Excerpt from Uncle Dudley's Odd Hours: Western Sketches, Indian Trail Echoes, Straws of Humor

This book makes no pretension, whatever, to being "A book among books, " in the literary world, this places it outside the pale of criticism. It is a simple record of little events, experienced or observed by the writer, during the early times in the interesting history of one of the best states in the Union. The incidents related are either exactly or substantially true - aside from many of the Straws of (alleged) Humor. A narrator of things must, of necessity, seem to stand in the position of the hero of the incidents related - for the most part, at least. The author denies, however, the remotest intention, or desire to pose as a hero in anything, little or big. He has endeavored to simply relate things in as impersonal a manner as the circumstances seemed to permit. He fully realizes the fact that his life has been nothing to be particularly proud of - in the presence of those saddest of all words, "It might have been." Scores of his "early day" companions in the work of laying the foundation upon which a new and proud state was soon to stand (noble fellows as they all were), fell by the wayside, never to rise again. Others became, at last, not only prominent in affairs, but closed their lives as influential Christian men. The only "distinction" the writer claims, is that of being the first boy in the Territory, without parent or guardian, who remained till he grew to be a full-fledged citizen of his beloved young state - Minnesota. He has in mind, scores of additional "incidents, " to those here given, which may be produced in another book, provided he is ever so circumstanced as to have them published in a more correct form than these appear.

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