An Indiana Girl/Preface

IT was on my first trip to Ashville that I met Uncle Nace Tipman beside the road. "Th' Yaller Front's th' on'y one I knows of," he replied semi-seriously to my inquiry, adding reassuringly, "It ain't much fer pretty, but it's all right fer good." I have his words yet, written in my note-book of things generally, and I lived long enough in that hostelry to have both ends of this sentence verified. To use his words: "Th' Yaller Front was not much fer pretty," but like the people who ran it, and those who frequented it, the beauty was inside. A rough exterior, surrounding well-kept and clean, if crude, beauties. Here was an atmosphere wholesome bodily and mentally. Live where the bread is cut to thick slices, the butter served in chunks, rivaling those of the meat; where the sauces are thick and the pie is quartered, not sixteenthed, and you will live in generous impulses of thought as well.

I learned to love the people. What else was there to do when they accepted me unquestioned and indicated their faith in me first? To me all of this story happened only yesterday, and as I read it I am back again in Dole's old rustic splint-bottom chair out on the sidewalk, bracing my back against the window casing. Overhead is the board awning; beneath are large cracks that merge into the street. One crack is broader than all the rest. That is the one that led to dreamland so often in the gentle, summer days. Parts of the story—the uglier parts—must have come to me then, for they are only fiction. The good things, the lovelier things, were the actual happenings and my incentive to write. If I have told enough of what I most wanted to tell, to offset my unmerited attributions of base motives, I shall be happy. They have taught me much. My gratitude could do no less than show the how of it. But I shall always have one regret, and that is that I was not a better pupil.