Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 April 1894 — PROGRESS IN INDIANA. [ARTICLE]

PROGRESS IN INDIANA.

Edward Eggleston' Noticed Many Changes During His Recent Visit. Phiiade.phia Press. , “What is the exact of your present historical works?” “I am looking forward to writing a history of the life of the United States, the work upon which I have been engaged for the greater part of thirteen years—yes, more than thirteen years.” ‘‘Has there not been some talk of a neAv novel from your pen?” “I wrote on my novel when I was in Indiana because I was away from all of my historical material, and I suppose the novel will take shape when I again get into a similar place." “I remember that you spoke of your return from the West —you had made something of an extended visit there?” “I staid two months in Madison, Ind. It was my first long visit to Indiana for thirty-eight years. I was born twenty miles up the river, but I had lived in Madison when a boy.” “Well, I suppose you found a good many changes there?" “Yes, very great changes—not so much in Madison as in the western part of Indiana —the changes there have been very great. The early illiteracy of the country has largely disappeared, and with it the rude pioneer manners that I described as existing there in the forties. Teachers’ institutes are held in the very schoolhouse from which many of the scenes in “The Hoosier Schoolmaster” were derived, and generally, Indiana to-day ranks with the New England States in the matter of literacy, having made the most rapid progress, perhaps, of any State in the Union in that regard. This progress was largely made between 1850 and 1870.” “What has been the principal cause of this progress?” “A large part of the decrease in illiteracy in southern Indiana came from the rapid migration further West of the poor whites after 18*50.” r “Then, instead of these being educated up to a certain standard, other people came in?” “Both processes went on. Education and emigration have raised the standard in southern Indiana.. To illustrate tlie present interest in such matters I will say that in the village where I was born there is a very prosperous literary club called by my own name. I was at first rather unpopular for having satirized the life, there but they have outgrown this. I lectured for the benefit of that club while in Indiana, and they gave me a reception which was attended by about two hundred of the most cultivated people from both sides of the Ohio river.”