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[Illustration: _The waterside at Martin's Ferry. Near this spot stood
the little brick house in which Mr. Howells was born._]




                           YEARS OF MY YOUTH

                                  BY
                             W. D. HOWELLS

                  WITH INTRODUCTION AND ILLUSTRATIONS
                   FROM PHOTOGRAPHS TAKEN EXPRESSLY
                   FOR THIS BOOK BY CLIFTON JOHNSON

                            [Illustration]

                     HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
                          NEW YORK AND LONDON

                           YEARS OF MY YOUTH

              Copyright, 1916, 1917, by Harper & Brothers
                Printed in the United States of America
                        Published October, 1917

                                  K-R




ILLUSTRATIONS


THE WATERSIDE AT MARTIN'S FERRY                         _Frontispiece_

THE OHIO RIVER AT WHEELING, WEST VIRGINIA             _Facing p._  10

HAMILTON, OHIO, THE "BOY'S TOWN" OF MR. HOWELLS'S YOUTH      "     16

THE MIAMI CANAL AT HAMILTON                                  "     22

THE NOW ABANDONED CANAL AT DAYTON AS IT APPEARS
ON THE BORDERS OF THE CITY                                   "     40

THE LITTLE MIAMI RIVER AT EUREKA MILLS, TWELVE
MILES EAST OF DAYTON                                         "     44

OVERLOOKING THE ISLAND WHICH THE HOWELLS FAMILY CULTIVATED   "     54

THE VICINITY WHERE MR. HOWELLS LIVED HIS "YEAR
IN A LOG CABIN"                                              "     60

ONE OF THE LAST LOG HOUSES TO SURVIVE IN THE VICINITY
OF JEFFERSON                                                 "     82

THE FOUR-STORY OFFICE ERECTED BY MR. HOWELLS'S
FATHER                                                       "    116

THE OHIO STATE HOUSE AT COLUMBUS VIEWED FROM
HIGH STREET                                                  "    138

THE STATE HOUSE YARD ON THE STATE STREET SIDE                "    158

OLD-TIME DWELLINGS ON ONE OF THE COLUMBUS
STREETS THAT MR. HOWELLS USED TO FREQUENT                    "    170

THE MEDICAL COLLEGE AT COLUMBUS                              "    184

THE QUAINT DOORWAY OF THE MEDICAL COLLEGE
THROUGH WHICH MR. HOWELLS PASSED DAILY
WHILE HE ROOMED IN THE BUILDING                              "    224

LOOKING INTO THE STATE HOUSE GROUNDS TOWARD THE
BROAD FLIGHT OF STEPS BEFORE THE WEST FRONT
OF THE BUILDING                                              "    236




PREFACE BY THE ILLUSTRATOR


Whenever I visit the region of a famous man's youth I have the feeling
that I ought to discover there some clue to the secret of his greatness;
for I cannot help fancying that the environment must have molded him and
been an essential element in the development of his individuality and
power. It was with such expectations that I recently went to Ohio, just
as spring was verging into summer, to see the land where Mr. Howells
spent the years of which he has made so frank and appealing a record in
this volume. In the middle of the last century the State retained much
of the crude primitiveness of the frontier, and I wondered what stimulus
this could have offered in creating a genius so broad in his views and
so sensitive to impressions, and in whose expression there is such fine
imagination, humor, sympathy, and wisdom.

I began my journey in Mr. Howells's native State where he began his
life's journey eighty years ago, at Martin's Ferry. The place is two
miles up the Ohio River from Wheeling, West Virginia, on the western
bank of the stream. By the water-side are big, ugly factories belching
smoke and steam, and in their vicinity are railroad tracks, cinders, and
other litter, and dingy, ramshackle buildings, among which are numerous
forlorn little dwellings and occasional saloons. A sort of careless
prosperity is in evidence, but not much of the charm of neatness, or
concern for appearances. The rest of the town overspreads the steep
<DW72>s that border the river, and pushes back into the nooks among the
adjacent upheaval of big hills. It is rather chaotic, but improves in
quality the farther it recedes from the smoke and din of the
manufacturing strip along the river.

The small brick Howells house stood close to the stream, where grime and
squalor most abound at present. However, the railroad was not there
then, and Martin's Ferry was a village that had in some respects real
rural attraction.

During the period of about twenty-five years which this book covers the
Howells family lived in seven different places, many of them widely
separated, but all within the confines of Ohio; and they seldom stayed
long in any town without occupying more than one residence. Naturally,
there have been marked changes in the aspect of most of the places where
they dwelt. Perhaps Jefferson has changed least. In the old days it had
six hundred inhabitants. Now it has three or four times that number, but
it is still serenely rustic, and every one knows every one else, and