CLEVELAND PUBLIC LIBRARY

It is not likely that any reader of the OHIO EDUCATIONAL MONTHLY is unfamiliar with that quaint and curious volume of never to be forgotten lore, "Howe's Historical Collections of Ohio." That unique work, a lasting monument to its author's prodigious industry and remarkable character, is not strictly a history, it is a cyclopedia of the life and adventures of the inhabitants of Ohio. It is a true and vivid account of the State and the People, a series of living pictures. Bancroft wrote to Howe "You are my guide through Ohio." And what a guide! How indefatigable, how versatile, how unprejudiced, how genial, how intelligent! The man was ubiquitous; his feet were familiar with every nook and corner of the state; he knew everybody and interviewed thousands of representative men, women, and chilren. In 1889, he wrote: "One effect of my work will be to increase the fra

ternal sentiment that is so marked a characteristic of Ohio men wherever their lot is cast, and that leads them to social sympathy and mutual help. And if we look at the sources of this state love we will find that it arises from the fact that Ohio being the oldest and strongest of the new states of the Northwest, by its organic law and its history has so thoroughly illustrated the beneficence and power of that great idea embodied in the simple word Americanism."

Henry Howe died in Columbus, on October 14th, 1893, in the seventy-eighth year of his busy life. He died a poor man, impoverished by his own enthusiasm, a devotee to unselfish ambition. He made no money for himself, but he made a good book for Ohio.

To the writer of these familiar notes, Henry Howe was a warm personal friend. In the introduction to the Centennial Edition of his

"Collections," the historian says: "For thirty years Cincinnati was my home. There my children were born and there I devoted myself to the writing and publishing of books, a very secluded citizen, mingling not in affairs of church nor state, still paying my pew-rent and always voting on election days a clean ticket."

It was during the last ten or fifteen years of Mr. Howe's residence in Cincinnati, that I became acquainted with him. His son Frank Henry Howe was one of my pupils in the Chickering Academy. I often called upon Mr. Howe at his publishing rooms, to enjoy his cheerful and entertaining chat. As I had some tastes and pursuits in common with him, we exchanged certain semi-professional favors and came into relations quite intimate. Later, after he removed to Columbus, I met him less frequently, though a desultory correspondence was kept up between us up to the year of his decease. Some of his last letters are so characteristic of the man, and so pathetically illustrative of the difficulties and discouragements of authorship, that I transcribe a few sentences and paragraphs for the perusal of the teachers of Ohio.

From a letter dated March 26th, 1889, I extract the following:

"I take more pride in my Traveling Notes than in all the rest of the work. When I am able to bring in those things that minister to the

joy of life and fill the hearts of the young with the love of the beautiful, and the spirit of pluck, I even fancy that through them an increased supply of poets may spring forth from Ohio soil and thus fill an aching void in regions now all too prosaic for the higher utilities. And as for fun, I am always in for it. It is such a good thing as an antidote to woe that I think where we are given its spirit we should thank the Lord as we do for our daily bread that is those of us who are pious which I believe you are or meant to be some time when a little boy, and looked forward to the time when you should repent and 'give up the world.'- You will see in my Notes I am fond of children as you will find on page 710. But one of the most exquisite moments of my life is described on page 269, in the article The Four Little Maids, where one invites my kiss by the presentation of a flower. The entire account is literally true.

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I have got to work hard to make my book go among the stupidities that comprise the mass of these people. And it has got to be written up by our leading men ere they will know what a mine of good there is in the book and how I have labored for their edification and spiritual welfare.

General Beatty is to fire off a big gun in my behalf in the next issue of our Hist. Mag. here, which will give some of my points. But my descriptive power I believe deserves

a setting forth. This I think my strongest point. When they call me 'Historian' it makes me mad. 'It means some dry old cuss who spends his life in libraries hunting up dates and poring over musty juiceless MSS. that yield nothing but ashes. Nature and humanity is my library 'with reading between the leaves,' the whole bound in good Philadelfy sheep.

I have a delightful letter from Bancroft."

In response to my answer to the foregoing, I received the following: COLUMBUS, O., March 29, 1889. Friend Venable:

Your letter and documents have all come to hand. The first warms my soul and encourages me to think I am not so much of a donkey after all as I feared I might be thought for prattling in "Traveling Notes.'

of the same sort-walk up, gentlemen-walk up!'

Warren county will receive Tom Corwin, Geo. Morrow, Judge McLane, Durbin Ward, Schiller Pugh,

etc.

Can you tell me where I can find a portrait of Dr. S. P. Hildreth, and do. Tom Corwin?"

In July, 1891, the nerve-strained author, wrote:

"I am now finishing Warren Co. and hope to have the last of my copy, 2d vol. O. H. C. in the hands of the printer in two or three weeks from now; and the book itself out in April; began it in September, 1885, by begging money, a loan of about thirty New Haven friends to help get me out of town onto the soil of Ohio. Several of them have since died and I never can repay them except in Paradise. On looking back, I think I was a blank fool, for from that day to this it has been but a continuous struggle to exist. Nothing but a love of nature and a love of fun has enabled me to live through it."

In August, 1891, came a brief letter saying, in part, "I am glad to learn my book pleases you. It does me and that is what I started for when I began to labor.

The errors (typographical, etc.) I will have corrected when we next print.

I am pretty well worked down with the long, cruel weight that has been upon me and I must now have some rest."

The final rest came all too soon. Henry Howe had planned to go to Chicago, to the World's Fair, in October, 1893; but, on the eve of

his expected departure, while seated at a restaurant table in Columbus, he was stricken by paralysis.

The historical novel as an element of literature has done and is doing much to lead us pleasantly through the mazes of history into a full interest in the details of the subject. He has read "The Fair God" with slight interest who is not by its perusal stimulated to read the "Conquest of Mexico" and so learn more of the events connected with the settlements made by the Spaniards in America close upon its discovery. The novelist who compasses some important event in history and makes it live before the reader is sure to gain an audience and the novel almost inevitably draws from the book-shelf the volume of history that has to do with the same event. Time was when historical characters moved through the pages of the novel under assumed names, but in these later times the novelist has conned his history with such fidelity that he is bold to introduce his characters under their baptismal names, thus adding interest and potency to the narrative. It is bewildering to

note how many books cluster about some important epoch in historybut, by the process of differentiation, we are enabled to lock upon these epochs from various points of view, through the books that are now coming to our hands, and we are the gainers by the change. Carlyle's "French Revolution" may not be very fascinating reading, but it becomes more so after Hugo's "Ninety-three," Dickens's "Tale of Two Cities," and "Les Miserables."

So the early history of Ohio may seem a dreary recital of solemn events to many, but we are the beneficiaries of much faithful work that tends to relieve the tedium and make the events more realistic. Some years ago the publication of county histories became a sort of fever, but the fever soon abated and the books were left practically without readers. The history of Clark county no doubt contains much valuable information, but the average reader would hardly make this his first choice in selecting a

book for "summer reading." However, if he will read "Alice of Old Vincennes" and thus become acquainted with George Rogers Clark, that intrepid frontiersman whose prowess pushed forward the bounds of civilization so rapidly, he will then probably find the county history not so forbidding as he had imagined. He now knows something of the man whose name the county bears, and he will be glad to know more of the exploits of the man whose memory was thus honored. The novel is good, for it was written by a master, but it is no less interesting because it deals. with events that are a part of history, and portrays such a character as General Clark whose name is high on the roll of heroic men whose deeds influenced the course of events in our state.

Again, the "Whiskey Rebellion" is but a marginal note in the old school history that made the day seem longer and the lesson more dreary in our school days, and we were inclined to "lump it off" with several other little rebellions that we thought might just as well have been omitted from history, inasmuch as they served no other purpose than to destroy our peace of mind, and prolong the agony of the recitation. But after leaving school we happened upon that delightful book by Dr. McCook of Steubenville, "The Latimers," and then only did we gain the perspective that enabled us to get a proper

conception of the Whisky Rebellion. It was the first real test of the Federal Constitution and, as such, was an event of signal importance—an event, moreover, that no student of Ohio history can afford to treat with indifference. Nor, indeed, can one be indifferent after reading "The Latimers"-but will be impelled to investigate on the side of formal history. Incidentally one gains some additional views of Washington and Hamilton-and has re-told the oft-repeated yet never tiresome recital of scout life-culminating in the rescue of the heroic girl at Mt. Pleasant near Lancaster. Here is still another book that makes luminous many events that enter into the history of our state-especially connected with the war of 1812. is "With British and Braves" by L. K. Parks and it is worthy of more than one reading. It would be interesting to know whether this book has found its way into the school libraries that are multiplying so rapidly throughout the state. It is worthy a place there, surely, for the book will inspire a greater love for his state in the breast of every boy who reads it. After reading the graphic descriptions of the siege of Fort Meigs, and of Major Croghan's gallant defence of Fort Stephenson we shall feel that the climax has been reached; but when we have felt the thrill of the author's portrayal of Perry's victory we are better able to appre

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