Dr. Eggleston had been established at New York for eight years when he wrote “Roxy” (1878), one of the best of his books, and one which depicts even more vividly than “The Hoosier Schoolmaster” his early environment. He was now forty-one, and the years that had added to the sum of his experience had developed also his natural instinct for character. The dramatic quality, too, shows strongly in this tale, which is, in its moral relation, a kind of Western “Scarlet Letter.” There is more or less of Vevay in this novel,--it is not important to inquire too curiously whether it be more or less,--and the pretty river village, with its slight foreign color, which was derived from the Swiss residents, the mystery and novelty of the broad river highway, the simplicity of the life, its lazy gossip and its religious enthusiasms, are all depicted with fidelity. The Bonabys, father and son, the lurking figure of Nancy, Twonnet, and Roxy, possess the interest that attaches to fresh types. The introduction of the volatile Twonnet, a member of the Swiss Colony, in contrast with the sober Roxy, the unobtrusive presentation of the religious problems that held the attention of the community, and the blending of the threads of young Bonaby’s destiny, are accomplished with skill and power. In “The Circuit Rider” (1874) Dr. Eggleston crossed the Indiana boundary into southern Ohio, but for all critical purposes the type remained the same. Political frontiers do not deter the novelist, who enjoys extra-territorial privileges. “The Circuit Rider” is not so entertaining a story as “Roxy.” The characters do not take hold of the imagination here as in the later book, and those somewhat vague qualities that combine to the creation of atmosphere are not blended so effectively. But as a picture of the strenuous religious life of the Ohio Valley in the early half of the century, the story is most important. In “Roxy” the strife between Calvinism and Wesleyism is more strongly contrasted; but “The Circuit Rider” gives a vivid impression of a period that was made remarkable by the heroism and sacrifice of the Methodist evangelists. After “Roxy” Dr. Eggleston did not return to the field of his early successes until he wrote “The Graysons” (1887). Like “The Circuit Rider” this story is not, geographically speaking, of Indiana, but it is nevertheless of that broader Hoosierdom which comprehended a small part of southern Ohio and considerably more of Illinois. This is one of the best of all the Hoosier cycle, and, indeed, one of the best of American novels. There is not an inartistic line in the book, and the manner in which Lincoln is introduced as a character,--appearing as the attorney for a boy charged with murder, and winning his freedom by a characteristic resort to homely philosophy,--is achieved so simply that the reader is left wondering whether it could really have been the great Lincoln who participated