If our primary suspicion be correct, that all the investigators and theorists have followed some false lead from the beginning, it will presumably be found in one of these three common features. Of the three, the one that would more probably have been derived from assumption than from observation is the third. If we adopt the hypothesis that it is erroneous, we have left the proposition that the word "hoosier," was in use at the South, signifying a rough or uncouth person, before it was applied to Indiana; and if this were true it would presumably continue to be used there in that sense. Now this condition actually exists, as appears from the following evidence. In her recent novel, "In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim," Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett refers several times to one of her characters--a boy from North Carolina--as a "hoosier." In reply to an inquiry she writes to me: The word "hoosier" in Tennessee and North Carolina seems to imply, as you suggest, an uncouth sort of rustic. In the days when I first heard it my idea was also that--in agreement with you again--it was a slang term. I think a Tennesseean or Carolinian of the class given to colloquialisms would have applied the term "hoosier" to any rustic person without reference to his belonging to any locality in particular. But when I lived in Tennessee I was very young and did not inquire closely into the matter. Mrs. C. W. Bean, of Washington, Ind., furnishes me this statement: In the year 1888, as a child, I visited Nashville, Tenn. One day I was walking down the street with two of my aunts, and our attention was attracted by a large number of mountaineers on the streets, mostly from northern Georgia, who had come in to some sort of society meeting. One of my aunts said, "What a lot of hoosiers there are in town." In surprise I said, "Why I am a Hoosier." A horrified look came over my aunt's face and she exclaimed, "For the Lord's sake, child, don't let any one here know you're a hoosier." I did not make the claim again for on inspection the visitors proved a wild-looking lot who might be suspected of never having seen civilization before. Miss Mary E. Johnson, of Nashville, Tenn., gives the following statement: I have been familiar with the use of the word "hoosier" all my life, and always as meaning a rough class of country people. The idea attached to it, as I understand it, is not so much that they are from the country, as that they are green and gawky. I think the sense is much the same as in "hayseed," "jay" or "yahoo." Hon. Thetus W. Sims, Representative in Congress from the Tenth Tennessee district, says: I have heard all my life of the word "hoosier" as applied to an ignorant, rough, unpolished fellow. Mrs. Samuel M. Deal (formerly Miss Mary L. Davis of Indianapolis) gives me this statement: