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 ...

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 bee...

“Want to be a schoolmaster, 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 mig...

There was a moment of utter stillness; but the magnetism of Ralph’s eye was too much for Bill Means. The request was so polite, the master’s look was so innocent and yet so determined. Bill often wond...

Mirandy had nothing but contempt for the new master until he developed the bulldog in his character. Mirandy fell in love with the bulldog. Like many other girls of her class, she was greatly enamored...

“I ’low,” said Mrs. Means, as she stuffed the tobacco into her cob pipe after supper on that eventful Wednesday evening: “I ’low they’ll app’int the Squire to gin out the words tonight. They mos’ alwa...

You expect me to describe that walk. You have had enough of the Jack Meanses and the Squire Hawkinses, and the Pete Joneses, and the rest. You wish me to tell you now of this truehearted girl and her ...

When Ralph got to Pete Jones’s he found that sinister-looking individual in the act of kicking one of his many dogs out of the house. “Come in, stranger, come in. You’ll find this ’ere house full of b...

The schoolmaster’s mind was like ancient Gaul⁠—divided into three parts. With one part he mechanically performed his school duties. With another he asked himself, What shall I do about the robbery? An...

It was a long, lonesome, fearful night that the schoolmaster passed, lying with nerves on edge and eyes wide open in that comfortless bed in the “furdest corner” of the loft of Pete Jones’s house, shi...

“Pap wants to know ef you would spend to-morry and Sunday at our house?” said one of Squire Hawkins’s girls, on the very next evening, which was Friday. The old Squire was thoughtful enough to remembe...

Ralph had reason to fear Small, who was a native of the same village of Lewisburg, and some five years the elder. Some facts in the doctor’s life had come into Ralph’s possession in such a way as to c...

“It’s very good for the health to dig in the elements. I was quite emaciated last year at the East, and the doctor told me to dig in the elements. I got me a florial hoe and dug, and it’s been most ex...

“They’s preachin’ down to Bethel Meetin’-house today,” said the Squire at breakfast. Twenty years in the West could not cure Squire Hawkins of saying “to” for “at.” “I rather guess as how the old man ...

The school had closed on Monday evening as usual. The boys had been talking in knots all day. Nothing but the bulldog in the slender, resolute young master had kept down the rising storm. A teacher wh...

Ralph sat still at his desk. The school had gone. All at once he became conscious that Shocky sat yet in his accustomed place upon the hard, backless bench. “Why, Shocky, haven’t you gone yet?” “No⁠—s...

Just as the flame on the forestick, which Ralph had watched so intensely, flickered and burned low, and just as Ralph with a heavy but not quite hopeless heart rose to leave, the latch lifted and Bud ...

Bud was doubly enlisted on the side of John Pearson, the basket-maker. In the first place, he knew that this persecution of the unpopular old man was only a blind to save somebody else; that they were...

Shocky, whose feet had flown as soon as he saw the final fall of Pete Jones, told the whole story to the wondering and admiring ears of Miss Hawkins, who unhappily could not remember anything at the E...

The Spring-in-rock, or, as it was sometimes, by a curious perversion, called, the “rock-in-spring,” was a spring running out of a cave-like fissure in a high limestone cliff. Here the old man sheltere...

In the lane, in the dark, under the shadow of the barn, Ralph met Hannah carrying her bucket of milk (they have no pails in Indiana).22 He could see only the white foam on the milk, and Hannah’s white...

At four o’clock the next morning, in the midst of a driving snow, Ralph went timidly up the lane toward the homely castle of the Meanses. He went timidly, for he was afraid of Bull. But he found Bud w...

In a little old cottage in Lewisburg, on one of the streets which was never traveled except by a solitary cow seeking pasture or a countryman bringing wood to some one of the half-dozen families livin...

Half an hour later, Ralph, having seen Miss Nancy Sawyer’s machinery of warm baths and simple remedies safely in operation, and having seen the roan colt comfortably stabled, and rewarded for his fait...

When Ralph got back to Miss Nancy Sawyer’s, Shocky was sitting up in bed talking to Miss Nancy and Miss Semantha. His cheeks were a little flushed with fever and the excitement of telling his story; t...

The Methodist church to which Mrs. Matilda White and Miss Nancy Sawyer belonged was the leading one in Lewisburg, as it was in most county-seat villages in Indiana. If I may be permitted to express my...

The Sunday that Ralph spent in Lewisburg, the Sunday that Shocky spent in an earthly paradise, the Sunday that Mrs. Thomson spent with Shocky instead of old Mowley, the Sunday that Miss Nancy thought ...

“Squar Haukins “this is too Lett u no that u beter be Keerful hoo yoo an yore familly tacks cides with fer peepl wont Stan it too hev the Men wat’s sportin the wuns wat’s robin us, sported bi yor Foke...

Dr. Small, silent, attentive, assiduous Dr. Small, set himself to work to bind up the wounded heart of Bud Means, even as he had bound up his broken arm. The flattery of his fine eyes, which looked at...

About ten days after Ralph’s return to Flat Creek things came to a crisis. The master was rather relieved at first to have the crisis come. He had been holding juvenile Flat Creek under his feet by sh...

The “prosecuting attorney” (for so the State’s attorney is called in Indiana) had been sent for the night before. Ralph refused all legal help. It was not wise to reject counsel, but all his blood was...

In order to explain Walter Johnson’s testimony and his state of mind, I must carry the reader back nearly a week. The scene was Dr. Small’s office. Bud and Walter Johnson had been having some confiden...

I do not know how much interest the “gentle reader” may feel in Bud. But I venture to hope that there are some Buddhists among my readers who will wish the contradictoriness of his actions explained. ...

Nothing can be more demoralizing in the long run than lynch law. And yet lynch law often originates in a burst of generous indignation which is not willing to suffer a bold oppressor to escape by mean...

For two weeks longer Ralph taught at the Flat Creek schoolhouse. He was everybody’s hero. And he was Bud’s idol. He did what he could to get Bud and Martha together, and though Bud always “saw her saf...

We are all children in reading stories. We want more than all else to know how it all came out at the end, and, if our taste is not perverted, we like it to come out well. For my part, ever since I be...

“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. ...