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_.