ome closer term, a man of
genius, and he shares with but three or four other Americans the fame of
qualities that made men love while they honored and revered him. In the
presence of this great soul, so simple, so sweet, so true, so winning,
so wise, I think the reader will scarcely care to be reminded that among
the notable Ohio men of our day are some of the richest, if not the very
richest, American millionaires.

XXV. OTHER NOTABLE OHIOANS

Two names well-known in literature belong to Ashtabula County. Albion
W. Tourgee was born there in 1838, and made a wide reputation by his
novels, "A Fool's Errand" and "Bricks without Straw,"--impassioned and
vivid reports of life in the South during the period of reconstruction;
and Edith Thomas, who was born in Medina County, made Ashtabula her home
till she went to live near New York. While she was still in Ohio, the
poems which are full of the love of nature and the sense of immortal
things began to win her a fame in which she need envy no others of our
time.

One of the earlier Ohioans of note was John Cleves Symmes, of Butler
County, who believed that the earth was penetrated at the poles by
openings into a habitable region within it. He petitioned Congress for
means to explore the Arctic seas and verify his theory; of course
he petitioned in vain, but he won world-wide attention and made some
converts. He had been a gallant officer of the United States Army, and
had fought well in the War of 1812, but he died poor and neglected. He
was of New Jersey birth, and of that stanch New Jersey stock which gave
character to the whole southwestern part of Ohio.

Another and still more famous theorist, who is not generally known to
have been an Ohioan, was Delia Bacon, who first maintained that the
plays and poems of Shakespeare were written, by Sir Francis Bacon. She
was born in Portage County at Tallmadge, where her father was settled as
minister.

A sculptor who, if not the greatest American sculptor, has yet achieved
in his art the most American things ever done in it, is J. Q. A. Ward,
the author of the "Indian Hunter," and many other noble if less native
works. He was born at Urbana, in Champaign County, of the old pioneer
stock; and in a region remote from artistic influences, he felt the
artistic impulse in his boyhood. His earliest attempt was a figure
modeled in the wax which one of his sisters used in making wax flowers,
and which he clandestinely borrowed. Th