of age this remarkable boy began to study and continued so to do for four long years.

An ordinary visit by a Doctor, even such as Goforth, would not be an expensive luxury in our day at the schedule price of 25 to 50 cents. Every physician kept his own drug store, ordering his medicines directly from the East once or twice a year. They pulled teeth for a quarter and plugged them when decayed Iwith tin foil instead of gold. * * *

Are you tired? Nothing is so tedious as a mere mathematical enumeration of even the most beautiful scenes, exciting incidents and wonderful people. I must not weary you, although it goes against the grain to pass by a score of other men, as interesting if not as great as these. As they rise before the mind's eye, rugged, purposeful, masterful men, all; setting the stamp of their personality ineffaceably upon the sensitive material of the city's character, one is tempted to adopt the words of the sacred author and, in despair, sum up by crying out "What shall I more say, for the time would fail me to tell of" Martin Baum, Peyton Short, John S. Gano, David E. Wade, David Ziegler, William Ruffin, Judge William Goforth and a host of others whom (if the world was not unworthy) it may be truly said they must be named among the worthies of the world.

I tell you these were men: "all wool and a yard wide!" "They stood four square to every wind that blew." We shall not see their like again, for the conditions that produced them have passed away forever.

They stand out clear and strong against the commonplace background of their daily lives. Than the crude stage on which they played their parts none could furnish fewer accessories of a great drama. They are like the actors of the Shakesperian tragedies and comedies in the rude theaters of that primitive age They must either be great in themselves or be made contemptible by their sur roundings.

No individual character and no community can be properly conceived without a more or less clear conception of its immediate environment. Whether we are the products of environment to so complete a degree as the scientist would have us believe, we are to a great degree, at least. The air produces the bird; the sea the fish; the forest the lion; the desert the cactus and the swamp the fern; a Virginia plantation a Washington; a Kentucky wilderness a Lincoln.

Concerning the development of individual genius we may not dogmatise; but of this we feel assured, that the effect of the institutions, the people, the buildings, the stage of culture prodigiously modify, if they do not wholly create the soul; the personality of a community.

Attempt then to form a mental concept of those surroundings-a half completed clearing in a wilderness, with logs lying scattered about like jack straws; charred tree trunks rising like stakes at which giant martyrs had been burned; stumps standing in the streets like snags in a river; the roads hub-deep with mud; the side walks mere trails along which foot passengers could make their way in wet weather only by jumping from board to board; or rock to rock, and even crawling along a rail fence; a rivulet running here; a frog pond lying there; the rude log cabins scattered irregularly in every direction; drunken Indians reeling through the streets; rough and tumble fights breaking out in the saloons; half maudlin soldiers picking quarrels with the citizens; horses, cattle and hogs wandering at will; the people clad in skins and homespun; a mail from the East

arriving but once a week or two; a book, a newspaper, a magazine as rare as hen's teeth; no luxuries; no arts; nor conveniences. Can any good come out of such another Nazareth? Let us see!

Its inhabitants had abandoned civilization; but only to reproduce it. They had but little of the machinery necessary to do so; but were fertile in crude expedients and substitutes. Lacking palaces and temples; mahogany furniture and gold plate; silks and satins; they did their best with log houses, pewter dishes and homespun. A grotesque appearance they made (to cynical observers) clad in blue jeans, wallowing through muddy streets; sitting in meeting houses with rifles on their knees; carrying water in buckets suspended from their shoulder yokes; counting the scalps of Indians; dancing upon floors which creaked beneath their heavy tread to music that was probably barbaric. But such are the crude beginnings from which all culture springs.

CHAPTER VI.

INCIDENTS.

THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH ERECTED IN 1792-THE FIRST SCHOOL ESTABLISHED A NEWSPAPER, THE CENTINEL, IS STARTED JAIL BUILT OF LOGSCOURTS INAUGURATED ENSIGN WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON LICKS DANIEL RYAN AND KNOCKS DOWN A DEPUTY SHERIFF WHEN ATTEMPTING TO ARREST HIM CRIMES THE POST OFFICE.

How difficult it is in the first place to conceive and in the second place to portray a situation so remote; people so different and incidents so unfamiliar! After spending many months or years in poring over the original documents which have preserved forever the records of such distant days, the vanished life begins. to reappear; and the scenes to reconstruct themselves before the student's mind. He no longer beholds the metropolis of the present day, for it has somehow vanished and in its place he sees a scattered hamlet of log houses. The people who walk its streets have been dead for many, many years; but, are alive again. It is with those ghostly beings and not the breathing people of today that he consorts. So long have I contemplated the buildings and the citizens of that little Losantiville that I can see them and it as plainly as Covington or Dayton; Avondale or Clifton !

But you are to bestow only a passing glance on that which I have stared at until its image remains upon the mind like that of the sun upon the eye. To so present these pictures that you, also, shall behold it-this is the problem of art! A Thucydides, Tacitus, Gibbon, Macaulay may accomplish the miracle: but how impossible is it to the tyro!

I have daubed in a background consisting of geologic preparations extending over aeons; and of catastrophic movements of tribes and nations covering decades; and now the characters and incidents rush pell mell upon and over them, and I do not know how in the world to arrange the min order and fix them in their places! I have marched the heroes across the stage in a stiff and informal procession and now shall introduce some disconnected scenes and independent facts i which they acted, in the desperate hope that by some good fortune (in the place of a perfect art) a true conception of the life of those vanished days may form itself within your minds.

Incidents, etc.

In 1791 about half of the able bodied men were compelled to join the army and several had been killed, while a few of those remaining at home had been frightened by the Indian troubles and slipped away. The only commercial development of importance was the erection of a primitive horse mill for grinding

corn.

In 1792 there was a very considerable development and a traveler by the name of Heckwelder estimated that the population outside the garrison had risen to 900. The town was over run with merchants and overstocked with goods, he affirmed. It teemed with idlers and the place "resembled Sodom!" But this element of desperate characters were likely to be pushed across the river into Kentucky, he thought, and would probably "drift down to New Orleans!"

Heckwelder took several trips into the surrounding country and was entertained by Judge Symmes, and also in Fort Washington, where he witnessed the hanging of a murderer. On the next Sunday Winthrop Sargent gave him a dinner, and on the 28th General Wilkinson did the same in the Fort.

Heckwelder was interested, astonished and horrified all together; but hopeful and confident that he knew how to improve the situation! "I believe it will be in my power to advise them (the colonists) on the methods they are to take to have justice done them!"

Events crowded upon each other in 1792. It was in it that the First Presbyterian Church was erected; a little, rude building constructed from the logs cut upon the spot.

Several log cabins and three or four frame houses were put up. The first school was established and attended by about thirty scholars.

The "Centinel" newspaper was started.

The first of the great floods swept down the channel of the river, causing destruction and exciting terror.

The first fire took place, resulting in the burning of a hundred acres of fallen timber and brush, and frightening the citizens into clearing up their lands.

In 1793 the first jail was erected, a rude log cabin one story and a half high. In 1793 Wm. McCash made the first water cart (?) consisting of two long poles fastened together for support of barrel, rear ends dragging and front ends serving as shafts for horse. Soon afterwards his brother made a real cart with broad wheels fastened to axle which rolled in staples.

Kenneth Morton, a school teacher (in a blacksmith shop near the landing) "whipped grown young men and women with a hickory gad until they jumped from the floor."

Francis Menessier, at the foot of Main Street, in a coffee house, taught French.

James White, in a building next to Thomas Williams (skin dealer) taught nightschool four evenings each week for three months at $2.00 "per" and each pupil was to find fire-wood and candles!

R. Haughton taught minuet, cotillions, country dances and Scotch reels. In 1801 Levi McClean taught a singing school.

Amusements were early attempted. The soldiers had a band and gave concerts. Theatrical entertainments and horse races were held as early as 1801. Dr. Richard Allison, the surgeon at the garrison answered calls for citizens and after the fort was abandoned, settled down and practiced in the village.

Dr. Adams, Dr. John Carmichael, Dr. Joseph Philips, Dr. John Elliot, Dr. Joseph Strong, Dr. John Selman, Dr. William Burnet, Jr., Dr. Calvin Morrill, Dr. John Holt, Dr. Robert McClure and Dr. John Crammer are only names to us; but they did their work and passed on.