RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
East Walnut Hills, Mt. Auburn and Clifton, on the heights to the north and east, were famous for their beautiful country places.
Then there was a large population of the best class of Germans, many of whom were university men who left their own country after the Revolution of 1848 and came to Cincinnati to settle. Of these, Frederick Hassaurek, General Willich and Judge Stallo, who came to Cincinnati when Carl Schurz went to St. Louis, are perhaps the most prominent. The German influence upon the community was marked. It made for a more liberal Sunday; it brought the study of German into the public schools; and it developed a strong taste for good music. Indeed, the musical advantages of Cincinnati in my girlhood were better than those of any city in the United States, with the exception of New York or Boston. Theodore Thomas was president of the Conservatory of Music and he organised a symphony orchestra which he continued to direct until he went to Chicago along about 1890.
Cincinnati in those days, with her educated, wealthy and public-spirited society, was much in advance of any other city in the Mississippi Valley in culture and refinement. There was great interest in schools of all sorts and in every kind of intellectual activity. Away back in 1848 the Literary Club of Cincinnati was formed by a company of men among whom were both Mr. Taft's father and mine, as well as Rutherford B. Hayes, Stanley Matthews, Manning F. Force and Mr. Spofford, later Librarian of Congress. This club continues to be a cherished institution and in my girlhood it was the centre of all interest in literature and intellectual pursuits.
My father, John Williamson Herron, was a graduate of Miami University at Oxford, Ohio, and was in college with Benjamin Harrison. He was for fifty years a trustee of that institution and was devoted to its interests. My hus-
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