The novels of Eggleston have not the compression, the finish, the finesse of Harte's. Some of his works, notably _The Hoosier Schoolmaster_, were written at full speed with the press clattering behind the author. Often there is to the style a mawkish Sunday-school juvenile flavor. There is often a lack of art, of distinction, of constructive skill. But there are compensations even for such grave defects. There is a vividness of characterization and of description that can be compared even with that of Dickens; there is the ability to sketch a scene that clings to the memory in all its details. The trial scene in _The Graysons_ is not surpassed for vividness and narrative power in any novel of the period. And, finally, there is a realism in background and atmosphere that makes the novels real sources of history. The influence of Eggleston's work was enormous. He helped to create a new reading public, a public made up of those who, like himself, had had scruples against novel reading. He was an influence in the creating of a new and healthy realism in America. What Hay was to the new school of local color poets, Eggleston was to the new school of novelists. Harte was a romanticist; Eggleston was a realist. From Harte came the first conception of a new and powerful literature of the West. Eggleston was the directing hand that turned the current of this new literature into the channel of realism. BIBLIOGRAPHY JOHN HAY. (1838-1905.) _The Pike County Ballads and Other Pieces_, (167 pages), 1871; _Jim Bludso of the Prairie Belle, and Little Breeches_, illustrated by Eytinge (23 pages), 1871; _Castilian Days_, 1871; _The Bread-winners_, 1883; _Poems by John Hay_, 1890 and 1899; _A Poet in Exile: Early letters of John Hay._ Edited by Caroline Ticknor, 1910. EDWARD EGGLESTON. (1837-1902.) _Mr. Blake's Walking-Stick_, 1870; _The Hoosier Schoolmaster_, 1871; _The End of the World_, 1872; _The Mystery of Metropolisville_, 1873; _The Circuit Rider_, 1874; _The Schoolmaster's Stories_, 1874; _Roxy_, 1878; _The Hoosier Schoolboy_, 1883; _Queer Stories_, 1884; _The Graysons_, 1888; _The Faith Doctor_, 1891; _Duffels_ (short stories), 1893; _The First of the Hoosiers_, by George Cary Eggleston, 1903. CHAPTER VI JOAQUIN MILLER