WILLIAM HENRY VENABLE. 57 This voice did on my spirit fall, Peschiera, when thy bridge I crost, "'T is better to have fought and lost, Than never to have fought at all.” SUBMISSION. WILLIAM HENRY VENABLE. WILLIAM HENRY VENABLE, of Cincinnati, was born in Warren County, Ohio, April 29, 1836. His father, of whom the son says, "He was both meek and brave, Not haughty and yet proud," was a character exceptional in his time and place: he was a man of books and fine tastes in the country while it was yet new, on a small farm that he tilled with his own hands. In the longer season he worked on his farm, and in that shorter, cold one in which the farmers' boys and girls got their learning he taught the district-school. He was a scholar of considerable attainments and wide reading, and the purity, and sincerity, and simple dignity of his life illustrated the primitive meaning of the word gentleman: he was a gentle man. In short, with his friendship for nature and his love of literature, he was such a man as his son well might cite for proof that he is a poet born. And on the mother's side, too, Dr. Venable comes from a brainy stock of farmers with literary tastes and tendencies. In a home full of books, with such a father's keen appreciation of them for a constant inspiration, young Venable very naturally and very early became an enthusiastic reader and ardent student. He soon outgrew the limits of learning in the country school, and went to town for the advantages of higher institutions. His circumstances did not permit him to take a course at college; but, with his academic privileges and his industry and ardor in availing himself of them, he was not slow in coming into notice as an educated man and an educator. His intellectual curiosity had taken him into Latin, Greek and German, but much more into science, history and literature; which latter-notably the last-are his specialties. To the promotion of liberal education in these, by teaching, and speaking, and writing, he has given himself with an energy that, but for his strong will and cheerful temperament, would long ago have wrecked the delicate physical organization which he has inherited. Notwithstanding his nature is underlaid with a stratum of intense melancholy, and in spite of his apparently slight hold on existence, he is an optimist, a resolute and indefatigable worker, and a successful man of affairs. His labor has gained him a delightful home on a romantic hill at Tusculum (a suburb of Cincinnati), where dwells a charming family-a wife, as he truly characterizes her in the dedication of one of his books of verse, "wise, noble, loved and loving," and half a dozen admirable children. His quick eye for character, his delicious humor and swift imagination, and his dramatic instinct of scene and situation make him an interesting storyteller whether in speaking or in writing; as witness his "Thomas Tadmore," a narrative lecture of the "humor and pathos of boy-life," with which he has delighted so many audiences-not to mention the various short stories of like character which he has contributed to periodicals and newspapers. But such work as this-and measurably, too, the same may be said of his poetic utterance—has been but the byplay of a career of earnest, toilsome (often irksome) endeavor. His life has been devoted to the higher interests of his time, especially the furtherance of liberal education and literary culture. With tongue and pen he has wrought incessantly for the diffusion of "sweetness and light." He has written innumerable articles for the periodical press, and has lectured on elevating subjects hundreds of times to audiences in all parts of the Ohio Valley and elsewhere. He has done a great deal of periodical and newspaper work in the line of editorial writing, and has made extensive original research in local history and biography. In the yet obscure annals of the settlement and early growth of the Northwest Territory -north of the Ohio and west of the Alleghanies-he is an authority. He is a member of numerous societies for the advancement of knowledge and civilization, and has been complimented with the collegiate degrees of A.M. and LL.D. Among Dr. Venable's first publications was a line of books for use in schools-a "History of the United States," "The School Stage," "The Amateur Actor," and "Dramatic Scenes." Following these, "Chronicles of the Great Rebellion,” “PrizeEssay on the Use of the Dictionary," "Facts and Experiments in Chemistry," "Sketches of Cincinnati Libraries," "A Series of Studies of the Literature of the West," "Footprints of the Pioneers in the Ohio Valley," "Sketch of the Life of Wm. D. Gallagher," "Down South Before the War," etc. His first volume of poems, "June on the Miami," appeared in 1871; "The Teacher's Dream," a giftbook, in 1880; "Melodies of the Heart, Songs of Freedom, and Other Poems," in 1884, and "Songs of School-days," in 1889. Of Venable as a man, the distinguished artist C. T. Webber, of Cincinnati, writes: "I know a great many things about Venable which it will not do to tell here; but he will be taken off one of these days, and then those who remain can speak out, and they will love to speak it, and the world will be the better for the hearing of it;"-and adds that he is 66 as keenly alive to the moral beauty, to the intellectual and artistic harmony of his peers as he is to the music of the Miami's soft waters, that flow, one must think, in the more contented melody for his praise." Another friend, in writing of him as a poet, says: "Mr. Venable is a poet born and a poet by culture. He has the fine poetical physique, and lives and breathes in the melody of nature. All his tastes, all his aspirations, all his belongings, are colored through and through with the ethereal blood of song." C. K. THE TEACHER'S DREAM. THE weary teacher sat alone While twilight gathered on; The weary teacher sat alone, "Another round, another round Of labor thrown away,Another chain of toil and pain Dragged through a tedious day. "Of no avail is constant zeal, Love's sacrifice is loss, "I squander on a barren field My strength, my life, my all; He sighed, and low upon his hands And then he lifted up his face, But started back aghast,The room by strange and sudden change Assumed proportions vast. It seemed a senate hall, and one Addressed a listening throng: The 'wildered teacher thought he knew WILLIAM HENRY VENABLE. 59 The stately senate hall dissolved, A church rose in its place, And though he heard the solemn voice, The teacher's thought was strangely wrought: "My yearning heart, to-day, Wept for this youth whose wayward will The church, a phantasm, vanished soon: In classic gloom of alcoved room, "My idlest lad!" the teacher said, The vision of a cottage home A mother's face illumed the place "A miracle! a miracle! This matron, well I know, Was but a wild and careless child, "And when she to her children speaks Her lips repeat, in accents sweet, The scene was changed again, and lo, "A dream!" the sleeper, waking, said, Of peace and trust and love and praise; THE SALUTATORIAN. IN SNOWY lace and satin, Bedecked with floral glory, She bows, and reads, in Latin, The class salutatory. A scarlet rose resembles Her cheeks aglow with blushes; Her timid bosom trembles Like a singing hermit thrush's. Her charming agitation, More than any word she utters. Captivates my admiration; And my heart excited flutters. Oh, fair and gentle creature, Trained in language and belles lettres, I'm very sure no teacher Than I can love you better. She has won my heart completely For she smiled so very sweetly Just because she chanced to stammer. She's the flower of the college; I care not, Sir Professor, What you say about her knowledge, I shall go away, heart-laden, Carry these enraptured roses, And, gentle roses, tarry In her presence like a tutor, And warn her not to marry If her suitors do not suit her. THE COMING MAN. THE Coming Man I sing: the Coming Man flight His solemn gaze pursues her starry light. Not knowledge only enters in the plan THE VENAL VOTE. AND thou didst sell thy vote, and thou didst buy! Stain not your flag by glancing at its stars. TO MY WIFE. WISE, noble, loved and loving wife, These heart-born songs, a gift, I bring To thee, whose deeds, thy muses, sing The poem of a perfect life. EMERSON. The Transcendentalist-he now transcends GIRLHOOD. A charm attends her everywhere; A sense of beauty; Care smiles to see her free of care; The hard heart loves her nnaware; Age pays her duty. She is protected by the sky; Good spirits tend her; Her innocence is panoply; God's wrath must on the miscreant lie, Who dares offend her. -The School Girl. LAURA JACINTA RITTENHOUSE. THE subject of this sketch, Mrs. Laura J. Rit tenhouse, née Arter, was born in 1841, in an humble but well-provided home in Pulaski County, Illinois, on the crest of forest-crowned hills overlooking the waters of the beautiful and usually placid Ohio river. The strong natural endowments of her parents (Dr. and Mrs. Daniel Arter) were transmitted to the child. Her opportunities to improve these qualities were few and poor, but as good as the sparcely settled country afforded. On December 31, 1863, Miss Arter was married to Mr. Wood Rittenhouse, a prosperous merchant and honored citizen of Cairo, Ill. She has lived very happily with him, and is the mother of a bright girl and four studious, industrious and promising boys. For many years after her marriage, the cares of home and the training of her children occupied Mrs. Rittenhouse's time so fully that her literary work was almost abandoned, but for the past two or three years she has had a few hours occasionally to devote to her pen, and that she improves these intervals the columns of many magazines and papers abundantly testify. A woman pure and fine of character, unflinching in principle, strong in her love of truth and justice, generous, warm-hearted, magnetic, cheery and gifted with large executive power, she has been a natural leader among her kind, first in all benevo| lent and social enterprises, a tireless worker for home and church and fellow-kind. Her warmest interest has, for years, been given to the work of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and for that body and its great cause she has worked and written unceasingly. Although Mrs. Rittenhouse is the author of a number of poems, her best efforts are her stories. She possesses the peculiar faculty of clothing everyday and even commonplace incidents in most attractive garb. She never drifts into the unreasonably sensational. She invests all the topics with which she deals and all the plots she constructs with rare interest to the reader, and her style is at once healthful and elevating. M. B. H. IN THE COUNTRY. IN GORGEOUS chaplets on the trees, The mellow fruits of autumn clung. The cedars droop their stately heads, Bowed down with diamonds pure and bright, And fleecy robes have draped the earth Where flowed the golden summer light. |