avor of
schools, and these two parties fought each other a long time. At last
they united, and together gave the people canals and schools, the two
ways out of the wilderness.

Our canals are no longer the great avenues of commerce, because the
modern needs and means are different from those of former days, but our
schools are still the royal roads, the people's roads, to and from the
world of letters and arts. Ohio is now second to no other state in her
public school system: and well-nigh three-quarters of a century ago,
when General Lafayette visited Cincinnati in his tour of the Republic
which he had helped to found, nothing surprised and charmed him more
than the greeting which the children of her public schools gave him. It
spoke to him of a refined and graceful life, such as he could never have
imagined in the young city so lately carven out the forests; and such
proofs of the general culture must have done more than all the signs of
material prosperity, all the objects of industry so proudly shown him,
to make him regard Ohio (to use his own words) as the eighth wonder of
the world. Six hundred boys and girls from the public schools met him at
sunrise, on the morning of his arrival, and scattered flowers under his
feet and made the air ring with their shouts of "Welcome to Lafayette!"

As for the Indians, who fought so long and so hard here for the graves
of their fathers and the homes of their children, they had to find their
ways out too. But it would not be easy to say what became of them all,
for they went such various ways out of Ohio and out of the world. Some
remained in the country which they had lost, and in a few cases they
tried to take on the likeness of civilized men. But oftener they only
took on the vices of civilization; they were the drunkards and the
vagrants of their neighborhoods, living by a little work and by the
contemptuous charity of the settlers. In them the proud spirit of their
race was broken; they suffered insult and outrage from their conquerors
without resisting; a small white Titian might knock a stalwart Indian
down with his fist, and the Indian would not attempt to revenge himself.
For a while, the settlers feared the lingering red men, but they soon
learned to despise them, and it was seldom that they troubled the whites
by theft or violence.

A good many of the tribesmen followed the British into Canada, after the
War of 1812, where it must be owned to our shame as Americans