THROUGH OHIO AND INDIANA.
Riding slowly through Mentor, Ohio, a small place with two stores
and a meeting-house, I overtook a man driving a raw-boned bay horse
that jogged along in a lifeless sort of a way. The driver too seemed
to be tired, as he leaned forward holding his body up by resting his
elbows on his knees, but this shiftless acting man drove into the
yard at Garfield's old home and was Mrs. Garfield's farmer. Views
of the homestead and its surroundings are familiar to every one,
but a large two-story stone addition is being built that alters the
appearance of the house somewhat. This handsome addition is doubtless
fire-proof, and the lower windows are protected with heavy iron bars,
giving the whole addition the appearance of an elegant prison, but it
is designed, I am told, to preserve all of Garfield's books, papers,
and other valuables.
Six miles east of Cleveland, a city named after a Connecticut
surveyor, is the Lake View Cemetery, at which place I stopped a few
minutes at the tomb that holds the remains of Garfield, guarded by
a squad of United States infantry. The use of the tomb was given
to Mrs. Garfield by a private family until such time as the remains
could be deposited in their final resting place on the top of a hill
a short distance away. The Garfield monument, the massive foundation
of which is barely finished, and of which George Keller of Hartford,
is the architect, is on a site that commands a fine view of the lake,
the city, and the surrounding country for miles; the most beautiful
location in that part of the State.
Euclid is a small village full of rum-holes, and surrounded by mud and
water, the most forsaken place I have yet seen, and in every respect,
excepting distance, Euclid avenue in Cleveland is as far removed from
Euclid as Paradise from Purgatory. Buffalo has streets as beautiful,
with better pavements, but none as long. The poplar seems to be the
popular tree, long stately rows lining the sides of the street. I was
using the sidewalk on what is called the "bob" side of this street when
a rider, using the pavement on the opposite, the "Nabob" side, warned
me I had better get off the sidewalk, and so I rode into the city over
poor pavements with the gentleman that proved to be the president of
the Cleveland club, Mr. H. B. Payne. Plank roads are a necessity in
the clay soil of the outer suburbs of Cleveland, but covered with two
or three inches of mud and sunken about eight or ten inches below the
level of the ground, these plank roads are neither pleasant to look
at nor easy to ride over. Much of the low, wet land between Buffalo
and Cleveland that will not produce a profitable crop of any of the
cereals, is lately being used in raising grapes, currants, and other
small fruits. This industry, new for this section of the country,
is assuming enormous proportions, and I passed acres and acres of
land entirely devoted to grapes. In fact the country seemed to be one
vast vineyard, and I could easily imagine what a delicious sight it
must present in the fall of the year, and my parched mouth seemed to
get drier as I rode past the immense cellars that I knew were full of
the cool wine. The route I was to take to Columbus was given me very
explicitly at Cleveland as far as Wellington, and from that place I
was told to "go right on to Columbus," from which I understood that
the latter place was only a short distance ahead. But at Wellington,
wheelmen could tell me nothing, livery stable keepers could only guess
at the best route, which I was equally able to do, and so I struck
out blindly. I went right on, not always right, however, often wrong,
but still I went. The Ohio wheelmen are to issue a road book soon,
but if the information in it is no more extended than the knowledge
of roads possessed by all the northern Ohio wheelmen I have met,
from the consuls up to the riders of baby bicycles, the value of the
book will not be very great.
And this is the kind of country I went into. Land, low, level, and
wet. Very little land under cultivation and that little producing
a very thin crop of wheat. Houses small and out of repair. Barns
tumbling down and propped up. No pebbly brooks or clean wells, but
plenty of stagnant pools and plenty of warm rain-water to drink. If
a farm-house has happened to burn down the farm is deserted. Nobody
seemed to be doing anything and everybody was waiting for the land to
dry up or something to turn up. The farmers were all fat, good natured,
and wanted to talk. The roads were in awful condition, full of hard,
dry ruts, and chunks of clay, that would beat a man's brains out if
his head came in contact with them. No one was going from place to
place, and over a portion of one main road only two teams had passed
in three days--since the last rain. Everybody seemed to have settled
down into the wet clay and to become contented; as happy as a great
fat hog wallowing in the mud and grunting with satisfaction. To be
sure there are a few places of three or four thousand inhabitants
scattered along through this otherwise thinly populated section, but
this is the general impression a traveler gets. I had to walk over a
good portion of the road and so had plenty of chance to observe the
condition of things for seventy-five miles south of Cleveland.
Besides, the farmers are as ignorant as they are indolent, knowing
little about their own State and less about other States. Not one
in ten of them could tell me within a hundred and fifty miles the
distance to Columbus, their own capital. One man persisted in thinking
Connecticut was a small village with a cotton mill, in the State of
Rhode Island, and I could not hammer--we were in a blacksmith's shop
out of the rain at the time--I could not hammer anything else into
the fat old simpleton's head. Then, in the large towns along the way,
as if to add insult to injury, the people, in talking to me about this
section of poor roads and poor farmers, referred to them as "Yankee
roads" and "Yankee farmers." But the people out here, although rather
despising the close, saving habits of the average New Englander,
yet do respect the perseverance, the tenacity, the sort of bull-dog
grip that they think the inhabitants of the Eastern States are noted
for. They pity the farmers of New England who contend against a stony,
barren soil, but they regard with admiration their constant endeavors
to obtain a competency. Here they get their living, such as it is,
so easy. At the risk of making a too egotistical illustration of
how they regard a little perseverance I will give a little incident
that occurred at Wellington, a place of three or four thousand
inhabitants. A large portly gentleman, fifty or sixty years old,
sitting in a carriage in front of a fine residence, stopped me to ask
the inevitable questions, where from, where to, and all about it. Then
he "hollered" loud enough for all Wellington to hear, "Wife, wife,
come out here and see this boy; this boy from Connecticut. Come all
the way on a bicycle, goes sixty and seventy miles a day some days;
going clear out to Denver on it. There's an Eastern boy for you,
that's Eastern grit, that is. That's Eastern," and he smiled all over
his round face and wished me all the good luck in the world.
Tuesday I experienced some of the difficulties of the Western mud. A
light drizzling rain in the morning made the roads too slippery to
ride, and walking was hardly possible. The sticky mud accumulated
under the brake and between the forks till, obliged to turn the
machine around and push it backwards with the little wheel in the air,
the big wheel finally stuck fast and slid along in the road. Then in
pushing up hill with all the strength I had my feet would slip back
and in going down hill I slipped up, paradoxical as it may seem. But
a heavy rain the next morning made the highways impassable for a
pedestrian even, and so I took to the lots, avoiding the plowed fields
whenever possible. Through ordinary soil the sides of the roads would
be passable, but all the holes made by cattle during the spring mud
for the last twenty-five years remain to-day just as they were made
along the sides, and when these holes are filled with water it is
not pleasant to have your foot slip into one of them and then have
the water squirt all over you, therefore I took the lots, climbing
post and rail fences, crawling through and lifting the machine over
barbed wire fences, any way to get along, but all day I made only
twelve miles and worked hard too.
Along in the afternoon a gentleman in a buggy, the first team I had
seen during the day, offered to help me along a mile or so. Seated
in the backside of his buggy with my legs hanging off and dragging
the machine after me, I thought that was not just the advertised way
of going "right on to Columbus," but it was to Columbus I was going,
someway. If the machine was muddy the day before, it was plastered
all over now. The sticky clay would accumulate under the forks and
saddle, and drop off in such big chunks that at times I did not know
but I had kept hold of the wrong chunk, and had left the machine back
somewhere in the road. Then from the shape of the mass of mud near
the locality where the cyclometer was last seen, I observed that the
ingenious little appliance was gliding gracefully along bottom-side
up. But all this did not last. The roads dried up before night so I
could walk in them. A mound of clay beside the road marks the spot
where I cleaned up the machine, and after passing through Ashland,
Mansfield, and some other smaller places, the next day, thirty-five
miles above Columbus I came to a "double-track" road and the hard
work was over. These double-track or "summer" roads, as they are
called, are made of coarse gravel on one side, and the natural soil,
the clay, on the other, the clay track being preferred in the summer,
and the gravel in the winter and spring. But I forgot to mention one
little incident of the day before. In jumping into a team-wagon for
a short ride, the corduroy breeches, with a loud report, split open
across the seat, really to such an extent that a change of apparel was
absolutely necessary, but before I could get to a barn, in which to
disrobe, I met several teams, in which were young ladies, and I know
they thought me very bold to turn about and face them after they had
passed. Stopping at Cardington, I found a wheelman, Mr. Samuel Brown,
who was also a tailor, and he put my breeches in riding order again.
The State capitol at Columbus is a heavy, square, granite building,
with piles of immense grindstones laid one on top of the other that
answers for pillars in front. It has very much the appearance of an
Egyptian temple, and is dark inside and dingy out. The buildings in
these Western cities, whether built of marble, granite, sand-stone,
or brick, all soon have the same dingy look, the smoke from the
immense amount of soft coal used being the probable cause. The members
of the legislature there convened all had an easy-going happy way
about them, and the clerk and messengers were slow and innocent in
their manners, in sharp contrast to the business-like, clean-cut
appearance of many Eastern legislators, and the rapid actions of
Eastern clerks and messengers. On the way out of the city I passed
the insane asylum, an institution that to outward appearances will
accommodate more patients and that certainly did produce more noise
by yelling lunatics than the one at Middletown, Conn. Both north and
west of Columbus for many miles log huts are seen on all sides, some
deserted, but most of them still occupied, that confounded clay pasted
into the cracks between the logs, making the best kind of protection
against the weather. Great black sows with chunked little black pigs
are as plenty by the roadside as hens and chickens are in the East,
and they are often seen roaming around the streets in good sized towns.
Three miles west of Dayton is the Soldiers' Home, and as I rode
through the entrance to the grounds, a big Dutchman stopped me,
but finding my object was simply to ride about the grounds and
out again, he said: "Vell, when you get up into the crowd be very
careful, for some are blind and some deaf, and if you run into one
h--l will be to pay." There was quite a crowd, four or five thousand
of them, some fishing, some watching the alligator, all seemingly
enjoying themselves about the grounds--grounds that are laid out
in beautiful shape, and that contain everything almost that would
make life happy. All enjoying themselves? No, not all, for over on
the farther side of the grounds several hundred were laying away,
with military honors, one who had gone over to the silent majority,
and as they filled his grave another grave was being dug.
Mr. T. J. Kirkpatrick of Springfield, is of medium size, middle aged,
light complexioned, with light-colored side-whiskers and mustache,
and from my ten minutes' talk with him I am satisfied that if there
had been no other route from Cleveland to Columbus than the one the
local consul at Cleveland gave me, Kirkpatrick would have started
out and made one for the occasion. He is one of those men who can't
do enough to help you along, and is an honor to the L. A. W.
The "pike" from Columbus to Indianapolis is a road that originally
must have been built at great expense, for it is raised fifteen feet
or more along some of the low lands, and now is kept in excellent
repair,--a broad, level, and very straight highway, so straight that
in forty-four miles there are only two slight bends in it, and so
level in places that for twelve miles there is not the slightest rise
or depression. In the western part of Ohio the land is just rolling
enough to make some very fine coasting, and at times you can look
straight ahead eight or ten miles, to the top of an apparently very
high hill where the telegraph poles seem to come together, they are
so far off, and the task of climbing that hill makes you faint in
anticipation, but long before you get there the hill has faded away
(another illustration of the maxim never to climb a hill until you
get to it), the grade up it has been so gradual, and then, at last,
you can look back and see another hill just as high that you have
come down without knowing it. The very numerous toll-gate keepers
along this pike charge two cents a mile for a horse, so if I had had
one of flesh and blood, the expense one day would have been $1.52,
but it being of steel and rubber, and only part of a rubber tire on
the little wheel at that, the cost for toll was nothing. The road
from Buffalo to Cleveland I thought was high water-mark, but this
pike is so uniformly good for 180 miles that it must have first place.
The appetite such a journey as this gives one is no small part of
the pleasure of the trip, everything tastes so good. The truth was
never more plainly stated than by a Spartan waiter. Dionysius was
taking a "hasty plate of soup," at one of those free lunches they
gave there in Greece so often, when, pushing back from the table, he
complained that the black broth was not highly seasoned enough for
him. The waiter roared it through the hall "Seasoned! We season it
by running, sweating, and getting tired, hungry, and thirsty." It is
truly wonderful how such exercise does increase a person's digestive
ability. I can imagine to a certain degree just how Milo, a Grecian
athlete, must have enjoyed himself. Twenty pounds was the amount of
his daily bread, and the same quantity of meat, besides fifteen quarts
of wine, taken afterwards, no doubt, for his stomach's ache. One
day, feeling somewhat faint from lack of nourishment, he knocked a
four-year-old in the head with his fist, and devoured the whole "beef
critter" during the day. To some this may at first appear incredible,
but there is one explanation, at least, that is plausible: Milo must
undoubtedly have been a wheelman.
The first night out from Columbus I stopped at a farm-house. I walked
around to the side door and was just going into the dining-room,
when a man, with black hair, wild eyes, and thin pale face came
out. He took one sharp look at me, and turning suddenly, slammed the
glass door in my face, rushed through the dining-room, and pulling
a spread from the table in his flight, and covering himself up with
it, disappeared. But not for a great while. As I was eating supper
he came back through the room, slamming the doors in his wild rush,
and ran out into the yard, as if the very devil was after him. Then I
could see him out in the dark, his eyes glaring in at me through the
window, and after a while, when everything was still, bang! would go
some door, and away he would run through the room into the bed-room
again. Still he said nothing, had not spoken for years, they told
me. Once or twice during the evening he came slowly into the room,
sidling along with his face averted, and his hands apparently warding
off some blow coming from where I sat, and during the night I heard
an occasional crash as if the side of the house had fallen in. It was
that lunatic trying to get out of the cage in which they confined him,
while the inmates of the house were asleep.
Distance traveled in four weeks, 1,257 miles.