The new literature of the period was influenced more by the _Pike County Ballads_ than by the _East and West Poems_. The ballads were something new in literature, something certainly not Bostonian, certainly not English--something that could be described only as "Western," fresh, independent, as the Pike himself was new and independent among the types of humanity. John Hay was therefore a pioneer, a creator, a leader. His was one of those rare germinal minds that appear now and then to break into new regions and to scatter seed from which others are to reap the harvest. IV In the same remarkable year in which appeared _East and West Poems_ and _Pike County Ballads_ and so many other notable first volumes, there began in _Hearth and Home_ Edward Eggleston's study of early Indiana life, entitled _The Hoosier Schoolmaster_. Crude as the novel is in its plot and hasty as it is in style and finish, it nevertheless must be numbered as the third leading influence upon the literature of the period. The extent to which it was influenced by Harte cannot be determined. The brother and biographer of the novelist insists that "the quickening influence that led to the writing of the story" was the reading of Taine's _Art in the Netherlands_. He further records that his brother one day said to him: "I am going to write a three-number story founded upon your experiences at Ricker's Ridge, and call it _The Hoosier Schoolmaster_." Then he set forth his theory of art--that the artist, whether with pen or brush, who would do his best work, must choose his subjects from the life that he knows. He cited the Dutch painters and justified his choice of what seemed an unliterary theme, involving rude characters and a strange dialect perversion, by reference to Lowell's success with _The Biglow Papers_.[58] If Eggleston was not influenced by Harte, then it is certain that he drew his early inspiration from the same fountain head as Harte did. Both were the literary offspring of Dickens. One cannot read far in _The Hoosier Schoolmaster_ without recognizing the manner and spirit of the elder novelist. It is more prominent in his earlier work--in the short story, _The Christmas Club_, which is almost a parody, in the portraits of Shockey and Hawkins and Miranda Means, and in the occasional moralizing and goody-goodiness of tone.