Public-domain ebook
Language: en886 downloads on Project Gutenberg
Subjects
In: Novels·American Literature·Teaching & Education
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #15099.
The opening · free to read
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 Stael, "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
The book keeps going
Reading is free forever. Sign up and watch scenes appear while you read.
Scenes Storieta drew for other classics.
New illustrated classics
Once or twice a month: the latest books to get full character casts, scene art, and free comic editions. No account needed.
