"Age is a recommendation in four things," runs a Spanish proverb: "Old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, old books to read." To these might well be added a fifth,--old towns to love. To those who know her, Marietta is a hallowed spot. She is a tender-bosomed matron, this mother of many sons. Around her is a fair line of hills, which, whether green with the eternal promise of the spring, or wrapped in the blue smoke from autumn's invisible battlefield, or hoary with winter's snows, are changelessly beautiful. About her are broad fields, now quivering to their resurrection, now white to the harvests. Before her are the lovely, far-stretching rivers, calling to her all day long with their old, sweet notes of running water. By the bonds of her historic beauty she holds her children in a very tender thrall. In all times, and in all places, their hearts yearn unto her in the far Horatian cry: "Septimius,--_that angle of the earth laughs for me beyond all others_!" [Illustration] [Illustration] CLEVELAND THE PLEASANT CITY BY CHARLES F. THWING The first thing to be said about Cleveland is what, with the change of a pronoun, a Cambridge poet said about one of whom he wrote: "It is so pleasant." Its streets are pleasant to live in and to look upon; its parks are pleasant to stroll in or to ride in; its houses are, on the whole, pleasant to the æsthetic sense; its libraries are pleasant for their selectness though not for their bigness; its people are, above all, pleasant for their dignity, graciousness, genuineness, simplicity and appreciation. In the year 1838 the late Asa Gray spent a short time in Cleveland, and wrote from Cleveland to a friend, saying that the city would "ultimately be a very pleasant place"; he adds: "The people show some signs of civilization; they eat ice cream, which is sold in many places."[1] I wish I were able to assure my old friend and neighbor, as he now lives with the immortelles and other fadeless flowers, that he has proved to be a true prophet: Cleveland has become a "very pleasant place," and possibly I might be allowed to assure him that signs of the ice-age of modern civilization still linger. In that relation in which men commonly use the word "pleasant," the weather, Cleveland is not pleasant. It has as much cloudy weather as almost any part of the world; and yet it has a pleasant climate. Its summers are not hot, its winters not cold. To the worker of any sort this pleasant climate of much unpleasant weather is very pleasing, for in it, as in the climate of London, one can get much work out of himself. [Illustration VIEW IN GORDON PARK.]