Ohio History Journal

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SONG WRITERS OF OHIO

SONG WRITERS OF OHIO.

 

WILL LAMARTINE THOMPSON.

 

Author of " Gathering Shells from the Seashore."

 

C. B. GALBREATH.

The world no longer takes things for granted. The days of

"original research" are upon us. The strenuous quest for the

eternal verities works results at once constructive and icono-

clastic. It reveals marvels and dissipates old illusions.  The

method of the analyst is merciless,-as frigid as justice, as "un-

compromising as truth." Woe to the tradition or the ideal that

rests on sandy foundation.

Theories of beauty in the abstract are older than the science

of ethics. Beauty in the concrete, if it be at all existent, is rela-

tive. We are variously impressed as we view the pages of art

and nature. The things that to-day satisfy the soul with their

sweet harmonies, may pall upon the aesthetic sense to-morrow.

Rare indeed are the things attractive to all eyes and in all seasons

beautiful.

The sentimental Frenchman, so runs the history or the

legend, when his eye beheld the river that forms the southern

boundary of our state, called it La Belle Riviere,--"The River

Beautiful." The hand of man had not marred its banks; indus-

trial civilization had not polluted its waters. It meandered in

stately grandeur through the solitude primeval. We are told

that the Frenchman was mistaken - that even then it was somber

rather than beautiful.

Passing over the varied comments of early explorers and

the fervid tributes of some of our later poets, it may be observed

that the great English novelist, who first visited America in a

somewhat critical mood, found the Ohio "a fine, broad river

always, but in some parts much wider than in others; and then

there is usually a green island, covered with trees, dividing it

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