I here do public penance for my culpable indiscretion.
"Jeems Phillips," name and all, is a real person whom at the time of writing this story I had not seen since I was a lad of nine and he a man of nearly forty.

He was a mere memory to me, and was put into the book with some slighting remarks which the real Jeems did not deserve.

I did not know that he was living, and it did not seem likely that the story would have vitality enough to travel all the way to Indiana.

But the portion referring to Phillips was transferred to the county paper circulating among Jeems' neighbors.

For once the good-natured man was, as they say in Hoosier, "mad," and he threatened to thrash the editor.
"Do you think he means you ?" demanded the editor.