Cincinnati, a civic ode

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CINCINNATI

A CIVIC ODE
"By WILLIAM HENRY VENABLE

Read in McMicken Hall

UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI

On the Evening of

UNIVERSITY ALUMNI DAY

November 22, J907

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Copyrighted, 1907,

by the

University of Cincinnati.

CINCINNATI
A CIVIC ODE

I

O not unsung-, not unrenowned,
Ere brave Saint Clair to his reward had gfone,
Or yet from yond the ample bound
Of green Ohio's hunting--ground
Tecumseh faced the Anglo-Saxon dawn,
My City Beautiful was throned and crowned:
Then all Hesperia confest,
With jubilant acclaim,
Her sovereign and inviolable name.
Queen of the West 1

II

Upon the proud young bosom she was nursed,
Of the Republic, in the wild
Security of God's primeval wood:
Illustrious Child !
By Liberty begotten, first
Of all that august civic sisterhood
Born since the grand Ordain of Eighty-Seven
Promulged its mandatory plevin,
Which fain had reconciled
Human decretals and the voice of Heaven.

Ill

Baptismal sponsors gave
Her virtuous patronymical and brave.
Prom hoary chronicle and legend caught,
And blazon of that laureled son of Mars,

Whose purple heraldry of scars,
(From fields of valorous duty brought,)

Dnriched patrician Rome with dower

Of ancient honorable power.

The half-tradition old
Of Cincinnatus told,
Who cast aside the victor's brand and took
In peaceful grasp the whetted pruning-hook,
And drave the plowshare through the furrowed
Was g-olden legend unto Washington [mold,

And his compeers in patriotic arms,

Who flung the sword and musket down,
(Their martial fields of glory won,)
Shouldered the ax and spade.
To wage a conquering crusade
Against brute forces and insensate foes:
Besieged the stubborn shade,
Subdued their savage farms,
Builded the busy town,
And bade the desert blossom as the rose.

IV

Upgrew a fair Emporium beside

Ohio's amber flood, as by the yellow tide

Of storied Tiber sprung, of yore.

On lowland and acropolis.

The elder world's metropolis.

Along the imperial shore !

V

Yet not of Latian swarm were they

Who hived the early honey of the West;
They boasted Borean sires of strenuous clay:

Long-striding men of soldierly broad breast,
Of dauntless brain and all-achieving hands,

Fetched out of British and Teutonic lands.
Schooled for command by knowing to obey,
Inured to fight and disciplined to pray,

Columbian leaders of potential sway.
Survivors of the European Best 1

VI

With grand desire and purpose vast,

To purge from dross the metal true,
And pour the seven-times-molten Past

In perfect patterns of the New,

They led the migratory van:
And every hero carried in his heart
The constitution and politic chart,
The code, the creed, the high-imagined plan
Of that Ideal State whereunto wend
The hopeful dreams of universal man.

And whither all the ages tend.

VII

Such the stock adventure brought

Over Allegheny ranges,
By the Revolution taught

War and Fortune's bitter changes:
They hewed the forest jungle, broke

The wild, reluctant plain;
With rhythmic sinews, stroke on stroke.

They cradled in the grain;
The masted barge on gliding keel

Rich bales of traffic bore;
The laden steamer's cataract wheel

Befoamed the River shore;
Anon, as rolls the thunder-peal.

As glares the lightning flame.
O'er trammeled miles of outspun steel
The Locomotive came ! —
Electron's viewless messengers, more fleet
Than herald Mercury of winged feet.
Far-flashing, multiplied the thrilling word.
Freedom! and Freedom! — Freedom, evermore! —
Which all the Appalachian echoes heard
And broad Atlantic's rumorous billows bore

Persuasive to his utmost peopled shore,
Tempting- shrewd Mammon, and with louder voice

Bidding courag-eous Poverty rejoice:
Then Westward ho! the Movers found their g^oal,

Ohio, thine auspicious Metropolel —
Nor landmark-trees blazed by his hatchet blade,
Nor scanty bounds by Filson's chain surveyed.
Might longer then suffice as border-line;
Not Eastern Row nor Western, could confine
Emption of homestead, or sequestered hold

Salubrious Mohawk's northward-spreading- wold:
A century's growth, down crashed the 'builder Oak,'
The quarry from Silurian slumber woke.
The town, advancing-, saw the farms retreat.

The turnpike rumbled, now a paven street: —
With bold and eager Emulation rode
Young Enterprise; keen Industry and Wealth
Sought new employ and prosperous abode
With blithe Success and robust Hope and Health,
In verdant vale wherethrough Dameta flowed.
Or high upon the crofts and bowery hills.
Above the gardens and the rural mills

Of Mahketewa's brook and affluent rills:
Their palaces adorned each rampart green,
Their cottages in every dell were seen,

O'er which the well-beloved Queen
Holds chartered reign
And eminent domain !

VIII

Today wouldst thou behold
What ensigns of magnificence and might
Her spacious realms of urban grandeur show?
Choose for thy belvedere some foreland bold,
Auburn, or Echo, or aerial height
Of sun-clad Eden's blossomy plateau: —

There bid thy wildered g-aze
Explore the chequered maze,
Unending street, innumerable square.
Park, courtyard, terrace, fountain, esplanade,
Gay boulevard and thronging thoroughfare.
Far villas peering out from bosky shade,
Cliff-clambering' roads and shimmering waterways:
Lo, Architecture here and Sculpture vie
With rival works of carven wonder shown
In sumptuous granite and marmorean stone;
Behold stupendous where proud citadels

Of legionary Trade aspire the sky.
And where Religion's sanctuaries raise
Their domed and steepled votive splendors high:
(Upon the hush of Sabbath morning swells

How sweet, their chime of tolerant bells!)

IX

Seen dimly over many a roofy mile.

Where hills obscure environ vales remote,
Rise colonnaded stacks of chimney pile.

Above whose dusky summits float
Pennons of smoke, like signal flags unfurled

Atop their truce-proclaiming towers.
By the allied triumphal powers
Of Science, Labor, and mechanic Skill,
Subduing nature to man's godlike will:
Forth yonder myriad factories are whirled.

By steam-and-lightning's aid.
Invention's yield perpetual, conveyed
Beyond strange seas to buy the bartered world! —
Hark, the hoarse whistle, and dull, distant roar
Of rumbling freight-trains, ponderous and slow,
Monsters of iron joint, which come and go

Obedient to the watchful semaphore
That curbs their guided course along the shore

Edged by the margin of the southering: River:
Now gfolden gleam, now silvern flash and quiver
The molten mirrors of its burnished tide
Whereover costly argosies of Commerce ridel

X

Thrice-happy City, dearest to my heart,

Who, showering benizon upon her own.

Endows her opulent material mart

With lavish purchase from each ransacked zone,

Yet ne'er forgot exchange of rarer kind.

By trade-winds from all ports of Wisdom blown —

Imperishable merchandise of Mind:
Man may not live by bread alone.
But every word of God shall be made known I —

Thy voyagers of Argonaut,
Enriched with dazzling ransom of their toil
In ravaged Colchis, costlier guerdon brought
As trophy home than prize of golden spoil:
Gems from the trove of Truth, for ages sought,

Precious beyond appraise in sordid fee;
Audit of Culture, treasury of Art:
Whate'er the Daughters of Mnemosyne
In templed grove of Academe impart:
Heroic Song, Philosophy divine,
Precept oracular. Narration old,
Or aught by sage Antiquity extolled,

Or murmured at Apollo's lucent shrine.
Here Education rounds a cosmic plan,
Enough omnipotent aye to create
From nebulous childhood, ordered worlds of man,

Evolving Scholar, Citizen, and State.
Each liberal science, every craft austere,
All sedulous joys of book and pen are here,
Delights that charm the reason or engage

Imagination's quickened eye or ear: —

Pencil of limner, sculptor's cunning- steel,

And whirling marvel of Palissy's wheel; —
Drama, in pomp of gorg-eous equipage,
Ostends upon the applauded stage

Phantasmagoria of the living Age;
And, by celestial votaries attended.
Impassioned Music, from the spheres descended,

Abiding here in the tutelar control.
Commands orchestral diapasons pour
Exalted fugue and symphony along
Resounding aisle and bannered corridor;
Or, while the organ's mellow thunders roll.
She bids enraptured voices thrill the soul
With heaven-born harmony of choral song!

XI

0 Cincinnati! whom the Pioneers,

How many weary lustrums long ago.
With orisons and dedicated tears.
Blest, kneeling when the pure December snow

Melted, for pity, into drops of Spring,
My heart renews their throbbing fervor now,

Their toil, their love, their hope, remembering,

1 breathe their patriot ardor and their vow.
Their exultation and prophetic faith I sing! —
For they were Freedom's vanguard, and they bore

Her starry flag and led her empire West,
Ere yet the wounds of sacrificial war

Had healed upon their Mother-Country's breast:
Courageous they and loyal! evermore
Bold for The People! valorous and strong
Against embattled Myrmidons of Wrong:

Forever honorable, true, and just!
Historial years, above their crumbling dust.

On wings of peace and wings of war have flown.
Returning Aprils green and grateful sod

There where with hands that knew the ax to wield

They pledged a log-hewn temple unto God

Or ere they thrice had husked the ripened field

Or promised harvest o'er the tilth had sown:
Seers, Legislators, Politicians, these.

Prom ancestors indomitable? sprung!
Who, as with brawn of sinewy grip they swung
Their polished helves and launcht the steely edge,

Invading so the monarchy of trees.
Or smote with ponderous maul the iron wedge, —
Labored meanwhile within the spacious Mind,
Planning and building, for their fellow-kind,

Futurity colossal, on the vast

Foundations of the immemorial Past !

COMMENTARY

COMMENTARY
I

1. Saint Clair. General Arthur St. Clair (1734-1818), a friend
and comrade of George Washington, was an ofificer in the Ameri-
can army during the Revolutionary War; was president of Con-
gress in 1787; governor of the North-West Territory, from 1789 to
1802, living in Cincinnati eleven years, 1790-1801. His mansion,
the first brick house built in the Miami settlement, stood on the
south-west corner of Eighth and Main Streets.

2. Tecumseh. Tecumseh, a Shawnee Indian chief, famed for
his courage and eloquence, was born near the site of the city of
Springfield, Ohio, in the year 1768. He made persistent effort to
unite the aboriginal red tribes against their white, American foes,
and joined the British troops when the war of 1812 was in prog-
ress. Tecumseh was killed in the battle of the Thames, Canada,
Oct. 5, 1813.

3. Queen of the West. The name "Queen of the West" was
applied to Cincinnati early in the history of the town. Some of
Benjamin Drake's "Tales and Sketches of the Queen City" were
contributed to the Cincinnati Literary Gazette, as long ago as
1824. Ten years later, Charles Fenno Hoffman, in his book "A
Winter in the West," employs the nomination as if it were then
in familiar use. Longfellow gave world-wide celebrity to the
soubriquet, by introducing it into his lyric entitled "Catawba
Wine," singing of

"The Queen of the West
In her garlands drest
On the banks of the beautiful River."

II

4. Upon the proud young bosom she was nursed

Of the Republic. Cincinnati was founded in 1788, the year
in which the American Republic was organized, and only twelve
years subsequent to the date of the Declaration of Independence.

5. By Liberty begotten, first

Of all that august civic sisterhood. The two settlements,
Columbia, near the mouth of the Little Miami, and Losantiville,
opposite the mouth of the Licking, were begun, respectively,
November 18 and December 28, 1788, nearly six months after the
enactment of the Ordinance of 1787. The young city was not in-
corporated until 1802.

6. Promulged its mandatory plevin. The Ordinance of 1787
was at once an organic law and a political promise. Of that nota-
ble document, Daniel Webster used these memorable words: "We
are accustomed to praise the law-g-ivers of antiquity; we help per-
petuate the fame of Solon and Lycurgus; but I doubt whether one
single law of any law-giver, ancient or modern, has produced
effects of more distinct, marked, and lasting character, than the
Ordinance of 1787. We see its consequences at this moment, and
we shall never cease to see them, perhaps, while the Ohio shall
flow."

Ill

7. And blazon of that laureled son of Mars. Lucius Quinctius,
surnamed Cincinnatus, or the "crisp-haired," a Roman dictator
and legendary hero, is thought to have been born about 519 B. C.
The tradition goes that, while on his farm beyond the Tiber, he
was summoned from the plow to take command of an army which
defended Rome from invading enemies; and that, after thus serv-
ing his country, he laid aside the sword and returned to his hus-
bandry. The "Order of the Cincinnati," named in admiration of
this Roman general, was organized in 1784, by officers of the
Revolutionary Army, Washington being its first president. In
recognition of this organization, General St. Clair, in 1790, be-
stowed the name "Cincinnati" upon the hamlet opposite the mouth
of the Ivicking, which, up to that time, had borne the name
"Losantiville," given, in 1788, by John Filson, one of its founders.

IV

8. On lowland and acropolis. "The ranges of hills bordering
these extensive plains, . . . being variously diversified by
streams and rivulets, lying at different distances from the town,
and having a dense covering of trees, afford a pleasant termina-
tion to the view. From Newport or Covington, the appearance of
the town is beautiful; and, at a future period, when the streets
shall be graded from the Hill to the river shore, promises to be-
come magnificent."— Daniel Drake, in his Picture of Cincinnati,
published in 1815.— "The first impression upon touching the quays
at Cincinnati, and looking up its spacious avenues, terminating
always in green acclivities which bound the city, is exceedingly
beautiful."— Charles Fenno Hoffman's A Winter in the West, 1835.

VII

9. The masted barge on gliding keel. Ohio River barges of
the early period were provided with a mast amidship, carrying

square-sails and top-sails, and they somewhat resembled small
ocean schooners.

10. The laden steamer's cataract wheel. The first steamboat
on the Ohio River, the "Orleans," was built by Nicholas J. Roose-
velt, a brother of President Roosevelt's grandfather, at Pittsburg-,
and her trial trip was made from that city to New Orleans, in 1812.

11. The Locomotive came. "The work of constructing the
first railroad from Cincinnati was commenced in 1837. The road
crept slowly up the Ivittle Miami. In December, 1841, the track
had been laid only from Fulton to Milford, a distance of fifteen
miles. The next year the road reached Fosters. In July, 1844,
the first cars were seen at Deerfield, now South Lebanon, and be-
fore the close of the summer, they were at the mouth of Todd's
Fork. In August, 1845, the road was completed to Xenia, and on
the tenth day of August, ten years after the road was chartered,
the first train reached Springfield." — Josiah Morrow, in his sketch
of the life of Governor Jeremiah Morrow, p. 73.

12. Electron's viewless messengers. A line of Morse's electric
telegraph, connecting Baltimore with Washington, was brought
into operation in 1844. The wire was slowly stretched westward,
and, on August 21, 1847, the first dispatch to Cincinnati was
flashed.

13. Freedoml and Freedoml—Freedom, evermore! That Cin-
cinnati was consecrated to Liberty from the first, is strikingly
attested by an early Virginia clergyman. Rev. James Smith, who,
visiting Ohio in 1795, wrote in his Journal, on Sunday, September
5, of that year: "We are now in full view of the beautiful and
flourishing town of Cincinnati, most delightfully situated on the
bank of 'the most beautiful river on earth'. This large and popu-
lous town has risen almost instantaneously from nothing, it being
(as I was told) only four years since it was all in woods. Such is
the happy efi^ect of that government in which every trace of vas-
salage is rooted out and destroyed. To a real republican, as I am,
how grateful, how pleasing the sight which I now behold. To a
man weary of slavery and the consequent evils attending it, what
pleasing reflections must arise." — Ohio Arch, and Hist. Quart.,
Vol. XVI, p. 376.

14. Bidding courageous Poverty rejoice. "It was not to Mont-
mirail they were going — it was to America. They were not flying
to the sound of the trumpet of war — they were hurrying from
misery and starvation. In a word, it was a family of poor Alsa-
tian peasants who were emigrating. They could not obtain a

living in their native land, but had been promised one in Ohio." —
From Victor Hugo's "The Rhine," quoted by C. I4. Martzolff, in
his history of Perry County, Ohio. — "The poor man, (ungoverned,
can govern himself) shoulders his axe, and walks into the Western
Woods, sure of a nourishing Earth and an overarching Sky! — It
is the very Door of Hope to distracted Europe." — Thomas Carlyle,
in a letter to Emerson.

15. Nor scanty bounds by Filson's chain surveyed. John Filson,
(See note 7,) whose versatility enabled him to become, succes-
sively, a teacher, an historian, an explorer, and a surveyor, drew
the first plan of Cincinnati, or, as he called it, Eosantiville. The
original name of what is now Plum Street, was Filson Avenue.
The Filson Club, of Louisville, Ky., is named in honor of this
pioneer of enterprise and of letters, who well deserves to be re-
membered by the Queen City.

16. Not Eastern Row nor Western. The old name, Eastern
Row, was changed to Broadway; Western Row, to Central Ave-
nue; and Northern Row, to Seventh Street.

17. Salubrious Mohawk's northward-spreading wold. Mohawk
village, a once well known hill-top suburb of Cincinnati, was on
Hamilton Road, now McMicken Avenue. Here, as we learn from
an essay by Elizabeth Haven Appleton, "Mrs. Frances Trollope,
in 1828, had her home, in a farm house, on the edge of the prime-
val forest which clad the country for many miles." — See volume
in memory of Elizabeth Haven Appleton, edited by Eugene F.
Bliss, and published in Cincinnati, 1891.

18. Builder Oak. "The builder Oake, sole King of forests
all." — Spenser's Faerie Queene.

19. Silurian slumber. The Silurian Blue Limestone rocks of
the so called "Cincinnati Group," including the River Quarry
Beds and the Hill Quarry Beds, supply unlimited quantities of
building-stone of great excellence and beauty. "The advantages
that the city of Cincinnati reaps from the quarries which sur-
round it, are immense." — Ford's Hamilton County, 1881.

20. In verdant vale wherethrough Dameta flowed. "This
sweet valley is bounded toward the rising sun by the gentle
stream Dameta, or the creek of deers; and on the side of the set-
ting sun, by the transparent waters of El-hen-a, or the stream of
the green hills." — Timothy Flint, in a story entitled "Oolemba in
Cincinnati," contributed to Hall's "Western Souvenir," 1829.
Dameta, or Deer Creek, formerly the pride of local poets and
artists, has long been imprisoned in the deep conduit of a sewer

which empties into the Ohio near the foot of Butler Street, just
below the Old Waterworks. The romantic valley of the once
beautiful stream is now buried from sight by the dumpage of
half a century.

21. Mahketewa's brook and affluent rills. Mahketewa was the
Indian name of Mill Creek. See William D. Gallagher's lyric,
"The Spotted Fawn," which, sixty years ago, was one of the most
popular songs in the Ohio Valley. It begins with the lines:
"On Mahketewa's flowery marge
The Red Chief's wigwam stood."

22. Auburn, or Echo, or aerial height

Of sun-clad Eden's blossomy plateau. Each of these
lofty elevations commands a magnificent prospect of Cincin-
nati and its natural environs. The Queen City is famed for the
picturesque charm of its suburbs. The following sentences, quoted
from an article by James Parton, written for the Atlantic Month-
ly, forty years ago, are of interest: "As far as we have seen or
read, no inland city of the world surpasses Cincinnati in the
beauty of its environs. They present as perfect a combination of
the picturesque and the accessible, as can anywhere be found.
There are still the primeval forests and the virgin soil to favor the
plans of the artist in capabilities. The Duke of Newcastle's party,
one of which was the Prince of Wales, were not flattering their
entertainers when they pronounced the suburbs of Cincinnati the
finest they had anywhere seen."

23. Daughters of Mnemosyne. Mnemosyne, goddess of Mem-
ory and mother of the Muses.

24. Here Education rounds a cosmic plan. The rounded plan
of Education in Cincinnati contemplates a complete system of
public instruction, comprising all classes and grades of school,
from the most elementary to the most advanced, the crowning in-
stitution of that system being the City University. — "The educa-
tional system of Cincinnati is unique in its scope, including kin-
dergarten, elementary grades, high school, and university, besides
vocational schools of law, medicine, engineering, and teaching.
The plan has been unified into an organic whole, which is more
comprehensive than that of any other American city at the pres-
ent time. The work that now engages the city is to make each
factor of this great educational unit as ideally complete as possi-
ble.— If the development for the next five years is as vigorous as
it has been for the last two, the system of public education will
be unique in another respect — in approaching near to the ideals of

what civic education should be." — Dr. F. B. Dyer, Superintendent
of Public Schools, Cincinnati. Annual Report, 1907. — "No institu-
tion in this or any other country stands is quite such close rela-
tions to a people as does this University to the city of Cincinnati.
. . The modern university exists for the advancement of all men,
without reg-ard to class. . . A municipal university is both the
latest and highest expression of the striving's of the democratic
spirit after light and knowledge. The people of Cincinnati should
be proud, then, that their University represents, thus, the newest
and most advanced thing in popular education. It is, thus, the
privilege and responsibility of this people to lead the way and
show other cities how to build strongly and conduct successfully
this latest and most characteristic thing in democratic education
— the municipal university.'' — Dr. Charles William Dabney, Presi-
dent of the University of Cincinnati. Annual address, ("The Uni-
versity of the City",) delivered on Commencement day, June 1,
1907. — The Cincinnati ideal of education was recognized and en-
forced by Hon. Elmer Ellsworth Brown, United States Commis-
sioner of Education, in an address on "The Self -Respect of Cit-
ies," delivered on the occasion of the Commencement of the Uni-
versity of Cincinnati, June 1, 1907: "There is nothing more vital
in our modern life than the interaction of these two ideals — the
academic freedom of the university and the efficient cosmopoli-
tanism of the city. Whenever a great university is located in a
great center of population the two types of influence meet and
mingle in ways that are full of significance. But where the two
are bound together so intimately as in this community, where the
university is part of the public system of education and the crown-
ing member of that system, there is opportunity for peculiarly
fruitful relations between them. The university is at once an
added mark of civic distinction and an agency deliberately erected
by the city to influence and possibly to recast the ideals and pur-
poses of the city's life."

25. All sedulous joys of book and pen are here. That Cin-
cinnati, from the earliest period of its history up to the present
time, has held foremost rank, among Western cities, as a center
of literary culture, is a claim fully justified by the record of
achievement of the eminent writers, past and present, who have
been identified with the Queen City and its literary activities.
"Within a period of ten years, counting backward and forward
from 1830, there existed a literary circle of which Cincinnati was
the center, which, as a whole, has never had a superior in Ameri-
ca.— Among those who were influential in that circle, I may men-

tion the names of William Henry Harrison, Timothy Flint, Micah
P. Flint, Daniel Drake, James Hall, Jacob Burnet, Benjamin F.
Drake, Edward D. Mansfield, William D. Gallagher, Otway Curry,
S. P. Hildreth, L,. A. Hine, Caroline I^ee Hentz, Rebecca S. Nichols,
Thos. H. Shreve, F. W. Thomas, Lyman Beecher, Charles Ham-
mond, Elisha Whittlesey, Albert Pike, L,. J. Cist, James H. Per-
kins, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Eliza A. Dupuy, Amelia Welby,
Sarah T. Bolton, and John B. Dillon."— William T. Cogg-eshall
(author of "Poets and Poetry of the West," 1860), in an address
on "The West and Its Literature," delivered at Ohio University,
June 22, 1858. — Among- the authors of a later period, whose dis-
tinguished achievement, especially in the domain of poetry, en-
titles them to honored recognition, may be named: Alice Cary,
Phoebe Cary, Thomas Buchanany Read, William H. Lytle, Coates
Kinney, John James Piatt, and Sarah M. B. Piatt.

26. And whirling marvel of Palissy's wheel. Bernard Palissy,
thfe renowned potter and enameler, was born in 1510, and he died
in the Bastille, Paris, in 1589. His name is here used, of course, as
suggestive of the ceramic art which has given "Rookwood Pot-
tery" celebrity in every civilized country.

27. Pencil and linnner, sculptor's cunning steel. Cincinnati
has justly been called the "Cradle of American Art." Among the
names of painters and sculptors who have plied their vocation in
the Queen City, the following may be mentioned: Hiram Powers,
1805-1873; Shobel Clevinger, 1812-1843; James H. Beard, 1812-1893;
W. T. Matthews, 1821-1905; T. B. Read; J. O. Eaton; W. H.
Powell; Godfrey N. Frankenstein; John P. Frankenstein; Frank
Dengler; W. H. Beard; C. T. Webber; Thomas Noble; Henry
Mosler; C. H. Neihaus; Frank Duveneck; Henry F. Farny; Moses
Ezekiel.

28. Abiding here in tutelar control. Not undistinguished at
home and abroad for the achievement of her poets, painters, and
sculptors, Cincinnati is, perhaps, most widely renowned on ac-
count of her pre-eminence among American cities as a center of
musical art and education. Her May Musical Festivals, her
Symphony Concerts, her societies for the promotion of orchestral
and choral music, and, above all, her celebrated College of Music,
have exerted, for the last quarter of a century, a far-reaching and
formative influence on the musical life of America. Of the illus-
trious teachers, composers, and directors, who have been connected
with the College of Music of Cincinnati, a few representative
names are here given: Theodore Thomas, Albino Gorno, Otto

Singer, Frank Van der Stucken, Pietro Floridia, and Louis Victor
Saar. — Deservedly conspicuous among the many music schools of
the Queen City, is the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, with
which institution are associated the names of Theodore Bohlman
and Pier Adolfo Tirindelli.

XI

29. With orisons and dedicated tears. "They made fast their
boat and clambered up the steep bank to a level spot in the midst
of a clump of pawpaw-bushes. Here the women and children sat
down, while the men cleared away the underbrush and placed sen-
tinels near the thicket to watch out for prowling Indians. Before
undertaking to pitch a tent or build a hut, the little congregation
(twenty-six in all) sang a hymn of praise and then knelt on the
ground while their pastor, Rev. Ezra Ferris, offered a prayer to
Almighty God." (See Tales from Ohio History, W. H. Venable.)
Some poetic license has been taken in the poem, which places in
December the religious ceremony which actually occurred Novem-
ber 6. — But the second colony, generally regarded as the first
settlers of Cincinnati proper, came to "Losantiville" December
27, and there can scarcely be a doubt that they also signalized
their coming by some suitable observance, most of them being
men of piety, like their leader, Robert Patterson, who, we are
told, "was profoundly religious."

30. They pledged a log-hewn temple unto God. The first re-
ligious society in the "Miami Country" was organized, by Dr.
Stephen Gano, in 1790. The first house of worship was built in
1792. This, the Columbia Baptist Church, was torn down in 1835;
and upon the site a pioneer monument was dedicated, July 4, 1889.

31. Seers, Legislators, Politicians, these. What Rev. Henry
M. Storrs uttered from a Marietta pulpit, April 8, 1888, may well
apply to the ideals of the original settlers of Cincinnati: "Today
our minds go back across the century to that band of patriotic
pioneers who, for the sake of the nation as well as themselves,
broke ground for civilization on this spot beside the 'beautiful
river.' Of their heroic character and achievements you have
already heard. They came from their Eastern homes with high
resolve. Imperial States, one after another, should be dedicated
to human freedom. Unfettered religion, pure morals, a broad and
universal education, public and private security under protection
of equal law, industry, thrift and plenty, should here be the inher-
itance of their children forever. They were planning great things.
Prophetic hope lent them inspiring visions. They were 'building
better than they knew.'" Ohio Archaeological and Historical
Quarterly, Vol. II, No. 1, June, 1888.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

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