Author; born Vevay, Ind., Dec. 10, 1837; educated in country and village schools in Ind. and at boarding school in Amelia Co., Va. (hon. degrees A.M., S.T.D., L.H.D.); married 2d, Sept. 14, 1891, Frances E. Goode. Entered M.E. ministry, 1857, traveling circuit in Southeast Ind., and later for 9 yrs. in Minn.; asso. editor Little Corporal, Chicago 1866–7; chief editor National Sunday School Teacher, 1867–70; editor Independent, New York, 1870–2; Hearth and Home, New York, 1871–2; pastor Ch. of Christian Endeavor, Brooklyn, 1874–9; since then retired from ministry and devoted to literature; vice-pres. Am. Hist. Soc; member Century Club and Authors Club. Author: “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 School-Boy,” 1883; “Queer Stories,” 1884; “The Graysons,” 1888; “History of the United States and Its People, for the Use of Schools,” 1888; “Household History of the United States and Its People,” 1888; “First Book in American History,” 1889; “The Faith Doctor,” 1891; “Duffels,” 1893; “Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans;” “Stories of American Life and Adventure;” “The Beginners of a Nation,” 1896; “The Transit of Civilization from England to America,” 1900. Editor: “Christ in Art,” 1874; “Christ in Literature,” 1875.

Personal

  He was a sickly boy, never able to endure the confinement of the school-room. One year he spent in quest of health among his father’s relatives in Virginia, and while there enjoyed such facilities of instruction as the sons of Southern planters were able to get in their native State; but all his knowledge of “schools and schoolmasters” was gained in a little more than two years. Apart from this he is wholly self-educated. A little Latin, less Greek, more Italian and Spanish, and of French a plenty, he has acquired without a teacher; the rest of his education has come through a wide reading of English literature.

  I first got acquainted with Dr. Eggleston through his novels “The Circuit Rider” and “Roxy,” and being then in the novel-reading phase of intellectual development, I of course believed them unrivalled in contemporary literature, as they fairly are of their kind. My enthusiasm lasted till I heard him preach from the pulpit, and straightway my admiration for the writer was lost in astonishment at the preacher. Never had I heard such sermons; and I still believe I never have. But upon closer acquaintance my astonishment at the preacher was swallowed up in wonder at the conversational powers of my new friend. Never had I heard such a talker—never have I heard such a one. But the best unveiling was the last, when I discovered under all these multifarious aspects the characteristics and attributes of a born philanthropist. Hitherto I had known only the writer, the preacher, and the talker; now I began to know the man…. Fortunately a splendid physique defeats the ill-effects that would seem inevitable. And indeed every literary man should possess the nerves of a farmer and the physique of a prize-fighter as a natural basis of success. Dr. Eggleston is a good sailor and an expert climber, and with these accomplishments, and a perpetually cheerful humor, he manages to keep his body in trim…. Everybody knows something of his personal appearance, if not by sight, then by report—the great bulk of frame, the large leonine head, now slightly grizzled, the deep, sharp, kindly eyes, the movements deliberate but not slow; and more, perhaps, of his conversation—precise, rapid, multifarious, swarming with ideas and the suggestions of things which the rapidity of his utterance prevents him from elaborating—original, opulent of forms, rich in quotation and allusion. And then the laugh—vast, inspiriting, uplifting.

General

  Its author has made for himself an opportunity to do for some of the more obvious phases of Western life what such books as “Locke Amsden, the Yankee Schoolmaster,” and scores of others of various merit have done for the life of New England. The band of thieves such as still here and there infest the Western country, keeping grand juries in awe, electing or killing sheriffs, and necessitating or instigating lynch-law executions; the “protracted meeting;” the spelling school in the evening; the “rough and tumble” fights; the brutality and sodden vulgarity of the ruder part of the community; the jumble of religious sects—something of these things which all once were of the West, if not precisely the West itself, is, on the whole, not ill sketched by Mr. Eggleston, and as these things are rapidly passing away, and are not finding too many or too clever observers, it is well that a man like Mr. Eggleston, with a fair share of literary skill, has taken occasion to sketch them.

  Dr. Eggleston is a close and sympathetic student of human nature, and his characters and the incidents of his stories are drawn from the life. We can scarcely point to any truer work in American fiction than some of the character-drawing in his first two stories. He has given us, thus far, chiefly genre pictures; but art of this sort requires as fine a pencil and as large a sympathy as that of a more pretentious nature. As contributions to the history of civilization in America, these stories are also valuable. In “The Hoosier Schoolmaster,” Dr. Eggleston has given us as faithful a picture of life in Southern Indiana, twenty-five years ago, as Bret Harte has given us of “The Argonauts of ’49,” or as Scott has given us, in “Ivanhoe,” of life in England after the Norman conquest. The life thus described is, like that described by Bret Harte, only one episode in this great epic of our civilization; and the description of it is only one study for the complete picture of our national life; but it is of immense value for all that to all who want to know what manner of nation this has been and is to be. The chief defect of these stories is in the plot. In this respect they are no more faulty than some of the stories of George MacDonald, yet those who read novels for the action rather than the philosophy, may have cause of complaint against them.

  The starting-point of novel-writing with me was the accidental production of a little newspaper story, dashed off in ten weeks, amid pressing editorial duties, and with no thought of making a book. The “Hoosier Schoolmaster,” faulty and unfinished as it is, first won public attention for me, and now, after sixteen years, the exasperating public still buys thousands of copies of it annually, preferring it to the most careful work I can do. I am often asked in regard to the immediate impetus to the writing of this story…. I had just finished reading Taine’s “Art in the Netherlands.” Applying his maxim, that an artist ought to paint what he has seen, I tried my hand on the dialect and other traits of the more illiterate people of Southern Indiana.