Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/499

ABEAM SANDERS PIATT. Abram Sanders Piatt is more generally known to the political than the poetical world. The two pursuits, so wide apart as they are, seldom center in one individual. Did Mr. Piatt seriously follow either, this would not probably be the fact in this in- stance. But the happy possessor of broad acres — and beautiful acres they are — in the Macacheek Valley, Logan county, Ohio, he dallies with the muses, and worries the politicians more for amusement than aught else. His serious moments are given to the care of an interesting family, and the cultivation of his farm. No one of any re^ finement could long dwell in the Macacheek Valley and not feel more or less of the poetry that seems to live in its very atmosphere. So rare a combination of plain and hiU, wood and meadow, adorned by the deep clear glittering stream that gives name to the valley, seldom greets the eyes. There, the hawthorn and hazel gather in clumps upon the sloping hill-sides, or upon fields, while, like great hosts, the many- tinted forests of burr-oak, maple and hickory close in on every side the view. Nor is the Macacheek without its legends and historical associations. Men yet live, rough old backwoodsmen, with heads whitened by the snows of eighty winters, who will point out the precise spot where a poor Indian woman, seen lurking about the smoking ruins of the Macacheek towns, only then destroyed by the white invaders, was shot by a rifleman, who mistook her for a warrior. Near the Piatt homestead may be seen the spot where Simon Kenton was forced by his cruel enemies to run the gauntlet, when between lake and river lay a vast un- broken wilderness. It was near this, that he and Girty, the renegade, recognized each other, and the hard heart of the murderer was touched at the sight of his old comrade and friend, and he saved his life at a time when this bold act endangered his own. The family to which Mr. Piatt belongs is one of the pioneer families of the Mad River Valley, and has prominent association with the literature and pohtics of the West. Donn Piatt, his brother, is well known as a writer and political orator. Car- rie Piatt, a niece, has contributed popular articles in both prose and verse to "Western Magazines ; and John J. Piatt, a nephew, of whom notice is hereafter taken in these pages, is one of the young poets of the West, from whom much is expected. A. Sanders Piatt's poems have been published chiefly in the Cincinnati Daily Com- mercial and in the Macacheek Press, a sprightly weekly paper, published at West Liberty, of which he is now the editor. (483)