From the start, self-reliance has been a prevailing characteristic of Cincinnati. Its isolation in the days of the canoe, the barge and the pack-horse, developed its originality. A copy of the _Centinel of the Northwest Territory_, published in 1794, graphically illustrates its remoteness at that period, for news from Marietta had been eight days in arriving, Lexington dispatches were twenty-one days old, fifty-six days had been consumed in getting the latest information from New York, and European news antedated the day of issue four months and a half. It was natural among such conditions that the city should look to itself as the centre of interest, and hence at an early day the journals of Cincinnati, instead of canvassing distant localities for belated sensations, were encouraging local writers to entertain the public. It was the press of Cincinnati that first gave the poems of Alice and Phoebe Cary to the world, and they repaid it by conferring immortality in the world of letters upon the blue Miami, where they spent the simple years of their girlhood. And thither, because of the fame their singing had won them, traveled Horace Greeley and other celebrities of the day to do these gifted sisters homage. In Cincinnati was born Gen. Wm. H. Lytle, author of _Antony and Cleopatra_, and it was the journalism of that city that gave inspiration to his pen. Here, too, was directed the early genius of Wm. D. Howells, Rutherford B. Hayes, Salmon P. Chase, and other men who have dignified literature or public life. [Illustration CITY HALL, CINCINNATI.] Savage yells had not ceased to echo in its surrounding woods before music began to charm in Cincinnati. Even before Wayne came to silence the exultant war-cries of the tribes, Thomas Kennedy, in whose honor a street in Covington is named, used to entertain the frontier society with his fiddle, and a Mr. McLean, a butcher, took time to train the voices of the primitive colony. The Rev. Daniel Doty, who visited Cincinnati at an early day, was shocked at the singing and fiddling and dancing in the log cabins, as if the people "feared not God nor regarded Indians." Music, since directed in large measure by the German element in the city, has by its Chorus, its musical groves, its Saengerbund, Haydn Society, and other clubs, imparted distinction to Cincinnati and made it the Vienna of the American continent. It is not surprising that the pioneer butcher of the city found time from his chopping blocks to strike the tuning-fork, for Cincinnati, even after the location there of Fort Washington, was many times on the verge of starvation, and would have starved but for the timely help of frontier hunters under the noted Colonel Wallace, who brought the meat of buffalo, bear and deer to the stricken settlement. To-day the city dines well. In truth, it is famed for its good cheer and its bohemian independence.