The Hoosier Schoolmaster
By Edward Eggleston.
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As a pebble cast upon a great cairn, this edition is inscribed to the memory of James Russell Lowell, whose cordial encouragement to my early studies of American dialect is gratefully remembered.
Preface
I may as well confess, what it would be affectation to conceal, that I am more than pleased with the generous reception accorded to this story as a serial in the columns of Hearth and Home. It has been in my mind since I was a Hoosier boy to do something toward describing life in the back-country districts of the Western States. It used to be a matter of no little jealousy with us, I remember, that the manners, customs, thoughts, and feelings of New England country people filled so large a place in books, while our life, not less interesting, not less romantic, and certainly not less filled with humorous and grotesque material, had no place in literature. It was as though we were shut out of good society. And, with the single exception of Alice Cary, perhaps, our Western writers did not dare speak of the West otherwise than as the unreal world to which Cooper’s lively imagination had given birth.
I had some anxiety lest Western readers should take offence at my selecting what must always seem an exceptional phase of life to those who have grown up in the more refined regions of the West. But nowhere has the Schoolmaster been received more kindly than in his own country and among his own people.
Some of those who have spoken generous words of the Schoolmaster and his friends have suggested that the story is an autobiography. But it is not, save in the sense in which every work of art is an autobiography: in that it is the result of the experience and observation of the writer. Readers will therefore bear in mind that not Ralph nor Bud nor Brother Sodom nor Dr. Small represents the writer, nor do I appear, as Talleyrand said of Madame de Staël, “disguised as a woman,” in the person of Hannah or Mirandy. Some of the incidents have been drawn from life; none of them, I believe, from my own. I should like to be considered a member of the Church of the Best Licks, however.
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 everyone who aspires to write on Americanisms. To Mr. Lowell belongs the distinction of being the 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 someone better qualified than I to criticise the dialect.
I wish to dedicate this book to Rev. Williamson Terrell, D.D. of Columbus, Indiana, the Hoosier that I know best, and the best Hoosier that I know. This is not the place to express the reverence and filial affection I feel for him, but I am glad of the opportunity of saying that there is no one to whom Southern Indiana owes a larger debt. Perhaps my dedication to
