the Grand Army. Last Christmas there was a great celebration here, and a deputation from them who distributed presents. The pictures and ornaments on the walls are paid for by saving the rags and old papers of the Institution. In the small picture are shown three doors. That in the centre leads up-stairs. That on the left is to the sitting-room of the matron; on the right is the children's store-room, where each child's clothes are laid away in a series of drawers against the walls, a drawer to a child, and each one with its name or number. Over these rooms is the wash-room and the matron's bed-room. The children's dormitory is over the sitting-room, and of the same size. The floor is uncarpeted, the walls white, the coverlets to the beds white; the bedsteads are of oak, seventeen in number, arranged in rows. Two children occupy a single bed. Everything there is neat, sweet and clean, as it indeed is about everything connected with the Home. Many housekeepers might learn much in these regards by visiting the various State Institutions. The general tone of the bed-rooms is a snow-like whiteness and purity, with floods of light from ample windows. The Matrons welcome visitors and take a just pride in showing them through their cottages. Among them one sees a variety of character. There is the large, fleshy woman with rosy cheeks, who has charge of the smallest troop of boys. Her face is redolent with goodness and smiles, and it is pleasing to see the little ones clustering around her to be caressed and share the envied kiss. Then there is the tall, strong woman, somewhat advanced in years. She has no especial call for the exercise of the softer motherly qualities. Her expression shows determination and executive capacity: and she should have these. The question of strong government is ever before her, for her charge is a family of thirty-four boys from fourteen to near sixteen years of age. They all sleep in one room, are naturally full of the exuberance and strength of dawning manhood, and how she manages to keep them from occasionally engaging in a pillow fight and frolic on retiring. after the manner of boys elsewhere, is a mystery. To one such I carelessly remarked, "I suppose you have an easy time here in managing your charge. The moment I uttered this I wished I hadn't. I saw by the change of countenance, half comic and half anguished, I had made a mistake, for she at once ejaculated: "Humph! I should think so!-Boys are not angels; did you ever see any boys that were angels?" The Soldier's Widow.-Then there is the short, small, delicate matron. She is a blonde about forty-five years old, and her face ineffably sweet and gentle, and very sad; oh, so sad! There is a history of suffering in that face. Instinctively you are drawn toward her as to the face of the suffering Christ as portrayed by the genius of Raphael or Da Vinci. You inquire, and maybe learn she is a soldier's widow and now motherless. Her husband fell upon no battle-field in the heat and glory of patriotic conflict to find a grave of honor upon Southern soil. Worse than that. He was one of the thousands of victims to the horrors of Andersonville; was exchanged and came home to die, a mere skeleton, wasted by starvation, his mind gone, a hopeless driveling crying idiot. Then her two little ones were taken from her, and she is alone in the world. She is here and fills out her life in ministering to the little waifs of the departed heroes. Religion offers to her its cup of anticipate ry bliss in the expectation of again meeting her "Her faith shows a new world, and the eyes .FOUR LITERARY MEN. Four literary men of note and now living come under notice in connection with Xenia-William D. Gallagher, Coates Kinney, William D. Howells, and Whitelaw Reid. WILLIAM DAVIS GALLAGHER was born in 1808, in Philadelphia, and when a lad of eight years came with his widowed mother to Mount Pleasant, Hamilton county, Ohio, and was for forty-seven years a resident of the State; his home is now Peewee Valley, near Louisville, Ky. He learned the printing business in Cincinnati, and, in 1830, when but twentytwo years of age, came to Xenia, and started a campaign newspaper, which he entitled the Backwoodsman, giving it that name because it was peculiarly Western, a strong characteristic of his being an ardent affection for the West. Mr. Gallagher was an enthusiastic Whig, and the main object of his sheet was "to hurrah for Clay and to use up Jimmy Gardner, editor of the Jackson organ of Xenia." After the lapse of a year he returned to Cincinnati and took the editorship of the Cincinnati Mirror, which had a life of several years, and his prose and poetic writings were of so much merit that he was soon regarded as the leading imaginative writer of the West. Later he edited two other literary journals, was for a time on the Ohio State Journal, of Columbus, and from 1839 to 1850 was associate editor on the Cincinnati Gazette, when he went to Washington with Thomas Corwin in a confidential capacity, Corwin having been appointed Secretary of the Treasury again in the civil war he was employed in the United States Treasury Department at Louisville by Mr. Lincoln. In 1853 he was on the editorial staff of the Louisville Courier. Mr. Gallagher's father, Barnard Gallagher, was an Irish Roman Catholic, a participant in the rebellion in 1803, that cost Robert Emmet his life; and his mother, Abigail Davis, daughter of a Welsh farmer, who lost his life in the American Revolution. Coming from a liberty-loving stock, Mr. Gallagher inherited the spirit of freedom and philanthropy and could not be otherwise than an opposer of slavery. His biographer, Prof. Venable, in the Ohio Archæological and Historical Quarterly for 1888, says of him in his early days: "He sang the dignity of intrinsic manhood, the nobleness of honest labor and the glory of human freedom. Much he wrote was extremely radical. . Such lines as these, and as compose the poems •Truth and Freedom,'Conservatism.' The Laborer,' 'The New Age, All Things Free,' went to the brain and heart of many people, and it is not to be doubted but that they exercised a deep and lasting influence. "Mr. Gallagher first became known as a writer in 1828 by the publication of 'A Journey through Kentucky and Mississippi' in the Cincinnati Chronicle. His first poetical contribution that attracted general attention was The Wreck of the Hornet;' this was reprinted in a collection of his poems entitled 'Errato' (3 vols., Cincinnati, 1835-7). He edited Selections from the Poetical Literature of the West' (Cincinnati, 1841). In 1849 he delivered the annual address before the Ohio Historical and Philosophical Society, of which he was President, on The Progress and Resources of the Northwest. One of the most elaborate of his agricultural essays is his Fruit Culture in the Ohio Valley.' His latest volume is Miami Woods: a Golden Wedding and Other Poems (Cincinnati, 1881). Venable says: 'Gallagher's verse paints the forest and field with Nature's own color, and glows with the warmth of human love and joy. 'Miami Woods' is a sort of Thomson's Seasons' adapted to the Ohio Valley.' FIFTY YEARS AGO. A Song of the Western Pioneer. BY WM. D. GALLAGHER. No man was ever more thoroughly imbued with a love of the West than Mr. Gallagher. The memories of his boyhood were rich with the glow of enthusiasm for its free and manly life, when everything was so rapidly expanding and prosperity seemed to be so assured to the humblest who would but exert his powers. Annexed is one of his songs that was widely published in the papers of the West forty years ago : A song for the early times out West, A song for the free and gladsome life In the days when we were pioneers, The hunt, the shot, the glorious chase, The camp, the big, bright fire, and then In the days when we were pioneers, We shunn'd not labor; when 'twas due Our children bless us still. We lived not hermit lives, but oft And fires of love were kindled then That burn on warmly yet. O, pleasantly the stream of life In the days when we were pioneers, We felt that we were fellow-men; Our temples then were earth and sky; In the days when we were pioneers, Our forest life was rough and rude, O, free and manly lives we led, 'Mid verdure or 'mid snow, But now our course of life is short; And on our way to it we'll soon Yet while we linger we may all A backward glance still throw Many of his songs were set to music and sung in theatres, and in 1845 was published his famous ballad, "The Spotted Fawn," which became immensely popular, being sung everywhere. The Spotted Fawn was the beautiful daughter of an Indian chief, who dwelt in the valley of the Mahketewa, who, with her bridegroom, White Cloud, was slain on her bridal night by the cruel white man who in time of peace stole in upon them in their slumbering hours. The Mahketewa is the Indian name for a stream that empties into the Ohio at Cincinnati, commonly called Mill Creek and largely at that point inhabited by frogs. Some wicked wag wrote a parody upon the ballad under the title of "The Spotted Frog," which paralleled the fate of the Indian maiden with that of a young frog stoned to death by boys. This ever after spoiled the ballad for popular use. each follows: By Mahketewa's flowery marge She was the Red Chief's only child, Oh, the Spotted Fawn! The light and life of the forest shades A verse from By stagnant Mill Creek's muddy marge The Spotted Frog had birth, And grew as fair and fat a frog She was the Frog Chief's only child, But yet on one alone she smiled Oh, the Spotted Frog! Oh, the Spotted Frog! The light and life of Mill Creek's mud Mr. Gallagher is rather tall in person, with blue eyes and rather proudly bearing. He was a delegate to the National Convention which nominated Mr. Lincoln, whereupon, on his return home, a mob assembled at Beard's Station, near by, to warn him to leave the State, and his position was a dangerous one. Independent, outspoken and with the keenest sense of honor he had won the warm respect of his rebel neighbors, some of whom put arms into his hands for self-defence. A stalwart young mechanic took upon himself to champion the cause of free opinion. "I hate Gallagher's politics as much as any of you," said this chivalrous young Kentuckian to the crowd, "but he has as good a right to his opinions as we have to ours, and "-with a string of terrible oaths, added-" whoever tries to lay a hand on him or to give him an order to leave the State must first pass over my dead body." This put a quietus upon the mob, the excitement died away and the stars and stripes floated over Fern Cliff Cottage during the five gloomy years of the war. On Tuesday, September 4, 1888, the opening day of the Ohio State Centennial COL. COATES KINNEY. Exposition at Columbus, a tall, finelyformed and erect gentleman, with flashing dark eyes, and with the most silvery head in that multitude of thousands, arose on the platform and delivered the "OHIO CENTENNIAL ODE." The Coliseum, in which it was given, rises about 100 feet in the air, springing from the ground in form a half globe, with seats for some 10,000. Behind him were 1,500 children on the platform in tier above tier, arrayed in red, white and blue, whose patriotic songs had just filled the vast auditorium and the simultaneous fluttering of their hand-held flags had made for a few moments a bewildering, brilliant scene of gayety and beauty. Most poets have fine, delicate voices, that nullify their public-spoken utterances, from dwelling, we suppose, so greatly in the light, high regions of an attenuated etherealized idealism. Not so with the poet of Ohio's Centennial, COL. COATES KINNEY, of Xenia, for his voice is clear, strong and sonorous, and the audience signified their appreciation of a masterly production with rounds of applause. It was a great topic, the sublime occasion of an hundred years, and here we gladden and render more patriotic our pages by its presentation: Delivered in the Coliseum, Columbus, O., on the Opening Day, September 4, 1888, of the State Celebration of the Arrival of the Centennial Year. In what historic thousand years of man Has there been builded such a State as this? Yet, since the clamor of the axes ran Along the great woods, with the groan and hiss And crash of trees, to hew thy groundsels here, Ohio! but a century has gone, And thy republic's building stands the peer Of any that the sun and stars shine on. Not on a fallen empire's rubbish-heap, Not on old quicksands wet with blood of wrong, Do the foundations of thy structure sleep, But on a ground of nature, new and strong. Men that had faced the Old World seven years In battle on the Old World turned their backs And, quitting Old-World thoughts and hopes and fears, With only rifle, powder-horn and axe For tools of civilization, won their way Into the wilderness, against wild man and beast, And laid the wood-glooms open to the day. And from the sway of savagery released The land to nobler uses of a higher race; Where Labor, Knowledge, Freedom, Peace, and Law Have wrought all miracles of dream in place And time-ay, more than ever dream fore saw. A hundred years of Labor! Labor free! Our River ran between it and the curse, And freemen proved how toil can glory be. The heroes that Ohio took to nurse (As the she-wolf the founders of old Rome) Their deeds of fame let history rehearse And oratory celebrate; but see This paradise their hands haye made our home! Nod, plumes of wheat, wave, banderoles of corn, Toss, orchard-oriflammes, swing, wreaths of vine, Shout, happy farms, with voice of sheep and kine, For the old victories conquered here on these The fields of Labor when, ere we were born, The Fathers fought the armies of the trees, And, chopping out the night, chopt in the morn! A hundred years of Knowledge! We have mixt More brains with Labor in the century Than man had done since the decree was fixt That Labor was his doom and dignity. All honor to those far-foreworking men Who, as they stooped their sickles in to fling, Or took the wheat upon the cradles' swing, Thought of the boy, the little citizen There gathering sheaves, and planned the school for him, Which should wind up the clockwork of his mind To cunning moves of wheels and blades that skim Across the fields and reap, and rake, and |