HAINES LYTLE, the author of "Antony and Cleopatra," whose name was to go down to posterity as the "Soldier Poet." His reputation at the time was that of being highly social and possessed of winning politeness, a modest bearing and chivalrous spirit. One by our side who was under him, as we write, says: "My regiment was marching as an escort to some baggage wagons when an aid

galloped up to me and said, 'General Lytle sends his compliments to Col. Beatty with the request to send a company to the rear to guard against guerillas."" To be ever courteous seems to have been as a sort of intuition with him, and showed the high refinement of the man. It is said that just before the fatal charge at Chickamauga he drew on his gloves with the remark, "If I must die I will die as a gentleman." Whether true or a myth it matters not: if a myth its invention shows it was characteristic and, therefore, spiritually true.

Wm. Haines Lytle came from a ScotchIrish stock, and noted for warlike qualities and experiences. He was born in the old Lytle mansion on Lawrence street, November 2, 1826, graduated at Cincinnati College at twenty years of age, following his naturally military instincts became a Captain in Second Ohio in the war with Mexico, studied and practised the law, was a member of the Ohio Legislature, in 1857 was Major-General of the State militia. When the rebellion broke out he was commissioned Colonel of the Tenth Ohio, the Cincinnati Irish regiment, which he led into Western Virginia, and fell wounded at Carnifex Ferry while leading a desperate charge; was again badly wounded and taken prisoner at Perrysville, where his regiment suffered terrible loss. He was commissioned General and commanded the First Brigade of Sheridan's division on the fatal field of Chickamauga, where he fell at the head of his column while charging, pierced by three bullets. Captain Howard Green, a volunteer aid, sprang from his horse, received the General in his arms, and was rewarded with a smile of grateful recognition. Several officers and orderlies attempted to bear him off the field. The peril of this undertaking may be imagined since two of the orderlies were killed, and Col. Wm. B. McCreary wounded and left for dead on the field.

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"General Lytle repeatedly opened his eyes and motioned to his friends to leave him and save themselves. Finally, upon coming to a large tree upon a green knoll, they laid him down. He then handed his sword to one of the orderlies, and waving his hand toward the rear, he thus tried to express with his last breath that his well-tried blade should never fall into the hands of the enemy. So closed the life of the poet-soldier, Lytle. His death found him, as he prophetically wrote years before:

When preparing for our first tour over Ohio we passed a few days in the rooms of Dr. Randall, Secretary of the Cincinnati Historical and Philosophical Society. The Doctor then mainly constituted the society. A few years later he was shot while dodging somewhere in California behind a counter to avoid the ire of a

pursuing ruffian: but the society still survives. He had as an office mate L. A. Hine, then youthful, large and handsome, who was trying to reform a deceptive and deceiving world by publishing a magazine called "The Herald of Truth,” wherein was duly set forth a nice project for "Land for the Landless :" and then later he established his permanent home with his family at a spot properly named for domestic felicity; it being Love Land.

The rooms were on East Fifth street, opposite the old Dennison House, where the well-fed, portly form of Landlord Dennison, father of a then-to-be war Governor, was a daily object for pleasing contemplation. Alongside was the horse market, where for decades were daily sales of horses, sold amid crowds of coarse-grained men, unearthly, confusing yells and poundings of auctioneers, and the scampering to and fro on bareback horses of stable boys through the street to show their points. On looking upon the spot, its vulgarity and coarseness, its yells and shouting, and often oaths, it seemed as though the gates of heaven must be afar: at least there appeared no one in search of them in that vicinity. To enhance the attractions it was at a time when the city was termed Porkopolis, its citizens Porkopolitans, for swine had full liberty of the streets, living upon their findings, or going in huge droves stretching from curb to curb to temporary boarding places in the suburbs on Deer creek.

One day, while there in the rooms of the society, in bounced two laughing, merry country girls. Some jokes passed between them and the Doctor and Hine, and then they bounced out. They were from a rural spot eight miles north of the city, and well named Mount Healthy, their names Alice and Phoebe Cary, girls then respectively 26 and 22 years of age, and just rising into fame.

The portraits as published are not at all as they were then. Phoebe had a round, chubby face and seemed especially merry. Alice we

again saw and but once years later at a con-
cert by Jenny Lind in the old National Thea-
tre on Sycamore, near Third street. She
was then small and delicate with an oval face,
expression sedate and thoughtful. She was
attired in Quaker-like simplicity, her dark
hair parted in the middle and combed smooth
over the brow. No maiden could look more
pure and sweet than she on that evening.
Her appearance remains as "a living picture
on memory's wall." By her sat that most
superb-looking, rosy-cheeked old man, Bishop
M'Ilvaine, whose resemblance to Washington
was of almost universal remark. Robert
Cary, the father of the Cary sisters, came in
180 to the "Wilderness of Ohio" from
New Hampshire, and in 1814 married Eliza-
beth Jessup and made a home upon the farm
afterwards known as the "Clovernook
Alice Cary's charming stories.

of

Their mother, a sweet woman of literary tastes, died in 1835, and two years later their father married again. Alice was then 17 and Phoebe 13 years of age. Their stepmother was unsympathetic with their literary aspirations, which at this time were budding. Work with her was the ultimatum of life, and while they were willing and aided to the full extent of their strength in household labor, they persisted in studying and writing when the day's work was done, while she refusing the use of candles to the extent of

their wishes, they had recourse to the device
of a saucer of lard with a bit of rag for a
wick after the rest of the family had retired.
Alice began to write verses at 18, and Phoebe
some years after her. For years the Cincin-
nati papers formed the principal medium by
which they became known, then followed the
Ladies' Repository of Boston, Graham's
Magazine, and the National Era of Wash-
ington. Recognition from high authorities
at the East then came to their Western home.
John G. Whittier and others wrote words of
encouragement, and Edgar Allan Poe pro-
nounced Alice's "Pictures of Memory
of the most musically perfect lyrics in our
language.

one

In 1849 a great event occurred to the sisters -a visit to their home from Horace Greeley. The philosopher had come to the city and wanted the pleasure of an acquaintance with these rural maidens whose simple, natural verses of country life had touched a sympathetic chord, and so went out to their home and gladdened their hearts. We presume after that visit the stepmother wished she had been less close with her candles.

We remember that time well; the philosopher was an old acquaintance; the weather had turned intensely cold, and he said to us he was unprovided with a sufficiently warm clothing for a return by stage coach over the mountains.

A winter fashion at that time in the Ohio valley was a huge coarse blue blanket with a black border of about six inches. These shawls were extensively made into overcoats, whereon their black zebra-like stripes had full display. A more uncouth appearing garment could not be well imagined either as a shawl or overcoat. It was warm, but absorbed rain like a sponge. The shawls had struck the philosophic eye, they were so peculiarly what was then known as "Western," and to an inquiry we replied we had one not in use to which he was welcome

He grate

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fully accepted the gift and wore it home as a specimen of Cincinnati fashions, carrying, too, in its meshes a generous quantity of the city's soot, for which the garment had an especial retaining adaptability. To have thus ministered in that long ago to the comfort of an old-time philosopher bent on reforming mankind and inviting young men "to go West" is another pleasing picture on Memory's walls." Nearly thirty years elapsed ere we again saw the sage he was on his Presidential canvass, riding through Fourth street in an open barouche. His white, benevolent face had broadened, and he was bowing and smiling to the people, looking "for all the world" like some good old grandmamma when bent on dispensing to the youngsters some good warm gingerbread just out of the oven.

Having obtained recognition from the Eastern literati and some pecuniary success by a volume of their poems, in 1852, the sisters, first Alice and then Phoebe Cary, removed to New York to devote themselves to literature. They established themselves in a modest home, and by their habits of industry and frugality had success from the very start.

Occasionally they visited their old home and resumed the habits of their girlhood days. When they had obtained literary eminence they established on Sunday evenings weekly receptions, when for a term of fifteen years were wont to gather the finest intellects, the most cultured characters of the metropolis and the East. Assemblies so comprehensive in elements, so intellectually varied and harmonious, were never before seen in the metropolis. They were quite informal and

not especially gratifying to the mere butterflies of fashion whom curiosity sometimes prompted to attend.

Alice was frail, and in her last sickness, prolonged for years, she was tenderly nursed by her stronger sister, bearing her great sufferings with wonderful patience and resignation. She died February 12, 1871, and five months later Phoebe followed her. She was naturally robust in health, but she had been weakened by intense sorrow, and then becoming exposed to malarial influences quickly followed her sister. Both were buried in Greenwood cemetery.

It had been pitiful to see Phoebe's efforts to bear up under her dreadful loneliness after her sister's death. "She opened the windows to admit the sunlight, she filled her room with flowers, she refused to put on mourning and tried to interest herself in general plans for the advancement of woman. All in vain. Her writings were largely poems, parodies and hymns.'

One of her poems, written when she was only eighteen years of age, has a world-wide reputation. Its title is Nearer Home," and it has filled a page in nearly every book of sacred song since its composition. opening verses are:

One sweetly solemn thought
Comes to me o'er and o'er :
I am nearer home to-day
Than I ever have been before.
Nearer my Father's house

Where the mansions be;
Nearer the great white throne,
Nearer the crystal sea.

Its

The Cary Homestead, "the old gray farm-house," is still standing, in a thick grove about 100 feet back from the road, on the Hamilton pike, just beyond the beautiful suburb of College Hill, eight miles north of Fountain Square. The sisters were born in a humble house of logs and boards on a site about a hundred yards north of it. It is of brick, was built by their father about 1832, when the girls were respectively eight and twelve years of age. It is a substantial, roomy old-fashioned mansion, and is just as the sisters left it when they went to New York to seek their fortune. It has many visitors attracted by memories of the famous sisters, a brother of whom, Warren, a farmer, still lives there. After their decease Whittier, in writing of their original visit to him, thus alluded to it:

Years since (but names to me before)
Two sisters sought at eve my door,
Two song-birds wandering from their nest,
A gray old farm-house in the West.

Timid and young, the elder had
Even then a smile too sweetly sad;
The crown of pain we all must wear
Too early pressed her midnight hair.

Yet, ere the summer eve grew long,
Her modest lips were sweet with song;
A memory haunted all her words
Of clover-fields and singing birds.

The most interesting single object in this region is what is known as "the Cary tree.' It is the large and beautiful sycamore tree on the road between College Hill and Mount Pleasant. The history of this tree is very interesting, as given by Dr. John B. Peaslee, ex-superintendent Cincinnati public schools.

In 1832, when Alice was twelve years old and Phoebe only eight, on returning home from school one day they found a small tree, which a farmer had grubbed up and thrown into the road. One of them picked it up and said to the other: "Let us plant it. As soon as said these happy children ran to the opposite side of the road and with sticks

One of the attractions of the region is the for they had no other implement-they old family graveyard.

dug out the earth, and in the hole thus made