space of one human life. William Moody, the first white child born at the settlement (March 17, 1790), died there in 1879, an eye-witness to one of the most amazing developments of trade and commerce ever seen by mortal man. Baby Moody opened his infant eyes upon a vast and unfrequented river-a "white settlement," harassed by Indians, and where no inhabitant was quite sure, on retiring to rest at night, that he would not be scalped before morning. Before he died this native-born pioneer walked the pathways of that same hamlet, now magically changed into the gay bustling streets of a splendid and ever-growing city. Many of the more aged citizens of Cincinnati remember the Indians. The father of ex-Mayor Henry Spencer was captured by Indians when his son (who was still living in 1881, a venerable and respected gentleman) was a boy eleven years old. But at present there is never a bird in the gay Zoo Gardens of a rarer breed than your Indian, of the sort whose ancestors formerly peopled these rich alluvial bottoms, and made life hideous for the hardy pioneers who bravely laid the ground-plan for the superb metropolitan structure which we now see. Sturdy, imposing figures these founders of Cincinnati's greatness present in the fast-gathering gloom that there is about the early history of the city. Great seriousness of purpose, a most absorbing sense of inde pendence, and a most American belief in the fullness of their destiny, and in the material resources of their country and of their river-these things most of all characterize them, and explain their vigorous individuality and the impress they have left upon the present. Daniel Gano, famous for his hospitality, for his social character and influence, and for his generous public spirit, was one of them. So also was George Graham, an acute Pennsylvania youth, who settled in Cincinnati in 1822, in his twenty-fourth year, and took prompt hold of the steamboat trade, then almost at its birth. Few men did more than he to promote the prosperity and shape the commercial policy of Cincinnati, and in his later years he held numerous honorable preferments to which his fellow-citizens called him. He was president of the Academy of Natural Sciences, and of the State Natural History Society, and for forty years a trustee of the Cincinnati College. In the law there were the honored careers of Bellamy Storer and David K. Este names that will always be held in reverential esteem. white men, her southern neighbor, the elegant little Lexington, still looked down upon the social and literary aspirations of the town on the banks of the Ohio. The Rev. Timothy Flint, writing in 1826, says: "If its only rival, Lexington, be, as she contends, the Athens of the West, this place [Cincinnati] is struggling to become its Corinth." The struggles of Cincinnati as against Lexington in respect to leadership in trade, literature, art, and science are almost as remote in the city's annals as the pioneers' warfare with the red-skins. The first name by which Cincinnati was called was L'Osanteville. This pedantic appellation was bestowed upon the little village by the mysterious process of using the L to mean Licking River, the O to signify opposite, and santeville to indicate a healthy town-altogether, a fine situation opposite the Licking. In 1790, General St. Clair was sent as Governor of the Northwest Territory. He fixed his head - quarters for a time at L'Osanteville, and before he departed he had rebaptized the infant city. His choice of the word Cincinnati was a happy one. In good sooth each man of that The thing which, perhaps, of all others, day was a Cincinnatus, a patriot, who, the Cincinnatian of to-day knows least having aided his country to achieve her about, and desires no enlightenment upon, crown of self-government on the battleis-Indians. Yet the Indians were the fields of the sea-board, now retired in true fathers of Cincinnati. They had a peace to the fertile slopes of the interior, trading point at this spot, their trail from there to pursue the noble aims of husDetroit to the town of Lexington, Ken- bandry. December 28, 1788, is considertucky, crossing the Ohio River at exactly ed to be the natal day of Cincinnati, the place where the busiest part of Cin- though the town was not incorporated as cinnati now stands. For many years aft- a city until 1819. From that date on ward er Cincinnati had begun to flourish as a its progress has been unchecked by any commercial centre under the guidance of serious disaster. Neither flood, fire, finan cial crisis, nor devastating epidemic has ever paralyzed the city's prosperity. The first immigration to Cincinnati came from New England, about the years between 1825 and 1830; this was supplemented by an important and aristocratic element consisting of families of birth and social standing who removed thither from Virginia. That Cincinnati, being in a State so far west as Ohio, should ever receive any immigration from the remote shores of the Old World, was a possibility not dreamed of fifty years ago. Writing in 1841, Charles Cist enthusiastically prophesies: "I venture the prediction that within one hundred years from this time Cincinnati will be the greatest city in America, and by the year 2000, the greatest city in the world.... Most of the great cities of antiquity, some of which were of immense extent, were situated in the inte rior, and mostly in the valleys of large rivers meandering through rich alluvial territories; for example, Thebes, Memphis, and Ptolemais, the ancient and once populous capital of Egypt.' At great length Mr. Cist explains how this result was achieved, and he hoped it might be again, without the aid of foreign immigrationa desideratum unlooked-for in those days. Yet ten years later there was at least one German in Cincinnati to reproach Mr. Cist for having failed to celebrate his sourkrout in the "Correctory," and at present there are-well, go over the Rhine" in Cincinnati, some bright moonlight evening, and see for yourself how many Germans there are there. About the year 1835 there broke out, one scarcely knows how, a sort of Cincinnati fever in England. In the British Museum I have looked at a number of with baskets on their arms and bought the family marketing, and was disgusted with Cincinnati women because they scrubbed floors, washed dishes, and performed all household duties of a like character. The Poor lady! she probably had a very unpleasant experience of the West. people were wholly uncongenial to her; she had nothing in common with them, and she felt herself to be isolated and disappointed. She effected a certain measure of retribution, however, on her own account, by inflicting a very painful building on the town, her "Trollope's Bazaar," books, issued about that period, written | Cincinnati men because they went out by travellers who had returned from the far Western country, and had "mounts and marvels" (but true ones) to tell of the wonderful fertility of the Ohio soil, the splendid rivers, the astonishing enlightenment of the citizens, the desirability of Ohio as a residence State for English people, and so forth. Among those who were touched by the contagion was Mrs. Frances Trollope, whose querulous castigation of the people of the whole country in a book entitled Domestic Manners of the Americans I have recently re-read. Her avowed and laudable object in going to Cincinnati was to secure a future for her son, the late well-known novelist Anthony Trollope. A dispassionate reviewer of the situation easily sees the rights and wrongs of Mrs. Trollope's story. She was a clever literary woman, who was at home in the salons of what is now called "Upper Bohemia," both in Paris and in London, a linguist, and a person of refinement. In Cincinnati of course she was in exile; she found herself surrounded by persons whose daily battle for bread left them no time for any thought of life's graces and adornments. Yet she absurdly brought these pioneers into comparison with the people whom she had left, and ridiculed a dismal, ill-contrived edifice, with hideous windows, half Gothic, half Moresque in style, the whole now happily extinct and done away with. The homes built by some of her neighbors who came from Virginia are still standing in Cincinnati, and it is doubtful if modern architecture can much improve upon them. One of the oldest of these edifices, which was standing until quite recently, was the Lytle house, No. 66 Lawrence Street, which was built in 1814 by General William Lytle, and has always been occupied by his family and descendants. From beneath the portal of this noble old house |