Lancaster daily intelligencer. [volume] (Lancaster, Pa.) 1864-1928, 1880-07-02
CINCINNATI TO LEXINGTON.


Th0 Bloc Grass Region Of Ken
tucky-Lexingt0n.
Editorial Notes OF . trip from Cincinnati to
Lexington.
Cincinnati is not sweet town to the
superficial observer. It may have intrinsic
merits which entitle it to the high regard
of those who find them out but nobody
can do it with unaided vision and that
may account for the fact that the citizens
of the place, who have by laborious efforts
discovered its beauties, are SO unselfishly
ready to instruct the ignorant wayfarer
therein. But there was too Zig crowd of
outside barbarians at the Cincinnati con-
vention to enable the learned but limited
population of the city to give each one a
thorough course of instruction in Cincin-
MATHS delights, and so we, nearly all of us,
went away incredulous in regard to them.
We tasted the beer, and it was good We
ascended the inclined planes to the beer
gardens on the hills, Or mountains, as the
signboards delighted to call them, and we
found them pleasant but down below, in
| a town that bathed in the OhiO's muddy
water, and sat ON mud fiat at its side
and breathed an atmosphere that Obscured
the sun with it's smoke and filled your
pores and blackened your linen as though
you were on a railroad train, what could
there be but despair for stranger accus-
toned to clean water, sunshine and pure
air? Iwould like to he complimentary to
Cincinnati if l could, and l am ready
| to say for it, on its own statement, that it
has the biggest Music hall in the country,
and that it is equally devoted to the arts and
the industries but the Music hall is too
big, and the art is swallowed up in the in
| dustries. Whenever we hear of Cincinnati
and its Theodore Thomas-he is gone now
and of its schools OF design and two or
three other pretty things in the place, we
are reminded Of the appearance in a leaden
sky of few trembling little stars that we
always pity, so deep is the surrounding
blackness and so liable do they seem to ex-
tinction. The fine arts amid Cincinnati's S
dirt and pork-killing and distilling, shine
brightly, and the people need them to rec
oncile them to their sweltering lot.
If you get out of the town, on the hills
behind it, and travel several miles back,
you will find a very delightful suburb to
the city, where the wealthy citizens live
in elegant houses set in handsome lawns ;
and where there are two large parks be-
longing to the city. But the stranger does
not generally see this relief to the picture
down below, from which it is so far re-
moved. When Cincinnati people can get
on their hills they can live with decent
comfort like other people, but to 90 down
daily to business must be something like
descending into Hades.
Across the Ohio from the city lie two
other towns, in Kentucky, that are really a
part of the metropolis, with which they
are connected with a bridge. Newport,
which has in it a station of United States
troops, is separated from its larger neigh
Dor, Covington, by the Licking river, a
narrow stream of no great commercial i'm
portance. Covington is about the size of
Lancaster and is a very pleasant city, free
from the smoke that constantly hangs over
its unhappy neighbor, and with river
| bank that scorns to desecrate itself with
commerce. One would think that the
river bank would be the much-sought site
for residences, as is the Susquehanna's s bank
at Harrisburg, whose people seem to think
it rather superior place of abode to
heaven. But the objection at Covington
believe is that the winter wind is too cut
| ting in this exposure. In this hot weather it
seemed refreshing to hear of a wind that was
SO cold, and it was hard to believe in its
existence.
Somehow or other Covington Sc
cured an appropriation from Congress of
several hundred thousand dollars for a
United States public building, and she
has erected very handsome one, and done
it within the appropriation made; which
we were told as remarkable fact, as it is
for it is not often that the United States
is let off with the amount originally de-
manded for public work. Still, in this
case the appropriation was good big one
for town of Covington's size. and it would
not have been seemly for her not to be
content. Lancaster would be happy to
take quarter of the money to put up hel
postofice. In Covington they call the
building the custom house but as we saw
no boats about we presumed that this was
Just little innocent device of the Coving-
ingtonians to make people think they had
some commerce. In fact there did moi
seem to be much commerce on the ii t'er
even at Cincinnati. The boats at the banks
were few, and to see a steamer on the river
was an event. Maybe it was the wrong
time of the year, or maybe unexpected toe
much with our Eastern eyes used to the
shipping of the Atlantic ports.
My cousin, Mr.. Ernst, the president of the
Northern bank ofKentucky, at Covington,
and also of the Kentucky Central railroad,
which runs thence to Lexington, took me
down into Kentucky over this railroad on
the day after the convention to see the
glories of the famous blue grass region
which is tributary to his road.
The road runs along the banks of the
Licking and its tributaries to Lexington, one
hundred and six miles away. Until recently