University of Virginia Library

PREFACE.

Encouraged by the favour with which a recent
humble attempt to depict some of the peculiar features
of the Georgia backwoodsman has been received
by the public, some of my friends have persuaded
me to publish a few other stories illustrative
of similar character, which they knew I had written.
Influenced by these persuasions, I determined to
brush up my old manuscripts, produce something
new of the same sort, and thus endeavour to present
to the public a few more interesting specimens of
the genus “Cracker.”

I wish it to be understood that I use this term
with all due respect. It belongs to a class of good
people with whom it has been my destiny to become
intimately associated, and I know that there
is much to admire and respect in their characters.
The lineaments of these characters are strongly
marked, and they sit so fair, that he who takes rough
sketches, as I sometimes do, can readily “take their

picters;” but as a class they are brave, generous,
honest, and industrious, and withal, possessed of a
sturdy patriotism. The vagabond and the dissolute
among them are only the exceptions to the rule, and
in a few generations more, education will have made
the mass a great people. When such education will
have done all it is destined to effect for the American
backwoodsman, it may, and will increase the sum
of his happiness and usefulness in the scale of being,
but it will at the same time, by polishing away those
peculiarities which now mark his manners and language,
reduce him to the common level of common-place
people, and make him a less curious “specimen”
for the study of the naturalist. As he now is,
however, I have endeavoured, in a small way, to
catch his “manners living as they rise,” and if I
have been so fortunate as to succeed, the effort will
amuse him, when he meets with it, if it should
interest no one else.

I claim no higher character for my stories—some
of which have appeared in a literary periodical of
limited circulation—than that of mere sketches, designed
to amuse those who have a taste for such

things, with some slight traits of peculiar character;
and it may be to afford the student of human nature
a glance at characters not often found in books, or
anywhere else, indeed, except in just such places as
“Pineville,” Georgia. Should they thus add any
thing to the stock of man's innocent amusement, or
his knowledge, so as to make him for a moment
either happier or better, it will be a rich reward for