Eggleston's saddle bags contained far more than these. He read Whitfield and Thomas à Kempis, the _OEdipus Tyrannus_ in the Greek, and all the history and biography that he could buy or borrow. His "appointment" was in southeastern Indiana, a four-weeks' circuit with ten preaching places far apart in the Ohio River bottoms with their scattering population of malarial Pikes and their rude border civilization. He began his work with enthusiasm. He lived with his people; he entered intimately into their affairs; he studied at first hand their habits of life and of thought. It was an ideal preparation for a novelist, but the rough life was in no way fitted for his frail physique. After six months he broke down almost completely and was sent into the pine forests of Minnesota to recuperate. For several years he was connected with the Minnesota conference. He held pastorates in St. Paul and other places, but his health still continuing precarious, he at length retired to Chicago as an editor of the _Little Corporal_, a juvenile paper later merged in _St. Nicholas_. This step turned his attention to literature as a profession. From Chicago he was called to Brooklyn to the staff of the _Independent_, of which he later became the editor, and the rest of his life, save for a five years' pastorate in Brooklyn, he devoted to literature. VI The Western novels of Edward Eggleston are seven in number. One of them, _The Mystery of Metropolisville_, deals with frontier life in Minnesota, a stirring picture of a vital era; all the others are laid in Indiana or eastern Ohio in that malarial, river-bottom, Pike area that had been familiar to his boyhood. Two of them are historical novels: _The Circuit Rider_, which deals with Indiana life during the early years of the century before the War of 1812, and _The Graysons_, a stirring tale involving Abraham Lincoln, who had lived in the State from 1816 to 1830. _The End of the World_ described the Millerite excitement of Eggleston's early boyhood; the others, _The Hoosier Schoolmaster_, _Roxy_, and _The Hoosier Schoolboy_, were studies of sections of life that he had known intimately. One other novel he wrote, _The Faith Doctor_, the scene of which is laid in New York, and many short stories and juveniles.