"He was just beginning to make a name for himself in the musical world," declares a writer, "when he was stricken down in the prime of young manhood."

"He was educated for the ministry," says Mr. Root, in his autobiography, "but was so strongly inclined to music that he decided to try to make that his life's work. But he died almost at the commencement of his career."

Backward to the old home in the college town were borne the mortal remains of this dear interpreter of the melodies of the human heart. On the campus, at the corners of the streets and in the study room, there was the pall of sadness that only the alma mater of that day could feel at the obsequies of such a son. Professors, students and citizens moved in silent procession to the little cemetery by the winding stream, and in the quiet southwest corner, where sunshine and shadow weave changing figures on the sward the whole year round, the bard was gently laid to rest.

He yearned for the return of the season dear to poetic souls. With warmth and fragrance and music, spring came to open buds and spread the living green above his grave.

Nor poet, nor minstrel in all this middle west has found in place more fitting his lowly mansion of dreamless repose. Among the little mounds, the dark cedar and the arching elm stand guard, while at the edge of the sharp declivity beyond the grave and shading it from the declining sun, rises a sturdy oak, that has stood through calm and storm while generations have passed away. Not far distant and seen distinctly through the intervening branches, the stream with circling sweep moves onward as of old. Around is the music of nature, pleasantly broken at intervals by the college bell as it calls the students. to the lessons of the day.

Fair Otterbein! Blest are thy classic shades and hallowed thy memories. From these walls high-minded sons have gone forth to win laurels in the fields of honorable endeavor. Ministers and educators and jurists have acquired more than local fame, and one sweet singer found his way to the universal heart. The great world, in its mad rush for gain, may care but little who and what he was. But a better day will dawn is dawning.

When vulgar wealth yields to intellectual culture; when to sway thousands through the magic power of song to the support of a righteous cause is as great as to move men by eloquent appeal or to lead them forth to battle; when to add to the world's happiness is to be the world's benefactor; when to touch and refine the heart is to be a savior of mankind; when greed shall not outweigh the things of the spirit; when self is less and love is more, the fame of this son of song shall have a wider range, and for his memory there shall be a resurrection in the land he loved so well.

VOL. XIV. No. 2.

EDITORIALANA.

&O, Randall

APRIL, 1905

THE AVERY HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.

A philosophical essayist on the study of history tritely remarks that a historian should be possessed of industry, conscience and imagination.

ELROY M. AVERY.

Industry and patience to faithfully exhume the facts, conscience to truthfully and impartially exploit them, and imagination to vividly portray the scenes and events involved that the reader in his mind's eye may perceive them realistically reproduced. Such is the ideal historian. Such an one to a rare degree is Mr. Elroy M. Avery, author of "A History of the United States and Its People," published by the Burrows Brothers Company, Cleveland, Ohio-to be completed in twelve octavo volumes. The first volume is before us. As the proof of the pudding is in the eating, the test of the book is in the reading. It has long been our notion that the history of the United States has not yet been written. To be sure, many so-called histories have been put forth, but in the main written by eastern authors-provincial scholars, whose pens have been cramped by local pride or prejudices-a narrow range of historical vision-a vision bright and clear often till it reached the Alleghany Mountains, but beyond that lost in the vista of the great and overwhelming West. The vast and vital part played in the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys and beyond, in the formative period of our country, has usually been slightingly treated or practically ignored. The true history of the United States must be written by a Westerner; the entire sweep of the historian's realm can only be had from the center and not from one side of our vast domain. Mr. Avery was properly born, located and educated for this work. All hail to a recital of the origin and growth of the American Republic by a Westerner-an Ohioan. Mr. Avery is a typical American. Born in Erie, Monroe County, Michigan (1844), of the best New England stock and tradition, the best blood of our forefathers, and the best brawn and brain of our western self-made manhood. A descendant of Puritan ancestry, a son of the American Revolution, a

country farm boy, ambitious, industrious, indefatigable in his efforts for the development of all that was best in him, an improver of opportunities, a student in the school of experience and the academic course, a school teacher, a printer and newspaper writer, a brave soldier boy in the war for our nation's unity and preservation, college graduate (Michigan, '71), professor, litterateur, scientist, lecturer, principal of high-school, author of many standard text-books in scientific and literary subjects, a politician of the higher order and statesman in the Ohio Senate (1894-1898). Rare combination of natural and acquired fitness for the work which has engaged his attention for the past twenty years.

This first volume covers the period of the geologic formation of the land, the first Americans, paleolithic and neolithic Americans, the Northmen, voyages of the early navigators, Columbus, Da Gama, the Cabots, Vespucius, the Spanish, English and French pioneers, the American Indians, etc. The chapters on the first Americans, the paleolithic the neolithic man, are especially interesting and satisfactory. They deal with subjects fascinating because somewhat nebulous-on the border between myth and history. Mr. Avery has been unusually happy in treating these topics-concisely and comprehensively giving what is known and what has been guessed by the leading knowers and chief guessers. After stating the geologic hypothesis of the formation of surface of our land, he says: "In the earliest archean age (Azoic), only dead matter existed on earth. Then life appeared: first the unconscious life of the plant, then, the conscious and intelligent life of the animal. After almost countless ages, man appeared. Upon matter, life had been imposed; now, mind was to crown the structure, standing upon matter and life and dominating both. 'And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.' At what stage in this scene of development did man first appear in the world that Columbus found, and what sort of a being was he?"

He then discusses the earliest evidences of man's appearance-the glacial man—the original "ice-man"-the paleolithic man, so-called because of the "rudeness of the relics found in the quaternary gravels." He was followed by the neolithic gentleman (?), also pre-historic, but of a higher grade of intelligence and skill, residing in the stone age, but whose implements were ground or polished in a manner that set him above his paleolithic predecessor in the scale of civilization. The evidences of the neolithic race are very abundant and widely distributed. The third period was called the ethnographic, lying partly before and partly within historical times. "It began with our first knowledge of the red man, and is now fading from the screen like a dissolving view that has been held up for study for four hundred years." Then follow descriptions of prehistoric monuments. The shell heaps, the bone heaps, graves, village sites, and the innumerable and interesting remains of the cliff dwellers, mound builders, and peoples who left their indelible and often vast and wonderful