atmosphere.  This crop still stood firm and hardy on the Reserve, and they often turned homesick eyes, talked lovingly and lingeringly of “down country,” as they all called loved and cherished New England.  Most of the first settlers were poor, but hardy and enterprising.  The two last qualities were absolutely necessary to take them through the long, wearisome journey to Ohio, the then far West.  They took up lands, built cabins, and forced a subsistence from the newly-cleared, stumpy virgin soil.  This homogeneous people constituted a practical and thorough democracy.  Their social relations were based on personal equality, varied only by the accident of superior talents, address or enterprise, and as yet but little modified by wealth or its adventitious circumstances.

Among the emigrants scattered here and there was occasionally found a branch of a “down country” family of some pretensions, dating back to services in the Revolution, to old wealth, or official position.  Among these were one or two families at Painesville, near the lake, at Parkman, several at Warren, and more at Cleveland, who had made each other’s acquaintance, and who, as the country improved and the means of communication were perfected, formed and kept up a sort of association over the heads, and hardly within the observation, of the people generally.  Of these, as we may say, by right of his wife, was Judge Markham.  He was a hardy, intelligent, and, for his day, a cultivated man, who came early into the woods as an agent for many large stockholders of the old Connecticut Land Company, and a liberal percentage of the sales placed in his hands the nucleus of a large fortune.  Sagacity in investments and improvements, with thorough business capacity, had already made him one of the wealthiest men on the Reserve; while a handsome person, and frank, pleasant address, rendered him very popular.  He had been for several years an associate judge of the court of common pleas for Geauga county, and had an extensive acquaintance and influence.  Mrs. Markham, a genuine daughter of the old Puritan ancestry, dating back to the first landing, a true specimen of the best Yankee woman under favorable circumstances, was a most thoroughly accomplished lady, who had gone into the woods with her young husband, and who shed and exercised a wide and beneficent influence through her sphere.  So simple, sweet, natural and judicious was she ever, that her neighbors felt her to be quite one of themselves, as she was.  Everybody was drawn to her; and so approachable was she, that the lower and more common declared that she was no lady at all.

Their only child, Julia, just maturing into womanhood, was one of the best and highest specimens of the American girl, to whom refinement, grace, and a strong, rich, sweet nature, came by right of birth, while she inherited beauty from both parents; she seemed, however, unconscious of this last possession, as she was of the admiration which filled the atmosphere that surrounded her.  She, too, must speak and act for herself.