In this connection I may mention an amusing incident that occured somewhat later in a town in Kentucky, where I happened for a day or two. There was a drunken brawl in progress on the street, and as quite a number were involved in it, the people with whom I was speaking began to be alarmed. I remarked just then that a few hussars would soon quiet them. My remark was caught up by some bystander, and the word hussar construed to mean the men of the State of Indiana (from which I had just come), and thus the word "Hoosier" came into existence. Such is the irony of fate! Learned men have labored long to introduce some favored word of the most approved classic derivation, and as a rule have failed. Here a chance word of mine, miscalled by an ignorant loafer, catches the popular fancy and passes into Literature.[12] At the same time he furnishes conclusive evidence that he did not originate it, for he says that he did not leave Washington for the West until the spring of 1833; that he went as far as Ohio with his family and passed the winter of 1833-4 in the state,[13] reaching Indiana the next spring, or more than a year after "The Hoosier's Nest" had appeared in print. His story, as given above, locates the incident at a still later date. The other publication is the third volume of The English Dialect Dictionary, in which appears the following: "HOOZER, Cum. 4 (hu-zer) said of anything unusually large." The "Cum 4" is a reference to "A Glossary of the Words and Phrases pertaining to the Dialect of Cumberland;" edition of 1899. Although I had long been convinced that "hoosier," or some word closely resembling it, must be an old English dialect or slang word, I had never found any trace of a similar substantive with this ending until in this publication, and, in my opinion, this word "hoozer" is the original form of our "hoosier." It evidently harks back to the Anglo-Saxon "hoo" for its derivation. It might naturally signify a hill-dweller or highlander as well as something large, but either would easily give rise to the derivative idea of uncouthness and rusticity. There is a suggestiveness in the fact that it is Cumberland dialect. The very center of hoosierdom in the South is the Cumberland Plateau with its associated Cumberland Mountains, Cumberland River, Cumberland Gap, and Cumberland Presbyterianism. The name Cumberland in these, however, is honorary in origin, the river and mountains having been named for that Duke of Cumberland who is known to the Scotch as "The Butcher of Culloden." But many of the settlers of this region, or their immediate forebears, were from Cumberland county, England, and so "hoozer" was a natural importation to the region. Thence it was probably brought to us by their migratory descendants, many of whom settled in the upper Whitewater Valley--the home of John Finley. JOHN FINLEY.