here 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