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 of the School-master and his friends have suggested that the story is an autobiography.

But it is not, save in the sense in which every work of art is an autobiography: in that it is the result of the experience and observation of the writer.

Readers will therefore bear in mind that not Ralph nor Bud nor Brother Sodom nor Dr.Small represents the writer, nor do I appear, as Talleyrand said of Madame de Stael, "disguised as a woman," in the person of Hannah or Mirandy.

Some of the incidents have been drawn from life; none of them, I believe, from my own.

I should like to be considered a member of the Church of the Best Licks, however.
It has been in my mind to append some remarks, philological and otherwise, upon the dialect, but Professor Lowell's admirable and erudite preface to the Biglow Papers must be the despair of every one who aspires to write on Americanisms.