MURAT HALSTEAD.-Out on a farm at Paddy's Run, in Butler county, was born September 2, 1829, Murat Halstead. There was not much of the French tongue in Paddy's Run and he was named and called Mu-rat. His father was a North Carolinian, but was brought to Ohio by his parents when a very little child, and the mother was a native of Ohio, so that Murat was a Buckeye born and bred. The boy worked on the farm and received his education at the old Farmers' college at College Hill. When only eighteen he began to contribute to the papers and soon, abandoning his intention of studying law, entered journalism as a profession. He was first on the Gazette, then on the Enquirer, after that as news editor of the Atlas, and associate editor of the Columbian. In 1853 he became city editor of the Commercial, soon bought a small share in it, and in 1866 assumed entire control of the paper. When the two morning papers, the Commercial and the Gazette, were combined he was elected president of the company and was the recognized chief of the big republican paper. Mr. Halstead composed constantly editorials and other work, and as he is said to have produced usually about three thousand words a day, in his long life of newspaper activity he probably wrote more than any journalist who ever lived. In this long life—he died only in 1908-spent in journalism, while he wrote for nearly every important paper in the United States and was at the head of one of the great ones in Brooklyn, it is as a Cincinnati man and as an immense force in republican politics, the head of the great republican organ of this section of the country, that he is to be considered, one of the greatly eminent journalists of the day.

JACOB DETSON Cox was born in Montreal, Canada, on the twenty-seventh day of October, 1828. He studied at and was graduated from Oberlin college, Ohio, taught school, and studied law-exactly the process so many fine young men have gone through. He practiced law in Cincinnati, was an Ohio state senator, a general in the Civil war, and after that was made governor of the state. He declined renomination and practiced law till he became President Grant's secretary of the interior. He was president and then receiver for the Toledo and Wabash railroad, and was elected to Congress from the Toledo district. After that General Cox returned to Cincinnati, where he practiced his profession and became dean of the law school and later president of the university. At one time in the state senate were Cox, E. A. Ferguson, Justice Woods and Garfield, an unusual combination. And it was General Cox who was the guest of General Burnside in the old Pike Opera House on the night of the thrilling jubilation over the battle of Vicksburg. He died in August, 1900. His memory is fresh in the minds of many Cincinnatians, a man of infinite capacity, though perhaps most vividly remembered here for his connection with the law school and university.

CHARLES PETTIT MCILVAINE, the son of a United States senator, was born in New Jersey, January 18, 1799, graduated from Princeton when seventeen years old, and was made a priest of the Protestant Episcopal church at twenty-two. His first parish was in Georgetown, D. C. A few years later he became chaplain and professor at West Point, and after other parish work he took a professorship in the University of New York. In 1832, when he was only thirty-three years of age, he was made bishop of Ohio. Before coming out he raised $30,000 among his friends in the east for Kenyon college and the theological seminary at Gambier, of which he became president. When the Civil war came on Bishop

McIlvaine worked devotedly in the sanitary commission. He was given honorary degrees by Princeton, Brown, and Oxford and Cambridge of the English universities. He died in Florence, Italy, March 13, 1873. Born the year Washington died, he was said to bear a strange resemblance to the president. These are the few facts in the life of a noble and sweet-souled man who was so well remembered, so deeply beloved by thousands.

SISTER ANTHONY O'CONNELL was born in Limerick, Ireland, and was brought to this country when a wee little child by her parents. She lived in Maine and Boston and entered the community at Emmetsburg when twenty years old. Two years later she came to Cincinnati, beginning here her life of entire devotion to humanity as a sister of charity. She worked successively in St. Peter's Orphan Asylum, the St. Aloysius, the St. Joseph, and the St. John's hospitals, most of the time as head of these institutions. When the Civil war broke out she was the first to answer a hurry call for nurses after the battle of Pittsburgh Landing, and from that time on to the close of the struggle she gave her services to the sick and wounded soldiers. When it was over she returned to Cincinnati and started a foundling home, where she lived in her work till her death in 1898. She lies in the little Mt. St. Joseph cemetery and her grave is always decorated on Memorial Day by the old soldiers who have christened her "The Angel of the Battlefield." Her picture shows a pure, wistful, Irish face, and the record she has left is that of the utter beauty of human kindness.

Perhaps it is impossible to so compare the decades of our history as to be able to select the most important. While some seem less significant than others in respect of this or that, each one excels in something else. But taking as much into consideration as our minds can possibly hold, we think that the "the seventies" were the most fascinating ten years of our history.

This may be, however, because our own interests are so much concerned with the development of Cincinnati's higher life. We see in them that sort of activity which is, by far, the noblest in a city's soul. The struggle for wealth or size has little of real grandeur or dignity. Mere bigness counts for much less in a city. than a mountain. There are cities containing millions of people in China (and) perhaps in America) that cannot hold a candle to little Athens in the days when her population numbered but a few thousand; because among them there was a Phidias, a Pericles, a Socrates, a Plato or a Demosthenes, and also because in them the love of truth, beauty and goodness became a consuming passion,

CHAPTER XIV.

THE EIGHTIES.

POPULATION INCREASES TO 253,139-FIRST TRAIN ON THE CINCINNATI SOUTHERN GOES THROUGH TO CHATTANOOGA-HARRISON, THE "BOY PREACHER," CLAIMS THREE THOUSAND CONVERTS-RAILROAD RIOTS-THE "BERNER" RIOT-DESTRUCTION OF THE COURTHOUSE.

Except for two events of first-class importance the "eighties" are dull and unimportant years. It is true that innumerable things happened, any of which, taken alone and described in detail, would make a book.

In 1880 the number of inhabitants had risen to 253,139.

The first train on the Cincinnati Southern went through to Chattanooga and the event was celebrated by a banquet in Central Music Hall, at which three thousand people sat down.

The national democratic convention was held.

The Times and the Star consolidated.

A company was formed to light the city with electricity.

The Little Miami depot was built.

The Metropolitan National Bank, the Security Insurance Company, the Union National Bank and the Exchange National Bank were established.

The "Boy Preacher" Harrison held revival meetings and claimed three thousand converts.

In 1882 there was a violent struggle between the more strict and the lower elements over "the Sunday closing law;" the National Forestry Congress and the American Library associations held annual meetings; dinners were given to George Ward Nichols and Judge Alphonso Taft.

In 1886 occurred the railroad labor riots.

In 1888 there was a bitter contest over the Owen law which closed the saloons on Sunday. This also was the year of the great centennial exposition of the Ohio valley and central states.

Over a file of the newspapers of this decade one could linger for many days; but soon all interest would be absorbed by those two events which will forever characterize the eighties, one of a purely sporadic nature, the flood; the other symptomatic in the highest degree, the courthouse riot.

In 1883 there occurred a rise of the Ohio river of such stupendous proportion as to throw its predecessors entirely in the shade. Of these predecessors there had been many.

A river which drains twenty thousand square miles of country, much of which is mountainous, will have its ups and downs. From the first year of their arrival

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the pioneers began to respect the varying moods of the mighty but unstable stream. It was a flood which convinced them that Columbia could not be the metropolis of the northwest, because it was too easily overflowed. The location of our city was made with reference to this danger, and, although it has often been disturbed by the great annual freshets, it had never, until at this time, experienced a real catastrophe. Of these great risings of the waters, the first authentic record was made in 1832, when on February the 18th the river reached the abnormal height of sixty-four feet and three inches.

The next great disaster occurred in 1847, December 17th, when the waters rose to sixty-three feet and seven inches.

Naturally, the residents accepted these records as the limit of the river's antics and their buildings and their businesses were all adjusted to what they thought its utmost power to overflow its banks.

On the 15th of February, 1883, however, the monster put forth a supreme effort; rose to sixty-six feet and four inches and produced widespread disaster. The pumping engines of the city water works were stopped; but fortunately there was a supply in the reservoirs large enough to tide the people over. The gas works, however, were submerged and the city was enveloped in darkness. More than fifteen hundred business houses, together with innumerable residences, were partially inundated and twenty-four hundred people thrown upon the public for charitable assistance. In Covington, Newport, Bellevue and Dayton the situation was equally desperate. Upon the suggestion of Melville E. Ingalls, the chamber of commerce organized relief committees and help was given generously.

It was hoped when the crest of the flood had passed that the merciless river. had done its worst; but in the very next year its power was exercised in a far more terrible manner still. The first two weeks of January were cold, with frequent light falls of snow, which on the 14th and 19th were increased considerably and were varied with sleet and rain, while the temperature fluctuated wildly from zero to sixty degrees above. On the twenty-ninth there was a general rainfall over the southern half of the water-shed and the streams began to swell in an ominous manner. The Ohio rose steadily and at seven o'clock on the 4th of February had attained a height of forty-nine feet and eleven and one-half inches. On the next day the river-wise ones began to scent danger; but the general public pursued the even tenor of its way. News from all directions began to come in and to reveal a critical situation. The Licking, the Big Sandy, the New, the Kanawha, the Muskingum, Youghiogheny, Monongahela and Allegheny were vomiting immeasurable volumes of water into the choked channels, and streams like the Kentucky and Miami contributed to the trouble by holding its waters back.

On February 6th the levee at Lawrenceburg gave way and the full extent of the peril began to manifest itself by this and similar disasters. At once the lethargy of the city was broken and the safe sprang to the help of the imperilled. Henry C. Urner, president of the chamber of commerce, appointed a committee and a fund of $3,000 was appropriated. S. F. Dana was chosen treasurer and Sidney D. Maxwell secretary. The common council authorized the city to borrow money to a sum not exceeding a hundred thousand dollars to meet the