All unconsciously the country was drifting steadily towards the great testing time of character, and those heroic souls which stood the fierce trial were being fitted for the crucial hour. Institutions were being established; organizations founded; buildings erected and great improvements made which counted enormously in the development of the town; but then, as ever, it was the opinions, convictions and ideals which were slowly taking form, out of sight, sometimes, that were of the greatest interest and importance. As we look back upon those years between 1819 and 1839, we clearly see that they were in the highest degree formative, and that the next period was to be but the result of conclusions come to in the questionings and debates that grew out of the discussion of those elemental principles of the divine and human government, as interpreted by the institution of human slavery.

Let it be observed, now, that the end of this period was also the end of the first half century of the city's existence. The fourth decade of the individual life has been called "the old age of youth and the youth of old age." Cincinnati, if cities are like persons, had reached the old age of its youth and the youth of its old age. It was fitting, therefore, that the 50th anniversary should be properly observed; and on the 26th day of December, 1838 (because it was then supposed the landing took place on that date instead of the 28th), a dignified and worthy celebration was held. At sunrise, at noon and at night, salutes were fired. There was a magnificent parade in the streets and a crowded assemblage of citizens in the old First Presbyterian church, where prayers were offered by Drs. Wilson and Burke, and a magnificent oration (of three hours and twenty minutes' duration), delivered by Dr. Drake. At its close a banquet was held in the "Pearl Street House," where toasts were eloquently responded to by distinguished orators. It was a great and glorious day and celebrated the close of a distinct and definite period. But, after all, such lines of demarcation are purely artificial. There is no real break or interruption in the onward flow of events in the lives of nations and cities as there is none in the onward flow of a river. Occasionally great movements are brought to an abrupt close; old conceptions vanish and, even, burst as bubbles do; swift and radical transitions in business, politics and religion occur; great men and even groups of great men die; but the panorama continues to unroll. Not for a moment can it stop. by day or night. Forever and forevermore, the present gives birth to the future. The happenings of today inaugurate the movements of tomorrow. The new is forever issuing from the old; the future from the past. The celebrants of the great festival retired at night with the feeling that the curtain had been rung down upon a finished act; but already the scenery for the next had been arranged and the drama was going forward. Old truths will once more be reiterated; old errors will again struggle to be accepted; old battles will be renewed. The web will be forever in the spinning.

CHAPTER X.

THE CITY FROM 1839 TO 1861.

THE DECADE FROM 1839 TO 1849 ONE OF GREAT DEVELOPMENT-CIST'S DIRECTORY PUBLISHED IN 1841-RACE RIOTS AND OTHER DISTURBANCES THE RACE PROBLEM MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS-LINCOLN, STANTON-RALPH WALDO EMERSON, KOSSUTH, WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON, CHARLES DICKENS, GENERAL WINFIELD SCOTT, RUTHERFORD B. HAYES AND A HOST OF OTHER NOTABLES.

We have now arrived at a point in the history of Cincinnati where the city may be said to have begun 'to find itself." The decade from 1839 to 1849 was that of the greatest development in every direction which it had yet known, and although the growth as measured by figures declined, the evolution of the interior forces the ideas, the aspirations, the purposes of the people went steadily forward until at last in the great crisis of the Civil war all were melted into a solution out of which they emerged recrystallized.

As a matter of course, our sources of information about this much more recent period have increased in numbers, in accuracy and in fulness until our trouble is no longer to discover facts; but to eliminate them. So copious has become the fund of knowledge, in fact, that its very repletion tends to choke the stream of narration. From this moment and on until the last word is written, the historian cannot help but feel a sense of guilt because by reason of his inviolable space limitations he must exclude from his annals incidents, events, and people of surpassing interest. He cannot record all that he would, and is certain that he will not record all that he ought. Every historian's sense of the relative importance of the various items which he has to consider, is imperfect. Always and everywhere his personal likes and dislikes; affinities and antipathies; struggles and weaknesses must influence his selections and rejections. What you would be interested in might be of the least concern to me, while what I am fascinated by may seem to you intensely dull and stupidly exaggerated.

For this grief of realizing that his records are thus certain to be inadequate, the historian has a melancholy consolation in the fact that other tellers of the great story will arise to give their due importance to the things which he has magnified or minimized. The lawyer, the educator, the journalist, the physician, the banker, each of whose thoughts are colored by his own experience, will stretch. out a hand over the flood of oblivion in which other authors have permitted scenes and people to sink, and save them for future remembrance.

This essay is but an interpretation in which the dominant purpose is to seize upon strategic movements, portray critical incidents, bring forward creative spirits and show the psychology of the city's growth, with the distinct and definite aim of pointing out the kind of people and the sort of movements that count for progress and good citizenship.

We stand here, then, at the beginning of the second half century, meekly enough trying to pick out the most shining threads in the warp and woof of the ever-growing fabric.

It is the fact of growth, indeed, that strikes us with ever-increasing force. The consciousness that a city is a living organism, with a spirit and character of its own, intensifies with every period of advance. Like a gigantic creature of the prehistoric ages, the mysterious entity feeds and grows until its magnitude awakens awe. With insatiable hunger it swallows little settlements that once had a life and character of their own, assimilating them as a leviathan does its food. It reaches out its great tentacles, fastens upon new acres of forest; of farm; of hilltop and valley, and overspreads them with its mighty bulk, consisting of homes and stores; of shops and mills; of churches and schools. Through its ever new and numerous veins and arteries of street and boulevard flow the ever-increasing streams of life blood, the drops of which are individual men and women and children.

That sense of mystery which one feels at surveying the growth of a plant deepens into awe as he watches the growth of a city. The shrewdest intellect can do nothing more than guess the direction or quality of this growth, for sometimes a pebble may turn it aside, while at others a mountain cannot successfully oppose its progress. A new invention; a remarkable personality; a different route of travel will alter its habits and even its character. No single individual can absolutely impose upon it the laws of its being; none can eliminate; few can influence them. By some internal force and in accordance with some heavenimposed ordinances the growth goes forward; but through and by the intellect and will of the people, for they are its spirit; they are its will.

At the beginning of its second half century, Cincinnati stood seventh among the great cities of America (they were all small then) and bade fair to attain. a higher rank in the future. Everybody in the country believed this and its own inhabitants had the most boundless faith in its destiny. One of them (a little later on), J. W. Scott, went so far as to prophesy that by the middle of the year 2000 it would be the greatest city in the world! No wonder that he thought so, for, at any rate, history had preserved no other record of a growth so great in a time so short. In 1840 there were 46,338 inhabitants!

Several good accounts of the general appearance of the town and of its people in the first few years of the sixth decade have been preserved. W. G. Lyford, a traveler from the east ; Rev. J. I. Buckingham, an Englishman, and a most distinguished countryman of his, Charles Dickens, visited and recorded impressions in which there is a striking agreement. They found the city substantially and beautifully built. The houses were comfortable and sometimes elegant and generally enclosed by spacious grounds. The streets were thronged with busy and prosperous people. The public landing was a fascinating place and the sight of as many as thirty great steamboats coming in and going out or lying at the dock made the scene most picturesque. Dickens "was charmed with the appearance of the town and its adjoining suburb, Mt. Auburn, from which the city, lying in an amphitheater of hills, forms a picture of remarkable beauty and is seen to advantage."

In 1841 Charles Cist issued the first of his remarkable directories, from which a realistic conception of the city, physical, mental, moral, educational and

religious, may be drawn. Out of the encyclopedic mass of information we select at random, almost, the facts that in the current year $5,200,000 were invested in commercial houses and $14,541,182 in manufactures; that there were five incorporated and two unincorporated banks; that there were seven insurance companies; that there were twenty-nine periodicals; that the common schools contained 4,000 pupils under the guidance of sixty teachers; that the churches were increasing and prospering.

In 1851 came the second of the directories, and the city had then arisen to the rank of the fifth (instead of the seventh) great city. It had reached to the number of sixteen wards and included the space between Mill creek on the west; the river on the south and east and McMillan street, on the north and northeast. The total number of buildings was 16,286. The turnpikes had been immensely improved and extended. The Miami and White Water canals were doing an enormous business. The Little Miami; the Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton were in process of construction. Nine hotels were entertaining innumerable guests, the chiefest being the Burnet House, "acknowledged to be the most spacious and, in its interior arrangements, the finest hotel in the world." Horace Greeley is quoted as saying in the Tribune in 1850, "It requires no keenness of observation to see that Cincinnati is destined to become the focus and market for the grandest circle of manufacturing thrift on the continent. Her delightful climate; her unequaled and ever-increasing facilities for cheap and rapid commercial intercourse with all parts of the country and the world; her enterprising and energetic population; her own elastic and exulting youth; are all elements which predict and insure her electric progress to giant greatness. I doubt if there is another spot on earth where food, cotton, timber and iron can all be concentrated so cheaply—that is at so moderate a cost of human labor in producing and bringing them together—as here. Such fatness of soil, such a wealth of immense treasures-coal, iron, salt and the finest clays for all purposes of use— and all cropping out from the steep and facile banks of placid, though not sluggish navigable rivers. How many Californias could equal in permanent worth the valley of the Ohio!"

The third and last of Mr. Cist's books was issued just before the war, in '59, and the story is still one of great though not so extraordinary expansion. There were sixteen public schools (besides the two high schools), with 17,685 pupils. One hundred and eighty Christian societies and six Jewish synagogues are enumerated. There were fifty-three periodicals, sixteen local insurance societies; the manufactured and industrial products attained a total of $112,254,400, the imports reached to $74,348,758, and the exports to $47,497,095.

As for the political aspects of the situation it may be said that the ever-expanding life of this great, growing and beautiful city was presided over by several mayors, all of whom deserve mention because of their official position, and some for their personal traits.

1833-1843.

Samuel W. Davies, who was first elected in 1833, was re-elected again and again, holding office until his death in 1843. He was indeed a most remarkable person, being "nearly six feet in height and endowed with intellectual, moral and spiritual characters of the highest type."