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Life on a backwoods farm. Halstead, William Riley, 1848–1931. 
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[View Figure]
A JACK-OAK STRUCTURE.

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Life on a
Backwoods FarmOR
THE BOYHOOD OF
REUBEN RODNEY BLANNERHASSETT

BY

WILLIAM RILEY HALSTEAD

CINCINNATI: JENNINGS & PYE NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS

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COPYRIGHT
BY CRANSTON & CURTS,
1894.

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PREFACE.

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THIS book is in no sense personal history. Its intent is to be true to life, rather than fact. The imagination is at play, therefore; but not as in works of morbid sensational fiction. It is the more wholesome imagination possessed by the plowman, and the well-digger, and the blacksmith, and the uncultured huntsman.

The author, of necessity, leaves the merits of the volume to the estimate to be placed upon it by its readers; but he may safely say of -it, that it is not imitative. There is no other book like it. Its method is its own; but as to that, the author has thoroughly tested it in public utter- ance, and he trusts it will not fail him in the printed page.

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As it is not a learned book, the scholars will have no recognition. It is not a novel. It is not a story. There is no attempt at coherence of time or place. It is incident without a plot--a simple medley of country tales. Rodney is, at least, not an impossible boy. The tales he spins are supposed to be a few of the things that touched his life to make him what he was--manly, strong, honest--and they are the things that touch every life. The waves of little events are thrown up against a boy's spirit, and he tells you how he felt and what he thought about them. The contention is, that everything has significance to the character. Please do not ask of the things you find recorded here, "Did that happen?" but ask, "Could that happen? and would it have the consequences put down to it?'

The artificial and the formal are abolished, and we have gone out in the sun and open air, among men and women who are strangers to the delicacies of refined living, who are yet rough and uncouth with the hardships of toil, but who are intensely active, who have never regretted being born, and who have never page: 5[View Page 5] thought of apologizing for the presumption of being in the world.

The output of American literature to this time has hardly been true to the American spirit and American conditions. To the extent that we write books like they do in Germany, or as we imitate the classics, we shall belong to the ancient school, and possess nothing on our own account. We shall be devoid of origination. The traditional in literature has certainly been sufficiently magnified. The power of the masters of the great past might well now become less, while we give a little more time and interest to that which is natural to us. Our literary plant will not abide unless it be indigenous to the soil. The better literary material for any people is not an import. Charles Dickens taught the English-speaking world that there is a never-ending supply of it in the manners and habits and lives of the common people.

In the preparation of this work the author has felt as if he were hacking a narrow roadway through a vast forest. It may be the road will get the forest settled.

WILLIAM RILEY HALSTEAD.

EVANSVILLE, INDIANA.

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CONTENTS.

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ILLUSTRATIONS.

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