e world his load
Bending him to the ground!

"I bring thee wisdom, Master." Is it he,
I marvelled then, in sooth?
"Thy palace-builder, beauty-seeker see!"
I saw the Ghost of Youth!

CINCINNATI.

The French possessors of the Western country used to call the Ohio the
Beautiful River; and they might well think it beautiful who came into it
from the flat-shored, mountainous Mississippi, and found themselves
winding about among lofty, steep, and picturesque hills, covered with
foliage, and fringed at the bottom with a strip of brilliant grass. But
travellers from the Atlantic States, accustomed as they are to the
clear, sparkling waters and to the brimming fulness of such rivers as
the James, the Delaware, and the Hudson, do not at once perceive the
fitness of the old French name, _La Belle Riviere_. The water of the
Ohio is yellow, and there is usually a wide slope of yellow earth on
each side of the stream, from which the water has receded, and over
which it will flow again at the next "rise." It is always rising or
falling. As at the South the item of most interest in the newspapers is
the price of cotton, and in New York the price of gold, so in the West
the special duty of the news-gatherer is to keep the public advised of
the depth of the rivers. The Ohio, during the rainy seasons, is forty
feet deeper than it is during the dry. Between the notch which marks the
lowest point to which the river has ever fallen at Cincinnati and that
which records the point of its highest rise, the distance is sixty-four
feet. If our Eastern rivers were capable of such vacillation as this,
our large cities would go under once or twice a year.

In truth, those great and famous Western rivers are ditches dug by
Nature as part of the drainage system of the continent,--mere means of
carrying off the surplus water when it rains. At the East, the water
plays a part in the life, in the pleasures, in the imagination and
memories of the people. We go down to Coney Island of a hot afternoon;
we take a trip to Cape May; we sail in Boston Harbor; we go upon
moonlight excursions, attended by a cotillon band; we spend a day at the
fishing banks; we go up the Erie Railroad for a week's trout-fishing; we
own a share in a small schooner; we have yacht clubs and boat races; we
build villas which command a water view. There is little of this in the
Western country; for the rivers are not very invitin