During the last ten years the five largest cities of Ohio have grown almost I. exactly in proportion to the relative tax levies for school purposes during 1904-05

The cost for the same service at the custom house or United States government building was $11;560, and the cost of maintenance and care of the Union Trust building and First National Bank building are in proportion. Janitors' wages alone at the court house, thirty-three men for one year, amounted to $28,485. At the Union Trust building, which is much larger than the court house, the same item amounted to $1.0,390.

356 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY

Conditions of waste at the city hall are reported to be as flagrant as at the court house. Fifty thousand dollars per year wasted in janitor and engineer charges at the court house and city hall is a very conservative estimate of existing conditions. While this great drain was being made upon the public's resources, in order to keep satisfied and care for a large number of ward to between election periods, the city fathers, in their great wisdom, were able to devote during the year 1909 but $71,878.79 toward the support of the health department, and $85,988.17 toward the maintenance of our parks. Here we find waste in the care of two buildings equal to one-third the total amount spent in the maintenance of the two great departments of public health and parks. Further illustrations of waste are unnecessary to show the principle which apparently for a generation has governed the expenditure of public moneys in our community. The primary object was the perpetuation of a political organization. To accomplish this, two requirements existed ; a low tax rate, and berths for an army of political workers. At the same time the public utility companies, which in the past have contributed heavily to campaign funds, had to be cared for through opportunity to make excessive charges for services rendered the public. With the political machine, its workers, and corporation allies thus cared for, under a low tax rate, comparatively little was left to provide for those great functions of municipal government, such as schools, parks, hospitals, and health, which go farthest to promote the intelligence, health, beauty, and prosperity of a community. Such a policy long continued could have but one result—the inevitable partnership between bad government and municipal stagnation. This, in large part, is the explanation of Cincinnati's failure to grow, while its neighbors, like Detroit and Cleveland, are astounding the country by their progressive ideas, clean government, and expansion. It is time that the substantial citizens of Cincinnati should study and appreciate this lesson of the census. .Further concealment of these shameful conditions will be fatal to the real and future honor and glory of Cincinnati.

A had reputation, for cities as for individuals, is a bad asset. For years Cincinnati has had the reputation of being one of the worst governed and boss-ridden cities of the country. In many ways it has deserved this bad name. Before Cincinnati can expect to attract to itself any important part of the constantly increasing population seeking new homes in the cities, it must conduct a housecleaning of its governmental household, so that it will deserve a reputation above reproach.

Development during very recent years of a more active civic intelligence, great improvements during the same interval in our schools, the anticipated revival of our river traffic upon the completion of the nine-foot stage, the securing of independent, and able park, health, and hospital boards, the improved water supply, and the invaluable services obtained from the Bureau of Municipal Research ; all are hopeful signs of the dawning of an era of betterment for Cincinnati. Whether or not our city is to take its proper place among the municipalities of our country, whether these signs of better times are to develop into accomplishment depends entirely upon the awakening of the public to an understanding of true conditions, so that in the future the people demand that our public offices be administered and public funds be spent in the conservation of the. interests of the public, and not of party organizations.

CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 357

The cumulative effects of a generation of misgovernment have made the task a difficult one for Cincinnati to retrieve itself and catch up to the progress of other cities. .What has been accomplished toward this end in recent years is but a small though hopeful start in the right direction. It is essential that all who have the true welfare of Cincinnati at heart should take active part in fostering the excellent work under way in our schools, and just started in our park and health departments. Further, the more active and enlightened civic intelligence which is beginning to assert itself in this community should be encouraged, to the end that all will appreciate the necessity for good government before Cincinnati may take her proper place among the cities of the country.

CHAPTER III.

POTPOURRI.

A SERIES OF ARTICLES ENTERTAININGLY WRITTEN-WOMEN OF CINCINNATI- BENEFACTIONS-OLD INNS AND WAYFARING-TOUR OF THE CITY-PARKS-FAMOUS HOMES-THEATRES-CINCINNATI RED STOCKINGS-EMINENT DEAD IN SPRING GROVE CEMETERY.

WOMEN OF CINCINNATI-MARY MACMILLAN.

No, romance is not dead in the world—not while .there are women. And even a modern American city may have its legendary romance or its romantic legend like Sparta and Troy and Rome of old. Cincinnati has a quaint story of her orgin but then Cincinnati, of course, is essentially picturesque in her history and topography and everything else. Whether the tale is true or not nobody can prove but there is significance in the fact that it was believed by the early settlers themselves, among them Judge Burnet who tells it in a style of jocoseness and gallantry peculiar to his time. Of the three new settlements, Columbia, Losantiville, and North Bend, which were struggling for the breath of life,. North Bend had the advantage of being the residence of the patentee, John Cleves Symmes. He demanded, begged and cajoled the government for military protection until a rather thin detail of troops was sent out. The young officer in command, Ensign Luce, true to military practice immediately fell in love. The Helen of the settlement was the wife of a small merchant who proceeded to move from North Bend to Losantiville in order to have his spouse away from the officer's enchanting presence. But the ensign forthwith followed and decided of course that where his inamorata dwelt was the proper location for an army post. With the fort came military protection and the supremacy of Losantiville over the other. settlements. And so, if the story be true, Cincinnati owes her origin, her life, to the charms of a woman. Whatever sort of siren she was, however, who sang the young Ensign Luce up the river from North Bend, Cincinnati women have been pre-eminently mothers, nourishers. The name of the Indian tribe who lived in this land of old was Miami, which is said to mean mothers. Whether. or not the element of it, the quality of motherhood and all that it denotes, existed,in the forests and the soil and the virtue of it was taken in by the women who came here, who can say? The women of Cincinnati have always been of that quality, mothers, nourishers. The history of the city with, of course, the sporadic exceptions of the very unusual, is exactly the history of her womanhood. It has changed and developed in hopes and ambitions and qualifications as the women have changed. But through every change they have

- 359 -

360 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY

kept and possess still most strongly of all the essential quality of womanhood, the mother, the nourisher.

Of the pioneers in Cincinnati there was a preponderance from New Jersey and Pennsylvania. This meant an ancestry of English, Scotch, and Scotch-Irish. They were people of endurance, pluck, mettle. A great many of them were Revolutionary soldiers or the sons of Revolutionary soldiers come west after the impoverishing war to retrieve their fortunes in the rich primeval lands. The women were the wives, daughters, sisters, of such men. They, too, had passed through the war. These women had in them, moreover, the .element of the pioneer—that element which we who dwell in walls and upon pavements see little of. They loved the open country, the free life. 'They loved the 'Silence of the forest and its teeming animation. They were willing to endure privations, hardships, danger, for the sake of these and of the glory to come. They were women of bravery and decision. A story is told of one of them who fired a gun to signal the men to come from their work in the fields. The women were in the blockhouse and while the Indians were not especially hostile at that time, it was feared that they might come to steal horses and the women were to fire a gun in that event. The red thieves came,. surely enough, and the woman who shot off her musket decided coolly that she might as well aim at an. Indian. That she hit him was evidenced by the blood on the snow in the track of the Indians who fled when the white men came running from their work.

Another story showing the mettle of the women, is that of Mrs. Pryor of White's Station where Carthage now lies. Indians were besieging the block-house and Mrs. Pyor was alone with her children, cut off from the other inhabitants of the Station by the creek. Her first intimation of danger was the crack of a rifle and an Indian had shot her wee four-year-old girl in the yard. Mrs. Pryor ran out and carried in the little body. She had no time for grief or thought, for in a moment an Indian was approaching the house and she realized that if she stayed there she .and the other two children would be killed. She was not strong enough to carry them both and so, praying that the Indians might spare the baby because it was so very little, she caught up the two-year-old boy and ran, plunging waist deep into the cold waters of the creek. She made her escape to the block-house, but when the siege was raised and a return made for the baby, the Indians had dashed out its brains against a stump near the cabin. This was in October 1793 before Wayne's victory at Fallen Timbers which was the first and only thing to secure safety to 'the pioneers from the Indians.

The early history of Cincinnati buds, like Aaron's rod, with romantic tales which could be woven into novels. Still another is that of Louisa St. Clair, the governor's daughter, who was a dashing, rollicking, fascinating girl. When her father was appointed governor he was also commissioned to make terms with the Indians but failed to win over one chief, Captain Brant. Louisa, dressed in Indian fashion, mounted a pony and rode with a communication supposed to be from her father, to the camp of young Brant, who had been to college and was a man of some education and refinement, and had met her before. The girl failed in her mission but the .young chief fell in love with her, followed her back home, was introduced to her father and proposed for her hand several times.

CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 361

Unfortunately there is little of what is considered actual record, which is in reality the very questionable record, of ink, of the women of the early days of Cincinnati. After General Wayne's victory over the Indians at Fallen Timbers in 1794 and hid subsequent treaty of peace with them, there were no more massacres nor even small dangers from the savages. The great Mad Anthony had cut their claws, poor, pathetic, untamable creatures that they were. And the women of Cincinnati were left to their necessary duties of a new settlement. There was spinning and sewing and the ordinary occupations of household and garden, and the care df the poor and the Sick.

The woman who seems to be the example and at the same time the acme of early Cincinnati womanhood, was Charlotte Chambers Ludlow. Her husband, Israel Ludlow, was one of the three original proprietors of the place. When the lots were parcelled out, he preferred to take his share in a farm of one hundred and twenty-five acres seven miles from town rather than in town lots. This farm was where Cumminsville now stands.

Charlotte Chambers was of Scotch descent, being the granddaughter of Benjamin Chambers who was the founder of Chambersburgh, Pennsylvania. Her father was James Chambers, a general in the Colonial army in the Revolution and afterwards a member of the Society of the Cincinnati. Her mother was a daughter of Captain Robert Patterson. of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Charlotte is described as more than ordinarily beautiful in her personal and mental endowments. She was above medium height, with pleasing contour and graceful, with fair complexion, rich brown hair, hazel eyes, aquiline nose, and lovely mouth. To these charms add characteristics which were particularly admired and desired in her time—or in any time, for that matter—wit, amiability, cheerfulness. Very evidently she possessed social tact and it is related of her that she was given to harmless "raillery"—a beautiful word so completely lost sight of nowadays—and could tell anecdotes with delightful vivacity. She seems to have been a joyous girl with much sense and good judgment and a rare poetic appreciation. Her philosophy and descriptions even in her earliest letters, are picked out in words that .give them verve and grace.

She portrays with quaintness and artlessness a levee or drawing-room at President Washington's mansion in Philadelphia. She writes her mother that she wore a white brocade silk, with white high-heeled shoes embroidered with silver, a light blue sash with silver cord and tassel tied at her left side. Her watch was suspended at her right side and her hair was in natural curls, surmounting all was a white hat with white ostrich feather and brilliant band and buckle. To Mrs. Washington's courtesy Charlotte returned a courtesy, "calculating my declension to her own with critical exactness." 'She seems to have made a hit with the president and his lady and small wonder—the sweet young girl in all her fair white finery—and was entertained at their home and table intimately afterwards.

In 1796 Charlotte Chambers married Israel Ludlow and started for the west on horseback through the vast forests and over the Alleghenies. They made several visits by the way and came down the Ohio in a boat from Pittsburgh. When she arrived at her new. home Major Ziegler told her that the ladies of Cincinnati were not gay but extremely affectionate one to another. The wife of John Cleves Symmes, Miss ,Livingston of New York, and his daughter who was the

362 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY

wife of William Henry Harrison, the future president, called upon Mrs. Ludlow. She describes the former lady as fine looking with dignity and mental ability, and the latter as delicate with sweetness of disposition and goodness of heart.

The Colonel built a house for his young wife on their farm at Ludlow's Station and here she lived happily with her "beloved Ludlow" as she called him, and wrote letters home and much in her journal. Her letters age delightful even while they are regrettably in the style of the time, a style of ornate primness. She tells her father of the unutterable richness of the country. She speaks of the Ohio river as very beautiful—they all do—calls the Miami river beautiful, too, and says the Mad river country is the garden spot. Of Ohio. Despite the literary style, or rather when she gets a little the better of it, she rises now and then to a description that is exquisite for charm and clearness as, for instance, when she tells how she was awakened one midsummer's. night by distant dreamy music among the hills which proved to be the post-boy's horn as he wound his way in to town. Her description has all the emotional quality of music itself.

Mrs. Ludlow was a capable husbandman of the farm in her husband's absence and was ever thoughtful and bountiful to the Sick and poor at Ludlow's Station. She always possessed religion but a severe illness seemed to turn her life wholly to that. In this illness she was attended by Dr. Allison, the earliest physician in Cincinnati, coming as he did an army surgeon with the troops. He was with Wayne in the war against the Indians and his horse received a bullet in its skull which could never be extracted. So the doctor would say as he rode the animal through the streets of Cincinnati, that his horse had more in its head than most doctors had. It was doubtless .this same horse which he rode one night out to Ludlow's Station for, with a strange foreboding born of no actual knowledge on his part that she was in mortal danger, he got up and rode the seven. midnight miles out to find her almost dying. He stayed and worked with her, bringing her back to life. It is a curious incident, making one breathe deeply and believe tremblingly that spiritual communion is not so far away from those who are fit for it.

In 1804 Israel Ludlow died and Charlotte received every kind attention at that time from her friend's among whom were Mrs. Gano, Mrs. Findley, Mrs. Allison, Mrs. Stone, and Mrs. Ziegler. This was the Major's wife, the "Lucy Ziegler" whom she loved and mourned so deeply later as "faithful and candid and dear." She was left with a little family, one of them born after his father's death, and she moved from the distant Ludlow's Station into town. Here she lived six years when she married the Reverend David Riske and went back to the Ludlow house.

Beside the ordinary work done in those days as the lady of the most important landlord of the neighborhood—the squire's dame was a chatelaine and lady bountiful—Mrs. Ludlow and afterwards when she was Mrs. Riske, was most active in religious work. In 1816 she organized an association of women as an auxiliary to the American Bible Society of New York and was a most zealous worker for the African association of Cincinnati, sympathizing in her broad mentality with the .race which at that time was so utterly despised. She wrote a letter for the association of women of which she was a member, to the Mayor of the town

CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 863

and the town council for an amelioration of jail conditions which then were very fearful. She also started a missionary society.

In 1818 her second husband, David Riske, died. And in 1820 in failing health she started with her young children and her servants on a driving journey to visit her son in Missouri, where in May 1821 she died.

Charlotte Chambers had in her the fine, rare, strong temperament of which the best pioneers are made. She loved the freedom, the open air, the freshness of life in new lands better than white brocades and high-heeled shoes of presidential drawing-rooms. Some of the women who were her associates in Cincinnati at the time were: Mrs. Burnet, Mrs. Gano, Mrs. Allison; Mrs. Lytle, Mrs. Harrison, Mrs. Symmes, Mrs. Mansfield, Mrs. Goforth, Mrs. Longworth, Mrs. Piatt, Mrs. Yeatman, Mrs. "Baum, Mrs. Wallace, Mrs. Spencer, Mrs. St. Clair, Mrs. Wade, Mrs. Burgoyne, Mrs. Ruffin, Mrs. Cary, Mrs. Meigs.

Truly, what is one man's meat is another man's poison and the piety which seemed so admirable to these ladies became an object of criticism only a. little later to one who would scorn to be called a Cincinnatian but, sojourning in the town only a few years; had a personality vivid enough to create the strongest impression perhaps ever made here by any woman. This was Mrs. Trollope of the caustic tongue and fearlessly humorous pen. She came to Cincinnati from England in 1828, an endless journey of water by way of New Orleans, to establish her son in business. Her book written after her return to England, is called "Domestic Manners of the Americans," and a preponderance of it both in bulk and spleen is dealt to Cincinnati.

Mrs. Trollope, was English. She was Anglican to the marrow-bone, and it annoyed her that American women did not take their religion quietly like a necessary dose of Epsom salts before breakfast. That was the refreshingly unemotional English way of doing it and Mrs. Trollope found everything annoying that was not done precisely after the English way. In her opinion American women turned a religious service into a social function, going to church of a Sabbath morning in their best silk gowns and Sunday bonnets' and getting as much excitement out of their clothing and the extemporaneous prayers of the unestablished preacher as possible, or else they threw restraint to the winds and had revivals and camp-meetings. Either course was, in extremely bad taste in Mrs. Trollope's opinion; feeling, Mrs. Trollope firmly believed, was a thing to be kept entirely out of religion.

She came to this country with a proper prejudice against slavery which was very evidently mitigated by a closer acquaintance with the South. On her way up from New Orleans she writes that all Kentuckians, a noble race of men, are either colonels or judges and thus puts herself on record as the first to discover this now admittedly prevalent condition. She speaks of the raging crocodiles in the Mississippi river, which go about devouring babies alive, but when her steamboat enters the waters of the Ohio she finds "La Belle Riviere" all that her fancy painted it. She uses the old-fashioned phraseology of elegance, speaking of lofty forests and pleasant prospects, but she is unerringly entertaining and she does not split her infinitives. Her interest is not in the grand openness and wild beauty of the new land but it foreshadows the great novelist, her son Anthony Trollope, and is exactly what one would' expect in his mother, an interest in humanity, in

Vol. I-24

364 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY.

the manners and customs of people. :After the habit of every true Englishman, she carries English standards with her like a correct time piece, and if the sun reaches the meridian six hours later at Cincinnati than at London, then it is morally, certain that Cincinnati is altogether wrong.

It seems to have been her expectation to find Cincinnati, a town thirty-five years old, with full-grown amusements and luxuries, like a little chunk of London transferred to the American backwoods. That things have to grow and can not be set up whole on the carpet of a new civilization like a baby's blocks, did not seem to strike her. "In America," she says, "where women are guarded by a seven-fold shield of habitual insignificance,' and we gasp as our thought jumps forward to the great Biennial convention of Women's Clubs held in Cincinnati in 191o. She complains bitterly that there are no amusements here, no dinners, none of the uplifting delights of social life. Life here was not merely .rude and crude, but dull.. The ladies had rich gowns but no place to wear them except to stupid tea-drinkings and to church. Even at an evening tea-party where both gentlemen and ladies were present there was an abundance of nothing but heavy food and lack-lustre entertainment. The gentlemen herded together at one end of one room and the ladies fittingly sat elsewhere, alone and unhappy, and exchanged whispered remarks upon the preserving of fruit or the latest case of measles. She comments rather objectively, as though she might be talking of the habits of buffalo, upon the tobacco-chewing practices of the American gentlemen.

The subject of their tobacco-chewing meets us on tender ground. We would rather shut our eyes to it and turn and run the other way. Mrs. Trollope is quite right, they chewed, and that seems to prove them unalterably barbarians. We feel weakly that we should rather not discuss it, dismissing it as altogether unconnected with the Women of Cincinnati; but unfortunately it is not unconnected with them. We wonder why they permitted the men to do it—those men who were our grandfathers and who were, in other respects, gentlemen! We wonder faintly if perhaps Mrs. Trollope was not nearly right in her scornful criticism indicating that the women of Cincinnati in that day were merely the submerged tenth.

There was only one theatre, she says regretfully, and it was hardly considered the proper thing for ladies to attend it. But the little Englishwoman went to it with huge pleasure. At this theatre Mr. and Mrs. Drake acted and acted well. Unfortunately we know nothing of this Mrs. Drake though it would seem that she is one of the most notable women who ever lived in Cincinnati. All references to her acting are equally commendatory. Mrs. Trollope says that she is hardly surpassed by anyone and places her in rank with the famous Mrs. Siddons.

Mrs. Trollope lived while in Cincinnati in the village called Mohawk in the neighborhood of McMicken avenue below Mount Auburn—and though she acknowledges gracefully that she has not the magic power of her admirable friend, Miss Mitford, to describe village life and character, she does describe most delightfully her home and the life about. There is an entertaining detachment in her writing. She is always the observer, caustic frequently but always with

CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 365

humour and never the bitter propagandist that our later visitor, Charles Dickens, was.

That her book aroused the hot indignation of Cincinnatians was altogether proper ; but that she gave a pretty true account of affairs here is also true. There is something to be said on her side. She was married to an ineffectual man—the worst fate that can befall a woman—who was constantly shiftless and in debt. For twenty years she bore this life and then she began to make her living with her pen. She wrote, like Harriet Beecher Stowe and the Carys and other women, while she nursed sickness and kept house and did the thousand things the woman of the house must do. Her son's business venture in Cincinnati was unsuccessful and she was not in a frame of mind while here to tell polite white lies and say things were all lovely when they were distinctly not lovely. There was one man in Cincinnati: whom she unreservedly admired, Timothy Flint, the wonderful old literary man and missionary. Yet we know very well that he was only one of a coterie of people with education and culture. It is very patent that Timothy Flint, Dr. Daniel Drake, Edward Mansfield, Mrs. Ludlow, and Judge Burnet, did not use the illiterate English Mrs. Trollope invariably puts into the mouths of her Cincinnatians. There creeps up the suspicion that our grandfathers were not wholly indicative when they said that Mrs. Trollope did not get into the best social circles in Cincinnati. There were people who used mahogany 'furniture and fine white china and silver candlesticks—we know because some Of it has come down to us—people who lived in brick houses led up to by long flights of 'steps at the top Of which were pannelled front doors with solid silver: door-plates. And these things were here even before the advent from England of the little critical lady.

There was a coterie then which came to be called the Semi-Colon Club. They met in the ,evening and after, the serious mental business was over, had delicious things to eat and the sweet diversion of dancing. Into this club came the Beechers, when the Reverend Lyman Beecher came from Litchfield, Connecticut, to Cincinniati as president of Lane Theological Seminary in 1833: Harriet Beecher was young then and in the meetings of the Semi-Colon Club she was rather silent; though when she did speak it was to say something worth listening to, and she seems to have been gay-hearted enough.

The bare facts of her life are briefly told. She was born in Litchfield and taught with her sister there before coming west. She was married at twenty-four, three years after coming to Cincinnati, to the Reverend Calvin Stowe, who was a professor in Lane Seminary. In 185o she returned with her husband to the east where he became divinity professor in Bowdoin College. Later he accepted an appointment as professor of sacred literature in Andover Theological Seminary. She had written for many magazines and published a number of Sunday-school stories and a book of' sketches before "Uncle Tom's Cabin" came out in serial form, published weekly by the National Era, an anti-slavery organ of Washington. She published several novels afterward, but of course "Uncle Tom" overshadows everything else.

Mrs. Stowe came of Puritan stock and a famous family of preachers. Her father was a man, of originality, with an enormous fund of life and religion and humour. He preached splendidly and played the violin execrably and enjoyed

366 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY

doing both. He was strongly interested in politics and the entire family seems to have engaged blithely and healthily in the hottest argument upon religion and politics and everything else. To a young man who desired to read for the ministry but who had more zeal than ability, Dr. Beecher said, "A great many people answer who were never called ; before you enter the ministry be sure you are called."

They lived the still New England life, without ornament in their homes or art in their natures. The pleasantest times of the little Harriet's life were at the home of her grandmother, Nut Plains—called so, she says, because it was very hilly and no nuts grew there. To this house came her uncle, Sam Foote, a jolly roving sailor, bringing shells and shawls and wonderful .things that turned life into a fairy tale. The little girl was like her father in peculiar. genius, like him in her affectionate disposition and strong conscience. When she grew up she had gentle manners, was retiring and modest. She was fond of flowers and, busy as she was teaching school and writing, she would go to the woods and bring flowers home to plant. Everything grew for her. It was said that Miss Beecher could make a hairpin grow. Lacking beauty herself she was an ardent lover of it. There is a curious vision into her character suggested by the fact that she would have given anything to be beautiful.

People do not read "Uncle tom's Cabin" nowadays and it is the fashion to consider it a foolish overwrought thing that was much overestimated. The novel was dashed off, says a friend of hers; in poverty and sickness, at white heat on a portfolio in the kitchen while she was taking care of her babies and cooking. After it came out serially, it was published in several editions and over four hundred thousand copies Were sold in this country. It was pirated in England and five hundred thousand copies were sold. It was translated into every European language and some of the languages of Asia, and from two to twelve translations made. It was dramatized in this country and is played even yet. It was put on the stage in England and, garbled and strange, it was acted in German and French and almost every language in almost every country on the continent. Let no one think that this extraordinary popularity was due to the great moral mes-sage of the book. Ethical propaganda may be never so living, if it be not clothed in the fig leaves of a vivid tale it will not be read, much less dramatized. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" may be melodramatic and very faultily written, but it grasps the interest of the reader with a hold few -books have ever had and it is one of the great forces that have changed the face of this country. While it was not actually written in Cincinnati, but immediately after Mrs. Stowe moved east, yet all her materials were gathered here and probably it never could have been written if she had not lived here in this borderland of beauty and terrible seriousness of gathering war.

Women who have done creative work in 'the past have almost invariably had a labour like that of Sisyphos, rolling their stone up against the hill of opposition. There has been almost always poverty, illness, the consuming duties of family and home. The ancient theory is still current that severe strain against odds brings out ability, but the other course has never been given a fair trial with any woman we know of. It is to be remembered that much washing will wear away a. stone—it has worn away many a woman, and that all work and no play

CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 367

makes Jack a dull boy—it has created many a dull little Jill. A race track is usually made as progressive as possible, yet a woman with poetry in her soul to sing used to be .expected to cook potatoes and sweep a house. Alice and Phoebe Cary are a notable case in point. It is hard to write of these two women because the meaning of their life comes upon one with such inexpressible fulness.

Though their father was poor they came of aristocratic lineage, carrying in their blood a strain of British royalty. Phoebe had much family pride and took great pleasure in their coat-of-arms which she had hanging in a frame upon her wall. They were born upon their father's farm which lay between College Hill and Mount, Healthy and is now the Clovernook Home for the Blind. They family were of a large family consisting of two boys and seven girls, born in rapid succession. Their father seems to have been robust in health but their mother was delicate, dying early, and the children almost all of them, inherited her weakness. The father, Robert .Cary, was a man of 'gentle, fine, poetic temperament, and Alice was like him. They all had deep spirituality and while the sisters did not lead an especially churchly life their daily breath was silently religious. Just before they moved into their new home which they called Clovernook, one day at sunset immediately after a summer storm, some one saw an elder sister with the little sister in her arms standing in the doorway of the new house. All of the family saw them, when it was discovered that they were upstairs in the old house. The father went over to investigate but found no one. Shortly after the family moved into the new house these two girls died. It was the beginning of death in the family. The mother died and the father married again with a woman of plain, workaday, bromidic temperament totally at variance with the disposition of his motherless little brood. Then the struggle began in earnest.

Alice and Phoebe wanted to read and write poetry and their stepmother kept them busy all day churning and ironing and doing the necessary work of a farming household and at night she would not allow them a candle. So they surreptitiously put a wick in a saucer of oil and worked by that. They read and wrote and sent verses to newspapers and magazines. Many of their things were published and finally the editor of the National Era, the Washington paper which published "Uncle' Tom's Cabin," sent Alice a check, for ten dollars. Otway Curry, a forgotten literary man, and Edgar Allan Poe, encouraged her and Poe was ardently enthusiastic in his admiration. But of course Poe was always violently that or the extreme opposite. Then Rufus Griswold took her up and extolled her work in his book, "The Female Poets of America." Through his good offices a volume of poems by Alice and Phoebe was brought out in 1850. From that time their progress to popularity and fame was straight and sure and easy, though they never remitted their intense and overtaxing labour: It had become habitual.

Alice and Phoebe and another sister moved to New York and by means of their writing they were able to buy and furnish a comfortable house at 53 East 20th street and live in what was to them luxury. Here they dwelt for twenty years when Alice died and .Phoebe followed her in a little' over a year. Followed her Seems the right and only way to put it for Phoebe was always following Alice even to the death, and her life was like a crushed rose after Alice was gone. She seemed to have nothing left to live for and 'veritably pined away:

368 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY

Their home was the centre for literary people in. New York. Their friends were the most famous intellects of the time, the most intimate among them being perhaps John G. Whittier and Horace Greeley. They had a little salon every Sunday evening when their friends gathered in their pleasant parlors. One terribly stormy night no one came but Horace Greeley and he got out a new volume of Tennyson .and while the real storm raged outside he read the "Passing of Arthur" with its glorious description of the white storm of symbolism. It is easy to picture the house, its deep red velvet carpets and rosewood furniture, the ideals of elegance and comfort at that time. It is pleasant to think that they took joy in it, but the pity is that they could not have breathed their life a little more easily and saved themselves for a larger space of it. When. she came to die, Alice was not ready to relinquish her life. She clung to it with all the strength of her strong will, but the overtaxed body could do no more. That is the pity of it, that early necessity should have made the habit which overpowered better judgment. And the fact reaches to another point : if these two women had had a life more a little richer physically and a little more repressed mentally their work might have been of a deeper, finer quality.

They gained in their time a marvelous popularity: Their verses were read and loved by every one, yet today Edmund Clarence Stedman includes only one poem from each of them in his most excellent American Anthology. "The Pictures of Memory," by Alice is lovely, full of all her eerie touching beauty, and Phoebe's hymn, "One Sweetly Solemn Thought" has been sung by many a devout heart, but one feels the lack of strength and originality in one after another of their poems. It is rather the personality of the poets themselves that is appealing. Their story touches one as that of the Bronté sisters does. With their cheerful striving, their charity, their devotion to beloved ones in all daily life, their spirituality, their essence of the Ohio country that has a sweet tang like a wild plum's fragrance, they appeal with a captivating pathos and romance.

We go back and picture amusing little Mrs. Trollope standing on. a little hill and flinging, gracefully and adroitly; batches of muddy ridicule at little Cincinnati beneath. Yet Mrs. Trollope built a bazaar which combined or ratter did not in the least combine but added one on top of the other, Greek, Egyptian, Gothic, and Mohammedan architecture. Some Cincinnatians considered the thing a monstrosity, but of course Cincinnati as a whole had little sense of art then—it was too young, too busy in the making. But there was some art life and an organization of artists as early as 1826. A little later came one who must be considered the pioneer patron of art in Cincinnati, a woman, Mrs. Sarah Worthington King Peter.

Mrs. Peter was a beautiful and attractive woman. She was of medium height, with gray eyes, fine complexion, and soft light brown hair with a touch of gold in 'it. She is described as lovely when she was old, with gray eyes that had a glint of blue and were merry, challenging, alert. She was a blue-blooded aristocrat, descended from the Van Schwearingens and Worthingtons of Virginia, her father being United States senator and then governor of Ohio. She was born in 1800 in Chillicothe, where, a girl of sixteen, she married Edward King, a youth of twenty-one and himself a son of a United States senator and governor of the state of New York. Some time after the death of her first husband, ,she

CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 369

married again with a Mr. Peter, the English consul at Philadelphia, whom also she survived. She lost several children, the one remaining well-known citizen of Cincinnati being he Honorable Rufus King. Mrs. Peter was incontestably a Cincinnatian though she sojourned in other cities and made many trips to Europe. She loved Italy and during her second visit there she was received into the Roman Catholic, church; She was a devoted disciple of the Faith and enjoyed a personal acquaintance with the Pope. She knew French, German, Italian, played the piano and organ, had a pleasing presence and a happy wealth of physical health and strength with plenty of money and mind, so it was only natural that she should have been a leader among women. She was one of the founders of the Protestant Orphan Asylum on Mount Auburn, she worked during the Civil War in the Sanitary Commission and under Dr. George Blackburn in his floating hospital, and afterwards in the cholera epidemic of 1866 like any Sister of Charity. She was instrumental in founding hospitals and homes for Catholic Sisterhoods. But Cincinnati owes most to her for germinating the idea of an art collection and academy.

In 1854 there was formed under the inspiration of Mrs. Peter an Academy of Fine Arts, to advance the cultivation of taste and to teach the arts of design by which women might earn their living. Mrs. Peter gained the influence of prominent Cincinnati women in the work and the association was to found an academy of design. Mrs. Peter. made a trip to Europe, traveling at her own expense, with five thousand dollars to buy copies of the old masters, for the art enterprise at home. Then came hard times, financial troubles, and the Civil war was brewing. The women of the association were not able to interest the Community and elicit the support they needed. Becoming discouraged, they disbanded and gave over the collection of Picture's and plaster casts to Mr. McMicken who had presented them with a thousand dollars for their original enterprise, and these possessions became a part of McMicken University, now the Cincinnati University. It is a most interesting fact to .be remembered that this association in Cincinnati antidated the movement which led to the South Kensington museum in London. And the studies and paintings collected by these women and most of them actually bought by Mrs. Peter came into the possession of the museum association when the academy came from the university to the control of the former, and are now within the walls of our. Art Museum.

Mrs. Peter and her associates did not expect to accomplish stupendous things. They were cultivated women and seers into the present and the future. They hoped to plant merely a little thing which might grow into something great. And though their society had no ostensible connection with the later movement among Cincinnati women which led directly to the Museum and Academy in Eden Park, yet what they planted really bore the germ of all art life which centres now in those buildings.

Along in the early seventies art life among women of Cincinnati began again to burgeon like the first austere life in spring. All life seems to beat in rhythm. It is a curious circumstance that about seventeen years seems to be the usual distance between the waves of endeavor among Cincinnati women. It was this length of time from the lapse of the first movement led by Mrs. Peter to this second wave lust referred to. Now women began to carve in wood—and though

370 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY

it seems an unheard of, impossible, and almost outrageous thing for a lady to do, they took to their tools like ducks to water and became utterly engrossed by their new found sport. Mrs. Jameson tells with a smile that whenever her mother, Mrs. William Dodd, could not be found, she was always "carving." To anticipate a moment, Mrs. Dodd carved a table which took the silver medal at the Philadelphia Centennial exposition. Down in the Masonic temple at Third and Walnut streets was an art school, all that was left at that time of the McMicken University. Here a few Bohemian students gathered. It was a dusty, dirty, attic sort of place, but here in 1873 Benn Pitman began to teach wood-carving to women—married women with half-grown children some of them were. The next summer he invited Miss McLaughlin, .Mrs. Dominick, and perhaps a dozen others to meet him and opened a box which, he said, contained colors for painting .on. china. He acknowledged that he knew as little about it as they did, but they and he were all beautifully enthusiastic and he was acquainted with a little man who fired names on barbers' mugs and would fire their china for them. That was the naive conception of ceramic art in Cincinnati which has developed into as beautiful, a ware as the world has ever known; Rookwood Pottery.

1876 was the year of the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia. In the meantime Cincinnati had gone mad over china painting. What was called a Martha Washington Tea-party was held in the old Lookout House at the head of the hill where the inclined plane used to descend from Mount Auburn. Women had their decorated china for sale, the particular objects of interest being the Martha Washington cups. Many of these sold for fabulous prices—one of them exhibited at the Centennial, is now with the pottery collection at the Museum. The tea-party, continued several nights, was the. fashionable thing and an enormous sum of money was made from it.

Thus these women carved wood and painted china and raised money, so that when the Centennial came they had something to show. Of all the exhibits by women theirs was far-and-away the best. It was not merely the best exhibit but it was a surprise and wonder to the world.

It is impossible to detail all the art impulses at work among Cincinnati women in 'this period. Down in a little funny dirty shop on Fifth street between Elm and Plum, worked the Frys, old English people. Here the women came and begged. to be taught wood-carving. Mr. Fry at first refused but was finally induced to take, them and upstairs in this tumbled-down place they worked.

In the old house where Mrs: Trollope had lived on Hamilton road was the little commercial pottery of Mr. Dallas. Over the wagon-shed here worked Mrs. William Dodd, Mrs. Storer, and others. Through the cracks in the floor horses could be seen below and heard stamping and switching flies, but that did not matter.. The women experimented here until Joseph Longworth, Mrs. Storer's father, bought an old schoolhouse in the east end of town where the Pennsylvania railroad crosses the street car tracks. In this little building Mrs. Storer established a kiln and called it Rookwood after her father's home. The pottery was afterward moved to Mount Adams where it can be seen now, picturesque and attractive, on its promontory jutting out over the city. It was not until its experimental stage was passed and Rookwood Pottery on a good paying basis

CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 371

that Mrs. Storer turned it over to the present management, she retaining the right to: use the pottery for her own private work whenever she chooses.

Miss Louise McLaughlin, who has written several books on china painting and worked most successfully in metal, pottery, every sort of artistic handicraft, is the true discoverer of the method of decorating under the glaze which is still the ,foundation principle of the work at Rookwood Pottery. Miss McLaughlins name is connected with almost every activity in art life of the city for the last twenty-five years and more, and she is still experimenting in glazes and decoration of pottery and porcelain. It was she who organized the Pottery, Chit), formed in 1879 under her presidency. It lived a beautiful and useful life for eleven years, when it was .disbanded. Before the Chicago World's Fair it was revived in order to furnish an exhibit and many women not before members were invited to join. So that the ceramic exhibit by Cincinnati women was almost altogether from this club and made a most creditable showing. The club is still in existence.

Mrs. Bellamy Storer's name has occurred in this paper several times.. The daughter of Joseph Longworth, she was brought up in an atmosphere of art and her first husband was George Ward Nichols, the promoter of Cincinnati's May festivals and the great patron of art. Mrs. Storer was interested in every art enterprise of the city. She experimented with remarkable success in different forms of handicraft and has just recently done very finished and lovely metal work, but her name stands pre-eminently with Rookwood. She is the founder of the pottery and managed it till it grew into a flourishing business.

One goes back and takes up another and perhaps the most important thread of the art Movement of the seventies. After the Centennial, at Philadelphia the Cincinnati women who had worked for that decided to form an association for the furtherance of art. Mrs. Aaron F. Perry was the president, and Mrs. John Davis, Mrs. John Shillito, Mrs. O. J. Wilson, Mrs. Winslow, Mrs. Dodd, Mrs. Bullock, Mr's. Noyes, Miss Appleton, Miss Vattier (Mrs. John Gano afterwards) and many other prominent women entered ardently into the work. Under their auspices a course of lectures was given and a loan exhibit of pictures held, which gave an impetus to the movement so that the association was incorporated as the "Women's Art Museum Association of Cincinnati." The trustees were as they signed their names : Elizabeth W. Perry, Jane P. Dodd; Elizabeth K. Whitman, Sophia P. Mallon, Eliza J. Davis; Caroline Hulbert, Mary F. Huntington, Sarah C. Perry, Mary Shillito, Ellen Stanwood, Laura Vallette, Susan L. Winslow. Their purpose was definite and high but they were wise enough to go slow. They opened small rooms on Fourth street at the corner of Home street and had classes in china painting, water color painting, and artistic embroidery. In 1879 they moved to the south wing of the Exposition building. On the evening of September 8, 1886, at the opening of the exposition it was announced that Charles W. West would give $150,000 for an art museum if an equal sum could be raised within a year, and on the evening of October 9, the closing night of the exposition, the announcement was made that, the entire sum had been raised. The purpose of the association had been splendidly accomplished and the Cincinnati Art Museum on Walnut Hills was finally dedicated in May, 1886: The women gave to the Museun all of their belongings, including paintings, pottery, tapestry rich

372 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY

lace, a collection of Etruscan pottery (52 pieces) a gift to them from Signor Castellani of Rome, and deciding that pottery ought to be their particular province, they made a rare collection of it which they presented as their special gift.

It has been said that life goes in rhythms. It is also to be noticed that a large efflorescence is followed by another product, an aftermath. The Centennial at Philadelphia, exhibiting women's skill, stimulated their interest and led directly to the building of the Art Museum. So, also, the work and success of the women who had charge of the Cincinnati exhibit at the Chicago World's Fair had a prosperous. continuation in the Cincinnati Woman's Club. In the winter of 1893-4, Mrs. Sophia P. Mallon, Mrs. J. J. Gest, Mrs. Fayette Smith, Mrs. H. B. Morehead, Mrs. H. C. Yergason, Miss Annie Laws, and Miss Clara Newton came together to talk over a woman's club. This was the little nucleus. From it grew a club limited in membership to one hundred and fifty. For a number of years they had their club rooms in the Mercantile Library building, and cramped and busy rooms they were. It was not an unusual thing for them to give an entertainment at which many people stood and many more were turned away.. In 1910, seventeen years after the little beginning—another seventeen years—they moved into their own house on Oak street, a spot that is the borderland of Walnut Hills, Avondale, and Mt. Auburn. The club has a membership of over six .hundred with a waiting list. The club house is completely satisfying, which, after all, is the highest test of art and of comfort. It is colonial in architecture and, within, the blending of color and furnishings give one's artistic soul a sense of rare harmony and beauty and rest. The clubhouse is known not merely to Cincinnatians but to thousands of women who were here at the great Biennial Federation of Women's Clubs of the United States which met in Cincinnati in the May of 1910.

Sister Anthony is a name of reverence to all old soldiers. She was born in Ireland and brought to this country as a child by her parents. In 1837 she came to Cincinnati and worked in various orphan asylums and hospitals. After the war she continued her work of mercy and charity in Cincinnati, .starting the Foundling Home in Norwood where she spent her declining years. The Sisters of Charity have all done splendid work in. Cincinnati which is the home of this typically American sisterhood. It is significant that their work began here in 1852, the year Dr. Daniel Drake, the great and good physician died. But it is for her work during the Civil war that Sister Anthony specially eminent and beloved. After the bloody battle of Pittsburgh Landing a hurry call came for nurses and . she was the first to respond. This was :the beginning of her ministrations. She was nurse, attendant, everything that was human and self-sacrificing and capable. to the sick and dying soldiers, from that time on to the end of the war. She was called the "Angel of the Battlefield," and to this day in the little cemetery of Mount St. Joseph where she was laid in 1898, the old soldiers strew her grave with flowers on Decoration Day, paying to her a reverence tenderer even than they would give to a great commander.

Miss Georgia Trader possessed the beauty of sight until she was eleven years old. Then she lost it and she and her sisters, surrounded by affection and material advantages, developed a vast sympathy for the blind who are poor. In the summer of 1899 Miss Georgia was reading the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. The book made her wonder, first about the blind who have no books

CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 373

to read, and second, about Franklin's ingenuity, perseverance and pluck. She consulted with her: sisters and, after going to Mr. Hodges, Mr. Goss, and Dr. Robert Sattler for advice, they put a notice in the paper asking for the names and addresses of blind people in Cincinnati. Soon they had a list of one hundred and eighty-one names ; then they advertised by another notice in the paper, for people to cope to read to the blind at the public library.

As the library is for the benefit of the majority and the blind are so small a minority, Mr. Hodges, the librarian, cannot buy books for them, but Misses Georgia and Florence Trader started a library which has been amassed into 13,031 volumes. It is not the largest library for the blind in the world but it is perhaps the best, for it contains many modern books and few duplicates. By an act of Congress which permits these books to be circulated through the mails free of charge, the Traders send them all over the country, only four states in the Union having so far not availed themselves of the opportunity of borrowing. The Traders started classes to teach blind children the elementary branches of education ; at last they persuaded the school board to take up the subject, though they themselves raised the money for its support. Now there is a regular department for blind children supported by the city through the school board ; it is held in the Third Intermediate school building. There are two teachers and twenty blind pupils recite their lessons with the normal children.

Through the good offices of these young women, the Traders, much work is carried on at the public library, and Mr. Hodges gives a room and bears all the expense of caring for the books. Here there are five regular readings a week and one entertainment a month. Every Friday the Traders have a large class, teaching the blind to read, write, crochet, knit, make bead baskets and rafia work.

When Clovernook, the home of Alice and Phoebe Cary, was for sale, Georgia Trader longed in her heart for it as a home for the blind. The sisters applied to Mr. Procter, but he refused them because, he said, it would be so enormous a care to them. Then they went out to see it one dripping day in spring. Clovernook stood there quietly and quaintly by the roadside, with its soft hillslopes behind. It was too altogether desirable and they went again to Mr. Procter. They were crazy for it, they told him. He turned to his real-estate man. "These little girls think they want Clovernook," he said, "so I wish you to go out and buy it for them." In May, 1003 Clovernook Home for the Blind was opened. Since then ten women and one man have lived there, though the man has recently married and moved to Mount Healthy from where he comes every day to make the famous Clovernook brooms. The weaving shop was started through the gifts of Professor P. V. N. Myers and Mrs. Mary M. Emery. This and the broom shop are self-supporting, the home is not and never will be, says Miss Georgia Trader cheerfully. She and her sister Florence support this home and all other enterprises for the blind through the subscriptions they solicit.

Sometimes things seem to happen altogether properly. It is a thing beautifully fitting that Clovernook should now be the home for the blind conducted by these ardent-souled sisters. It would seem that Alice and Phoebe Cary with their deep spirituality must know and smile quietly over the present use of their beloved home. And between those sisters and these, both devoted to each other and to

374 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY

the high and lovely things of the soul, there is in thought a connection as strong and beautiful and real as the home that has passed from the one to the other.

Mrs. Alice Williams Brotherton is loyally and essentially a Cincinnatian. She tells one with a smile as she works away at her knitting, that her birth at Cambridge, Indiana, was a mere accident due to the fact that her grandfather, a doctor, lived there, and that she is a Cincinnatian and has always lived in Cincinnati—has lived in Cincinnati for generations back, and expects to live in Cincinnati till she dies. She went to Woodward high school, where also William Ernest Brotherton went ; the two became sweethearts and married, being perhaps the first match made at Woodward. They owe their married happiness to old Woodward and are devoted alumni. Mrs. Brotherton began to write early and has contributed to all of our best magazines, the Century, Scribner's, the Atlantic Monthly, Poet Lore, the Independent, St. Nicholas. She has published two volumes of verse, "Beyond the Veil" and the "Sailing of King Olaf," and one of prose, "What the Wind Told the Tree-Tops." Many of her lyrics have been set to music. She is an active 'member of the Cincinnati Woman's Club and of the Press Club—indeed, she gives one the impression that she would inevitably be active anywhere. She herself believes that her best work has been done in her study of Shakespeare which has gone through her entire life and resulted in essays and lectures, but it seems more likely that she will be best known in future by her poetry. There is a strength and individuality in her poem, "The Blazing Heart," for instance, which Mr. E. C. Stedman has included in his American Anthology, that make one wish she had given herself more exclusively to poetry. Perhaps she has scattered her resources too much, but in so doing she has evidently got much joy from life and rounded out her own character. Outside Mrs. Brotherton's house are tangled old rose bushes and inside there is a flavor of old American verse—she shows autograph letters from Whittier and many another poet—yet she herself has grown on and is today the modern capable woman.

Back in the first years of the last decade of the last century there was nothing in Cincinnati worthy the name of orchestra. Michael Brand had a band, doing the best he could with local material, and Tuchfarber gave "pop" concerts in the old Pike opera house. But there was a large, lively, capable woman's musical club which met in the old Lincoln Club building on Garfield place. They brought Maud Powell and other celebrities here and furnished a concert by the Boston Symphony Orchestra which aroused so much enthusiasm that Mrs. Taft, the present lady of the White House, who was then president of the Musical Club, called a meeting to consider the possibility of establishing an orchestra here. The origin of the orchestra was really at a: dinner party given at Mrs. Taft's Pike street home, where the subject of a permanent orchestra came up and was pleasantly and ardently discussed over the good things to eat. Some of the women who were interested in the project were Mrs. Taft, Mrs. Billing, Miss Roedter, Mrs. Eckstein, Mrs. Forcheimer, and Mrs. Chatfield. Soon the orchestra association was incorporated. In 1893 an open meeting was held at which stock was offered for sale to the members and to the outsiders present. One hundred shares of this stock were sold at ten dollars a share and this thousand dollars still lies as a nest egg, never changing hands, never paying a dividend, just accruing interest. The board was formed with Mrs. William Howard Taft as president;

CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 375

Miss Sallie Wooley, recording secretary ; Mrs. Louise Anderson, vice president; Mr's. Joseph Wilby, corresponding secretary, and Miss Isabel Jelke, treasurer. Mrs. Taft was president for six years when she went to Manila. And Miss Jelke was treasurer all the seven years she was a member of the board. The present officers are: President, Mrs. Christian R. Holmes ; vice-president, Mrs. J. Walter Freiberg; second vice-president, Mrs. Clifford Wright ; corresponding secretary, Mrs. Joseph Wilby ; recording secretary, Mrs. Louis N. Stix ; treasurer, Mrs. Frank Jameson.

In the fall of 1894 the association canvassed the town for musicians and the orchestra formed was very naturally made up of the old band which had played under Michael Brand. Three conductors were brought, Seidl, Schradick, and Van der Stucken, and in the winter and spring of 1895 nine concerts were given, three under the leadership of each of the conductors. Mr. Van der Stucken was chosen and in the fall of 1895 the Cincinnati Orchestra, a permanent organization, was in full swing under his leadership. He had been engaged for six years and at the end of this period he was re-engaged for another six years. During these twelve years twenty concerts were given each season, the order being every other week, a matinee on Friday afternoon and the program repeated the following Saturday night. The concerts were in Music Hall and there were no tours made. Iv. 1907 Mr. Van der Stucken resigned from the leadership of the orchestra to return to Europe and devote his time to composition. The following winter there was no Cincinnati Orchestra, but the association brought here the Boston Symphony, the Damrosch, the Pittsburgh, the Thomas, and the Russian orchestras. Of course' it was splendid music, but there were only five concerts and the music lovers of Cincinnati were hungry for their orchestra back again. So when in the late autumn of 1909 the season opened with a rehabilitated orchestra under the leadership of the young Leopold Stokowski, there was joy in the hearts of many. Interest in the orchestra grew with the orchestra's growth and achievement. Successful tours were made to large cities as well as to small towns, one journey being as far west as Kansas City in the season of 1910-11.

The only platitude about the future is the platitude that the future is sure not to be platitudinous. It will be as violently sulphitic as the New York Stock Exchange. What the Cincinnati Orchestra may become is the toss of a coin into the air. But the fact now is that the orchestra is the most significant element in the musical life of the city and is one of the leading orchestras of the county. It is beautifully satisfying to be able to say this—to be able as an unprejudiced outsider, to say that amid petty bickerings and jealousies, a thing of absolute artistic ability, the Cincinnati Orchestra, has been achieved.

The Art Academy is indirectly, perhaps even directly responsible for the development of a number of artists among women. Not only in the semi-arts of wood-carving, metal work, jewel designing, and leather work, have many students spent their time profitably, but in the pure arts of painting and sculpture some women have become famous.

Miss Zoe Dunlap and Miss Melva Wilson studied as girls at the academy. They afterward went abroad together and, returning, opened studios in New York. Miss Dunlap's forte is in miniature painting and her exhibitions at the Fifth avenue galleries have run through an entire season, something never granted

376 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY

before to a woman painter. Miss Wilson is .a sculptor. Her most important achievement. so far is a heroic figure of the Christ, done in marble and standing on the mortuary chapel in Calvary cemetery, Long Island City, New York. She has recently been given an order for a frieze in the new Catholic cathedral in St. Louis. The frieze, two hundred feet long, extending round the body of the church and representing the fourteen stations of the life of Christ, is to be carved in white marble. It is a monumental, a life work, and, says Herbert Corey, is the greatest undertaking in ecclesiastical art of the century. Miss Wilson and Miss Dunlap are both ardent ¾souls and faithful 'believers in their art. Miss Wilson gives one the sense of the unencumbered devotion of the mediaeval artist.

Miss Dixie Belden painted so perfectly and so long the American girl that her art (became associated in the mind of the public with that type alone. Since her recent study abroad, her canvasses show her to be equally deft in whatever she may attempt. She does most entertaining humorous sketches, full of the artist's humor and temperament. Her more serious labor goes into portraits which have delightful character and are always easily distinguishable as hers. Miss Selden's pictures have a brightness that is expressive of her own character.

Miss Mendenhall, too, has shown wonderful growth since her study abroad. Italy particularly has given her the. joyful breath of inspiration. Miss Mendenhall is regarded by many people as the young woman among artists from whom most may be expected.

Miss Lord has studied abroad as well as at home and is teaching in the Art Academy. She is modest and retiring, true-souled and a truly able artist. She has studied at the Julian school in Paris and is one of the worthy few Americans whose work has been exhibited in the Paris Salon. She won a medal at the Chicago world's fair, has had many honors. Her pictures are accepted by judges for exhibits.

Among the other artists are Mrs. Sykes, who does remarkably good water colors and has exhibited in many places, and Miss Laura Fry, the daughter of the celebrated old teacher of wood-carving, and herself pre-eminent for her work in wood.

The work of these women has all been admitted and hung in various notable exhibits, including those at the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Pittsburgh Carnegie Institute, the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts, and the Chicago Art Institute. But the Cincinnati artist who has won international fame and the highest honor that can be given to a living artist is Miss Elizabeth Nourse. Her international reputation is shown by the one crucial thing that she lives in Paris among the greatest artists of the age who regard her as one of themselves ; and her highest honor is in the fact that the French government has just purchased a picture of hers to be hung in the national gallery of the Luxembourg. This picture is called "Les Volets Clos" (Closed Shutters), and a French paper in commenting upon it says that the artist has a "profound capacity of feeling" and that in her picture is a glorification of sunlight and shadow.

Miss Elizabeth Nourse is of ancient and aristocratic lineage, her ancestors having come to America with the Puritans. Indeed she is a lineal descendant

CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 377

of Rebecca Nourse of witchcraft memory, who was dragged from her home in Orchard Farm and put to death on Gallows Hill in Salem.

Miss Nourse studied at the Cincinnati Art Academy and at the Julian School in Paris. She was a pupil of Boulanger and of Carolus Duran. Millais said to her, "You paint like a man six feet tall." She was advised by these artists to open her own studio. Her first spring in Paris was made happy by the acceptance of her salon picture which was hung on the line, an unprecedented honor for a. newcomer. Since then her work has never been refused. Her exhibit of oil paintings at the Chicago world's fair won her the first medal and one of the judges remarked that her two paintings, "The Peasant Women of Borst" and ,`The Pardon," were the best pictures in the exhibit. She has won many medals since and in .France has had the honor to be elected a member of the Societe des Beaux-Arts.

Miss Nourse paints chiefly peasant life and is particularly. sympathetic and successful in portraying motherhood. She will paint only what appeals to her, though that means pictures—not too, readily sold—of hard and ugly peasant life. She is a zealous and ascetic laborer, working eight hours a day When the light permits and staying outdoors till the freezing weather drives her models in. She is very sympathetic and her models tell her all their woes. She is personally uninfluenced by French art, but has gained much inspiration from the personal friendship." of such men as Pulvis de Chavannes, Rodin, and Dagnon Bouveret: She is gentle; fragile, and beautiful, Vance Thompson says, and adds of her art, "No American woman artist stands so high in Paris as Miss Nourse."

Away back in 1869 when Miss Nourse—the other and older Miss Nourse under whom such, a multitude of Cincinnati women have got their lessons—had her school downtown, a little girl of sixteen came to her and said, "I want to start a conservatory of music." Miss Nourse laughed at her, but the little girl persisted, persisted ardently and hopefully and convincingly, and finally Miss Nourse gave her one room. She gained pupils and took another room, and then opened a house of her own. Her work grew and she moved to Broadway, then to the big house on the corner of Lawrence and Fourth, and at last to the old Shillito place on Oak and Highland and Burnet avenues. The little girl was Miss Clara Baur and her one room was the beginning of the. Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, with its three acres of land in the core of the city, its big buildings, its faculty of nearly fifty, and its student body of over a thousand. It is an enormous leap from the little girl in her teens in her one room to the present magnitude of the conservatory. It represents what has been accomplished by a woman Not in a miracle was it done, but, like everything of permanent worth, through 4 generation of time with patience, determination, and faith to an ideal. Miss Clara Baur was born in Germany and studied music in Stuttgart, where at that period was the most famous method of voice culture. She came to this country when she was sixteen years of age and immediately started her school of music, which was the first conservatory west of Boston—the Boston conservatory, preceding it by only a very short time. Miss Bertha Baur came down from her home in Ann Arbor to study music in her aunt's school and, the school losing its secretary at that time, she dropped into the place and has ever since conducted the business of the conservatory. Between Miss Clara and Miss

378 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY

Bertha Baur are the qualities of wise dreaming and executive sense ; the former was possessed of the vision and the latter possessed the wisdom. Miss Wanda Baur is added to the staff in this family of capable women. These elements in their success are to be noted especially : their wisdom in bringing great artists to the conservatory—men like Frederic Shailer Evans, Theodor Bohlmann, the Sturms, and Tirindelli ; the many educational recitals they have given to the public ; and the ideal they have constantly pictured to their students that not merely musical technique but a rounded development in education is necessary to the artist.

Two things are inevitable where real success is. There can be other qualities that make it better, stronger, easier, surer, but the two things that may not be absent are charm of personality and a passion for one's ideal. In addition to ability in their particular musical spheres and to patience and sapience, these two gifts of the gods are held by Miss Clara and Miss Bertha Bauer. They themseh es would say that they have succeeded .because they have insisted upon the highest ideals in musical art. And one is pleased and smiles, for it is better to have ideals than ideas—though naturally these women have both—and it is greater to believe in one's art than in one's ''self.

Robert Louis Stevenson says that a happy man or woman is a better thing `to find than a five-pound note. And, though Robert Louis had a penchant for vagabonds and thieves and was visibly embarrased in the presence of ladies in his stories, one is willing to wager one's last Lincoln penny that he would have reveled in the acquaintance of Miss M. Cora Dow. Till one knows her, the name "Dow" carries with it only the sense of business, of full-stocked crowded drug-stores—one smells toilet soaps and Seidlitz powders and mentally drinks foaming soda-water. But after one has talked with her the enormous business this one woman has built up seems but a detail in her fine, strong, hopeful character. Again a quotation from Stevenson comes to mind, "It is better to travel than to arrive." Miss Dow is. always traveling in her journey of cheerfulness and purpose, and her achievements are the wild-rose covered milestones.

She is one of the multitude of examples of the fact that the person who achieves the best success is the person without academic education. She was an only child and her life was one of vicissitude because whenever her father was ill or their place of residence was moved she was taken out of school. Much with him, she was his right-hand man from the earliest. He was a retired wholesale druggist and at last, because he needed to, he opened a little retail store on West Fifth street, where he caught the commuters' trade of the C. H. & D. It was necessary for the young girl to help him so she studied pharmacy, taking the gold medal in her class. She then started a little store up on Seventh street. This was her beginning. She was not backed up by any corporation, as it has been asserted by the inefficient who are always ready to sigh about luck and to try, to attribute the success of their fellows to anything but the one thing which produces it, native ability. She has keen business sagacity, pluck, idealism. She is altogether decided—that, very evidently—hard-headed even, and one would better keep one's finger off the nail she has determined to drive in. She is, utterly open and honest and kind, and there is a childlike simplicity about her when she sits pondering some big question, her brown eyes fixed upon a par-

CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 379

ticularly shiny place on her mahogany desk, her thin feminine hands dropped in her gown that is always a little strange and always becoming. Delicately made, finely tempered, still she is what Olive Schreiner would call a virile woman. The female parasite is as far from her as Louis XIV was from Julius` Caesar. As she looks at one quietly and says, "I have always been happy, every bit of my life, even When I was passing through the greatest trouble anyone can have," —one feels a thrill and the wonder if, after all the person of real 'capacity is not always at bottom happy.

She has now ten retail drug stores, a great warehouse, employs. about one hundred and seventy people, a big automobile and forty-six horses. She has Always 'been an omniverous reader and her chief delight is in music and has been ever since a little thing only high as, the table she heard her first grand opera and planned to lose the family and hide under a seat and Stay for the evening . performance. She did not mind going without food and being shut in the big hall all by herself through the night, but the thought offrightening her mother smote her heart and she gave up the intention. That is it—she does not, want anyone or anything to be hurt. She says with utter modesty,

"I want to make the world a little better, a little kinder"

The slogan "Dow" has adopted and which, appears on: every bit of their stationery is "A square deal for the horse." Every bill. and letter going out from the house contains a prayer for the horse and dog. The horse folder has been translate, into Spanish, is being set up in Turkish, and millions of copies will be sent out this year from all corners of the world.. Miss Dow has influenced large manufacturers to use the horse slogan and to give their horses a vacation in the heat of summer of at least two weeks, until even the United States government has adopted her measure. Tacked up in innumerable stables is a placard pleading for the horse. All this she has done not at all for advertising purposes, but quietly through the Ohio Humane Society. Her broad sympathy is with all life, but she has worked particularly for dumb creatures because she .thinks, very truly, that they cannot make their own misery known and that humanity more surely gains the sympathy of humanity. No, this work is not to advertise her business, hilt rather she uses business to advertise benevolence. "To help a little to lessen the suffering of the world—that is so much more important than `Dow's,' ". she says humbly, with decision.. And one feels joyfully, that one is in the presence of the soul of a practical dreamer of truths.

Mrs. Mary S. Watts is a "Buckeye", born and bred, as the patriotic old Dr. Daniel Drake would say. She came into existence. in the soft fertile Scioto valley and lived there long enough to know it well and devotedly. Since her marriage her home has been in Cincinnati on Walnut Hills, not so very far from where Harriet Beecher Stowe worked; at her material for "Uncle Tom's Cabin" over a half century ago.

Mrs. Watts, like all writers; has beeb a great reader. She has always desired in a more or less desultory way to write, but it is only a few years since her first short stories were accepted, and creative work became a thing of active and earnest intent. She has succeeded. rapidly and solidly. From short stories she proceeded almost immediately to the novel and her third book, "Nathan Burke," at once placed her in the inner circle of the few who must be considered seri-

Vol. I-25

380 - CINCINNATI—THE OUEEN CITY

ously and permanently. She has a broad grasp of things, a lively mode of thought, and a charm of intimacy, which causes the bromidic variety of critics who must always be judging by comparison, to whisper, "Thackeray ;" and there is a contented cheer and virility in her writing which causes those. who believe that no good can come out of . Nazareth or from women writers, to exclaim about its extraordinary and masculine vigor. One of the largest cable orders ever received from England for an American novel was sent for ,"Nathan Burke." Her new novel, "The Legacy," has its setting in the fictionally unused and beautiful valley of the Scioto in Ohio. This book deals with the old yet ever new theme of heredity, and proves beyond a doubt that Mrs. Watts has gained complete control of the medium of her art, that she has gained artistry.

She is still young, purposeful, bright, buoyant. That, together with the fact of her quick and healthy development indicates the certainty of rich attainment. She has laurels, but it is probable that her masterpiece is yet to come.

Possibly no woman who has ever lived in Cincinnati has been so active in so many interests of the very life of the city as has Miss Annie Laws. Descended from good English and Swiss stock through colonial New England and Virginia, Miss Laws is born and bred a Cincinnatian. She is one of the fortunate women who were educated in Miss Appleton's. school.

Miss Laws is a charter member of the Cincinnati Kindergarten Association and was one of the group who organized the first kitchen garden in Cincinnati. She was one of the organizers of the first training school for nurses. She was acting president of the Columbian Exposition Association of Cincinnati, was one of the organizers of the Ladies' Musical Club and for long a member of the May Festival Chorus. She is a member of the D. A. R. and a founder and member of the Cincinnati Woman's Club, is on the Orphan Asylum board, was a founder 'of the Visiting Nurses' Association, has been vice-president and president of the Ohio Federation of Women's Clubs, an organizer of the Folk-Lore Society and of the Story Tellers' League, has been identified with the Archæological, the Natural History, and the Municipal Arts societies, was one of the organizers of the Mothers' clubs and of the Hospital Social Service Association, is in the Cincinnati chapter of the American Red Cross Society, and a member of the recently formed committee to consider the co-ordination of Cincinnati's Social Welfare Work. She has been an officer, in many instances the head, of almost all of these organizations and has been in many others besides.

One may say, not in the least with levity, that Miss Annie Laws could easily carry on the affairs of a great municipal or business corporation of the country, so remarkable is her constructive and executive ability.

The Cincinnati chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution was established in 1893 with Mrs. Brent Arnold as regent. She was succeeded by Mrs. Morehead, Mrs. William P. Judkins, Miss Annie Laws, Mrs. John A. Murphy, Mrs. Herbert Jenny, Miss Hollister, Mrs. Kite, Mrs. Adam Gray, Mrs. Pierce J. Cadwalader, Mrs. Bechtel, Mrs. J. R. Murdoch. The work of the chapter here as elsewhere has been the usual commendable effort of the society to preserve relics, pursue historical research, and cherish and foster patriotism.

It is a far cry from the old methods of medicine to modern hygiene and therapeutics and yet it is less than twenty-five years ago since there were no trained

CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 381

nurses in Cincinnati. In 1888 some thoughtful and broad-visioned women held a meeting to consider the founding of a training school for nurses and in 1889 the Cincinnati Training School was started—the first school for nurses west of the Alleghenies. The beginning was small and simple, naturally. Miss Annie Murray, graduate of the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, was the superintendent ; there was one assistant, a trained nurse ; five pupil nurses ; a little flat in the neighborhood of the city hospital was the headquarters ; and the school had one ward in the hospital as a laboratory. From this initiatory work the school grew until it had entire charge of the nursing at the hospital, had nurses in the Soldiers' Home, and did much work in private families and district nursing. The women who founded this school were Miss Annie Laws, Mrs. F. G. Huntington, Miss Keys, Mrs. W. H. Taft, Mrs. A. Howard Hinkle, Mrs. John A. Gano, Miss Scarborough, Miss Wooley, Mrs. R. M. W. Taylor, Mrs. Stettinius, Miss Carson, Mrs. L. C. Wier, Miss Davis, Mrs. J. D. Brannan, Mrs. John R. Holmes, Mrs. Sachs, Mrs. Bellamy Storer. The school as an organization was finally disbanded when the various hospitals all began having their own schools, but to the women who started it is due all honor for their initiative in this very vital form of new social work.

Just recently—in 1909—another branch of this great system of the care of the sick, has been started, the Visiting Nurses' Association. There are fifteen nurses and the city is divided into nine districts each, with well equipped headquarters. It would seem that this is in reality the most elemental and systematic way of philanthropic and social reform so far possible, for the nurse may be not merely a nurse but a friend and teacher, getting into the homes and hearts of the people and instructing them as to proper living in a way that no doctor or priest or charity worker ever could. Again it is women who started this work, its first officers and trustees being Dr. Elizabeth Campbell, Mrs. Charles F. Goss, Dr. Frances Hollingshead, Mrs. Hodges, Miss Greenwood, Miss Annie Laws, Mrs. T. H. C. Allen, Miss Bayler, Miss Elsie Field, Miss Thatcher, Miss Edith Campbell, Miss Golder, Miss Josephine Simrall, Mrs. John M. Withrow, Miss Fisher, Mrs. Jenny, together with a few men, Dr. Alfred Friedlander, Frank Miller, Dr. Fackler, Cecil Gamble, Mr. Hubbard, Wallace Miller.

Back in 1833, when so many little children had been left orphans by the frightful visitation of cholera in the preceding year, a meeting of the citizens was held in the First Presbyterian church to plan for an orphan asylum. A board of managers was elected, consisting of the following women : Mrs. Clarissa H. Davis, Mrs. Jared Mansfield, Mrs. John Morehead, Mrs. Louis Stoughton, Mrs. Garrard, Mrs. Rebecca Burnet, Mrs. Sarah Peter, Mrs. G. R. Gilmore, Mrs. Catherine Bates, Mrs. Philip Young, Mrs. James Johnson, Mrs. Elizabeth Hall. In June of that year twenty-six ragged little boys were taken from the city hospital and in a poor building in the pest. house lot in the lowlands of Milcreek the orphan asylum was opened. A few years after it was moved to a building on Elm street, and a second moving in 1861 brought it to the present site on Mount Auburn. It is an appealing philanthropy and has had devoted adherents all through its history. The early records of the names of the trustees and other supporters were not kept, but a list of life members shows such well-known names as Baum, Burnet, and Bates, Beecher, Davis, Groesbeck,

382 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY

Wade, Kemper, Mendenhall, Shillito, and Taylor. In the seventy-eight years of its existence the asylum has had only four presidents, Mrs. Clarissa H. Davis, Mrs. Rebecca Burnet, Mrs. Catherine Bates, who served fifty years, and the present head, Mrs. A. D. Bullock. And to the list of twenty-six ragged little boys whom the devoted Women took from the hospital and put into a home have been added so many other little boys and little girls as well that the number now has mounted up to something like twenty-six thousand.

One summer, a good many years ago, three young married women, Mrs. Patrick Mallon, Mrs. C. D. Robertson, and Mrs. Benedict, found it best because of their 'Young children to spend the season at home. They got together and studied Froebel kindergarten work, becoming intensely interested in it, and this, perhaps, was the embryo of the kindergarten movement in,' Cincinnati. The actual history of it begins with December 13, 1879, when *a -group of women met to establish formally a kindergarten association, and on. December 19, a constitution was adopted and Mrs. Alphonso Taft, .the president's mother, was elected the first president. Before that there had been some few private kindergartens, but from that time, on the kindergarten idea grew strongly and beautifully in the hearts of the community and to greater perfection in itself.

The names of Mrs. Patrick Mallon, Miss Fanny Field, Mrs. Fleischmann, Mrs. Charles Kellogg, Mrs. Eckstein, Mrs. Goodman, and, above all, of Miss Annie Laws, are abidingly and in great honor connected with the name "kindergarten" in Cincinnati. Through the efforts of these women and others the movement in Cincinnati has grown enormously., In the very' inception!' of the work it was decided to multiply kindergartens as fast as possible and to keep them, however they might be supported, closely affiliated with the main organization. The association was incorporated in 1894.

The Kindergarten Training School has its own building, a large frame house which was formerly Mrs. Westendorf's school, on Linton street, in Avondale. A connection is established With the University of Cincinnati whereby after their sophomore year students may elect a kindergarten course leading to the degree of B. A. In the training school a department of household economics has been added and the most modern methods of kindergarten training are used. It is difficult to state psychic or even physical growth and gain, but to those for whom figures mean anything one may tell the story that the Cincinnati Kindergarten Association now -numbers sixty-three kindergartens to its credit with about an even number of mothers' clubs.

Fannie Bloomfield Zeisler, Julia Reeve King, and Geneva Johnston Bishop have all lived -in Cincinnati, and Clara Morris served her stage apprenticeship here and may almost be regarded as a Cincinnati product, while, Mary Anderson began her stage career in the old Wood's theatre on Sixth and Vine. Julia Marlowe; the talented, the charming, the purposeful actress, while not born here, is veritably a Cincinnati woman, having spent all her girlhood in Cincinnati until she began the itinerant theatrical life to grow into the great artist who is inevitably a citizen of the world.

One of the important influences in Cincinnati forty years ago was that of a teacher, Miss Elizabeth Haven Appleton: She was born in New England in 1815 and the various branches of her family in New England—Adams, Havens, Ap-

CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 383

pletons—are all notable names. She gave lectures in Cincinnati and wrote, was especially interested in books and art, a member of the. Ladies' Academy of Art, librarian and secretary of the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio, but her importance lies chiefly in her success as an educator. She was a woman of vigor, energy and system, a hater of shams, a keen humorist whose interest was in the individual rather than in institutions or works of charity. She had a school here froth. 1850 to 1875, educating more than four hundred girls, and she is regarded by her old pupils who have become the leading women of Cincinnati, as the greatest educator the place has ever known.

Kate Chase Sprague, the beautiful, sparkling daughter of Salmon P. Chase, who was perhaps the greatest man next to Lincoln of his time, certainly the most brilliant, was born in Cincinnati and now lies by the side of her father in Spring Grove. The scene of the active years of her life was Washington, where her entertaining rivalled that of the White House. She had the social and political prestige belonging to great women of the world and many were the affairs of state arranged under her hospitality.

A woman whose name is linked with almost every movement for good within her lifetime is "that of Mrs. Patrick Mallon. She had cool executive ability as well as goodness of heart, and to her the Widow's Home, the Kindergarten Association, the Associated Charities, the Mount Auburn Presbyterian church, the Woman's Art . Museum Association, and many other institutions owe a debt of gratitude. Mrs. Alphonso Taft, the wife of the judge and mother of the President, is and her name connected with good works in Cincinnati, and her daughter-in-law, the lady of the White House, as long as she lived in Cincinnati was very active in all *artistic and philanthropic work. Mrs. Lawrence Maxwell, Mrs. Morehead, Mrs, McLean Blair, and a dozen others who have done splendid work in local institutions are likewise known far and wide through their connection with women's club.

Two early writers among Cincinnati women were Caroline Lee Hentz, who was among the literati of the time of the Beechers, Dr. Drake, Mrs. Peter and that circle; and "Belle Smith," who at a later date wrote entertaining books of travel. Mrs. Mary Wright Curwen was another eminent Cincinnati woman who wrote and gave lectures and was in the advance guard of thought of the generation just passed.

Miss Edith Campbell has gained prominence and we prophesy will in future be a very strong influence in Cincinnati life. Essentially a Cincinnati woman, she has taken. her B. A. and her M. A. from the university and was associated in the economics department there before becoming director of the Schmidlapp fund. She was on the state board of charities and corrections and is a keen investigator and sympathetic, worker in every sort of social activity. She was elected to the school board in the fall of 1911, being the first woman ever elected in Cincinnati. In the limitless possibilities of the wide new social work, Miss Campbell's beautiful capacity may lead her far.

One goes back to a woman who seemed to have no connection with anything in Cincinnati and yet lived here for years, was one of the foremost women of her time and was more world famous than any woman who has ever lived here. Frances Wright 'is' called "Fanny Wright, reformer," in Appleton's en-

384 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY

cyclopedia. Born in Scotland, she was an orphan, adopted the philosophy of the French materialists, and became a propagandist of her faith. She traveled in America in 1818-20 and, returning to England, published a book about her travels. She came back to this country in 1825 and bought 2,400 acres of land in Tennessee, at Nashoba, now Memphis, where she established a colony of emancipated slaves. Nashoba was held in trust for her by Lafayette, who was her intimate friend, but her plans for elevating the state of the negro were given up when it was discovered that they were in flagrant conflict with the laws of the state of Tennessee. It was Fanny Wright with whom Mrs. Trollope came to this country and whom the latter little level-headed woman described as having an enthusiasm like that of the religious fanatics of old. Mrs. Trollope found Nashoba unpleasant, water soaked, unhealthy, and felt loathing for the place and lack of sympathy for Miss Wright.

Later Fanny Wright made a lecture tour through America and, of course, met the greatest opposition. She was a free thinker, a free lover, a free-tongued reformer, and could scarcely find a hall, never a church, in which to deliver her lectures. She was a friend of Robert Dale Owen and was associated with him in his socialistic community at New Harmony, in Indiana. Later she went to France, where she became the mate of M. D'Arusmont, whose system of philosophy, was like her own. She separated from him and came to Cincinnati and continued to live here with her daughter till her death, and now lies out in Spring Grove. She wrote books and gave lectures and is perhaps the pioneer of woman's rights in this country. She is said to have been benevolent, unselfish, fearless, and eccentric.

Thus do the lives of the women of Cincinnati tell their own story. First it is that of the pioneer when the women were mothers, nourishers, defenders. After that for over three-quarters of a century they led the quiet life, the life that was essentially the feminine ideal; of work and duty. With this came religious and philanthropic activity when the exigencies of the spirit in the growing city demanded it. And occasionally the unusual woman blossomed, the poet, the novelist, the religious enthusiast or social reformer. Then in the renaissance of the seventies women began ,to band together and assume the generating and directing influence which in all social and artistic life they have kept since. At that time and ever more increasingly since, their lives have had such multifarious interests that it is impossible to include all the women who ought to be mentioned in a paper about their history. Still more impossible is it to make such a paper chronological in. its sub-topics, and so, purely for personal pleasure, a poet is chosen to end it.

Out near North Bend at her country place, which is "a quaint and picturesque affair, with spacious grounds full, of fruit and forest trees and of roses and all manner of flowers in their season," lives the poet whose soul is as sweet as honeysuckle and whose mind is as bright as a will-o'-the-wisp. It is very difficult to describe Mrs. Piatt. One despairs of downright English and flies to the lovely things of nature for comparison. She confounds one in the very first place by laughing that she is not an eminent woman and is not a Cincinnatian and does not belong in a history. But though one realizes that real gods and

CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 385

fairies and poets are never merely local, yet one believes that she intrinsically belongs to Cincinnati.

Mrs. Piatt was born in Kentucky, the descendant of a family of famous pioneers, and was educated there. She married Mr.. John James Piatt, of the far famed Indiana and Ohio family of Piatts, himself a poet and literary man of wide reputation. This union reminds one of that other ideal marriage of poets, the Brownings—it is as devoted and congenial. The Piatts lived in their country house at North Bend which Mrs. Piatt's own words have sketched enticingly, until Mr. Piatt received an appointment as United States consul in Europe. His residence at Cork and afterwards at Dublin and their sojourns in various cities of Great .Britain comprised nearly fifteen years. And though it is no longer than the period since their return to this country, with winters spent in Cincinnati and summers at North Bend, yet it seems longer, for that was their golden age when they were producing and publishing their work and meeting the choicest literary people of the English-speaking world.

It is perfectly delightful to listen to Mrs. Piatt tell in her quiet, whimsically humorous. way of Clement Shorter and Andrew Lang and Edmund Gosse, of George Bernard Shaw and William Sharp and "Willie" Yeats. William Sharp, she says, was the handsomest man she ever saw, and then in the next breath she tells you how handsome Willie Yeats is—and it is discovered that the dear little lady has an adorable weakness for handsome men. She acknowledges it blandly and one feels sorry for the brilliant grizzled Andrew because he is not handsome. Mrs. Alice Meynell and Jean Ingelow were the literary women she knew and liked best. Miss Ingelow at that time gave garden parties which were altogether the thing, at her home in London, and out among her grass and roses the most delightful literary people in this center of the world came to play. It is easy to imagine that the "handsome men" gladly paid their compliments to the witty and. charming American woman.

England has shown good taste in the choice of American writers she. has been pleased to honor, and we, too, love our poet, but it is to England's credit that Mrs. Piatt is better appreciated there than here. In addition to being on terms of intimate friendship with the greatest literary people of the age, she has appealed there to a wide public. Yet the best critic America has, has given her due credit for all her genius. Edmund Clarence Stedman includes eleven of Mrs. Piatt's poems in his American Anthology of poetry, which is high praise in consideration of the lesser space he has given to older and. wider known poets.

It is difficult to characterize Mrs. Piatt's poetry as it is to capture her personality in words, and one comes gladly to the conclusion that the woman and her poetry are one. When one asks Mr. Piatt for information about his wife he remarks :

"You want definite facts."

And then she retorts, smiling in that charming way she has of teasing him, "but there is nothing definite about me." That is the hopeless and the delightful part of it. One can tell facts about a locomotive or Mr. Herbert Spencer, but a spring shower or a poet like Mrs. Piatt does not present concrete points to be described. One sees that she has brown eyes and is little, that she has the intelligence of a great imagination, and wit, and that .human compensation

386 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY

which the gods lack-the sense of humor—and a rare courtesy. But it is the combination of all these and so much more that produces an interesting, ineffable personality and makes one want to seek her again and again. And so one goes back again and again to her poems. They have the rarest of all poetic virtues, individuality. They are written about unusual things in the simplest way, catching the actual phraseology of people and children. They are beautiful and sweet and touching and have an eerie flavor that reminds one a little of Christina Rossetti, and may have been nourished by Mrs. Piatt's life in Ireland. And yet after all, one has not characterized them. They are as appealing as a little night wind among the leaves or an unexpected tint of green in the sunset sky. One goes again inevitably to nature for comparison because only in the simplest things of nature does one find likeness for a charm that hides even while it gives itself, and for an appeal that is as vital as it is ineffable.

BENEFACTIONS

Mary MacMillan.

Benefactions is a beautiful, big, gracious word like the smile of the good brown earth, rich and fostering, in the sunlight of early spring. It is .derived directly from the Latin bene, meaning well, and. factus, meaning done, and our Anglo-Saxon expression "good deeds" would be the literal equivalent for it. But if it were used strictly in that sense everything worth while in the entire history of the city would come under its head. The city charities have been exhaustively treated elsewhere and for the most part will not be referred to here. Only the early benefactions which, small as they may seem through the diminishing glass of the years, but important in the history of the growth, of the benevolences of the city and those benefactions which are not philanthropies strictly speaking, but are rather large and important gifts for the public good and chiefly of an educational or aesthetic nature—the gifts, in other words, that are not for bread alone, but for the spirit—those will be considered under this title.

A Yankee and a man of education, Edward Mansfield became a Cincinnatian by preference and adoption and his judgment therefore is to be considered with deference when he says that though Cincinnati had natural advantages in position and resources the city owes her great growth as much to her citizens as to natural causes. "It has derived its greatest success from the sagacity, labors, zeal, enterprise, and patriotism of citizens," says Mansfield, writing in the prime of his life of the city which was just in the prime of hers. At the very earliest and then on through the years when she was gaining her sobriquet of Queen City of the .West, Cincinnati had good citizenship. Full-hearted men of beneficent deeds and feelings lived here, and if they lacked the prophetic vision which alone could have forearmed the city for the care of her present miles upon miles of inhabitants they could not perhaps be to blame for that. Their deeds were equal to their day and its needs. In the beginning when they did not dream of our modern words "slum!' and "graft," their churches and schools seemed the Only beneficent institutions or foundations necessary and toward them almost every citizen, however poor, contributed in goods or money or real estate. When

CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 387

their only houses were little log cabins they also built little log cabins for schools and churches.

A few years later when the actual necessities for living had been builded, when Cincinnati was ,"one of the dirtiest little villages" the Honorable Edward Mansfield ever saw, even then in 1i8o6806re was an effort made to raise money for a "Cincinnati University." It was a very high sounding name, but the dirty little village took itself seriously had among its citizenship men like Martin Baum, Jacob. Burnet, Daniel Drake and others who had high hopes of halls of learning among the western forests. In 1814 another effort was made. And in 1815 Captain John Kidd left the proceeds from rents of a perpetual lease which was the first, gift to the cause of education on record here. It was given to the Lancaster Seminary and afterward came to the Cincinnati College, but ultimately the city lost bequest because of an adverse claim. There were efforts made to elevate this old Lancaster Seminary into what would be considered by the learned citizens of that day a reputable college and large amounts were subscribed by General William Lytle, Oliver M. Spencer, John H. Piatt, Ethan Stone, William Cory, General James Findley, David E. Wade, Andrew Mack and others. But the real Cincinnati University must waif its building and launching till the advent of Charles McMicken many years later.

However, thesed men are to be considered benefactors as are also those wild were overseers of the poor, members of the volunteer fire brigade and others who, a little better equipped for life in money or physical strength or mentality, gave of their abundance to the benefit of their neighbors.

At an extremely early date, still when it was a "dirtiest little village," money was subscribed for libraries. Her public schools, of which Cincinnati is so justly proud, owe their very existence to a Yankee with the attractive name of Nathan Guilford, who came to Cincinnati from Massachusetts in 1816. A Yale man and evidently possessed of the New England faith in learning, he managed to get through, the legislature an act by which a tax could be levied for educational purposes. This was in 1825, a year that marked about the centre of a period of much growth and movement in the educational zone of Cincinnati.

Elnathen Kemper—another name for an old-fashioned story—gave part of his farm on Walnut Hills and Ebenezer Lane—still another name which makes one smile and wonder if all those astute old Yankee patrons of Minerva had names fit for fiction—Ebenezer and his brother offered to start a school for indigent young men who desired to become ministers. This resulted in Lane Seminary). which was incorporated in 1829 and still stands upon its original site on Gilbert avenue in Walnut Hills.

In 1820 Dr. Daniel Drake organized the Medical College of Ohio which, nearly a hundred years old, now forms the medical department of the Cincinnati University. Benefactions, like charity, usually begin at home, and the public frequently benefits financially by the absence of a family or the loss of one. Dr. Drake, never a rich man, had a family to support.and leave his money to, but he had his finger of interest and work in almost every beneficent pie cooked up for Cincinnati in all the fifty-two years of his life here. Railroads and canals, hospitals and medical colleges, literary societies and libraries, every direction of the Multifarious life of the city attracted and made active the broad, scientific, busy

388 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY

and brilliant mind of this man, who, though his name is not yet carved upon any museum or hospital or college of this city, must yet be considered one of the first and ever greatest benefactors that have blessed Cincinnati.

In 1824 a curious character died in Cincinnati. His name was Thomas Hughes and he was a Scotchman, though born in England very near to the border of Wales. He came to Cincinnati and lived in the northern part of the town, as a shoemaker, a life of peculiar seclusion with his dog and pony and hen. It was known that he had had some great sorrow and the. neighbors guessed that he had been unhappily married, but nothing definite was known by them about the patient, sensitive man. Perhaps his dog could have told them. Hughes and William Woodward had talked together of educational matters and when the quiet uncomplaining Thomas was found sick in bed by a :neighbor and taken to the neighbor's home where he died, his will revealed that he had left his property to the cause of education. His farm covers about ten squares, extending from Schiller street up to Mount Auburn, between Main and Sycamore, with two lots below Schiller. From this small golden egg has grown the beautiful new building of Hughes high school, which stands not upon the original property, but in Clifton. One cannot help wishing that the gentle' spirit of .this simple kindly man could come, some moonlight night, upon the Clifton promontory and look at the vast building of the present school. He would go back to his grave in Spring Grove in a vast peace and gladness over what his benefaction had begun.

The friend of Thomas Hughes, William Woodward, married his ward, the youthful heiress, Abigail Cutter. In 1819, that pregnant year in Cincinnati's history, Woodward began to think about the cause of education. He was a: tanner and trader and general business man—a Yankee froth Connecticut—who made money and died leaving an estate of $230,000 in realty and $28,000 in personalty. In 1826 he began to plan what in the beginning was called Woodward college and he had the pleasure of hauling away the first cartload of earth from the excavation for his new building. He lived to see the opening exercises of the school in 1831. And he was buried with his wife, Abigail Cutter, in a vault in the schoolyard over which his statue was erected. When- the present handsome Woodward high school was built the memory of William Woodward was respected and the statue moved around to the east front and in a vault beneath repose now all that remains of the earthly part of William and Abigail. Woodward gave not only the property upon which the high school stands but other valuable land, and his name belongs. with those of Kemper, Lane, Drake and Hughes as among the' benefactors of education of that period.

In 1802—what must the dirty little village have been at that time—a meeting was called at Yeatman's tavern to Start a library. Nothing is known of the fate of this literary activity, perhaps it was merged into the Circulating Library Society started in 1808. The library history of Cincinnati is varied, up and down, and complicated. There were no great gifts to it. But it has finally culminated in our notably excellent public library on Vine street and the various branch libraries in the East End, Norwood, Walnut Hills, Mount Auburn, Cumminsville, Price Hill:, and to be built in Avondale and Hyde Park, which are the benefactions of that wonderful short, stalky, little Scotch angel of the library, Andrew Carnegie.

CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 389

Another early benefactor to Cincinnati who gave of his zeal, strength, and mentality, for money he had none, was General Ormsby M. Mitchel. Just Ormsby Mitchel he was then when he planted the Cincinnati Observatory here. It is interesting to Cincinnatians to know that General Jared Mansfield, surveyor-general of the United States, managed to have the government import from England as little telescope which was set up in the old Ludlow house at Ludlow's station in Cumminsville, where the general was then living in 1806 and that same little telescope is now on exhibition at West Point as the relic of the first observatory in the United States. In 1842 the Cincinnati Astronomical Society was 'founded and soon the almost chimerical vision of founding a telescope here was born in the brain of Ormsby Mitchel. He was a young man and full of Indomitable enthusiasm and he hied himself off to Europe in search of a glass. for his telescope. He found what he wanted in Munich, and though its price was $1o,000 and he had not that amount in sight, he made a contract for it and. came home to get the money, as so many people have done ever since for foreign treasures.

The story of the building of the observatory, of Ormsby Mitchel's labor, is like a romance of whole hearted devotion. He gathered together the money by his own individual effort and paid for the lens. He watched over every detail of the work, for, finding that he could not trust the ordinary workman in so important a construction, he gave himself the added duty of overseeing every department. Finding the expense of hauling lime so great, he had a lime-kiln built on Mt. Adams. He gave up the idea of building of brick, because of its cost, and decided to make the observatory of limestone, of which there was abundance on the spot only waiting to be quarried. Exorbitant charges, were made for sand, so that he had sand-pits dug nearby. He dammed up a brook and supplied himself with water. He found no master-workmen would contract for the job under circumstances so adverse, so he became master-workman himself and superintended the building personally. And all the while he was performing the full work of one man in superintending the proper construction of this building for science, he was carrying on a man's full work as professor of mathematics and philosophy in the Cincinnati college, teaching five hours a day, from eight o'clock till one.

The land for the observatory, four acres, was given by Nicholas Longworth and in 1843 the corner-stone was laid by ex-President John Quincy Adams on the hilltop that has ever since been known by his name. Later, when the air about became so polluted by smoke that the usefulness of the observatory there was. ruined, John Kilgour gave land valued at $10,000 and $10,000 more for the construction of the present building whose corner-stone, laid in 1873, is the original one laid by. John Quincy. Adams. To the new observatory Julius Dexter added the gift of .p,000. And with the erection of the new building the observatory passed into the control of the University of Cincinnati. Up to the time of the Civil war our observatory was the finest in the United States and Ormsby Mitchel one of the greatest astronomers in the world. He made over fifty thouasnd observations. But with the breaking out of the war he went into the army, where he rose to the rank of' general. His name, known to so few Cincinnatians, ought to be revered, rather, as one of our very greatest benefactors.

390 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY

The Cincinnati University, dreamed of in the dirty little village of 1806, is now a fact, owing to the great good will of Charles McMicken.

McMicken was born in Pennsylvania in 1782 and came to Cincinnati in 1803, owning his clothing, his horse and saddle and bridle, and not much else. He worked and throve, became a merchant and finally lived in Bayou Sarah in Louisiana, but always retained his summer home in Cincinnati. He died in 1858 and at that time was supposed to be worth a million. Some time before this he had subscribed $10,000 to endow a professorship in Farmer's College, College Hill. And his will left an estate giving to Cincinnati the possibility of a great university which Cincinnati ought to have had the grace to name for him. His will, interesting to lawyers, was a curious one. He provided that none of the property in Cincinnati should be sold and that only the income from it should go to the university. He directed that the college buildings should be erected from the income of the estate and he even planned .exactly where they should be built and how much land should be left around them. Doubtless, the old gentleman saw in his imagination his western hillside and the buildings of his university rising from among the trees of it He went into all sorts. of 'small details, some of them strange and interesting, but his dream was to be beclouded and darkened before it attained any sort of realization years later. For much of his property was in Louisiana and Cincinnati's claim to that was protested by his nieces and nephews and finally lost. An effort. was made even to gain the property in Cincinnati and the case was argued by Aaron F. Perry, George E. Pugh, Alphonso Taft and, ultimately, having been carried to the supreme .court of the United States, settled in favor of the. city. In spite of the loss of about a. half million, the Cincinnati university still owes about $700,000 to Charles McMicken, and it would seem only the least courtesy on the part of Cincinnati, to say nothing of gratitude, that the institution should have been given his name.

The university has had its vicissitudes. Its. properties for a time depreciated in value. The Civil. war broke out, hurt business in Cincinnati and gave the university a painful setback. The ladies of the Cincinnati Academy of Fine Arts presented to it their collection, which Mr. McMicken had given them, and a school of design was carried on down in one of the old McMicken buildings in town and for a time this dusty garret was all there was of the great Cincinnati University. In 1874 the academic department was fully organized. Two years later Joseph Longworth gave $59,000 to the art department on condition that the university add $10,000 more. But, of course, this later came finally to the art museum. The observatory must be considered a benefaction belonging to the university, having come under the latter's control in 1873. But there were no further gifts of any importance from the foundation laid by Charles McMicken up to the time the institution was moved to Burnet woods. The dedication of the new building was in 1895 and in the same year Henry Hanna gave $50,000 for the erection of the north wing, called Hanna hall. He also provided $20,000 more for the equipment of his building. Now the benefactions followed fast. In 1898 Briggs S. Cunningham gave $60,000 for the erection of Cunningham hall, the south wing corresponding to Hanna hall on the north, in memory of his wife, Anna Evans Cunningham. And in the same year Asa Van Wormer, that richly beneficent old citizen, gave one thousand shares of Cincin-

CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 391

nati street railroad stock, the par value of which would be $50,000 for the fireproof stone building which was erected a little apart from and to the south of the main building and is known as. the Van Wormer library. Still in the same year W. A. Procter gave the Robert Clarke library of 6,759 volumes. In the next year, 1899, another splendid collection, the Enoch T. Carson Shakespeare library of 1,420 volumes, was added, and in 1900 the chemical library of Professor-Norton numbering 992 volumes. The books of the university library and of the Ohio Historical Society are all safely, comfortably and neatly housed in the Van Wormer building.

If the everlasting human craving for personal possession of property did not and would not forever obtain, the university and other institutions would be the richer: But in: spite of socialism the war between the individual and the institution goes merrily. on, and in the case of inheritance the individual is not always the loser. The Reverend Samuel J. Brown bequeathed $150,000 to establish a university. His will was set aside and his heirs gave $1,000 to the orphan asylum, $1,000 to the widows' home, property to Lane seminary, and $20,000 to the university. Matthew Thomas left the university an estate valued at $130,000. His heirs, belligerent at first, compromised upon receiving $20,000 in money, and from his benefaction the professorship in civil engineering is established.

The David Sinton chair of economics and political economy is from a gift made by Mr. Sinton in 1899 of $100,000.

Other benefactors of the university are Professor Lilienthal of New York, Mrs.. Nancy Fechheimer, Professor A. G. Weatherby, Frank J. Jones, Laura Seasongood, Christian Moerlein, Charles Windisch.

There have been no very large benefactions to the university recently except the fund bequeathed by the Misses Mary P. Ropes and Eliza O. Ropes to endow a chair in comparative literature, a gift amounting to over $76,000. Also a gift from Mrs. Hanna of about $10,000 for a fellowship in the physics department, and a bequest from Dr. Francis Brunning for the medical college, the amount not known.

Asa Van Wormer, who died in 1909, left an estate valued at $450,000, and securities valued at $140,000 to charities. He left the following gifts :

Children's. Home—Forty shares Gas Stock and 300 5th-3rd National Bank.

Colored Orphan Asylum—Forty shares Gas Stock.

Deutches Altenheim—Forty shares Gas Stock.

Protestant Rome for the Friendless and Foundlings—Forty shares Gas Stock.

Old Men's Home—Forty shares Gas Stock.

Union Bethel—Forty shares Gas Stock.

Y. W. C. A.-Forty shares Gas Stock.

Clovernook—Ten shares Gas Stock.

Home for Incurables—Ten shares Gas Stock.

Widows' Home—Ten shares Gas Stock.

Associated Charities—Forty shares Gas Stock.

Evangelical Protestant Deaconess Verein—Forty shares Gas Stock.

Bodmann Widows' Home —Forty shares Gas Stock.

Trinity M. E. Church—Forty shares Gas Stock.

392 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY

Christ Hospital—One hundred shares Gas Stock to endow free beds, in memory of his deceased wife, Julia Anna Van Wormer.

Cincinnati Orphan Asylum—Ten shares Gas Stock.

Fresh Air Fund—Forty shares Gas Stock.

The Ohio Mechanics' Institute owes its being, perhaps, to one Dr. John M. Craig, a citizen of Cincinnati, who delivered a series of lectures on experimental philosophy in as Prehistoric a year for science as 1828 and had in his kindly mind the intention of improving the qualifications and conditions of the young mechanics of the city. The 0. M. I. is, then, unbelievably old, one of the oldest institutions of the city, having been founded in 1829. It led almost a peripatetic life for years, sojourning at one time even in the Trollopean bazaar down on Third street. But finally Miles Greenwood, whose name ought to be mentioned always with honor, took hold of things, made a large donation and Obtained other subscriptions so that the trustees were able to buy the lot on the corner of Sixth and Vine and put up the building in 1848 where the school found its home from that time on down to the present day. How many people know. that Greenwood Hall, where so many rehearsals and entertainments have been given, means Miles Greenwood, the sturdy, aggressive, wholesome, good citizen?

But after a busy growing life of eighty years the O. M. I. found itself terribly cramped and root-bound in its old encompassing crock: With funds from the old property a tract of land on Walnut street along the canal was purchased and in 1908 Mrs. Mary M. Emery agreed to erect a building on the site. The splendid work the O. M. I. had done and was doing increasingly, appealed to Mrs. Emery strongly. To give this work a permanent and advantageous home seemed to her a fitting memorial to her husband, Thomas J. Emery, who believed that it is right to help youths to fit themselves for useful careers. In the old building last year there were over one .thousand, one hundred and eighty-four students. The new building will be able to take care of between three and four thousand. It virtually covers its enormous lot of one hundred and eighty by two hundred and thirty-two feet. It contains a gymnasium and shower-baths. The library is there also, the gift of Timothy C. Day, which amounts to an endowment now of $50,000. The assembly hall which, of course, is primarily for the uses of the school, is also by Mrs. Emery's bequest to be available for the Symphony Orchestra concerts and for other musical and lecture purpose, the charge for the musical performances to be merely enough to defray expenses. This hall will hold two thousand two hundred and six people. The building is an adaptation of English Gothic architecture. It, together with its equipment, and the ground upon which it stands, represents $1,000,000.

But all these statements and figures give little idea of the healthful, buoyant, useful work carried on by the O. M. I,, or the completely satisfying effect of the new building. It stands there today plain, simple, dignified, perfectly fitted to its purpose, altogether pleasing to the eye and imagination, even in its newness picturesque and bound to grow more so with the grace of the weathering years. It is, too, capitally located. For, according to Cincinnati's present plan for parks the canal will some day be a broad driveway and the land below it down to Court street will, be a green park stretching out to the westward:

CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 393

Out in Spring Grove is one monument on which are carved the names of two men who related by law could still be devoted friends. Down on Fountain square occur again the names of those two men, Tyler Davidson and Henry Probasco.

The fountain represents the culmination of two stories. Back to Germany one of them goes and has nothing whatever to do with Probasco or any of his family: It goes to Germany in i84o, when Munich was the fairy revelling place of art. Ferdinand von Miller was the head of the great bronze foundry and he and other young artists were accustomed to gather together and discuss all sorts of art questions with all the verve and impetuosity common to artists. One summer evening- they had gone to get a drink of cool water from the well in the garden at von Miller's. The subject of drinking fountains came up and August von Kreling declared his opinion that the old mythological emblems constantly used for fountains throughout Europe .were worn out, that a fountain ought to be designed to represent the beneficent uses of water to mankind. The other artists stated their opinions, the discussion waxed warm, Kreling became excited and in the twilight of the summer night drew design after design of fountains with his lighted cigar upon the polished garden table to the immense consternation and perturbation of the good mistress of the house. After this evening Kreling designed a fountain embodying his ideas of the meaning and suggestion in artistic form of the benison of water. But the model called for great expense in its execution and Germany became involved in war so that von Miller, though he tried again and again to dispose of Kreling's model and erect this great bronze fountain somewhere in Europe, was never able to do so.

In the meantime over in America, Tyler Davidson and Henry Probasco talked of fountains. To give one to the city, a beautiful one not of mythological character, but representing the beneficent uses of water, that became their intention. But here, 'too, a war broke out, the Civil war, and Mr. Davidson died. Much later, iris 1867, Henry Probasco, traveling in Europe, went to the Royal bronze foundry of: Bavaria. He wanted to order a fountain to be erected in Cincinnati to the memory of his brother-in-law, Tyler Davidson. He told Ferdinand von Miller his purpose and of his idea in regard to a fountain. Miller showed him one thing after another, nothing suited, and Probasco, talking of stained glass Windows, was about to depart when Miller suddenly remembered the long forgotten model of Kreling. He brought it out and Probasco forthwith accepted it.

Then comes the most interesting point of the story, the pugnacious phase, the climax of the third act. Cincinnati, with some apathy which she has been known to affect at various times, finally accepted Mr. Probasco's gift. After considering the square on Fifth between Walnut and Main, the city fathers finally again finally—decided to place the fountain on the square to the west. Here stood an obstacle in the shape; of an ancient market-house. It was a flimsy, wooden, rotten affair; but it was defended by a resolute company of butchers and hucksters who guarded it and regarded it as their own particular stronghold. Mr. Probasco had invited the fathers out to his mansion where, with extreme taste and tact he gave them an elegant collation before showing them the model of his fountain. In that grateful and exhilarated condition following a

394 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY

feast they vowed almost to a man to vote for the fountain. But afterwards the butchers got hold of them. Whether the butchers were a hardy set as is their reputation, and intimidated the fathers, or whether they wheedled them with the promise of innumerable roasts of beef, no one knows. At least they were frowningly victorious. So the bronze fountain stood aside for the decayed market- house till the question of supremacy was carried to the supreme court and there decided in favor of the fountain. Even then it was necessary to proceed with great caution, as art must inevitably do in its contest with utilitarianism. The butchers still zealously guarded their citadel. But at last the moment was seized. Ninety men with a guard of fifty policemen stole to the castle of the butchers when those unsuspecting ones were not at hand. The rotten old frame shell of the castle of beef gave way before. the valiant pick-axes. The poor flocked in and carried the debris away as sparrows dispose of garbage. And the butchers were conquered.

The laying of the corner-stone was a gala occasion. There were speeches by celebrated people. At the auspicious moment Mr. Probasco and, his friends stood with glasses of ice-water of which they drank a little, then he struck the corner-stone with a hammer and they all threw the pure water upon it. The fountain was formally opened to the public and presented to the city on ,October 6, 1871. There were seats for four thousand people. Speeches were made by Archbishop Purcell, Governor Hayes, Honorable William S. Groesbeck, and Dr. Lilienthal. At night all the buildings in- the vicinity were illuminated and it was estimated that up to ten o'clock in the evening not fewer than ten thousand people were on the square. Probably nothing has ever been given to the city that has excited so much enthusiasm and civic pride as the Tyler Davidson fountain.

The buildings of the art academy and the museum, standing upon a high hill in Eden Park, visible from innumerable points about the city as an attraction and inspiration to innumerable people, represent an unfinished series of benefactions. Mrs. Sarah Peter was the first benefactor back in the early fifties of the preceding century. Charles McMicken, founder of the university, gave money for the purchase of casts when an academy was started. This nucleus of our Museum is within its present walls. Later in the seventies some progressive and art-loving women 'formed and pushed along an art movement until they gained the allegiance of, some rich business men. At the opening of one of Cincinnati's famous expositions on a September evening of 1880, a formal announcement was made that Charles W. West would give $150,000 for an art museum on condition that an equal amount should be raised within a year. .On the closing night of the exposition, only a month later, on an evening in October, when this corner of the land wakens from her summer drowsiness and is at the full height of her strength and beauty, the announcement was made to a crazily enthusiastic public that the full amount had been raised.

Mr. West proposed .another $150,000 for an endowment fund. He gave in all $313,532, which, with the exception of McMicken's gift to the university, is the largest 'single benefaction in money to the city.

The Longworth family were ever very much interested patrons of art. Joseph Longworth was particularly so and in his lifetime gave to the amount of about $T00,000 to the school of design, which was under the control 'of the university.

CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 395

lt was apparently his intention to endow the school, but his death intervened. His son then proposed to endow it as a memorial to his father if the school should pass from the control of the university over to the control of the museum association. This was done and the Longworth endowment now amounts to $371,631.

David Sinton, who came to Cincinnati the first time perhaps even a trifle poorer than Charles McMicken, for it is not recorded that he had a horse and saddle and bridle, had in his young Scotch blood all the resolution and capacity of the most successful captain of industry. When he had heaped up his millions he began, to dispense much money in wise benefactions. One of these, his gift of $100,000 to the university, has been spoken of in this paper. Others of his gifts are noted elsewhere. But one of the most valuable of his benefactions is the art academy for the building of which he gave $75,000 at one time and more later.

Another in the series of benefactions to the museum is the Emma Louise Schmidlapp building added to the main structure by Mr. Jacob G. Schmidlapp in memory of his daughter. This wing, finished only a few years ago at a cost of $150,000, extends out over the winding roads of the park, is a massive, dignified still structure in stone. It is of Greek Doric architecture and contains chiefly the hall of sculpture and the library of the museum. Mr. Schmidlapp gives annually $1,500 for the maintenance of this building.

Other endowments to the museum are that of Reuben R. Springer.. of $40,000 to the museum and $11,371 to the academy, A. L. Harbeson $500 and Sallie Harbeson $500, Elizabeth H. Appleton $500, A. T. Goshorn who for years was director of the museum and one of the greatest friends to art that Cincinnati has ever known, $5,000; Clara Hunter, $200 ; and the Louise Ingalls endowment to the academy of $10,000. Other bequests are those of Mary P. Ropes, $17,200, and the Eliza O. Ropes bequest of stock of par value of $17,000 (worth $33,540), and the very recent bequest of the John J. Emery collection of pictures and of $200,000 to the museum fund.

Many gifts of rare and valuable articles have been made to the museum, the very latest of which is one of the most valuable and interesting. It is the large collection of rare old silver by Judge John S. Conner. The collection is made up. of exceptionally beautiful pieces and is rich in ecclesiastical and ceremonial silver and old Dutch articles.

But perhaps the most thoughtful and beneficent gift to the public generally is that of Mrs. Mary M. Emery, who established the Emery Free Day endowment of $100,000 in memory of her husband, Thomas J. Emery. The income from this money goes to pay the expenses of the institution on the one .day of each week when no admission is charged. So since 1907, Saturday has been free. This is a particular largess to school teachers, school- children and all workers who have a half-holiday on that day.-

Cincinnati has been so rich in public-spirited citizenship that it is impossible even to name all the men and women who have made gifts, to the public good. A group of men did much for the artistic life of the city in what was, as it were, the reconstruction period after the war. Joseph Longworth, John Shillito, George Ward Nichols, Julius Dexter, A. T. Goshorn, Reuben R. Springer are

Vol. I-26

396 - CINCINNATI-THE QUEEN CITY

names written in gold in the city's history. Mr. Springer gave to many things, his largest lump gift being for the erection of Music Hall. Cincinnati's expositions, virtually started many years ago by the O. M. I., had become famous and very large, and Cincinnati's May music festivals were becoming brilliantly artistic events when in 1875, realizing that there was no adequate home in Cincinnati for either of these, Reuben R. Springer offered to give $125,000 for a music hall if an equal sum should be raised by the citizens. This was accomplished, but the hall eventually cost $300,968.78, the exposition wings $235,000, and Mr. Springer gave, first and last, $235,000. He. contributed largely to the great organ, too, which cost $32,695. And Springer hail; the main hall of the building—in the foyer of which his statue stands—where so many splendid, concerts and operas have been given and so many great conventions held that it has won for Cincinnati the. sobriquet of :the convention city; still remains one. of the largest and finest halls in the country.

Music, of course, has had many practically-minded friends in Cincinnati. Near Music Hall on the south stands the :College of Music. This, too, received a small endowment from Reuben R. Springer, but its chiefest benefaction is that of recent years from Jacob G. Schmidlapp, who built the dormitory as a memorial to his wife.

Perhaps no gift in the name of art has ever given so much wholesome joy to so many people as the free concerts in the open air in the parks. These were initiated by William S. Groesbeck, who in 1875 gave $50,000 for band concerts to be given in Burnet woods on Saturday afternoons through the summer. More recently Jacob G. Schmidlapp and Mrs. Charles Schmidlapp; who did this in the memory of her husband, endowed a fund for free concerts on Sunday afternoons through the summer in Eden park. The latest gift, .though it is not endowed, is that -Of Mrs. Charles Fleischmann and her son, Julius Fleischmann, for free concerts on summer -evenings in the parks down town. So that altogether in the summer of 1910 there were forty-three concerts given in the parks down town (Fleischmann ), thirteen in Burnet Woods (Groesbeck), and nine: teen in Eden Park (Schmidlapp).

The vision of the: people sitting there in quiet delight by the hundreds upon the benches and in the grass of the: sloping hillside, breathing the sweet air and listening to the music they love on a 'summer afternoon, is a "benison on the giver." Mothers go there and rest while the wee toddlers run so perilously to and fro on the greensward before the grandstand ; young-girls go there with their sweethearts ; old men go there for whom even many weary years of toil have not killed their love of music—you: see them all sitting silent on the benches. And you wish for more parks and more band concerts.

It is a difficult thing to write of the good deeds of the living. One seems to them, if they are retiring and they generally are, perhaps to be dealing out fulsome flattery ; to others one seems like the foolish or paid tool of a rich man's ambition., There is so. much ambition and flattery in the world that it is hard for people to 'take a simple honest statement in simplicity and good faith. Yet it is impossible to write a paper like this without' some such statements for the sake of historical fairness. Moreover one would have to be an emotional impossibility in writing of the great benefactions of the last few years without feeling some

CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 397

enthusiasm. The thought of the gifts of Hanna, L. A. Ault who has promoted the park interests and 'just given a park worth about $100,000, the work of George R. Balch and others who pulled the canal bill through, are kindling firebrands not merely to civic patriotism but to the deeper broader. feeling of human kindness.

No woman has ever done more good in Cincinnati than Mrs. Mary M. Emery has done. Perhaps no citizen, man or woman, has ever given so much money away in different benefactions. The Free Day endowment at the Art Museum and the building of the O. M. I. have been spoken of. Another large gift is that of the parish house of Christ church. The practical philanthropic work of Christ church was initiated by the Reverend Alexis Stein, a memory dear still to the hearts of many Cincinnatians, only about a dozen years ago. It grew so rapidly and Was so cramped that Mrs. Emery bought property. adjoining the church and erected a large, adequately appointed building, whose tower is a perfect piece of architecture full of grace, meeting the eye with the joyful satisfaction which perfect things give. This tower can be seen from many places—looking down Fourth, street it is particularly attractive and together with the steeple of the old First Presbyterian church and the tower of the Scottish Rite cathedral, it makes a pleasing bit of architectural effect in the city's very heart. The work of Christ church, one of the greatest parish house activities in the country, is practically due to the advantages of this building. There are now two thousand five hundred, individuals organized there' in clubs and classes. There are twenty organizations, with twenty-two regular meetings and many more occasional meetings .weekly. There have been as many as fourteen meetings in one day. The baths' are particularly beneficial and prosperous and are used to the extent of two thousand eight hundred a month.

Mrs. Emery has personally contributed to the Anna Louise Inn, the Cincinnati Orphan Asylum, Home for Incurables, Newsboys Home, Salvation Army Rescue Home, St. Joseph's Orphan Asylum, and through her husband's interest, to the Colored Orphan Asylum, the Episcopal Hospital for Children on Mount Auburn, the Fresh Air Farm at Terrace Park, the Girls Friendly Society Vacation Home nat Clermontville, Ohio, the Childrens' Home, and the Home for the Friendless.

Mrs. Emery's latest gift is the Mary M. Emery Bird Reserve. And this to some of us seems the most delightful philanthropy possible. In 1900 Mrs. Emery bought a tract' of wood' containing two or three acres, built a boy and cat proof high fence about it and turned it over to the biological department of the university, whose head, Professor Benedict, is so 'much interested in birds. A very practical object of the gift is to furnish a model to municipalities to follow in creating reserves for bringing back wild 'birds to the cities. 'Birds are a material good, as any biologist or forester knows, but they are, too, a potent element in the love of nature without which man is little better than beast' and without which there is no art. For beauty is as necessary to good living as bread.

The most unique benefaction to the city is the Schmidlapp fund, an invention of the active, brain of Jacob G. Schmidlapp. The fund is distinctly his original idea, there having been nothing just like it in the world before. A gift to working girls, it is a memorial to his daughter, Charlotte R. Schmidlapp.

398 - CINCINNATI-THE QUEEN CITY

It combines the purposes of a scholarship and a loan association and adds that most advantageous element of all, personal interest and sympathy. In 1907 Mr. Schmidlapp set aside certain properties the income only from which was to be used. According to the trust agreement $3,000 of the interest from these properties was to be distributed the first year and increased every year by $500 until the amount distributed should reach $6,00o a year, after which it was not to be increased till the principal reached $400,000 when $1o,000 should be distributed, and after that as the principal increased by $1o0,000 the income to be distributed should be increased by $2,500 until the principal should reach $2,000,000, when, at the discretion of the executive committee: all the income might be distributed. That is to say, part of the income will be dispensed each year, the rest accruing to the principal till that becomes $2,000,000. And the sum dispensed will range from $3,000 a year to the income from $2,000,000, which will be a very large sum of money, among the hundred thousands, if the property be well invested as it assuredly will be. The administration of the money is under the control of five directors of the Union Savings Bank and Trust company, together with the mayor of the city and the president of the university. Mr. Schmidlapp reserves the right to change the conditions of this agreement and provides that if by the laws of the state of Ohio, the fund becomes taxable, it shall revert to his estate.

The thought was in the donor's mind that a great many girls who are compelled to work outside of their homes, find their labor in surroundings uncongenial and often harmful to them, when, by a better education they could, obtain employment not detrimental to them physically or morally but making rather for strength and beauty both then and in the domestic life they, would lead later on. Miss M. Edith Campbell is the sympathetic, wise, and judicious director of the fund. So many girls and women applied to her that it was decided to limit the age of the applicant to between fourteen and twenty-five years. Money is given to a girl, when the director deems it proper, whereby she may acquire proficiency in stenography, or music, or academic or whatever she may feel herself best fitted for. This is regarded as a loan which she will repay when she becomes. self-supporting. And by repaying it she herself becomes a part of the scheme for helping others. The establishment of the fund has led to the establishment of the Vocation and Employment bureau, the business of which is to investigate the conditions surrounding girls and women who work, and .to help them in any way possible.

Mr. Schmidlapp's next benefaction and the one in which he is perhaps more interested than in anything he has done so far, are model tenement houses for workingmen. The first of these he is beginning to construct in South Norwood in the autumn of 1911.

It is a strange and touching thing that most benefactions are the fruit of sorrow. The desire to pay tribute to some one passed into the silence, the longing to perpetuate his name and memory has led thousands of people to make priceless gifts to. their fellow men. And those beneficiaries, unmindful, wander delightedly in free art galleries or study in their young enthusiasm in free schools, or enjoy bountiful comforts, or listen to the gay notes of music, because of the long sleep of some one beloved.

CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 399

OLD INNS AND WAYFARING.

Mary MacMillan.

"There be three things which go well, yea, four are comely in going: A lion which is strongest among beasts, and turneth not away for any; a greyhound; an he-goat also; and a king against whom there is no rising up."

So sang the Maker of Proverbs in his poetic series of three, yea four things that were to him full of strange wonder and interest past finding out. Today .he might have added, "There be three things of romantic allurement, yea four, that entice the imagination. A road that windeth on over the hill; a sail at sea; a train that glideth away into the night ; and an ancient inn that bath given shelter to wandering souls."

Travel, the movements of human beings, has had in it a romantic interest even from the times of the migration of the races on down to latter day jauntings into foreign lands. It has always charmed poets and story-tellers and almost every one of them has used it with joy and cunning wisdom, because the millions of others who can not make poems or tell stories, do nevertheless love adventure, movement and life, strange lands and the interest of new people with stories looking out of their eyes. From pleasant Dan Chaucer on down through the sweet prosiness of Longfellow to the wild vitality of Kipling, there have been pilgrimages, and from Omar through good Sir Walter to Stevenson, "there have been caravans and inns. We like it, for, though we English-speaking people have not the word for "wanderlust" in our language, we have the feeling in our blood; and even while we sit at home under our own vine and fig-tree, we travel in our fancies. And we like to read about the curious wayfaring of others.

Material comforts have so far developed in the last few years, we travel with, so much ease in fast-running electric cars or taxicabs, over smooth streets, or we glide across plains and over mountains in quiet, great easy-rolling Pullman coaches, breaking our journeys at hotels so luxurious that in the future hotel will take the place of the word palace as a synonym for elegant comfort; we set out from home in fact to find more splendid conveniences than we leave behind, compared to which travel in the old days meant such torture that we wonder how our ancestors ever had the courage to go away from home at all. Then: we remember that the spirit of change and adventure has been rife in animal life ever since the first oyster began to wriggle in his ancestral bed. To the spirit of change and adventure we owe our present home as much as to anything else. What more could have prompted and upheld that austerely romantic old soldier of fortune, the Sieur de la Salle, to paddle his solitary canoe round the Great Lakes or plunge down through the forests to discover the Ohio river? It was that quite . as much as anything else which led our ancestors out to homes in the wilderness. And it was that as much as it was necessity that lured them to travel later, on horseback and in bungling stagecoaches—that spirit which then and now and forever will be the smooth butter to the bread of necessity and will get the race along with pleasure into new prospects.