Unconscious preparation for a life-employment has rarely been more clearly exemplified in American literature than in the case of Dr. Eggleston. This is not true as to his novels of Western life merely, but as to the later historical writing in which he has so successfully detected and appraised various aspects of our social growth. His early experiences at the West were indelibly written in his memory, and though he did not at once transcribe them, his work as editor sharpened his instincts and helped him to an appreciation of his own material. His removal to New York in 1870 was another fortunate step of preparation, for it gave him a perspective which he could not have gained had he remained at the West. He wrote almost immediately “The Hoosier Schoolmaster,” the first draft, designed for _Hearth and Home_, being in the form of a short story, which he extended to its present form at the suggestion of one of the proprietors of the periodical. The reading of Taine’s “Art in the Netherlands” was the quickening influence that led to the writing of the story. Dr. Eggleston learned from Taine that an artist should paint what he sees, and he therefore undertook to portray the illiterate people of southern Indiana. The story was published in book form and gained wide popularity, which has not diminished in the thirty years since its appearance. Dr. Eggleston has been criticised severely in Indiana for the series of novels that began with “The Hoosier Schoolmaster,” but this criticism has come largely from a new generation that does not view these tales in the light of history, and is, therefore, hardly competent to pass on their veracity. By the legal tests for expert witnesses Dr. Eggleston is certainly qualified to speak; his own experience and the social evolution of the people of Indiana contribute to the creation of his competency; and when we add to these considerations his instinctive interest in the beginnings and tendencies of American life, it is not possible to reject him. He knew, as he says, “the antique Hoosier.” The Indiana of 1850 was very different from that of 1870, and Dr. Eggleston was looking backward a score of years when he created Ralph Hartsook, the youthful schoolmaster, and threw about him an atmosphere of ignorance and vice. The story is an instructive footnote to the history of education in Indiana. “Bud Means” is of the second generation of Hoosiers--the generation which, outside of the first social order, had little or no benefit of education, and which sank to the condition of illiteracy that awakened presently the efforts of the faithful few who won the fight for free schools. Courage preceded knowledge as a requirement of pedagogues in the period of which Dr. Eggleston wrote. “‘Lickin’ and larnin’ goes together; no lickin’, no larnin’,’ declared Pete Jones.” The student who may hereafter scan the educational history of Indiana and read with dismay the statistics compiled by Mills, will