Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/353

 LEWIS J. CIST. Lewis J. Cist is the eldest son of Charles Cist, who is well known throughout the West as the editor of Ci'sfs Advertiser, which was published in Cincinnati from 1844 to 185i5 — and as the author of three volumes of "Annals of Cincinnati" — published at decennial periods, the first volume representing the Queen City in 1840. Lewis J. in his early boyhood manifested a promising gift for making rhymes, but his father having a practical rather than a poetic turn of mind, instead of encouraging him to make authorship his profession, required him to give attention to mathematics and kindred studies, and, before he had attained his majority, tlie young man became an esteemed clerk in the Bank of the Ohio Life and Trust Company. Bank- ing, however, did not prevent Mr. Cist from often courting the muses. He wrote for lite Hes-perian, for his father's Advertiser, and for other newspapers, a large number of poems, from which, in 1845, he made selections for a volume* which was published in Cincinnati. his preface he disclaimed " pretensions to the honoi'ed title of poet, in the legitimate sense of the term," but styling himself a versifier, declared that he had " contented himself with occasionally gleaning — here, it may be, a weed, and there, perchance, a flower — from such by-nooks and out-of-the-way corners of the field of fancy, as had been passed over by the more worthy and accredited gatherers of the golden-hued harvests of Parnassus." Notwithstanding this modest disclaimer, the poet's book was received with words of fair encouragement by influential reviewers. His poems commemorating home affections were particularly approved. Several of them have been widely circulated. Mr. Cist is a native of Pennsylvania. He was born on the twentieth day of No- vember, 1818, at Harmony, a village established by George and Frederick Eapp (who afterward made " Economy " famous), on the banks of Conaquenesing Creek, a small stream, rising on the confines of Butler and Venango counties, Pennsylvania, and emptying into the Beaver river about twenty miles above its confluence with the Ohio. His father removed to Cincinnati when he was a child. There Lewis J. re- sided till 1850, when he removed to St. Louis, in which city he is now Assistant Cashier in a leading bank. Since his residence in St. Louis he has rarely published poems, but he has devoted himself with poetic enthusiasm to the collection of auto- graphs. He is prominent among the most devoted and successful collectors of chiro- graphic curiosities in the United States. pp.184 (337) 22
 * Trifles ia Verse : A Collection of Fugitive Poems, by Lewis J. Cist. Cincinnati : Robinaon & Jones, 1845. 12mo,