds in 
 editorial discussion is as important as a vari 
 ety of topics. I remember that when Theo 
 dore Tilton set up his paper, The Golden 
 Age, and said that he meant to write the 
 whole editorial page, Edward said to him : 
 "You ll score a failure, Theodore. No edi 
 torial page can live on the gushings of one 
 man, however able and however brilliant he 
 
 may be." 
 
 In the same way he absolutely refused to 
 burden his mind with details or to waste his 
 time over them, after he had got the office 
 into a good state of organization. He left 
 all such things to his managing editor and 
 
 341 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 his subordinates, and devoted himself ex 
 clusively to the larger work of general direc 
 tion. 
 
 As his conduct of the paper had won 
 for it recognition and influence, so, by the 
 time when "The End of the World" was 
 published, his novels had multiplied its cir 
 culation many times over. He felt that he 
 had accomplished the task undertaken. He 
 had lifted the paper out of the mire and set 
 it firmly on solid ground. He was anxious 
 to rid himself of the harness, and he felt that 
 he could do so without fear that his work 
 would be undone by a weaker direction on 
 the part of those whom he left to take up 
 the task where he laid it down. 
 
 Incidentally, and in illustration of the 
 difficulties Edward had met and overcome, it 
 is of interest to relate some things that hap 
 pened during the publication of the serials. 
 
 When " The Hoosier Schoolmaster " be 
 gan to appear, a member of the publishing 
 house was sorely troubled. He had been a 
 
 342 
 
The First of Authorship 
 
 bitter and vehement opponent of novels and 
 novel reading. He had published articles 
 of his own in denunciation of fiction and in 
 rebuke of his friends in a great publishing 
 house for putting forth literature of that 
 character. He now began to suspect that 
 "The Hoosier Schoolmaster" was in fact a 
 novel, and he was shocked at the thought 
 that it was appearing in a periodical pub 
 lished by himself. But it was manifestly 
 multiplying the circulation of that periodical 
 and changing its status from that of a losing 
 venture to that of a paying property; so 
 under the urgent insistence of his business 
 partners he reconciled himself to the situa 
 tion. 
 
 But when the story was about to appear 
 in book form Edward wrote u A Novel " as 
 sub-title, and the publisher referred to was 
 again in a state of nervous agitation. He 
 could in no wise consent to proclaim himself 
 as a publisher of novels. In view of the 
 large advance orders for the book he was 
 
 343 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 eager to publish the novel, but he could not 
 reconcile himself to the open admission that 
 it was a novel. 
 
 A little later we began publishing Jean 
 Ingelow s story, " Off the Skelligs," so that 
 the paper had two serials running at the same 
 time. One morning the novel-hating pub 
 lisher called upon Edward with a copy each 
 of Hearth and Home and one of the most 
 sensational story papers then in existence. 
 He spread the two out and said to Edward: 
 
 44 If there is any difference between these 
 two sheets I wish you would show me what 
 it is. I can t discover it." 
 
 Edward heaved a little sigh of weari 
 ness and answered: 
 
 44 If you cannot discover the difference 
 for yourself I certainly cannot teach you to 
 
 see it." 
 
 When we began publishing " The Hoos- 
 ier Schoolmaster" this publisher went to 
 Edward to offer a suggestion. The illustra 
 tions of the story were surrounded by text, 
 
 344 
 
The First of Authorship 
 
 of course, and where the text happened to 
 include conversation the broken lines left 
 blank ends next the picture. This publisher 
 was a stickler for what he called " framing a 
 picture " with its accompanying letter-press; 
 so the happy thought seized him that Ed 
 ward might insert enough words in each 
 broken line of conversation to extend it to 
 the margin of the illustrations. He had 
 been at pains to fill out the lines with his 
 pencil making a row of o s by way of 
 showing how much better the thing would 
 look if done in that way. I think he never 
 quite forgave Edward for his refusal to 
 tinker his text in the fashion suggested. 
 
 Upon resigning his editorial place, Ed 
 ward agreed to write one more serial story 
 for Hearth and Home, and he set to work 
 upon it immediately. This time he chose 
 for his theme the life in Minnesota as he had 
 known it, and produced " The Mystery of 
 Metropolisville." This was a broadening of 
 his field somewhat, and the conditions in 
 
 345 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 which the story was laid were quite different 
 from those of the two Hoosier stories. In 
 the earlier novels he had dealt with a life and 
 people whose characteristics were well de 
 fined. In the new story he must depict a life 
 that was formless as yet, and a people whose 
 gathering together in one community was so 
 recent that they could scarcely be thought 
 of as one people. They were a conglomer 
 ate mass of humanity, utter strangers to each 
 other. Coming from all parts of the coun 
 try, as they had done, they had little in com 
 mon. There were no well-defined character 
 istics, no prevalent habits, customs or ideas 
 that the novelist could seize upon. For pur 
 poses of literary art, such a people afforded 
 far less opportunity than did the Hoosiers. 
 Yet the new story proved very successful 
 both as a serial and in book form. 
 
 Edward was gravely dissatisfied with it 
 when it was done, and he determined to write 
 no more novels for a considerable time to 
 come. 
 
 346 
 
The First of Authorship 
 
 He was not permitted to carry this 
 determination into effect, for by this time 
 editors and publishers were, metaphorically, 
 sitting on his doorsteps in eager rivalry to 
 secure a novel at his hands. In the mean 
 time he had got a little rest, and his refreshed 
 mind was subconsciously at work upon a 
 new theme. He had always been impressed 
 with the heroic self-sacrifice of the Metho 
 dist circuit riders, and the picturesqueness 
 of their life in the early days in the West. 
 The theme fascinated him, after the thought 
 of using it in fiction had once entered his 
 mind. He had known these men, and he 
 had in some measure shared their life. Their 
 inspiration had been his own through years 
 of toil and hardship. His equipment was 
 perfect for the sympathetic handling of the 
 subject. Accordingly, he accepted an offer 
 made to him by the editor of The Christian 
 Union, and was soon at work on "The 
 Circuit Rider, a Tale of the Heroic Age." 
 
 This story took him back again to the 
 
 347 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 Hoosier life, but with a larger purpose and 
 perhaps with a sounder conception of its 
 significance. The piece was a new departure 
 in other ways. It was more carefully wrought 
 than its predecessors had been, for the rea 
 son that its author had leisure now, and did 
 not write each week to furnish "copy" to 
 clamorous printers against a pre-appointed 
 day of issue. It was far more serious than 
 the others had been, and far more literary. 
 It gave proof of larger powers than he had 
 shown before. 
 
 When " The Circuit Rider " was finished 
 Edward suspended his work in the field 
 of fiction, as he had meant to do before. 
 "The Circuit Rider" was published in 
 1874. He did not publish another novel 
 until 1878. 
 
 During that time of suspension he 
 brought out no book except a little volume 
 of juvenile stories. He was writing a good 
 deal -for the magazines, however, both over 
 his own name in the general pages, and 
 
 348 
 
The First of Authorship 
 
 anonymously in the editorial departments. 
 He was also compiling and editing two 
 sumptuously published subscription books, 
 the one called " Christ in Art," and the other 
 " Christ in Literature." 
 
 349 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 The Christian Endeavor Episode. 
 
 *3rr?j 
 
 N " The Hoosier Schoolmaster," as 
 every reader of that story remem 
 bers, Ralph Hartsook and Bud 
 Means organized themselves into 
 the "Church of the Best Licks." It was 
 Edward s dream some day to have charge of 
 such a church in fact creedless, caring 
 nothing for dogmatic theology, exacting no 
 profession of faith of its members, ancLde- 
 voting its endeavors solely to the betterment 
 of men and women, the uplifting of those 
 who were down, the encouragement of those 
 who despaired, the strengthening of the 
 weak and the amelioration of life in every 
 way possible/ 
 
 In the autumn of 1874 the opportunity 
 to realize this dream came to him. He was 
 asked to take charge of the Lee Avenue 
 350 
 
The Christian Endeavor Episode 
 
 Congregational Church in Brooklyn. He 
 frankly stated his condition of mind. He 
 could not meet the requirements of any 
 orthodox council, nor would he on any ac 
 count take charge of a church which imposed 
 any creed upon its members or exacted any 
 profession of faith at their hands. 
 
 The church accepted his terms, aban 
 doned its ecclesiastical relations, and changed 
 its name to The Church of Christian En 
 deavor, a phrase which Edward devised as a 
 dignified equivalent of The Church of the 
 Best Licks. 
 
 For four or five years he carried on 
 this philanthropic work with enthusiasm. 
 He was mightily supported in it by other 
 strong men whose sympathy with Christian 
 Endeavor found expression in tireless work. 
 The membership of the church grew rapidly, 
 and its congregations were swelled to a multi 
 tude. Many of those who labored in this 
 cause of uplifting were men and women of 
 orthodox belief. Indeed the majority of 
 351 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 the members were persons of that kind ; for 
 neither the church nor its pastor offered the 
 smallest objection to any one s faith, what 
 ever it might be. They insisted only that 
 the church should itself set up no creed 
 standards in its organized capacity. Every 
 member was free to believe as he pleased, 
 so long as he stood ready to aid the church s 
 work of human betterment. One day a 
 Quaker family applied to Edward for admis 
 sion. They frankly said that if it were 
 required that they should be baptized, they 
 would submit themselves to the ordinance, 
 but to them it would be an entirely meaning 
 less form. Edward laid the case before the 
 church, declaring his own conviction that 
 baptism ought not to be required as a con 
 dition of membership, and the church voted, 
 without a dissenting voice, to accept the 
 Quakers without any requirement as to forms 
 and ceremonies. 
 
 Some Unitarians, and many persons who 
 had never formulated their beliefs even in 
 352 
 
The Christian Endeavor Episode 
 
 their own minds, united with the church and 
 aided earnestly in its work. But in the main 
 its members were persons of orthodox be 
 liefs, who were liberal enough in spirit to see 
 no reason why they should exact like beliefs 
 on the part of others as a condition of a 
 harmonious working together for good. 
 
 It was no part of Edward s purpose to 
 win anybody away from his faith. He made 
 no war upon any man s creed. He made no 
 effort to induce any other to accept his own 
 views, or to think as he did on religious sub 
 jects. He never discussed such things in 
 the pulpit or elsewhere. He simply did not 
 care for creeds, or in any way concern him 
 self with them. He was not at all an aggres 
 sive apostle of liberalism in theological be 
 lief; he never discussed that subject; he 
 pleaded only for liberality in endeavors to 
 help those who needed help and to better 
 human conditions in every way possible. 
 
 He had an enthusiastic Sunday-school, 
 outnumbering any other in Brooklyn, and he 
 353 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 devised many ingenious ways in which to inter 
 est the children. He secured the assistance 
 of his friends among orthodox clergymen 
 and laymen, with now and then some one 
 who had no church relations whatever, and 
 induced them to come to his Sunday-school 
 and talk to the children. 
 
 He built up a library in the church, 
 contributing liberally to it himself, and in 
 ducing all his friends to contribute either 
 money or books. 
 
 He organized a society of the young 
 men for the perfectly free discussion of sub 
 jects of practical human interest. Into this 
 society he had no trouble in drawing a large 
 number of workingmen of active minds, who 
 discussed there questions of tariff, trades 
 unionism, the relations of capital and labor, 
 and whatever else they were interested in as 
 matters practically affecting their welfare in 
 the world. 
 
 In brief, this was a church of the Best 
 Licks, to which Abou Ben Adhem would 
 354 
 
The Christian Endeavor Episode 
 
 have been welcomed as a typical representa 
 tive of the prevailing spirit. 
 
 Its conduct and the guidance of its under 
 takings involved ceaseless labor on Edward s 
 part. It was labor joyfully given, but it 
 enormously overtaxed his meagre strength. 
 After four or five years of it his nervous 
 system completely broke down, and in 1879 
 he resigned his charge, thus finally quitting 
 the ministry. 
 
 He sailed with his family for Europe 
 immediately, intending to remain there for a 
 prolonged period. But before going he 
 told me what I had already guessed, namely, 
 that the strain which had done more than all 
 else to bring on his collapse, was not that of 
 ceaseless work, but that of a mind ill at ease. 
 When he assumed charge of that church he 
 had indeed lost his belief in dogmatic the 
 ology, but he retained enough of faith to 
 enable him to preach acceptably, with a little 
 care. During the four years or more of his 
 pastorate, through reading, study, and ear- 
 355 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 nest thought, even this small share of faith 
 had slipped away from him, until at the 
 last he frankly said to me, something like 
 this: 
 
 u There isn t a shred or a raveling of 
 belief in the supernatural left in me. How 
 can I go on preaching, when in doing so I 
 seem, to others at least, to profess what I no 
 longer believe ? For the last year I have had 
 to study carefully every word I have spoken 
 from the pulpit, lest I use terms that might 
 imply a faith which I have not, and thus, 
 while preaching morality, be guilty of an im 
 morality on my own account. It has been a 
 terrible strain, a sore conflict, and my health 
 has given way under it. I have wanted to 
 go on with this work, because of the great 
 good it is doing to others. If it could have 
 been completely secularized, and so stripped 
 of all appearance of a religious effort, I 
 should have had strength to continue it. As 
 it is, I should have felt myself in conscience 
 bound to give it up, even if my strength had 
 356 
 
The Christian Endeavor Episode 
 
 held out. My only hope is that some one 
 may be found who can carry it on in the 
 form and name of religion, without having 
 to compromise with his conscience, as I 
 should have to do with mine." 
 
 Thus ended another chapter of Edward 
 Eggleston s life. 
 
 From that hour forward he never en 
 tered a pulpit. He had already withdrawn 
 from the Methodist church, as well as from 
 its ministry, and while he never antagonized 
 the faith he had long and conscientiously 
 held, he never concealed the fact that he no 
 longer accepted any part of it. 
 
 357 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 The Historical Work of Twenty Years. 
 
 |HEN he sailed for Europe in 1879 
 Edward s means were scant. Dur 
 ing the four or five years given to 
 the Christian Endeavor enterprise 
 he had devoted practically all of his salary 
 to the work in which he felt so vital an inter 
 est. In the meanwhile he had depended for 
 the support of his family upon his copy 
 rights and upon his labors with the pen. 
 He wrote a good deal for the magazines, at 
 rates of pay which were then deemed very 
 liberal, and in 1878 he brought out a new 
 novel, " Roxy " his first book in four years. 
 u Roxy"was founded upon an occur 
 rence that had been known to both of us 
 in youth, an occurrence which brought 
 out the unconscious heroism of a good, 
 simple-minded woman, in humble life, in 
 358 
 
s 
 
The Historical Work of Twenty Years 
 
 a way that would be impossible to most 
 women. 
 
 Curiously enough, one newspaper critic 
 at least, and perhaps others, criticised the 
 story as immoral, because it hinged upon a 
 sinful incident. The criticism was as appli 
 cable to Hawthorne s " Scarlet Letter" as to 
 " Roxy." It utterly ignored the fact that 
 the sinful incident was handled with the ex 
 treme of delicacy, and with the highest moral 
 purpose and effect. To be consistent the 
 critic must have condemned all preachers 
 for mentioning theft, murder, robbery or 
 any other sin for the purpose of rebuking it. 
 
 Edward knew how to live comfortably 
 at small cost, whether in Europe or at home, 
 and so he made no use of a generosity which 
 was at this time extended to him. Roswell 
 Smith, publisher and chief owner of Scribner s 
 Monthly afterwards The Century Magazine 
 had become one of Edward s most devoted 
 friends. He had made so great a success 
 of the magazine that his fortune was now 
 359 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 ample, and, with one of those generous im 
 pulses which always governed his conduct, 
 he went to Edward one day, just before the 
 date of sailing, and bade him be at ease 
 during his stay abroad. " My purse is abso 
 lutely at your disposal," he said. " Draw 
 upon me for whatever money you need, 
 whenever you want it, and pray don t think 
 of the sum, whatever it may be, as a debt to 
 be repaid. I shall consider it only a privi 
 lege if you allow me to help you regain your 
 strength. I want to endow your work for the 
 public s sake, and you must let me do so." 
 
 Edward was much too independent of 
 spirit to accept such an offer, though he 
 knew that it was made with the utmost sin 
 cerity. But he never forgot the generosity 
 of it. " There are not many such men as 
 Roswell Smith," he used to say, " in this 
 money-grubbing world of ours." 
 
 Edward s first concern in Europe was to 
 get well by rest. For a time he did no work 
 not even reading a book for entertainment. 
 360 
 
The Historical Work of Twenty Years 
 
 He went up into the Swiss mountains and 
 lived there for a time among the peasants, 
 in the district from which our Vevay Swiss 
 people had emigrated. He found among 
 them relatives and near friends of the Vevay 
 settlers, and they never tired of questioning 
 him concerning the American Vevay and its 
 people. 
 
 He lived out of doors during his wak 
 ing hours, sometimes going into the vine 
 yards and helping in the work of grape gath 
 ering. On these occasions the stout peasant 
 women would watch carefully for the filling 
 of his basket, and when it was full one of 
 them would hurriedly snatch it away and 
 carry it to the receptacle into which all the 
 baskets must be emptied. They were deter 
 mined that "the dear monsieur" should do 
 no heavy work. When the hour came for 
 quitting the vineyard the peasants would 
 line themselves up in two rows and ask him 
 to pass through and walk in front of them. 
 When he wandered along a road, accom- 
 
 361 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 panied by his blonde-haired little grand 
 daughter, the peasants would select the finest 
 clusters of grapes, arrange them upon leaves 
 and present them to her with positive rever 
 ence for a child whom they called "the little 
 American angel," because of her fair face 
 and blonde locks. 
 
 After a time Edward went to Paris, 
 London and Venice, living in each of those 
 cities for months at a time. It was in Venice 
 that he wrote "The Hoosier School Boy," 
 and later "The Graysons." He used to say 
 that it interested him mightily, after living 
 all day in the atmosphere of the great prim 
 itive West, where the scene of his story was 
 laid, to pass almost instantly into the historic 
 surroundings of Venice, which he could do 
 merely by throwing down his pen and going 
 out of doors. One can easily understand 
 the fascination a thought of that kind must 
 have had for an imaginative man. 
 
 Apart from the recovery of his health, 
 the most important result of his residence in 
 
 362 
 
The Historical Work of Twenty Years 
 
 Europe was the suggestion that came to him 
 there as to his future work. It was from the 
 reflective calm of that life that he wrote to 
 me, about the beginning of the year 1880, 
 telling me of his newly formed plan. 
 
 " I am going to write a series of vol 
 umes," he wrote, "which together shall con 
 stitute a History of Life in the United States 
 not a history of the United States, bear in 
 mind, but a history of life there, the life of 
 the people, the sources of their ideas and 
 habits, the course of their development from 
 beginnings. These beginnings will be care 
 fully studied in the first volume. Beyond 
 that my plans for the ordering of the mate 
 rial are not fully formed. It will be a work 
 designed to answer the questions How? 
 and Whence? and Why? All this will 
 require a great deal of research, but I stand 
 ready to give ten years of my life to the task, 
 if necessary." 
 
 In the event the research required 
 proved to be much greater even than he had 
 
 363 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 panied by his blonde-haired little grand 
 daughter, the peasants would select the finest 
 clusters of grapes, arrange them upon leaves 
 and present them to her with positive rever 
 ence for a child whom they called "the little 
 American angel," because of her fair face 
 and blonde locks. 
 
 After a time Edward went to Paris, 
 London and Venice, living in each of those 
 cities for months at a time. It was in Venice 
 that he wrote "The Hoosier School Boy," 
 and later " The Graysons." He used to say 
 that it interested him mightily, after living 
 all day in the atmosphere of the great prim 
 itive West, where the scene of his story was 
 laid, to pass almost instantly into the historic 
 surroundings of Venice, which he could do 
 merely by throwing down his pen and going 
 out of doors. One can easily understand 
 the fascination a thought of that kind must 
 have had for an imaginative man. 
 
 Apart from the recovery of his health, 
 the most important result of his residence in 
 
 362 
 
The Historical Work of Twenty Years 
 
 Europe was the suggestion that came to him 
 there as to his future work. It was from the 
 reflective calm of that life that he wrote to 
 me, about the beginning of the year 1880, 
 telling me of his newly formed plan. 
 
 " I am going to write a series of vol 
 umes," he wrote, "which together shall con 
 stitute a History of Life in the United States 
 not a history of the United States, bear in 
 mind, but a history of life there, the life of 
 the people, the sources of their ideas and 
 habits, the course of their development from 
 beginnings. These beginnings will be care 
 fully studied in the first volume. Beyond 
 that my plans for the ordering of the mate 
 rial are not fully formed. It will be a work 
 designed to answer the questions How? 
 and Whence? and Why? All this will 
 require a great deal of research, but I stand 
 ready to give ten years of my life to the task, 
 if necessary." 
 
 In the event the research required 
 proved to be much greater even than he had 
 363 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 anticipated. He gave not ten, but twenty 
 years to the work, and died at last leaving it 
 scarcely more than begun. The two vol 
 umes that were published " The Beginners 
 of a Nation" and "The Transit of Civiliza 
 tion," are the only direct fruits we have or 
 ever shall have of that twenty years of cease 
 less and scholarly study. But these alone 
 are well worth all that they cost of toilsome 
 research, while the incidental fruit of his 
 labors is perhaps of even greater value to 
 the public. These are found in those school 
 histories and the like, in which he fairly 
 revolutionized the teaching of history in 
 schools, and devised new methods so good 
 that other writers of school history have 
 felt it necessary to borrow them sometimes 
 copying so closely as to excite wonder and 
 invite criticism. 
 
 Having conceived this undertaking, 
 
 Edward set to work upon it at once. For 
 
 years he studied in the British Museum, the 
 
 French National Library, and in many rich 
 
 364 
 
The Historical Work of Twenty Years 
 
 private libraries in England and France 
 which were generously thrown open to him. 
 Then he returned to America, and set him 
 self to the task of exhausting the resources 
 of the public and private libraries in this 
 country the Astor and Lenox in New York, 
 the Boston Public Library and the Athenaeum 
 in Boston, the Congressional Library in 
 Washington, many college collections and a 
 multitude of private libraries, besides a great 
 number of manuscript letters and records 
 preserved in the homes of old colonial fam 
 ilies. 
 
 In prosecuting his researches he made 
 many interesting "finds," including one very 
 notable one. This was a manuscript account 
 of Bacon s Rebellion, written by Nathaniel 
 Bacon himself. Edward came upon it by 
 accident one day while looking through a 
 wagon load of unsorted and unexamined 
 manuscripts in the British Museum. 
 
 One thing that made Edward s researches 
 time-consuming was his propensity to be- 
 
 365 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 lack of reverence for the past and its people. 
 But it was a simple piece of truth telling, by 
 one who had taken pains to find out the truth 
 and whose sole purpose it was to reveal it. 
 
 Parts of the book rather more than a 
 dozen chapters of it, each complete as a 
 study, were published from time to time in 
 the Century Magazine, but it was not until 
 late in the nineties that " The Beginners of 
 a Nation " appeared in book form. It was 
 followed a year or two later by the second 
 volume, entitled "The Transit of Civiliza 
 tion." 
 
 With this second work, fascinating as its 
 interest is, Edward was gravely dissatisfied. 
 It was not what he had intended it to be. It 
 was, as he said, born before its time. That 
 is to say, finding that his health was failing, 
 he feared that death might come to him be 
 fore he could complete the book in the form 
 and with the fulness he had intended to give 
 it. In order that his years of work upon it, 
 and the rich results of his seventeenth cen- 
 
 3G3 
 
ihe Historical Work of Twenty Years 
 
 tury explorations might not be wholly lost to 
 scholarship and history, he decided to put 
 the volume into such shape as he had strength 
 left to give it, and thus to publish it. 
 
 I am frequently asked by letter and in 
 person, whether it may not be possible for 
 some other hand to write the other volumes 
 of his u History of Life in the United States," 
 using the rich store of materials he had col 
 lected. I am obliged to answer no. The 
 greater part of his materials he carried only 
 in his own memory. The notes that would 
 have enabled him, had he lived, to do the 
 work intended, are not of a kind to be used 
 by any other. They were scarcely more than 
 mnemonic hints and suggestions. What 
 ever their value might have been to him, they 
 would have no fruitfulness of suggestion to 
 any other mind. 
 
 But the work thus lost was not wholly 
 without profit to the public. It was as an 
 outcome of that work that he wrote his 
 school histories and the u Household History 
 
 369 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 of the United States." Something has al 
 ready been said in this chapter with respect 
 to the good achieved by the publication of 
 these smaller works, not only through their 
 use in schools and families throughout the 
 country, but indirectly through the radical 
 changes they compelled in the methods of 
 school history-writing on the part of other 
 workers in that field, and in the system of 
 teaching the history of our country to its 
 youth. 
 
 In those later years, when he felt that 
 his working power was failing and realized 
 that he could never complete the great work 
 of his life, he felt a keen regret of course ; 
 but he confronted the necessity of leaving 
 his task unfinished with a calm philosophy 
 and was content. 
 
 370 
 
D 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 The Light Goes Out. 
 
 URING his stay in Europe, and after 
 his return to this country, Edward 
 diligently explored the book-shops 
 and attended book sales in search 
 of old and rare books in many languages, 
 on subjects related to his historical studies. 
 For the most part these were books not to 
 be found in public libraries anywhere. 
 
 He had built a home for his books at 
 Lake George, a structure of artistic beauty, 
 with walls made of the native stone trap 
 rock which always breaks in a way to show 
 at least one perfectly straight side. He now 
 added to this another building of like con 
 struction, as a house for himself, the two 
 structures standing a little way apart and on 
 different levels, but being connected by a 
 slate-roofed covered way. 
 371 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 Here he made his home, except that 
 during the colder months of the year he 
 occupied an apartment in New York. He 
 traveled a good deal at this time, partly in 
 search of materials, and partly for the sake 
 of his wife s health, which was failing. 
 During one of their trips to the South she 
 died in February, 1889, and the loneliness of 
 his life was relieved only by hard and some 
 times excessive work. 
 
 In October, 1891, he married his second 
 wife, Frances E. Goode, of Madison, In 
 diana, a distant relative whom he had known 
 from her childhood. She survives him. 
 
 After his second marriage he established 
 a little home in Madison for occasional 
 occupancy, in order that his wife might pass 
 some months of every year near her own 
 people. His permanent residence was still 
 at Lake George, but, besides spending some 
 time in Madison each year, he frequently 
 lived for months at a time in Washington or 
 New York, and toward the end he spent the 
 
 372 
 
The Light Goes Out 
 
 worst months of each winter in the far 
 South. Fortunately his books had placed 
 him financially in easy circumstances, so 
 that he was free to go and come at will, and 
 live wherever he found it most comfort 
 able. In the summer he was always at his 
 Lake George home, where he passed all his 
 waking hours among his books or walking 
 through the woodlands of the mountains 
 round about. He usually went to Lake 
 George in May, and remained there until 
 the snow began to fly in November or De 
 cember. 
 
 All this time he was at work upon his 
 history, but he found time to produce a 
 number of school books, besides his " House 
 hold History," and one novel, "The Faith 
 Doctor," which appeared in 1891. This was 
 the last novel he ever wrote, and the only 
 one the scene of which he laid elsewhere than 
 in the West. It deals with New York life, 
 and for explanation of this departure from 
 his usual practice, he urged that, after all, he 
 373 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 had lived in New York longer than he had 
 ever lived anywhere else, and knew New 
 York life better than he did that of any other 
 part of the country. His theme gave him 
 opportunity also to study and depict certain 
 very interesting phases of character, as af 
 fected by religious beliefs and enthusiasms. 
 His heroine, around whom the story is written, 
 was drawn with a peculiarly strong and deft 
 hand, all the more so because, in her enthusi 
 asm, her conscientiousness and her blind, 
 self-sacrificing devotion to duty as she under 
 stood it, she very closely resembled himself 
 in his youth and young manhood. He knew 
 what Agatha thought and felt at every emo 
 tional crisis, because he had thought and felt 
 in the same way once upon a time. 
 
 Two years later he published a collection 
 of short stories entitled "Duffels," and that 
 was the last excursion he ever made into the 
 field of fiction, great or small. Indeed a 
 great and growing distaste for fiction came 
 upon him about this time. When a few 
 374 
 
The Light Goes Out 
 
 years before his death, I wrote a boys story 
 called "The Last of the Flatboats," and 
 made one of the characters a close, almost 
 photographic portrait of himself as he had 
 been in boyhood, he lovingly listened while 
 his wife read the story to him. But, a little 
 later, when one of my novels was published, 
 he said to me : 
 
 "I enjoyed the boys book, Geordie, but 
 I can t listen to the reading of a novel, even 
 though you did write it." 
 
 About three years before his death he 
 was stricken suddenly one day with blind 
 ness in one eye. He believed this to be a 
 slight stroke of apoplexy, as subsequent 
 events clearly showed that it was. But the 
 oculists whom he consulted at the time made 
 a different diagnosis, and after a little while 
 the sight came back to the eye affected. 
 
 After that there was a slow but steady 
 and continuous decline of strength and ac 
 tivity. Edward s mind remained clear and 
 his thinking vigorous, but there was some 
 .375 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 loss of memory, some forgetfulness of words, 
 and now and then some confusion of things 
 remembered. The gout with which he had 
 suffered a good deal, seemed to grow steadily 
 less severe, and his physical health was excel 
 lent. But he walked with some difficulty 
 and lost the flexibility of his muscles. It 
 was sometimes difficult for him to seat him 
 self or to rise from a chair. 
 
 He continued to work a little now and 
 then, both upon his " History of Life " and 
 upon a school book that is not yet published, 
 which was the very last literary work he ever 
 attempted. 
 
 In the spring of 1902 he grew so much 
 worse that he entirely ceased to attempt work 
 of any kind. He found it distressing to 
 write a letter, or even a note, yet he suffered 
 no pain of any kind, enjoyed converse with his 
 friends, and seemed altogether happy in his 
 Lake George home. His cottage and mine 
 a few hundred yards away were the only 
 ones occupied so early in the year. One 
 376 
 
The Light Goes Out 
 
 afternoon, having finished my writing for 
 the day, I decided to go fishing for an hour 
 or so, and, seeing me preparing, Edward 
 called to me, saying that he would go with 
 me. He had quite ceased to go on the 
 water, because he was suffering, not only 
 with a muscular stiffness which rendered it 
 well nigh impossible for him to get into or out 
 of a boat, but with a giddiness which ren 
 dered boating disagreeable. But I happened 
 to have a broad, flat-bottomed fishing boat 
 of the sharpie type, with a broad stern and 
 extraordinary steadiness in the water, and 
 Edward thought he might manage to get 
 into that. I backed the stern up against a 
 pier and he succeeded in getting in. 
 
 As we fished, Edward presently dropped 
 his rod overboard and the heavy reel quickly 
 carried it to the bottom. He laughed at the 
 incident, saying: 
 
 " I didn t know I was letting go my hold. 
 Somehow I don t always know what my 
 hands are doing." 
 
 377 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 I offered him the use of my rod, but he 
 declined, saying: 
 
 " I really don t want to fish. I only want 
 to sit here in a boat with you this once more 
 before I* die." 
 
 I insisted that he mustn t talk about 
 dying, whereupon he said: 
 
 u Oh, don t imagine that I m bothering 
 about that. I know I have only a brief time 
 to live now, and I m not going to spend that 
 little while in worrying. Whenever death 
 wants me, I am ready. I ve had my fling 
 and the game is nearly over. The doctors say 
 differently, but I know my own condition far 
 better than they do. I am afflicted almost 
 constantly with what they call festination a 
 tendency to run when I walk, to keep from 
 falling forward. One symptom which usually 
 accompanies festination is lacking in my case, 
 and because of its absence the doctors insist 
 that I have no festination at all. Neverthe 
 less, I have it very markedly. I have to run 
 when I try to walk, and I have the great- 
 
 378 
 
The Light Goes Out 
 
 est difficulty to keep from falling forward 
 on my face. 
 
 "No, Geordie, I have not long to live, 
 but I am very happy. I m glad to be with 
 you in your boat to-day, for it is my last time 
 on the water. Do you know, the first time 
 I was ever in a row-boat, you rowed me, 
 sturdy little fellow that you were? It pleases 
 me to have you for my oarsman this last 
 time." 
 
 I was at this time staying quite alone in 
 my cottage and taking my meals at the coun 
 try post-office nearby, my family being de 
 tained in town by my son s examinations. A 
 day or two after the boating incident Ed 
 ward s wife begged me to take all my meals 
 at her house, saying that Edward seemed 
 specially to want me with him as much as pos 
 sible. My work was very heavy just then, 
 so that except at meal-time it was very diffi 
 cult for me to be with him, but I could do 
 this much for his gratification, and I did it 
 gladly. 
 
 379 
 
The First of The Hoosiers 
 
 He talked little at these times, and never 
 with aggressive interest in his theme; but 
 his thinking seemed as clear as ever, and 
 his gentle humor enlivened everything he 
 said. 
 
 One morning early in June I went to his 
 house for breakfast, and found him in a dis 
 tressing condition. He had been stricken 
 with a cerebral hemorrhage during the night, 
 and was now nearly helpless. During the 
 next two months he continued in this state. 
 He could walk a little ; he could come to the 
 table with a little help, and now and then he 
 would ask to be helped into his library, 
 where he would sit and look lovingly at his 
 books. But he could talk scarcely at all. 
 He could utter only brief, fragmentary sen 
 tences, and that with difficulty. 
 
 Finally, near the end of August, he was 
 stricken again, and for eight days after that 
 he lay unconscious. Then came the end, on 
 the 4th of September. 
 
 A brilliant mind had gone out. A life 
 380 
 
The Light Goes Out 
 
 of extraordinary activity had ceased to be. 
 A heart that had been always loving and 
 generous, a heart that had pulsed with all 
 human sympathy, and with high enthusiasm 
 in the service of others, had grown forever 
 still. 
 
 He had suffered no pain during all those 
 last months, and had known no worry. The 
 tender and judicious ministry of a nobly de 
 voted wife was his at every hour of every 
 day. He had gone to his death as in youth 
 he had planned to do, " like one who wraps 
 the drapery of his couch about him, and lies 
 down to pleasant dreams." 
 
 I think I do not suffer my affection to 
 warp my judgment when I say that Edward 
 Eggleston was the best man I ever knew. 
 From beginning to end of his life he not 
 only never did a wrong to any human being, 
 but he never failed to render any service in 
 his power to every one who had need of it, 
 no matter at what cost of self-sacrifice. He 
 lived always for others, never for himself. 
 
 381 
 
The First of The Hoosicrs 
 
 His generosity was not so much a habit as 
 an integral part of his character, and it needed 
 no large occasion, no strong appeal to call 
 it into activity. He was generous in small 
 ways as well as large. He was especially 
 generous in his judgments of others, whose 
 wrong doings he looked upon as the results 
 of a weakness which they could not help, 
 rather than as faults for which they should 
 be held responsible. 
 
 Never once in all his life, I am firmly 
 persuaded, did Edward Eggleston give just 
 offence to his own exceedingly sensitive 
 conscience ; never did he consciously do a 
 wrong or omit to discharge a duty. 
 
 So much I take the liberty of saying in 
 absolute sincerity to those thousands who 
 knew this man only through his writings. 
 To those who knew him personally, nothing 
 need be said in praise of his nobility of char 
 acter. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 382 
 
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