The Elk Mountain pilot., 1899-10-17
THE CARY SISTERS.
rHEIR EARLY LIFE ON THEIR
OHIO HOMESTEAD.
The Quaint Old House Still Standing
Whore They Lived During Their
f"uth-Amid Many Trials They Per
severed In Writing.
Especial Letter.)

About eight miles north OF the Gin
cinnatt postofflce, on the Hamilton cleo
trio line, is pleasant country home
which the passer-by is likely to notice
twice. even though ignorant of its
identity. In the middle of a large forced
yard or lawn set with shade and fruit
.rees, starred with peonies and lilies,
and thick-grown with lush blue grass,
stands commodious, old fashioned
brick house, the whole structure, bar
ring its green shutters, as white as
paint and whitewash can make it, and
showing pure as snowbank from
among the verdure and the fecking
shadows. 1t is a house of sixty years
ago, the heavy, -paneled doors
and square, small-paned windows i'm
parting flavor of quaintness, while
row of white brick pillars in a rear
angle of the walls supporting an over
head piazza adds picturesqueness. A
hooded well hard by, furnished with
bucket and windlass, is in keeping
with the house, and looks SO inviting
that the stranger feels he may, on the
plea of thirst, enter the grounds with
perfect propriety.
ly II he has in him any strain of senti-
ment, for this immaculate old home
stead and its rural surroundings are the
once famous "Clovernook''-the nurs-
ing place of the Cary sisters. who fifty
years ago stood in the forefront of that
interesting literary group that had
sprung up in the Ohio valley. presaging
an intellectual life in the West.
Among the relics kept in the old
house, which the interested visitor may
see for the asking, is parchment gov
ernment deed, dated 1914. signed by
James Madison, and emitting Christo-
pher Cary (the grandfather of the
poets) to $50 acres in Hamilton
county. Ohio. Christopher's son Rob
ert took possession of these acres, and
here in 1920 and 1925 were born Alice
and Phoebe. the two sisters who were
destined to make the family name not
! ed. There were other children-nine
of them all told-but they seem not to
have been literary. One of the flock.
an elder sister, Alice speaks of as
companion to whom she conhded her
crude little verses, and who, in turn.
confided stories of her own composing;
but this sister died when the budding
poet was yet q mere child. Then as
Phoebe's mind unfolded, she and Alice
grew together by the force of kindred
tastes, and all through girlhood these
two lived together and alone in the lit
tie ideal world which they built up. 1t
was no easy thing to do. Life in the
| West in those days had not passed the
pioneer period. and in pioneer life there
was little time for cultivating the
muses. and scant opportunity to ac-
quire the education and training easen-
tial to literary art.
The actual schooling the girls got
was meager: an Unsuitable appetite for
reading and tireless attempts at liter
| airy performance did the rest, and this
| culture had to be snatched as best the
aspirants could in a household where
work was never ended, and 1t was
struggle to provide the comforts of life.
The publications that struggled for
1 existence in the Ohio valley half CEN
| tury ago had, as a rule, very kindly
| attitude toward literary beginners. and
| so the sisters, first Alice and then
| Phoebe. soon found their way into
various columns. The harvest was
chiefly fame" Favored by an OCCASION
al mention, but it brought them into
the atmosphere for which they longed.
They became known to. and, in per-
sonal way, came to know people who
thought and aspired as they did. Kind
| ly letters of goodwill and praise, not
| only from nearby friends. but rom
across the mountains. found their way
to the country home. The stimulus
auickened them to a new growth, and.
within ten years after their first ap-
pearance in print, this pair of wild
flowers was fairly famous. Ere that,
pecuniary reward, in small way,
spurred them on, and, to help matters,
the father, as a remedy for domestic
| friction, built another house, and went
thither with the stepmother, leaving
the first house to the five surviving
children of the family, with Alice at