Buckeye yell
From Napoleon my route leads up the Maumee River and canal, first trying the tow-path of the latter, and then relinquishing it for the very fair wagon-road. The Maumee River, winding through its splendid rich valley, seems to possess a peculiar beauty all its own, and my mind, unbidden, mentally compares it with our old friend, the Humboldt. The latter stream traverses dreary plains, where almost nothing but sagebrush grows; the Maumee waters a smiling valley, where orchards, fields, and meadows alternate with sugar-maple groves, and in its fair bosom reflects beautiful landscape views, that are changed and rebeautified by the master-hand of the sun every hour of the day, and doubly embellished at night by the moon.
It is whispered that during "the late unpleasantness" the Ohio regiments could out-yell the Louisiana tigers, or any other Confederate troops, two to one. Who has not heard the "Ohio yell?" Most people are magnanimously inclined to regard this rumor as simply a "gag" on the Buckeye boys; but it isn't. The Ohioans are to the manner born; the "Buckeye yell" is a tangible fact. All along the Maumee it resounds in my ears; nearly every man or boy, who from the fields, far or near, sees me bowling along the road, straightway delivers himself of a yell, pure and simple. At Perrysburg, I strike the famous "Maumee pike" - forty miles of stone road, almost a dead level. The western half is kept in rather poor repair these days; but from Fremont eastward it is splendid wheeling.
The atmosphere of Bellevue is blue with politics, and myself and another innocent, unsuspecting individual, hailing from New York, are enticed into a political meeting by a wily politician, and dexterously made to pose before the assembled company as two gentlemen who have come - one from the Atlantic, the other from the Pacific - to witness the overwhelming success of the only honest, horny-handed, double-breasted patriots - the... party.