of the district.

except to get out.

There was nothing for an ambitious man to do

When overtaken by this disaster Benjamin Hanna was too old a man to move and make another start. He died in 1853, and left his children an abundance of land but very little personal property. His sons were young enough to begin again. Joshua Hanna moved to Pittsburgh and became a banker. Leonard and Robert Hanna started off in the opposite direction for Cleveland, where, in company with a fellow-townsman, Hiram Garretson, they founded a grocery and commission business. They were followed or accompanied by the other brothers. In a few years all the Hanna family had deserted New Lisbon.

Mark, then a lad of fifteen, accompanied his parents to Cleveland, but after his removal he remained tied to New Lisbon by one of the strongest of bonds. He had asserted his independence and the maturity of his years by an engagement of marriage with a young lady named Mary Ann McLain. His suit was discouraged from the start by his own family; but his parents were apparently either unable or unwilling absolutely to forbid it. Mark certainly regarded himself as regularly and definitely engaged. During many years he often revisited New Lisbon, in order to see his sweetheart, and presumably to play around with his former companions. A boy who was so much of a boy was bound to have a love-affair; and in the case of a boy who was being treated by his parents as so much of a man, the love-affair naturally threatened serious responsibilities.

It speaks well for his fidelity in his personal relations that this pseudo-engagement lasted for nine years. During that whole period he continued to go to New Lisbon whenever he could; and whenever he came, he brought with him an armful of presents including, so it is said, dresses. Evidently after living in Cleveland he was not satisfied with the fashions of New Lisbon or Mary's ability to live up to them. His ideas about the apparel and the behavior of women were presumably changing; and his attachment to Mary, which dated probably almost from childhood, was being strained. He was always gay and sociable, and he always instinctively sought the society of people of the same temper and habit. Mary ap

parently was shy, awkward and not at all lively. The relation could not last.

But the way the end was reached testifies both to the good judgment of Mark Hanna's mother and to Mark's own frank courage. Mary was invited to pay a visit to the Hanna home in Cleveland. She accepted and it proved to be her undoing. Mary felt uncomfortable and out of place in the brilliant society of such a metropolis as Cleveland. She either refused to bear Mark company in his engagements among his new friends, or if she did she made an indifferent showing. It is said that when Mary returned, she realized that she and Mark could never be married; and New Lisbon firmly believed that Samantha Hanna had arranged the visit, in order that both of the young couple might have their eyes opened.

over.

Whether the event was due to diplomacy or accident, the inevitable result soon followed. Mark made up his mind that an end must be made of it; and when his decision was once reached, he did not shirk its unpleasant consequences. He went to New Lisbon and told Mary face to face that it was all The poor child took her sentence hard, but she is said. to have admitted its justice. As for Mark, a boy could hardly have behaved better than he did in the matter of an early and mistaken attachment to a girl. He was faithful for many years; he was both kind and generous; he evidently tried hard to make a place for his boyish attachment in the midst of a new and different life; and when he failed, he got out of his false situation as manfully as he could. Evidently his parents respected his attachment, and instead of arousing his resentment by uncompromising opposition, they had enough confidence in his good sense to allow him to extricate himself. Even at the age of eighteen or nineteen he was evidently very much his own master, and had won the right to take care of himself. His self-assertion when a schoolboy against the excessive authority of his teacher, Miss Converse, was bearing its natural fruits.

None the less the incident did not leave a pleasant impression on Mark Hanna's mind. The visit during which he broke with Mary was his last appearance in New Lisbon in almost thirty years. He did not return until 1890, and since this next

D

visit was a sort of memorial pilgrimage of a successful man of fifty-three to the haunts of his youth, some incidents connected with it may be mentioned here. Mr. Hanna was accompanied on the trip by his wife, his mother, his daughter Ruth, his sister Miss Lillian Hanna, now Mrs. S. Prentiss Baldwin, his sister Mrs. Henry S. Hubbell and her husband, Miss Helen Converse, his mother's sister, and Howard Melville Hanna. They came in a private car, and occupied pretty much the whole of the inn kept by an Englishman named "Billy" Bradbury. They visited the old house on the hill, found that to their recollection the rooms had shrunk in size, and discovered a closet, in which Mark had been confined by his mother for some boyish misdeed until his father returned and released him. While near the house they came upon an aged man who was holding his horse while it grazed upon the grass back of the old homestead. Thinking that he looked like the man who used to drive the stage between New Lisbon and Wellsville, Mark Hanna called to him and asked, "Do you remember me?" The man looked at him indifferently and replied, "No, I don't." Not to be discouraged, Mr. Hanna continued, pointing to his brother, "This is Melville and I am Mark Hanna." "You don't say so," the old man answered without the slightest trace of interest. "And how's business your way?"

"Billy" Bradbury, the hotel-keeper, was something of a character, and he and Mr. Hanna evidently soon became great friends. "One day," says Mr. Bradbury, "Mr. Hanna was sitting in the office, and eight couples in single rigs drove up. They had come from Salem, ten miles away, to see the new railway bridge. Three of the young fellows put their horses in the barn; the other five were not so particular and contented themselves with any post they could find vacant in the street. Presently the whole eight couples walked into the hotel, and sat down upstairs in the parlor; but when supper was ready, only those who had their horses in the barn came down to eat. 'Say, landlord,' one of them asked, 'do you know why those fellows and their girls aren't eating? Because they have not got the price.' Mr. Hanna heard what was said, laughed and said to me: 'Billy, go upstairs, and bring them all down to supper. Bring the boys and the girls, and if the boys won't

come, bring the girls, and feed their horses. I'll pay the bill." So he did, and no one was the wiser. When the bill was presented after a visit of three days it came to $80. The landlord received a check for $100 and was told to keep the change. Naturally he swears by Mark Hanna.

CHAPTER V

EARLY YEARS IN CLEVELAND

IN April, 1852, Leonard Hanna and his brother Robert left New Lisbon and started on their new business career in Cleveland. They were accompanied by Hiram Garretson, a fellow-townsman of Quaker parentage, and about whom we know at least that he was a man of impressive personal appearance. At one time he represented his country at an international exposition in Vienna. Before the formal opening he joined a number of minor European potentates in a special inspection of the exposition. In describing this royal procession the London Times is reported to have said that the most regal-looking man in the group was the American Commissioner Hiram - which was not so bad for a Cleveland grocer. He and his partners apparently had little difficulty in starting a business, which soon became sufficiently profitable to support them and their families. The family of Leonard Hanna had not accompanied him to Cleveland in the spring of 1852. They joined him in the fall of the same year, after the business had been well established, and moved into a substantial brick house on Prospect Street, between Granger and Cheshire streets.

The fact that Mark considered himself engaged to be married was not allowed to interfere with the more immediately necessary business of going to school. His education was continued during some four years and a half. One of the public schools which he attended was situated on Brownell Street, then called Clinton Street. Later he studied at the Central High School, which stood on the site now occupied by the Citizens' Savings and Trust Co. John D. and William Rockefeller were among his schoolmates, the former being about Mark's own age. Finally his education was finished by an attendance of a few months at the Western Reserve College. Nothing of any importance is remembered about his life during these years