Affectionately to my Father,
The Reverend GRIGG THOMPSON.
Hoosier Mosaics.
By MAURICE THOMPSON.
NEW YORK:
E. J. HALE & SON, PUBLISHERS,
Murray Street.
1875.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by[4]
E. J. HALE & SON,
In the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.
CONTENTS.
| PAGE. | |
| Was She a Boy? | 7 |
| Trout's Luck, | 29 |
| Big Medicine, | 50 |
| The Venus of Balhinch, | 76 |
| The Legend of Potato Creek, | 92 |
| Stealing a Conductor, | 114 |
| Hoiden, | 127 |
| The Pedagogue, | 162 |
| An Idyl of the Rod, | 188 |
Was She a Boy?
No matter what business or what pleasure took me, I once, not long ago,went to Colfax. Whisper it not to each other that I was seeking aforeign appointment through the influence of my fellow Hoosier, the lateVice-President of the United States. O no, I didn't go to the Hon.Schuyler Colfax at all; but I went to Colfax, simply, which is a littledingy town, in Clinton County, that was formerly called Midway, becauseit is half way between Lafayette and Indianapolis. It was and is a placeof some three hundred inhabitants, eking out an aguish subsistence,maintaining a swampy, malarious aspect, keeping up a bilious, nay, anatra-bilious color, the year round, by sucking like an attenuated leechat the junction, or, rather, the crossing of the I. C. & L., and the L.C. & S. W. railroads. It lay mouldering, like something lost andforgotten, slowly rotting in the swamp.
I do not mean to attack the inhabitants of [8]Colfax, for they were goodpeople, and