Through High Places and Valleys

Solon received an invitation to help break ground for the new Cincinnati church building just after the election. Lou and the boys went with him for the week's adventure during the third week of December 1896. It was a good chance for them to help get over the Bryan's defeat by McKinley.

Cincinnati was a strange and wonderful fairyland for the boys and quite a spectacle for Lou. Nashville was fine, but Cincinnati had a feel - old, European, settled and bustling. It was magnificent. Large ornate buildings, some eight, ten stories high, the majestic Roblein Bridge connecting Cincinnati with Covington, Kentucky, the new exotic Moorish Wise Temple and the beautiful fountain, all nestled along the dark, brown, swift Ohio River with an expansive ridge as the backdrop from east to west. The local boosters said it was like the seven hills of ancient Rome. The sounds were fun to hear and confusing to understand - languages, machinery, trains, steam boats, wagoneers, peddlers, street musicians and more. There was even a funny dressed foreigner entertaining outside the hotel. "Gypsy," Jim thought, "with a trained monkey and trick dog." The monkey was named "Georgie" and the dog "Dickie".

Taking a nice sixth floor room facing the river at the magnificent Netherland Hotel with its grand lobby mirrors, the Stevenson's of Tennessee were captured by the busy, smelly, noisy, and colorful "Queen City of the West". Sounds, sights and the smells of cooking hops, stockyards, river, manure, bakeries, eateries, meat plants, rot, spoilage and coal fires all blended in the cold December air to wash over and invade them.