But Rutland is not only “the cradle of Ohio,” pre-eminent as that distinction is in her history. She also--like the other towns on the hills round about her, and like every good old New England town--has her long line of simple local annals, well worthy the attention of the summer visitor from Boston or Chicago. Happy are you if you hear them all from the lips of one or another of the local antiquarians, as you ride with him through the fields to Muschopauge Pond, or along the Princeton road to Wachusett, or over Paxton way to see the lot which Senator Hoar has bought on the top of Asnebumskit Hill,--perhaps finding the Senator himself on the hill, as we did, where he could see Worcester in one direction, and in the other, Rutland. [Illustration: THE “CENTRAL TREE.”] I remember well the crisp September night when I first saw Rutland, with the new moon in the clear sky, and the evening star. I remember that the man who drove me up from the little station to the big hotel on the hill, while I filled my lungs with Rutland air, proved to be the hotel proprietor himself, and, which was much better, proved--and proved it much more the next day--to be the very prince of local antiquarians. He had himself written a history of Rutland for a history of Worcester County, and there was nothing that he did not know. If there was anything, then the good village minister--he has been to Marietta since, and is president of the Rutland Historical Society--had read it in some book; or the town clerk knew it; or Mr. Miles remembered it--who was to Rutland born, and whose memory was good. So in the dozen pleasant visits which I have made to Rutland since, I have not only taken mine ease with the benevolent boniface, but have taken many history lessons on the broad piazzas and the hills. [Illustration: THE OLD RUTLAND INN.]