New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1882. Hardcover first edition - An early novel by this journalist and newspaper publisher, who had been one of Abraham Lincoln's three personal secretaries, and who later was a prolific and popular author of boys' adventure stories. This is an account of an educational experiment (where the boys had to "govern themselves") set in the years shortly before the Civil War - a roman a clef based on Stoddard's experiences at a Syracuse prep school in 1850. The publisher described it as a "narrative of bright, manly, and yet thoroughly boy-like life in an inland town, whose actual name and locality may be shrewdly guessed by those familiar with its characteristics. . . The drift of the book is wholly on the side of frank, intelligent, and self-reliant manliness; and it is impossible for any boy to read it without absorbing a love for nobility of character, and forming higher aspirations." 362 pp.