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THE HOOSIER
SCHOOLMASTER
A Story of Backwoods Life
in Indiana
REVISED
with an introduction and Notes on the District
by the Author,
EDWARD EGGLESTON
With Character Sketches by
F. OPPER
and other Illustrations by
W.E.B. STARKWEATHER
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
1871
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.
THE AUTHOR.
PREFACE TO THE LIBRARY EDITION.
BEING THE HISTORY OF A STORY.
"THE HOOSIER SCHOOL-MASTER" was written and printed in the autumn of
1871. It is therefore now about twenty-one years old, and the publishers
propose to mark its coming of age by issuing a library edition. I avail
myself of the occasion to make some needed revisions, and to preface the
new edition with an account of the origin and adventures of the book. If
I should seem to betray unbecoming pride in speaking of a story that has
passed into several languages and maintained an undiminished popularity
for more than a score of years, I count on receiving the indulgence
commonly granted to paternal vanity when celebrating the majority of a
first-born. With all its faults on its head, this little tale has become
a classic, in the bookseller's sense at least; and a public that has
shown so constant a partiality for it has a right to feel some curiosity
regarding its history.
I persuade myself that additional extenuation for this biography of a
book is to be found in the relation which "The Hoosier School-Master"
happens to bear to the most significant movement in American literature
in our generation. It is the file-leader of the procession of American
dialect novels. Before the appearance of this story, the New England
folk-speech had long been employed for various literary purposes, it is
true; and after its use by Lowell, it had acquired a standing that made
it the classic _lingua rustica_ of the United States. Even Hoosiers and
Southerners when put into print, as they sometimes were in rude
burlesque stories, usually talked about "huskin' bees" and "apple-parin'
bees" and used many other expressions foreign to their vernacular.
American literature hardly touched the speech and life of the people
outside of New England; in other words, it was provincial in the narrow
sense.
I can hardly suppose that "The Hoosier School-Master" bore any causative
relation to that broader provincial movement in our literature which now
includes such remarkable productions as the writings of Mr. Cable, Mr.
Harris, Mr. Page, Miss Murfree, Mr. Richard Malcom Johnson, Mr. Howe,
Mr. Garland, some of Mrs. Burnett's stories and others quite worthy of
inclusion in this list. The taking up of life in this regional way has
made our literature really national by the only process possible. The
Federal nation has at length manifested a consciousness of the
continental diversity of its forms of life. The "great American novel,"
for which prophetic critics yearned so fondly twenty years ago, is
appearing in sections. I may claim for this book the distinction, such
as it is, of being the first of the dialect stories that depict a life
quite beyond New England influence. Some of Mr. Bret Harte's brief and
powerful tales had already foreshadowed this movement toward a larger
rendering of our life. But the romantic character of Mr. Harte's
delightful stories and the absence of anything that can justly be called
dialect in them mark them as rather forerunners than beginners of the
prevailing school. For some years after the appearance of the present
novel, my own stories had to themselves the field of provincial realism
(if, indeed, there be any such thing as realism) before there came the
succession of fine productions which have made the last fourteen years
notable.
Though it had often occurred to me to write something in the dialect now
known as Hoosier--the folk-speech of the southern part of Ohio, Indiana,
and Illinois of forty years ago--I had postponed the attempt
indefinitely, probably because the only literary use that had been made
of the allied speech of the Southwest had been in the books of the
primitive humorists of that region. I found it hard to dissociate in my
own mind the dialect from the somewhat coarse boisterousness which
seemed inseparable from it in the works of these rollicking writers. It
chanced that in 1871 Taine's lectures on "Art in the Netherlands," or
rather Mr. John Durand's translation of them, fell into my hands as a
book for editorial review. These discourses are little else than an
elucidation of the thesis that the artist of originality will work
courageously with the materials he finds in his own environment. In
Taine's view, all life has matter for the artist, if only he have eyes
to see.
Many years previous to the time of which I am now speaking, while I was
yet a young man, I had projected a lecture on the Hoosier folk-speech,
and had even printed during the war a little political skit in that
dialect in a St. Paul paper. So far as I know, nothing else had ever
been printed in the Hoosier. Under the spur of Taine's argument, I now
proceeded to write a short story wholly in the dialect spoken in my
childhood by rustics on the north side of the Ohio River. This tale I
called "The Hoosier School-Master." It consisted almost entirely of an
autobiographical narration in dialect by Mirandy Means of the incidents
that form the groundwork of the present story. I was the newly
installed editor of a weekly journal, _Hearth and Home_, and I sent this
little story in a new dialect to my printer. It chanced that one of the
proprietors of the paper saw a part of it in proof. He urged me to take
it back and make a longer story out of the materials, and he expressed
great confidence in the success of such a story. Yielding to his
suggestion, I began to write this novel from week to week as it appeared
in the paper, and thus found myself involved in the career of a
novelist, which had up to that time formed no part of my plan of life.
In my inexperience I worked at a white-heat, completing the book in ten
weeks. Long before these weeks of eager toil were over, it was a
question among my friends whether the novel might not write _finis_ to
me before I should see the end of it.
The sole purpose I had in view at first was the resuscitation of the
dead-and-alive newspaper of which I had ventured to take charge. One of
the firm of publishers thought much less favorably of my story than his
partner did. I was called into the private office and informed with some
severity that my characters were too rough to be presentable in a paper
so refined as ours. I confess they did seem somewhat too robust for a
sheet so anæmic as _Hearth and Home_ had been in the months just
preceding. But when, the very next week after this protest was made, the
circulation of the paper increased some thousands at a bound, my
employer's critical estimate of the work underwent a rapid change--a
change based on what seemed to him better than merely literary
considerations. By the time the story closed, at the end of fourteen
instalments, the subscription list had multiplied itself four or five
fold. It is only fair to admit, however, that the original multiplicand
had been rather small.
Papers in Canada and in some of the other English colonies transferred
the novel bodily to their columns, and many of the American country
papers helped themselves to it quite freely. It had run some weeks of
its course before it occurred to any one that it might profitably be
reprinted in book form. The publishers were loath to risk much in the
venture. The newspaper type was rejustified to make a book page, and
barely two thousand copies were printed for a first edition. I remember
expressing the opinion that the number was too large.
"The Hoosier School-Master" was pirated with the utmost promptitude by
the Messrs. Routledge, in England, for that was in the barbarous days
before international copyright, when English publishers complained of
the unscrupulousness of American reprinters, while they themselves
pounced upon every line of American production that promised some
shillings of profit. "The Hoosier School-Master" was brought out in
England in a cheap, sensational form. The edition of ten thousand has
long been out of print. For this large edition and for the editions
issued in the British colonies and in continental Europe I have never
received a penny. A great many men have made money out of the book, but
my own returns have been comparatively small. For its use in serial form
I received nothing beyond my salary as editor. On the copyright edition
I have received the moderate royalty allowed to young authors at the
outset of their work. The sale of the American edition in the first
twenty years amounted to seventy thousand copies. The peculiarity of
this sale is its steadiness. After twenty years, "The Hoosier
School-Master" is selling at the average rate of more than three
thousand copies per annum. During the last half-dozen years the
popularity of the book has apparently increased, and its twentieth year
closed with a sale of twenty-one hundred in six months. Only those who
are familiar with the book trade and who know how brief is the life of
the average novel will understand how exceptional is this
long-continued popularity.
Some of the newspaper reviewers of twenty years ago were a little
puzzled to know what to make of a book in so questionable a shape, for
the American dialect novel was then a new-comer. But nothing could have
given a beginner more genuine pleasure than the cordial commendation of
the leading professional critic of the time, the late Mr. George Ripley,
who wrote an extended review of this book for the _Tribune_. The monthly
magazines all spoke of "The Hoosier School-Master" in terms as favorable
as it deserved. I cannot pretend that I was content with these notices
at the time, for I had the sensitiveness of a beginner. But on looking
at the reviews in the magazines of that day, I am amused to find that
the faults pointed out in the work of my prentice hand are just those
that I should be disposed to complain of now, if it were any part of my
business to tell the reader wherein I might have done better.
_The Nation_, then in its youth, honored "The Hoosier School-Master" by
giving it two pages, mostly in discussion of its dialect, but dispensing
paradoxical praise and censure in that condescending way with which we
are all familiar enough. According to its critic, the author had
understood and described the old Western life, but he had done it
"quite sketchily, to be sure." Yet it was done "with essential truth and
some effectiveness." The critic, however instantly stands on the other
foot again and adds that the book "is not a captivating one." But he
makes amends in the very next sentence by an allusion to "the
faithfulness of its transcript of the life it depicts," and then
instantly balances the account on the adverse side of the ledger by
assuring the reader that "it has no interest of passion or mental
power." But even this fatal conclusion is diluted by a dependent clause.
"Possibly," says the reviewer, "the good feeling of the intertwined love
story may conciliate the good-will of some of the malcontent." One could
hardly carry further the fine art of oscillating between moderate
commendation and parenthetical damnation--an art that lends a factitious
air of judicial impartiality and mental equipoise. Beyond question, _The
Nation_ is one of the ablest weekly papers in the world; the admirable
scholarship of its articles and reviews in departments of special
knowledge might well be a subject of pride to any American. But its
inadequate reviews of current fiction add nothing to its value, and its
habitual tone of condescending depreciation in treating imaginative
literature of indigenous origin is one of the strongest discouragements
to literary production.
The main value of good criticism lies in its readiness and penetration
in discovering and applauding merit not before recognized, or
imperfectly recognized. This is a conspicuous trait of Sainte-Beuve, the
greatest of all newspaper critics. He knew how to be severe upon
occasion, but he saw talent in advance of the public and dispensed
encouragement heartily, so that he made himself almost a foster-father
to the literature of his generation in France. But there is a class of
anonymous reviewers in England and America who seem to hold a
traditional theory that the function of a critic toward new-born talent
is analogous to that of Pharaoh toward the infant Jewish population[1].
During the first year after its publication "The Hoosier School-Master"
was translated into French and published in a condensed form in the
_Revue des Deux Mondes_. The translator was the writer who signs the
name M. Th. Bentzon, and who is well known to be Madame Blanc. This
French version afterward appeared in book form in the same volume with
one of Mr. Thomas Bailey Aldrich's stories and some other stories of
mine. In this latter shape I have never seen it. The title given to the
story by Madame Blanc was "Le Maître d'École de Flat Creek." It may be
imagined that the translator found it no easy task to get equivalents in
French for expressions in a dialect new and strange. "I'll be dog-on'd"
appears in French as "devil take me" ("_diable m'emporte_"), which is
not bad; the devil being rather a jolly sort of fellow, in French. "The
Church of the Best Licks" seems rather unrenderable, and I do not see
how the translator could have found a better phrase for it than
"_L'Eglise des Raclées_" though "_raclées_" does not convey the double
sense of "licks." "_Jim epelait vite comme l'eclair_" is not a good
rendering of "Jim spelled like lightning," since it is not the celerity
of the spelling that is the main consideration. "_Concours
d'epellation_" is probably the best equivalent for "spelling-school,"
but it seems something more stately in its French dress. When Bud says,
with reference to Hannah, "I never took no shine that air way," the
phrase is rather too idiomatic for the French tongue, and it becomes "I
haven't run after that hare" ("_Je n'ai pas chassé ce lièvre-la_").
Perhaps the most sadly amusing thing in the translation is the way the
meaning of the nickname Shocky is missed in an explanatory foot-note. It
is, according to the translator, an abbreviation or corruption of the
English word "shocking," which expresses the shocking ugliness of the
child--"_qui exprime la laideur choquante de l'enfant_."
A German version of "The Hoosier School-Master" was made about the time
of the appearance of the French translation, but of this I have never
seen a copy. I know of it only from the statement made to me by a German
professor, that he had read it in German before he knew any English.
What are the equivalents in High German for "right smart" and "dog-on" I
cannot imagine.
Several years after the publication of "The Hoosier School-Master" it
occurred to Mr. H. Hansen, of Kjöge, in Denmark, to render it into
Danish. Among the Danes the book enjoyed a popularity as great, perhaps,
as it has had at home. The circulation warranted Mr. Hansen and his
publisher in bringing out several other novels of mine. The Danish
translator was the only person concerned in the various foreign
editions of this book who had the courtesy to ask the author's leave.
Under the old conditions in regard to international copyright, an author
came to be regarded as one not entitled even to common civilities in the
matter of reprinting his works--he was to be plundered without
politeness. As I look at the row of my books in the unfamiliar Danish, I
am reminded of that New England mother who, on recovering her children
carried away by the Canadian Indians, found it impossible to communicate
with a daughter who spoke only French and a son who knew nothing but the
speech of his savage captors. Mr. Hansen was thoughtful enough to send
me the reviews of my books in the Danish newspapers; and he had the
double kindness to translate these into English and to leave out all but
those that were likely to be agreeable to my vanity. Of these I remember
but a single sentence, and that because it was expressed with felicity.
The reviewer said of the fun in "The Hoosier School-Master:" "This is
humor laughing to keep from bursting into tears."
A year or two before the appearance of "The Hoosier School-Master," a
newspaper article of mine touching upon American dialect interested Mr.
Lowell, and he urged me to "look for the foreign influence" that has
affected the speech of the Ohio River country. My reverence for him as
the master in such studies did not prevent me from feeling that the
suggestion was a little absurd. But at a later period I became aware
that North Irishmen used many of the pronunciations and idioms that
distinctly characterized the language of old-fashioned people on the
Ohio. Many Ulster men say "wair" for were and "air" for are, for
example. Connecting this with the existence of a considerable element of
Scotch-Irish names in the Ohio River region, I could not doubt that here
was one of the keys the master had bidden me look for. While pursuing at
a later period a series of investigations into the culture-history of
the American people in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, I
became much interested in the emigration to America from the north of
Ireland, a movement that waxed and waned as the great Irish-linen
industry of the last century declined or prospered. The first American
home of these Irish was Pennsylvania. A portion of them were
steady-going, psalm-singing, money-getting people, who in course of time
made themselves felt in the commerce, politics, and intellectual life of
the nation. There was also a dare-devil element, descended perhaps from
those rude borderers who were deported to Ireland more for the sake of
the peace of North Britain than for the benefit of Ireland. In this
rougher class there was perhaps a larger dash of the Celtic fire that
came from the wild Irish women whom the first Scotch settlers in Ulster
made the mothers of their progeny. Arrived in the wilds of Pennsylvania,
these Irishmen built rude cabins, planted little patches of corn and
potatoes, and distilled a whiskey that was never suffered to grow
mellow. The forest was congenial to men who spent much the larger part
of their time in boisterous sport of one sort or another. The
manufacture of the rifle was early brought to Lancaster, in
Pennsylvania, direct from the land of its invention by Swiss emigrants,
and in the adventurous Scotch-Irishman of the Pennsylvania frontier the
rifle found its fellow. Irish settlers became hunters of wild beasts,
explorers, pioneers, and warriors against the Indians, upon whom they
avenged their wrongs with relentless ferocity. Both the Irish race and
the intermingled Pennsylvania Dutch were prolific, and the up-country of
Pennsylvania soon overflowed. Emigration was held in check to the
westward for a while by the cruel massacres of the French and Indian
wars, and one river of population poured itself southward into the
fertile valleys of the Virginia mountain country; another and larger
flood swept still farther to the south along the eastern borders of the
Appalachian range until it reached the uplands of Carolina. When the
militia of one county in South Carolina was mustered during the
Revolution, it was found that every one of the thirty-five hundred men
enrolled were natives of Pennsylvania. These were mainly sons of North
Irishmen, and from the Carolina Irish sprang Calhoun, the most
aggressive statesman that has appeared in America, and Jackson, the most
brilliant military genius in the whole course of our history. Before the
close of the Revolution this adventurous race had begun to break over
the passes of the Alleghanies into the dark and bloody ground of
Kentucky and Tennessee. Soon afterward a multitude of Pennsylvanians of
all stocks--the Scotch-Irish and those Germans, Swiss, and Hollanders
who are commonly classed together as the Pennsylvania Dutch, as well as
a large number of people of English descent--began to migrate down the
Ohio Valley. Along with them came professional men and people of more or
less culture, chiefly from eastern Virginia and Maryland. There came
also into Indiana and Illinois, from the border States and from as far
south as North Carolina and Tennessee, a body of "poor whites." These
semi-nomadic people, descendants of the colonial bond-servants, formed,
in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, the lowest rank of
Hoosiers. But as early as 1845 there was a considerable exodus of these
to Missouri. From Pike County, in that State, they wended their way to
California, to appear in Mr. Bret Harte's stories as "Pikes." The
movement of this class out of Indiana went on with augmented volume in
the fifties. The emigrants of this period mostly sought the States lying
just west of the Mississippi, and the poorer sort made the trip in
little one-horse wagons of the sorriest description, laden mainly with
white-headed children and followed by the yellow curs that are the one
luxury indispensable to a family of this class. To this migration and to
a liberal provision for popular education Indiana owes a great
improvement in the average intelligence of her people. As early as 1880,
I believe, the State had come to rank with some of the New England
States in the matter of literacy.
The folk-speech of the Ohio River country has many features in common
with that of the eastern Middle States, while it received but little
from the dignified eighteenth-century English of eastern Virginia. There
are distinct traces of the North-Irish in the idioms and in the peculiar
pronunciations. One finds also here and there a word from the
"Pennsylvania Dutch," such as "waumus" for a loose jacket, from the
German _wamms_, a doublet, and "smearcase" for cottage cheese, from the
German _schmierkäse_. The only French word left by the old _voyageurs_,
so far as I now remember, is "cordelle," to tow a boat by a rope carried
along the shore.
Substantially the same folk-speech exists wherever the Pennsylvania
migration formed the main element of the primitive settlement. I have
heard the same dialect in the South Carolina uplands that one gets from
a Posey County Hoosier, or rather that one used to get in the old days
before the vandal school-master had reduced the vulgar tongue to the
monotonous propriety of what we call good English.
In drawing some of the subordinate characters in this tale a little too
baldly from the model, I fell into an error common to inexperienced
writers. It is amusing to observe that these portrait characters seem
the least substantial of all the figures in the book. Dr. Small is a
rather unrealistic villain, but I knew him well and respected him in my
boyish heart for a most exemplary Christian of good family at the very
time that, according to testimony afterward given, he was diversifying
his pursuits as a practising physician by leading a gang of burglars.
More than one person has been pointed out as the original of Bud Means,
and I believe there are one or two men each of whom flatters himself
that he posed for the figure of the first disciple of the Church of the
Best Licks. Bud is made up of elements found in some of his race, but
not in any one man. Not dreaming that the story would reach beyond the
small circulation of _Hearth and Home_, I used the names of people in
Switzerland and Decatur counties, in Indiana, almost without being aware
of it. I have heard that a young man bearing the surname given to one of
the rudest families in this book had to suffer many gibes while a
student at an Indiana college. I here do public penance for my culpable
indiscretion.
"Jeems Phillips," name and all, is a real person whom at the time of
writing this story I had not seen since I was a lad of nine and he a man
of nearly forty. He was a mere memory to me, and was put into the book
with some slighting remarks which the real Jeems did not deserve. I did
not know that he was living, and it did not seem likely that the story
would have vitality enough to travel all the way to Indiana. But the
portion referring to Phillips was transferred to the county paper
circulating among Jeems' neighbors. For once the good-natured man was,
as they say in Hoosier, "mad," and he threatened to thrash the editor.
"Do you think he means you?" demanded the editor. "To be sure he does,"
said the champion speller. "Can you spell?" "I can spell down any master
that ever came to our district," he replied. As time passed on,
Phillips found himself a lion. Strangers desired an introduction to him
as a notability, and invited the champion to dissipate with them at the
soda fountain in the village drug store. It became a matter of pride
with him that he was the most famous speller in the world. Two years
ago, while visiting the town of my nativity, I met upon the street the
aged Jeems Phillips, whom I had not seen for more than forty years. I
would go far to hear him "spell down" a complacent school-master once
more.
The publication of this book gave rise to an amusing revival of the
spelling-school as a means of public entertainment, not in rustic
regions alone, but in towns also. The furor extended to the great cities
of New York and London, and reached at last to farthest Australia,
spreading to every region in which English is spelled or spoken. But the
effect of the chapter on the spelling-school was temporary and
superficial; the only organization that came from the spelling-school
mania, so far as I know, was an association of proof-readers in London
to discuss mooted points. The sketch of the Church of the Best Licks,
however, seems to have made a deep and enduring impression upon
individuals and to have left some organized results. I myself
endeavored to realize it, and for five years I was the pastor of a
church in Brooklyn, organized on a basis almost as simple as that in the
Flat Creek school-house. The name I rendered into respectable English,
and the Church of the Best Licks became the Church of Christian
Endeavor. It was highly successful in doing that which a church ought to
do, and its methods of work have been widely copied. After my work as a
minister had been definitely closed, the name and the underlying thought
of this church were borrowed for a young people's society; and thus the
little story of good endeavor in Indiana seems to have left a permanent
mark on the ecclesiastical organization of the time.
If any one, judging by the length of this preface, should conclude that
I hold my little book in undue esteem, let him know that I owe it more
than one grudge. It is said that Thomas Campbell, twenty years after the
appearance of his best-known poem, was one day introduced as "the author
of 'The Pleasures of Hope.'" "Confound 'The Pleasures of Hope,'" he
protested; "can't I write anything else?" So, however much I may prefer
my later work, more carefully wrought in respect of thought, structure,
and style, this initial novel, the favorite of the larger public, has
become inseparably associated with my name. Often I have mentally
applied Campbell's imprecation on "The Pleasures of Hope" to this
story. I could not write in this vein now if I would, and twenty-one
years have made so many changes in me that I dare not make any but minor
changes in this novel. The author of "The Hoosier School-Master" is
distinctly not I; I am but his heir and executor; and since he is a more
popular writer than I, why should I meddle with his work? I have,
however, ventured to make some necessary revision of the diction, and
have added notes, mostly with reference to the dialect.
A second grudge against this story is that somehow its readers persist
in believing it to be a bit of my own life. Americans are credulous
believers in that miracle of the imagination whom no one has ever seen
in the flesh--the self-made man. Some readers of "The Hoosier
School-Master" have settled it for a certainty that the author sprang
from the rustic class he has described. One lady even wrote to inquire
whether my childhood were not represented in Shocky, the little lad out
of the poor-house. A biographical sketch of me in Italian goes so far as
to state that among the hard resorts by which I made a living in my
early life was the teaching of a Sunday-school in Chicago.
No one knows so well as I the faults of immaturity and inexperience that
characterize this book. But perhaps after all the public is right in so
often preferring an author's first book. There is what Emerson would
have called a "central spontaneity" about the work of a young man that
may give more delight to the reader than all the precision of thought
and perfection of style for which we strive as life advances.
JOSHUA'S ROCK ON LAKE GEORGE, 1892.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: Since writing the passage in the text, I have met with the
following in _The Speaker_, of London: "Everybody knows that when an
important work is published in history, philosophy, or any branch of
science, the editor of a respectable paper employs an expert to review
it; . . . indeed, the more abstruse the subject of the book, the more
careful and intelligent you will find the review. . . . It is equally
well known that works of fiction and books of verse are not treated with
anything like the same care. . . . A good poem, play, or novel is at
least as fine an achievement as a good history; yet the history gets the
benefit of an expert's judgment and two columns of thoughtful pimse or
censure, while the poem, play, or novel is treated to ten skittish lines
by the hack who happens to be within nearest call when the book comes
in."]
PART OF THE PREFACE TO THE
FIRST EDITION.
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 Gary, 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 School-master been received more kindly than in his own country
and among his own people.
Some of those who have spoken generous words of the School-master 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 every one
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.
BROOKLYN, December, 1871.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I
PAGE
A Private Lesson from a Bulldog . . . 37
CHAPTER II.
A Spell Coming. . . . . . . . . . . . 52
CHAPTER III.
Mirandy, Hank, and Shocky . . . . . . 57
CHAPTER IV.
Spelling Down the Master. . . . . . . 70
CHAPTER V.
The Walk Home . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
CHAPTER VI.
A Night at Pete Jones's . . . . . . . 97
CHAPTER VII
Ominous Remarks of Mr. Jones. . . . . 105
CHAPTER VIII.
The Struggle in the Dark. . . . . . . 109
CHAPTER IX.
Has God Forgotten Shocky? . . . . . . 114
CHAPTER X.
The Devil of Silence. . . . . . . . . 118
CHAPTER XI.
Miss Martha Hawkins . . . . . . . . . 125
CHAPTER XII.
The Hardshell Preacher. . . . . . . . 133
CHAPTER XIII.
A Struggle for the Mastery. . . . . . 143
CHAPTER XIV.
A Crisis with Bud . . . . . . . . . . 150
CHAPTER XV.
The Church of the Best Licks. . . . . 157
CHAPTER XVI.
The Church Militant . . . . . . . . . 163
CHAPTER XVII.
A Council of War. . . . . . . . . . . 169
CHAPTER XVIII.
Odds and Ends . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
CHAPTER XIX.
Face to Face. . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
CHAPTER XX.
God Remembers Shocky. . . . . . . . . 185
CHAPTER XXI.
Miss Nancy Sawyer . . . . . . . . . . 192
CHAPTER XXII.
Pancakes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
CHAPTER XXIII.
A Charitable Institution. . . . . . . 203
CHAPTER XXIV
The Good Samaritan. . . . . . . . . . 212
CHAPTER XXV.
Bud Wooing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
CHAPTER XXVI.
A Letter and its Consequences . . . . 220
CHAPTER XXVII.
A Loss and a Gain . . . . . . . . . . 224
CHAPTER XXVIII.
The Flight. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
CHAPTER XXIX.
The Trial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
CHAPTER XXX.
"Brother Sodom" . . . . . . . . . . . 249
CHAPTER XXXI.
The Trial Concluded . . . . . . . . . 254
CHAPTER XXXII.
After the Battle. . . . . . . . . . . 269
CHAPTER XXXIII.
Into the Light. . . . . . . . . . . . 274
CHAPTER XXXIV.
"How it Came Out" . . . . . . . . . . 278
The Hoosier School-Master.
CHAPTER I
A PRIVATE LESSON FROM A BULLDOG.
"Want to be a school-master, do you? You? Well, what would _you_ do in
Flat Crick deestrick, _I'd_ like to know? Why, the boys have driv off
the last two, and licked the one afore them like blazes. You might teach
a summer school, when nothin' but children come. But I 'low it takes a
right smart _man_ to be school-master in Flat Crick in the winter.
They'd pitch you out of doors, sonny, neck and heels, afore Christmas."
The young man, who had walked ten miles to get the school in this
district, and who had been mentally reviewing his learning at every step
he took, trembling lest the committee should find that he did not know
enough, was not a little taken aback at this greeting from "old Jack
Means," who was the first trustee that he lighted on. The impression
made by these ominous remarks was emphasized by the glances which he
received from Jack Means's two sons. The older one eyed him from the top
of his brawny shoulders with that amiable look which a big dog turns on
a little one before shaking him. Ralph Hartsook had never thought of
being measured by the standard of muscle. This notion of beating
education into young savages in spite of themselves dashed his ardor.
He had walked right to where Jack Means was at work shaving shingles in
his own front yard. While Mr. Means was making the speech which we have
set down above, and punctuating it with expectorations, a large brindle
bulldog had been sniffing at Ralph's heels, and a girl in a new
linsey-woolsey dress, standing by the door, had nearly giggled her head
off at the delightful prospect of seeing a new school-teacher eaten up
by the ferocious brute.
The disheartening words of the old man, the immense muscles of the young
man who was to be his rebellious pupil, the jaws of the ugly bulldog,
and the heartless giggle of the girl, gave Ralph a delightful sense of
having precipitated himself into a den of wild beasts. Faint with
weariness and discouragement, and shivering with fear, he sat down on a
wheelbarrow.
"You, Bull!" said the old man to the dog, which was showing more and
more a disposition to make a meal of the incipient pedagogue, "you,
Bull! git aout[2], you pup!" The dog walked sullenly off, but not until
he had given Ralph a look full of promise of what he meant to do when he
got a good chance. Ralph wished himself back in the village of
Lewisburg, whence he had come.
"You see," continued Mr. Means, spitting in a meditative sort of a way,
"you see, we a'n't none of your saft sort in these diggings. It takes a
_man_ to boss this deestrick. Howsumdever, ef you think you kin trust
your hide in Flat Crick school-house I ha'n't got no 'bjection. But ef
you git licked, don't come on us. Flat Crick don't pay no 'nsurance, you
bet! Any other trustees? Wal, yes. But as I pay the most taxes, t'others
jist let me run the thing. You can begin right off a Monday. They a'n't
been no other applications. You see, it takes grit to apply for this
school. The last master had a black eye for a month. But, as I wuz
sayin', you can jist roll up and wade in. I 'low you've got spunk,
maybe, and that goes for a heap sight more'n sinnoo with boys. Walk in,
and stay over Sunday with me. You'll hev' to board roun', and I guess
you better begin here."
Ralph did not go in, but sat out on the wheelbarrow, watching the old
man shave shingles, while the boys split the blocks and chopped wood.
Bull smelled of the new-comer again in an ugly way, and got a good kick
from the older son for his pains. But out of one of his red eyes the dog
warned the young school-master that _he_ should yet suffer for all kicks
received on his account.
"Ef Bull once takes a holt, heaven and yarth can't make him let go,"
said the older son to Ralph, by way of comfort.
It was well for Ralph that he began to "board roun'" by stopping at Mr.
Means's. Ralph felt that Flat Creek was what he needed. He had lived a
bookish life; but here was his lesson in the art of managing people, for
he who can manage the untamed and strapping youths of a winter school in
Hoopole County has gone far toward learning one of the hardest of
lessons. And in Ralph's time, things were worse than they are now. The
older son of Mr. Means was called Bud Means. What his real name was,
Ralph could not find out, for in many of these families the nickname of
"Bud" given to the oldest boy, and that of "Sis," which is the
birth-right of the oldest girl, completely bury the proper Christian
name. Ralph saw his first strategic point, which was to capture Bud
Means.
After supper, the boys began to get ready for something. Bull stuck up
his ears in a dignified way, and the three or four yellow curs who were
Bull's satellites yelped delightedly and discordantly.
"Bill," said Bud Means to his brother, "ax the master ef he'd like to
hunt coons. I'd like to take the starch out uv the stuck-up feller."
"'Nough said[3]," was Bill's reply.
"You durn't[4] do it," said Bud.
"I don't take no sech a dare[5]," returned Bill, and walked down to the
gate, by which Ralph stood watching the stars come out, and half wishing
he had never seen Flat Creek.
"I say, mister," began Bill, "mister, they's a coon what's been a eatin'
our chickens lately, and we're goin' to try to ketch[6] the varmint.
You wouldn't like to take a coon hunt nor nothin', would you?"
"Why, yes," said Ralph, "there's nothing I should like better, if I
could only be sure Bull wouldn't mistake me for the coon."
And so, as a matter of policy, Ralph dragged his tired legs eight or ten
miles, on hill and in hollow, after Bud, and Bill, and Bull, and the
coon. But the raccoon[7] climbed a tree. The boys got into a quarrel
about whose business it was to have brought the axe, and who was to
blame that the tree could not be felled. Now, if there was anything
Ralph's muscles were good for, it was climbing. So, asking Bud to give
him a start, he soon reached the limb above the one on which the raccoon
was. Ralph did not know how ugly a customer a raccoon can be, and so
got credit for more courage than he had. With much peril to his legs
from the raccoon's teeth, he succeeded in shaking the poor creature off
among the yelping brutes and yelling boys. Ralph could not help
sympathizing with the hunted animal, which sold its life as dearly as
possible, giving the dogs many a scratch and bite. It seemed to him that
he was like the raccoon, precipitated into the midst of a party of dogs
who would rejoice in worrying _his_ life out, as Bull and his crowd were
destroying the poor raccoon. When Bull at last seized the raccoon and
put an end to it, Ralph could not but admire the decided way in which he
did it, calling to mind Bud's comment, "Ef Bull once takes a holt,
heaven and yarth[8] can't make him let go."
But as they walked home, Bud carrying the raccoon by the tail, Ralph
felt that his hunt had not been in vain. He fancied that even red-eyed
Bull, walking uncomfortably close to his heels, respected him more
since he had climbed that tree.
"Purty peart kind of a master," remarked the old man to Bud, after Ralph
had gone to bed. "Guess you better be a little easy on him. Hey?"
But Bud deigned no reply. Perhaps because he knew that Ralph heard the
conversation through the thin partition.
Ralph woke delighted to find it raining. He did not want to hunt or fish
on Sunday, and this steady rain would enable him to make friends with
Bud. I do not know how he got started, but after breakfast he began to
tell stories. Out of all the books he had ever read he told story after
story. And "old man Means," and "old _Miss_ Means," and Bud Means, and
Bill Means, and Sis Means listened with great eyes while he told of
Sinbad's adventures, of the Old Man of the Sea, of Robinson Crusoe, of
Captain Gulliver's experiences in Liliput, and of Baron Munchausen's
exploits.
Ralph had caught his fish. The hungry minds of these backwoods people
were refreshed with the new life that came to their imaginations in
these stories. For there was but one book in the Means library, and
that, a well-thumbed copy of "Captain Riley's Narrative," had long since
lost all freshness.
"I'll be dog-on'd[9]," said Bill, emphatically, "ef I hadn't 'ruther
hear the master tell them whoppin' yarns than to go to a circus the best
day I ever seed!" Bill could pay no higher compliment.
What Ralph wanted was to make a friend of Bud. It's a nice thing to
have the seventy-four-gun ship on your own side, and the more Hartsook
admired the knotted muscles of Bud Means the more he desired to attach
him to himself. So, whenever he struck out a peculiarly brilliant
passage, he anxiously watched Bud's eye. But the young Philistine kept
his own counsel. He listened, but said nothing, and the eyes under his
shaggy brows gave no sign. Ralph could not tell whether those eyes were
deep and inscrutable or only stolid. Perhaps a little of both. When
Monday morning came, Ralph was nervous. He walked to school with Bud.
"I guess you're a little skeered by what the old man said, a'n't you?"
Ralph was about to deny it, but on reflection concluded that it was best
to speak the truth. He said that Mr. Means's description of the school
had made him feel a little down-hearted.
"What will you do with the tough boys? You a'n't no match for 'em." And
Ralph felt Bud's eyes not only measuring his muscles, but scrutinizing
his countenance. He only answered:
"I don't know."
"What would you do with me, for instance?" and Bud stretched himself up
as if to shake out the reserve power coiled up in his great muscles.
"I sha'n't have any trouble with you."
"Why, I'm the wust chap of all. I thrashed the last master, myself."
And again the eyes of Bud Means looked out sharply from his shadowing
brows to see the effect of this speech on the slender young man.
"You won't thrash me, though," said Ralph.
"Pshaw! I 'low I could whip you in an inch of your life with my left
hand, and never half try," said young Means, with a threatening sneer.
"I know that as well as you do."
"Well, a'n't you afraid of me, then?" and again he looked sidewise at
Ralph.
"Not a bit," said Ralph, wondering at his own courage.
They walked on in silence a minute. Bud was turning the matter over.
"Why a'n't you afraid of me?" he said presently.
"Because you and I are going to be friends."
"And what about t'others?"
"I am not afraid of all the other boys put together."
"You a'n't! The mischief! How's that?"
"Well, I'm not afraid of them because you and I are going to be friends,
and you can whip all of them together. You'll do the fighting and I'll
do the teaching."
The diplomatic Bud only chuckled a little at this; whether he assented
to the alliance or not Ralph could not tell.
When Ralph looked round on the faces of the scholars--the little faces
full of mischief and curiosity, the big faces full of an expression
which was not further removed than second-cousin from contempt--when
when young Hartsook looked into these faces, his heart palpitated with
stage-fright. There is no audience so hard to face as one of
school-children, as many a man has found to his cost. Perhaps it is that
no conventional restraint can keep down their laughter when you do or
say anything ridiculous.
Hartsook's first day was hurried and unsatisfactory. He was not of
himself, and consequently not master of anybody else. When evening came,
there were symptoms of insubordination through the whole school. Poor
Ralph was sick at heart. He felt that if there had ever been the shadow
of an alliance between himself and Bud, it was all "off" now. It seemed
to Hartsook that even Bull had lost his respect for the teacher. Half
that night the young man lay awake. At last comfort came to him. A
reminiscence of the death of the raccoon flashed on him like a vision.
He remembered that quiet and annihilating bite which Bull gave. He
remembered Bud's certificate, that "Ef Bull once takes a holt, heaven
and yarth can't make him let go." He thought that what Flat Creek needed
was a bulldog. He would be a bulldog, quiet, but invincible. He would
take hold in such a way that nothing should make him let go. And then he
went to sleep.
In the morning Ralph got out of bed slowly. He put his clothes on
slowly. He pulled on his boots in a bulldog mood. He tried to move as he
thought Bull would move if he were a man. He ate with deliberation, and
looked everybody in the eyes with a manner that made Bud watch him
curiously. He found himself continually comparing himself with Bull. He
found Bull possessing a strange fascination for him. He walked to school
alone, the rest having gone on before. He entered the school-room
preserving a cool and dogged manner. He saw in the eyes of the boys that
there was mischief brewing. He did not dare sit down in his chair for
fear of a pin. Everybody looked solemn. Ralph lifted the lid of his
desk. "Bow-wow! wow-wow!" It was the voice of an imprisoned puppy, and
the school giggled and then roared. Then everything was quiet.
The scholars expected an outburst of wrath from the teacher. For they
had come to regard the whole world as divided into two classes, the
teacher on the one side representing lawful authority, and the pupils on
the other in a state of chronic rebellion. To play a trick on the master
was an evidence of spirit; to "lick" the master was to be the crowned
hero of Flat Creek district. Such a hero was Bud Means; and Bill, who
had less muscle, saw a chance to distinguish himself on a teacher of
slender frame. Hence the puppy in the desk.
Ralph Hartsook grew red in the face when he saw the puppy. But the cool,
repressed, bulldog mood in which he had kept himself saved him. He
lifted the dog into his arms and stroked him until the laughter
subsided. Then, in a solemn and set way, he began:
"I am sorry," and he looked round the room with a steady, hard
eye--everybody felt that there was a conflict coming--"I am sorry that
any scholar in this school could be so mean"--the word was uttered with
a sharp emphasis, and all the big boys felt sure that there would be a
fight with Bill Means, and perhaps with Bud--"could be so _mean_--as
to--shut up his _brother_ in such a place as that!"
There was a long, derisive laugh. The wit was indifferent, but by one
stroke Ralph had carried the whole school to his side. By the
significant glances of the boys, Hartsook detected the perpetrator of
the joke, and with the hard and dogged look in his eyes, with just such
a look as Bull would give a puppy, but with the utmost suavity in his
voice, he said:
"William Means, will you be so good as to put this dog out of doors?"
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 2: _Aout_ is not the common form of _out_, as it is in certain
rustic New England regions. The vowel is here drawn in this way for
imperative emphasis, and it occurs as a consequence of drawling speech.]
[Footnote 3: "_'Nough said_" is more than enough said for the French
translator, who takes it apparently for a sort of barbarous negative and
renders it, "I don't like to speak to him." I need hardly explain to any
American reader that _enough said_ implies the ending of all discussion
by the acceptance of the proposition or challenge.]
[Footnote 4: _Durn't, daren't, dasent, dursent_, and _don't dast_ are
forms of this variable negative heard in the folk-speech of various
parts of the country. The tenses of this verb seem to have got
hopelessly mixed long ago, even in literary use, and the speech of the
people reflects the historic confusion.]
[Footnote 5: _To take a dare_ is an expression used in senses
diametrically opposed. Its common sense is that of the text. The man who
refuses to accept a challenge is said to take a dare, and there is some
implication of cowardice in the imputation. On the other hand, one who
accepts a challenge is said also to take the dare.]
[Footnote 6: Most bad English was once good English. _Ketch_ was used by
writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for _catch_. A New
Hampshire magistrate in the seventeenth century spells it _caitch_, and
probably pronounced it in that way. _Ketch_, a boat, was sometimes
spelled _catch_ by the first American colonists, and the far-fetched
derivation of the word from the Turkish may be one of the fancies of
etymologists.]
[Footnote 7: The derivation of _raccoon_ from the French _raton_, to
which Mr. Skeat gives currency, still holds its place in some of our
standard dictionaries. If American lexicographers would only read the
literature of American settlement they would know that Mr. Skeat's
citation of a translation of Buffon is nearly two centuries too late. As
early as 1612 Captain John Smith gives _aroughcune_ as the aboriginal
Virginia word, and more than one New England writer used _rackoon_ a few
years later.]
[Footnote 8: This prefixed _y_ is a mark of a very illiterate or antique
form of the dialect. I have known _piece yarthen_ used for "a piece of
earthen" [ware], the preposition getting lost in the sound of the _y_. I
leave it to etymologists to determine its relation to that ancient
prefix that differentiates _earn_ in one sense from _yearn_. But the
article before a vowel may account for it if we consider it a
corruption. "The earth" pronounced in a drawling way will produce _the
yearth_. In the New York Documents is a letter from one Barnard Hodges,
a settler in Delaware in the days of Governor Andros, whose spelling
indicates a free use of the parasitic _y_. He writes "yunless,"
"yeunder" (under), "yunderstanding," "yeundertake," and "yeouffeis"
(office).]
[Footnote 9: Like many of the ear-marks of this dialect, the verb
"dog-on" came from Scotland, presumably by the way of the north of
Ireland. A correspondent of _The Nation_ calls attention to the use of
"dagon" as Scotch dialect in Barrie's "Little Minister," a recent book.
On examining that story, I find that the word has precisely the sense of
our Hoosier "dog-on," which is to be pronounced broadly as a Hoosier
pronounces dog--"daug-on." If Mr. Barrie gives his _a_ the broad sound,
his "dagon" is nearly identical with "dog-on." Here are some detached
sentences from "The Little Minister:"
"Beattie spoke for more than himself when he said: 'Dagon that Manse! I
never gie a swear but there it is glowering at me.'"
"'Dagon religion,' Rob retorted fiercely; 't spoils a' thing.'"
"There was some angry muttering from the crowd, and young Charles Yuill
exclaimed, 'Dagon you, would you lord it ower us on week-days as well as
on Sabbaths?'"
"'Have you on your Sabbath shoon or have you no on your Sabbath shoon?'
'Guid care you took I should ha'e the dagont things on!' retorted the
farmer."
It will be seen that "dagont," as used above, is the Scotch form of
"dog-oned." But Mr. Barrie uses the same form apparently for "dog-on it"
in the following passage:
"Ay, there was Ruth when she was na wanted, but Ezra, dagont, it looked
as if Ezra had jumped clean out o' the Bible!"
Strangely enough, this word as a verb is not to be found in Jamieson's
dictionary of the Scottish dialect, but Jamieson gives "dugon" as a
noun. It is given in the supplement to Jamieson, however, as "dogon,"
but still as a noun, with an ancient plural _dogonis_. It is explained
as "a term of contempt." The example cited by Jamieson is Hogg's "Winter
Tales," I. 292, and is as follows:
"What wad my father say if I were to marry a man that loot himsel' be
thrashed by Tommy Potts, a great supple wi' a back nae stiffer than a
willy brand? . . . When one comes to close quarters wi' him he's but a
dugon."
Halliwell and Wright give _dogon_ as a noun, and mark it Anglo-Norman,
but they apparently know it only from Jamieson and the supplement to
Jamieson, where _dogguin_ is cited from Cotgrave as meaning "a filthie
old curre," and _doguin_ from Roquefort, defined by "brutal, currish"
[hargneux]. A word with the same orthography, _doguin_, is still used in
French for puppy. It is of course a question whether the noun _dogon_
and its French antecedents are connected with the American verb
_dog-on_. It is easy to conceive that such an epithet as _dogon_ might
get itself mixed up with the word dog, and so become an imprecation. For
instance, a servant in the family of a friend of mine in Indiana,
wishing to resign her place before the return of some daughters of the
house whom she had never seen, announced that she was going to leave
"before them dog-on girls got home." Here the word might have been the
old epithet, or an abbreviated participle. _Dogged_ is apparently a
corruption of dog-on in the phrase "I'll be dogged." I prefer _dog-on_
to _dogone_, because in the dialect the sense of setting a dog on is
frequently present to the speaker, though far enough away from the
primitive sense of the word; perhaps.]