Often I have mentally applied Campbell's imprecation on "The Pleasures of Hope" to this story.

I could not write in this vein now if I would, and twenty-one years have made so many changes in me that I dare not make any but minor changes in this novel.

The author of "The Hoosier School-Master" is distinctly not I; I am but his heir and executor; and since he is a more popular writer than I, why should I meddle with his work?
I have, however, ventured to make some necessary revision of the diction, and have added notes, mostly with reference to the dialect.
A second grudge against this story is that somehow its readers persist in believing it to be a bit of my own life.

Americans are credulous believers in that miracle of the imagination whom no one has ever seen in the flesh--the self-made man.

Some readers of "The Hoosier School-Master" have settled it for a certainty that the author sprang from the rustic class he has described.