In the grim terror of the times, an amusing incident now and then comes like a lilt of girlish laughter. Once the signal gun gave the alarm that the Indians were besieging the town. The night was dark and the confusion indescribable. Men rushed to their posts and the women and children scuttled to the central blockhouse. Colonel Sproat led the way with a box of valuable papers; next came a woman with her bed and children, and tumbling after her, old Mr. Moulton, with his leathern apron full of goldsmith's tools and tobacco. His daughter Anna carried the china tea-pot. Lyddy brought the great Bible. When all were in the frightened cry was raised that Mrs. Moulton was missing--that she had been scalped by the Indians. "Oh, no," said Lyddy calmly, "she'll be here in a minute. She stopped to put things a little to rights; she said she _would not_ leave the house _looking so_." And in a few moments the old lady scuttled in, bearing the looking-glass--a triumph of New England housewifery! A certain regularity of living was maintained in spite of the continuous fear. Every Sabbath morning church was held in a blockhouse where Psalms were droned with Puritan unction, and the sermon by Mr. Story, the scholarly Massachusetts divine, was tasted with much critical acumen by the learned backwoodsmen, many of whom were graduates of Harvard and Dartmouth. On the long Sabbath afternoons the children of the settlement studied their catechisms in the simple log cabin of Mrs. Mary Lake, the earnest woman who thus started what was perhaps the first Sunday-school in the United States. On week days they were gathered together for lessons, nor was the rod kept in less perpetual pickle because of the proximity of the Indians. [Illustration THE MILLS HOMESTEAD, MARIETTA.] The war once over, a busy activity ensued. Mills were built, bridges made, and more comfortable houses erected. It was not strange that the sons of the old coast States, with the siren voice of the sea still in their ears, should become notable builders of ships. The great trees of the forest were masts ready for felling, and many a stately vessel slipped into the water from this inland ship-yard, to glide down the Ohio into the Mississippi, and from thence to the shining ocean beyond. The town became a centre of industry and traffic, a position which she was not long to keep, for gradually trade drifted from her, and by and by she fell asleep commercially beside her pleasant waters, to nod and dream serenely through years to come. But not only was the early Marietta noted for her industrial prosperity; she was a centre of culture as well, and her place in this regard she has never lost. As soon as a greater wealth and leisure came to the pioneer colony, there bloomed abundantly the flowers of an intellectual refinement, which was the birth-right of those heroic men and women. [Illustration HARMAN BLENNERHASSETT.]