The startling events of the times are necessarily connected with our story. For the truth of history was never surpassed by fiction, only in the imagination of weak minds. Sixty miles above Louisville, on the southern bank of the Ohio, stood a round-log cabin, surrounded by heavy timber. In the background a towering clift reared its green-covered brow to overlook the valley--the woodland scenery seemed to say: “here is the home of the wolf and the wild cat,” and it gave the place a lonesome look. A passing neighbor had informed the inmates of the cabin that a _saw-mill_ was coming up the river. Two barefooted boys stood in the front yard, and looked with hopeful eyes upon the wonder of the passing steamer. The gentle breeze that waved their infant locks, whispered the coming storms of the future. It was the Washington, built by Captain Shreve, and was subsequently seized for navigating the western waters. The case was carried to the Supreme Court of the United States, where the exclusive pretensions of the monopolist to navigate the western waters by steam were denied. Some of the old heroes who battled for the free navigation of the western waters, left a request to be buried on the bank of the beautiful Ohio, where the merry song of the boatman would break the stillness of their resting place, and the music of the steam engine soothe their departed spirits. Well have their desires been fulfilled. Some long and tedious summers had passed away--notwithstanding a congressman had declared in Washington City, “that the Ohio river was frozen over six months in the year, and the balance of the season would not float a tad-pole.” The music of the steam engine or the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, had given rise to unforseen industries. Don and Dan Carlo, standing in the half-way house between boyhood and manhood, without inheriting a red cent in the wide world with which to commence the battle of life, grown up in poverty, surrounded by family pride, with willing hearts and strong arms, were ready t-o undertake any enterprise that glimmering fortune might point out. A relative on the mother's side held the title papers, signed by the Governor of Arkansas, to a tract ol land on the Mississippi river, who gave the privilege to Don and Dan Carlo, to establish a wood yard on said premises. For steam navigation was not only a fixed fact, but the boats were much improved--many of them taking on board twenty-four cords of wood at one landing. “Competition is the life of trade,” and several enterprising woodmen were established in this locality; and when a passing steamboat would ring for wood after night, all anxious to show the first light, the woodmen, torch in hand, would run out of their cabins in their shirt-tails. From this circumstance, that locality was known by the boatmen from Pittsburgh to New Orleans, by the homely appellation of the _Shirt-Tail Bend._