(Provided courtesy of Mary Lou Inwood.)

A FEW DAYS OFF

Rusticating Among the Old Scenes in Clinton.

     On the 10th on the early train South, grip in hand, I left for a few days off, to see old friends and visit the old home scenes of my boyhood in Clinton County.

     On reaching Dayton and finding I had an hour and more to spend before the train would leave for Xenia, I took a comfortable seat in the waiting room of the old depot, and settled myself to peruse the columns of the Commercial Gazette. That is always a newsy paper, well along in the front ranks of things, but this morning it seemed more than usually full of news, and being thoroughly engrossed with what was going on in the wide world, and more especially in the shape things were taken at Washington in relation to the Tariff of Trusts, I neither took any note of time, after Dr. Young's style, but paid no attention to incoming or outgoing trains. I heard no one say "All aboard for Xenia," but I ventured in a rather timid way to inquire of the Agent if my train was not overdue? "What train?" said he. The train to Xenia I responded. And then, with a gleam of satisfaction spreading all over his features he wickedly said: "Oh, that train has been gone eleven minutes!" So I had seven hours to see friends and the sights of the Gem City. I was particularly interested in the beautiful smooth asphalt pavements that are going down on some of the streets. There is no dust, no dirt, the horses and carriages rattle over them as noiselessly as they would over a barn floor, and there is no sign of wear.
     Six o'clock found me at Xenia, and an hour later at New Burlington a little quaint old town, on the edge of Greene and Clinton. This a very quiet town--very quiet. Rip Van Winkle never would have wakened here. There is no noise to disturb anyone. A sleepy man could have a refreshing nap here right in the middle of the day. In fact, the horses, many of them, and the awful cobblestone pavements and very much as they were 50 and 60 years ago. But the people are very clever. The men wear check shirts and go without coat or vest, and the tidy women in their neat calico dresses that come just to the tops of their shoes, are just as though they were one big family of sisters. They know just how the work goes on in each others' houses, and are ready to lend a helping hand in times of need. If a baby is sick the neighbor women help amuse it, or help do up the work, and are as good and motherly and sisterly as the longest day is long. They have excellent schools, a comfortable Methodist Church, and are now about to build a Quaker Church to replace the frame structure that was new 50 years ago. If a man wanted to retire from business and the noise and fuss that attend it, here would be a place that would command high consideration as being just to his taste--a community with nothing more noisy than the blacksmith at one end of the town and the shoemaker at the other.

     By special invitation I attended the 21st annual picnic of the Colletts and McKays. These families came to the neighborhood nearly 90 years ago, in the Spring of 1805, and purchased large tracts of the then untouched forests. During the intervening years they have intermarried and now there is a wide relationship, embracing hundreds of people. In fact nearly all the people seem to be more or less directly related to these worthy people who opened up the wilderness, made it smile in crops and wide pastures, and happy homes and who built school houses and churches, and made the country bloom and blossom as Eden.
     A pleasanter, happier, more hospitable people could not be found. They are all brothers, and brothers and sisters to the sojourner whose pleasant lot it may be to fall in with them. It was one of my best days so far. Here I met Dr. B. P. Goode of Cincinnatti, with his wife and daughter, a school boy of mine in the winter of 44-45, now nearly 50 years ago. And here were the Colletts, my boys and girls in the same school; John A. Smith, since Sheriff of the county. Here I met Bond Hackney, my schoolfellow in Cheyney Pylo's school more than 60 years ago, and many others whose families I knew a half century agone, men and women in middle life whose fathers and mothers have slept the sleep of the just in the quiet, unostentatious country cemeteries for many long years.
     They had a great dinner spread on tables in the grove for 400 to 500 people and after that a most grateful and refreshing shower, and so the day was a good one from first to last.
     Sunday was spent with brothers and sisters at Oakland, in the welcome quiet of a delightful country home. It was not their day for preaching, and so we had a day of real solid, refreshing rest, sitting in the cool shade of the trees and talking of the days gone by.

     Monday and Tuesday found me with friends at Wilmington, a town now nearly 90 years old. One thing about it is that in the center of Clinton, one of the best counties in the State, not only as to soil and improvements, but as to railroads, country pikes, and as to school advantages, perhaps no county in the state has been blessed with better schools; doubtless no county has a more wide awake, enlightened and progressive citizenship. I remember Wilmington for more than sixty years, and while it has been a quiet town with not a great deal of manufacturing, yet it has been the home of worthy and valuable citizens, who have looked out for the best interests of the people. It has now a population of 3,500 to 4,000. Some of the best school buildings in the State, one of them to be occupied this fall for the first, the Irvin Auger Bit Company and one of the leading Bridge Companies of the State, and altogether it is a growing and prosperous corporation that will soon be made a city. It has wide and well-shaded streets, well-kept homes that the people are justly proud of, and altogether as desirable a town for a home as one could wish.
     Just now the Yearly Meeting of Friends, which is to convene on the 16th, is receiving the chief attention of the people, and it will only have closed till the Cincinnati Conference of the M E Church will open its sessions. So as will be readily imagined, the healthy old town is taking on new life and new activity equal to the occasion that is before it.                         M.

     WE acknowledge the receipt of our usual invitation to the annual Collett-McKay reunion which this year will be held on August 11, in the customary place on the farm of ex-Commissioner D. M. Collett.