Mr. Howells has in the present volume given his writings the form of a series of historical stories, in which his native State is described and pictured from as remote a period as the geologic ice age. The slow-moving glaciers in the distant past covered most of the present State of Ohio. They rounded off the corners of her hills, smoothed the contour of her valleys, left glacial scratches on her rocks, and transported boulders from remote points where they had an origin and left them on the various glacial moraines. After the ice age came a strange and mysterious people who left traces of their one-time existence in the shape of curious and wonder-inspiring mounds and other earthworks of which Ohio has perhaps more than any other State. The remains of the ice age and the mound builders compete in interest with any fairy tale for young readers.
