premise: Augustus Baldwin Longstreet , a preacher and a college and university president in four Southern states , published the earliest of these backwoods sketches and in the character Ransy Sniffle , in the accounts of sharp horse-trading and eye gouging physical combat , and in the shockingly unliterary speech of his characters , he set an <mask> followed by many after him .
hypothesis: the proper context for <mask> here should be an item of information that is typical of a class or group