-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