Read "Told by "the Noted Traveler"" by James Whitcomb Riley online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Coming, clean from the Maryland-end / Of this great National Road of ours, / Through your vast West; with the time to spend, / Stopping for days in the main towns, where / Every citizen seemed a friend, / And friends grew thick as the wayside flowers, -- / I found no thing that I might narrate / More singularly strange or queer / Than a thing I found in your sister-state / Ohio, -- at a river-town -- down here / In my notebook: _Zanesville -- situate / On the stream Muskingum -- broad and clear, / And navigable, through half the year, / North, to Coshocton; south, as far / As Marietta._ -- But these facts are / Not of the _story_, but the _scene_ / Of the simple little tale I mean / To tell _directly_ -- from this, straight through / To the _end_ that is best worth listening to:
Eastward of Zanesville, two or three / Miles from the town, as our stage drove in, / I on the driver's seat, and he / Pointing out this and that to me, -- / On beyond us -- among the rest -- / A grovey slope, and a fluttering throng / Of little children, which he "guessed"