ASHTABULA COUNTY OHIO - HISTORY (Part 5) (published 1898)
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HISTORY OF OHIO, By Henry Howe, LL.D., 1898

TRAVELING NOTES.
        Tues., Oct. 5 - At noon I stepped form the cars at Jefferson. There
is not in any land a community of 1,200 people who live in more substantial
comfort and peace than this. The streets are broad, well shaded, the home
lots large, where about every family has its garden and fruit trees, where
all seem to be on the equal plane of middle life that answered to the
prayer of Agar; and, moreover, as the home of Joshua R. Giddings and Benj.
F. Wade, those Boanerges of freedom, and the spot of their burial, it has
an honor and memory of extraordinary value. The village, too, is well
named, being in memory of one who said that God was just and his justice
would not sleep forever, for he had no attribute that sympathized with
human slavery.
        THE OLD MAN AND HIS GRAPES - After leaving the care I turned into
the main street leading to the centre, when my attention was arrested by
the sight of an old man four rods from the road standing on a chair
plucking grapes from an arbor by the side of this cottage. One of the
pretty things in rural life is the sight of people plucking fruit;
instinctively the thoughts go up, and there drops into the heart with a
grateful sense the words "God giveth the increase." Early this morning
while in a hack going from Chardon to Painesville, I had passed an apple
orchard where men and boys were on ladders plucking the golden and crimson
fruit and carefully placing it in bags hanging from branches; and the sight
was pleasing.
        It is a weak spot in the education of city people that they can
know nothing of the gratification that comes from the cultivation and
development of the fruits of the earth, nor that exquisite pleasure, the
sense of personal ownership that must arise in the breast of the husbandman
as he looks upon his fields of golden grain, majestic forests, and grassy
hills dotted with pasturing kine and gamboling herds, and feels as he looks
that the eye of the Great Master is over it all; there, where the dew of
morning upon every tender blade and fragile leaf sparkles with His glory.
        This is in vain and deceitful world. My mouth watered for a bunch
of the old man's grapes, cool and fresh from the vine; so I approached him
under the guise of an inquiry about the way to centre of the village, which
I knew perfectly. As I neared him he excited my sympathy, for I discovered
he was paralyzed on one arm which hung limp and useless by his side, and
there were no grapes left except a few bunches under the roof of the
trellis which he could with difficulty reach with the other, and he said in
plaintive tones, "The boys came and nearly stripped my arbor  when the
grapes were not ripe." They did them no good; if they had only waited they
should have been welcome to a share with myself." I couldn't help thinking,
as I listened to his sorrowful tones, the genus boy is the same everywhere,
and then there is something so irresistibly comical in the nature of a boy
that the very thought of one often makes me laugh; that is, internally,
though at the moment the expression of my countenance may be quite doleful.
On my arrival at the centre I found standing the court-house and tavern
that I had sketched in the long ago only a little changed; a grove of trees
had grown in the court-house yard and a porch had been built on the front
of the tavern. They gave me a good dinner therein and then I went for a
walk about the village to see the comfort in which the people lived.
        THE FOUR LITTLE MAIDS - On the plank walk on the outskirts I met
two little girls. I stopped them and said, "Where are you going, my little
girls?" and they replied, "To the primary, sir." And then I inquired of one
of them, "How old are you - ten years? " No, sir, I am nine." Whereupon the
other chimed in "I too am nine." "That," I remarked, "makes eighteen years
of little girls." By this time two other of their mates had come up and
pausing, I asked each "How old she was," and each answered as the others,
in the soft, musical tones of childhood, "Nine, sir." "That", said I,
"makes in all thirty-six years of little girls." I wanted to hold this
interesting group, so pointing to an oak near by, the symmetry of which had
arrested my eye, I said, "Is not that a beautiful tree? What kind of a tree
is it?" when one of them replied, "It is an acorn tree." I thought it quite
a pretty name. She had evidently admired acorns and had picked them up, and
not knowing the right name of the oak had called it by its fruit. I too
admired acorns- indeed, had one at that moment in my vest pocket - with its
dark, rough reticulated saucer and smooth, light-hued conical cup. Then I
said, "I make it a rule when I meet a group of little girls like you to
catch the prettiest one and kiss her." I so spake because I thought it time
to bring the conference to a close, and I should have the fun of seeing
them scream, laugh and scamper away. Man proposes, God disposes. They
didn't scare a bit - stood stock still; one indeed, the prettiest, the one
to whom I had first spoken, the one who had called the oak an acorn tree -
a plump, rosy-cheeked, blue-eyed little puss she was - advanced and,
looking up archly in my face while holding betwixt finger and thumb a
blooming gladiole said, "Will you pleases accept this, sir?" Could anything
be more irresistible? a cherub dropped from the skies inviting a kiss! Can
anything that happens up yonder be sweeter that this?
        I had no sooner accepted the flower than a second little one thrust
forward her hand holding a large, golden pippin and said, "Will you please
take this sir?" and I took it. Then a third one did not advance, but in the
hollow of her hand lay a small, wee peach, and as she spoke she gently
waved her open hand to and fro, while her body waved, in unison from right
to left, and in a half-shy deprecating tone said, "I have nothing but this
little peach to offer; will you take it, sir?" The fields and gardens
around were blooming with flowers and orchards were bending under their
burden of many-colored apples and golden, luscious pears, but Jack Frost
had lingered too long in the springtime and cruelly nipped the peach
blossoms; so I declined the peach, as peaches were scarce, thereby I fear
wounding her feelings.
        Ere I parted I gave to each my card, whereupon was told who I was
and what my errand. And as I did so, I thought long after I had passed away
and these little people will be mothers, they will show my book to their
offspring with its many pictures of their Ohio land, and stories of pioneer
life and later stories of the heroic men who fought for the Union in that
dreadful, bloody war of the Rebellion, and point out the portrait of the
author and describe this meeting with him when they, too, were young things
on their way to the "primary;" meeting with him an old, white-bearded man,
by the beautiful oak on the wayside of the village. And then to a question
from the children, they may answer; "Oh, he has been dead many years, long
before you were born; it was in ____ he died."
        AN EARLY ACQUAINTANCE - Twenty minutes later I was in the office of
the Ashtabula Sentinel, and there met Mr. J.A. Howells, editor. I had seen
him but once before; he was then a nine year old boy standing by my side
watching me sketch Rossville from the Hamilton side of the Miami river. And
when the book was published and he looked upon that picture with the old
mill, bridge and river, it was always with a sense of personal ownership -
he was in at its birth. And the whole family valued it; and when his
brother, the famed novelist had a family of his own, he wrote from Boston,
where he lived, for a copy; for he wanted, he said, his boys to enjoy the
book as he had done in his boy days.


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