W, Q . HOWELLS 
 
This book 
 is presented to 
 Illinois Wesleyan 
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 PRESIDENT 
 MINOR MYERS, JR. 
 
 
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Illinois Wesleyan University 
 Sheean Library 
 P.O. Box 2899 
 
 Bloomington, IL 61702-2899 
 
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THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 And published with Mr. Howells’ s sanction . 
 
 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 
 
 A COUNTERFEIT PRESENTMENT. 
 
 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 THE LADY OF THE AROOSTOOK. 2 vols. 
 OUT OF THE QUESTION and AT THE 
 SIGN OF THE SAVAGE. 
 
 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 2 vols. 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY and 
 TONELLI’S MARRIAGE. 
 
 Edinburgh : David Douglas. 
 London : Hamilton, Adams and Co. 
 
THEIR WEDDING 
 JOURNEY 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM D. HOWELLS 
 
 EDINBURGH 
 
 DAVID DOUGLAS, CASTLE STREET 
 1882 
 
(Etitnfmrgi) tSiubersttg ^Bress 
 
 T. AND A. CONSTABLE, PRINTERS TO HER MAJESTY. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. THE OUTSET, .... 7 
 
 II. a midsummer-day’s dream, . 44 
 
 III. THE NIGHT BOAT, ... 65 
 
 IV. A day’s railroading, . . 91 
 
 V. THE ENCHANTED CITY, AND 
 
 BEYOND, . . . 110 
 
 VI. NIAGARA, 133 
 
 VII. DOWN THE ST. LAWRENCE, . .192 
 
 VIII. THE SENTIMENT OF MONTREAL, . 217 
 
 IX. QUEBEC, 255 
 
 X. HOMEWARD AND HOME, . .311 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 . . r 
 
 
 
 
 
THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 I. 
 
 THE OUTSET. 
 
 T HEY first met in Boston, but the match 
 was made in Europe, where they after- 
 wards saw each other ; whither, indeed, he 
 followed her ; and there the match was also 
 broken off. Why it was broken off, and why 
 it was renewed after a lapse of years, is part 
 of quite a long love-story, which I do not 
 think myself qualified to rehearse, distrust- 
 ing my fitness for a sustained or involved 
 narration ; though I am persuaded that a 
 skilful romancer could turn the courtship 
 of Basil and Isabel March to excellent ac- 
 count. Fortunately for me, however, in 
 attempting to tell the reader of the wedding- 
 journey of a newly married couple, no longer 
 very young, to be sure, but still fresh in the 
 light of their love, I shall have nothing to do 
 but to talk of some ordinary traits of Ameri- 
 
8 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 can life as these appeared to them, to speak 
 a little of well-known and easily accessible 
 places, to present now a bit of landscape and 
 now a sketch of character. 
 
 They had agreed to make their wedding - 
 journey in the simplest and quietest way, 
 and as it did not take place at once after 
 their marriage, but some weeks later, it had 
 all the desired charm of privacy from the 
 outset. 
 
 “ How much better,” said Isabel, 6 ‘ to go 
 now, when nobody cares whether you go or 
 stay, than to have started off upon a wretched 
 wedding-breakfast, all tears and trousseau, 
 and had people wanting to see you aboard 
 the cars. Now there will not be a suspicion 
 of honey-moonshine about us ; we shall go 
 just like anybody else, — with a difference, 
 dear, with a difference ! ” and she took Basil’s 
 cheeks between her hands. In order to do 
 this, she had to run round the table ; for 
 they were at dinner, and Isabel’s aunt, with 
 whom they had begun married life, sat sub- 
 stantial between them. It was rather a 
 girlish thing for Isabel, and she added, with 
 a conscious blush, “We are past our first 
 youth, you know ; and we shall not strike 
 the public as bridal, shall we ? My one hor- 
 ror in life is an evident bride. ” 
 
THE OUTSET. 
 
 9 
 
 Basil looked at her fondly, as if he did not 
 think her at all too old to be taken for a 
 bride ; and for my part I do not object to a 
 woman’s being of Isabel’s age, if she is of a 
 good heart and temper. Life must have 
 been very unkind to her if at that age she 
 have not won more than she has lost. It 
 seemed to Basil that his wife was quite as 
 fair as when they met first, eight years be- 
 fore ; but he could not help recurring with 
 an inextinguishable regret to the long inter- 
 val of their broken engagement, which but 
 for that fatality they might have spent to- 
 gether, he imagined, in just such rapture as 
 this. The regret always haunted him, more 
 or less ; it was part of his love ; the loss ac- 
 counted irreparable really enriched the final 
 gain. 
 
 “ I don’t know/’ he said presently, with 
 as much gravity as a man can whose cheeks 
 are clasped between a lady’s hands, “ you 
 don’t begin very well for a bride who wishes 
 to keep her secret. If you behave in this 
 way, they will put us into the ‘ bridal cham- 
 bers ’ at all the hotels. And the cars — they *re 
 beginning to have them on the palace-cars. ” 
 
 Just then a shadow fell into the room. 
 
 “ Wasn’t that thunder, Isabel?” asked 
 her aunt, who had been contentedly survey- 
 
10 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 ing the tender spectacle before her. ‘ ‘ 0 
 dear ! you ’ll never be able to go by the boat 
 to-night, if it storms. It ’s actually raining 
 now !” 
 
 In fact, it was the beginning of that ter- 
 rible storm of June, 1870. All in a moment, 
 out of the hot sunshine of the day it burst 
 upon us before we quite knew that it threat- 
 ened, even before we had fairly noticed the 
 clouds, and it went on from passion to pas- 
 sion with an inexhaustible violence. In the 
 square upon which our friends looked out 
 of their dining-room windows the trees 
 whitened in the gusts, and darkened in the 
 driving floods of the rainfall, and in some 
 paroxysms of the tempest bent themselves in 
 desperate submission, and then with a great 
 shudder rent away whole branches and flung 
 them far off upon the ground. Hail mingled 
 with the rain, and now the few umbrellas 
 that had braved the storm vanished, and the 
 hurtling ice crackled upon the pavement, 
 where the lightning played like flames burn- 
 ing from the earth, while the thunder roared 
 overhead without ceasing. There was some- 
 thing splendidly theatrical about it all ; and 
 when a street -car, laden to the last inch of its 
 capacity, came by, with horses that pranced 
 and leaped under the stinging blows of the 
 
THE OUTSET. 
 
 11 
 
 hail-stones, our friends felt as if it were an 
 effective and very naturalistic bit of panto- 
 mime contrived for their admiration. Yet 
 as to themselves they were very sensible of a 
 potent reality in the affair, and at intervals 
 during the storm they debated about going 
 at all that day, and decided to go and not to 
 go, according to the changing complexion of 
 the elements. Basil had said that as this was 
 their first journey together in America, he 
 wished to give it at the beginning as pungent 
 a national character as possible, and that 
 as he could imagine nothing more peculiarly 
 American than a voyage to New York by a 
 Fall Biver boat, they ought to take that 
 route thither. So much upholstery, so much 
 music, such variety of company, he under- 
 stood, could not be got in any other way, 
 and it might be that they would even catch 
 a glimpse of the inventor of the combination, 
 who represented the very excess and ex- 
 tremity of a certain kind of Americanism. 
 Isabel had eagerly consented ; but these 
 aesthetic motives were paralysed for her by 
 the thought of passing Point Judith in a 
 storm, and she descended from her high 
 intents first to the Inside Boats, without the 
 magnificence and the orchestra, and then to 
 the idea of going by land in a sleeping-car. 
 
12 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 Having comfortably accomplished this feat, 
 she treated Basil’s consent as a matter of 
 course, not because she did not regard him, 
 but because as a woman she could not con- 
 ceive of the steps to her conclusion as un- 
 known to him, and always treated her own 
 decisions as the product of their common 
 reasoning. But her husband held out for the 
 boat, and insisted that if the storm fell be- 
 fore seven o’clock, they could reach it at 
 Newport by the last express ; and it was 
 this obstinacy that, in proof of Isabel’s 
 wisdom, obliged them to wait two hours in 
 the station before going by the land route. 
 The storm abated at five o’clock, and though 
 the rain continued, it seemed well by a 
 quarter of seven to set out for the Old 
 Colony Depot, in sight of which a sudden 
 and vivid flash of lightning caused Isabel to 
 seize her husband’s arm, and to implore him, 
 “ 0 don’t go by the boat ! ” On this, Basil 
 had the incredible weakness to yield ; and 
 bade the driver take them to the Worcester 
 Depot. It was the first swerving from the 
 ideal in their wedding journey, but it was 
 by no means the last ; though it must be 
 confessed that it was early to begin. 
 
 They both felt more tranquil when they 
 were irretrievably committed by the pur- 
 
THE OUTSET. 
 
 13 
 
 chase of their tickets, and when they sat 
 down in the waiting-room of the station, 
 with all the time between seven and nine 
 o’clock before them. Basil would have eked 
 out the business of checking the trunks into 
 an affair of some length, but the baggage- 
 master did his duty with pitiless celerity ; 
 and so Basil, in the mere excess of his dis- 
 occupation, bought an accident-insurance 
 ticket. This employed him half a minute, 
 and then he gave up the unequal contest, 
 and went and took his place beside Isabel, 
 who sat prettily wrapped in her shawl, 
 perfectly content. 
 
 “ Isn’t it charming,” she said gaily, 
 “ having to wait so long ? It puts me in 
 mind of some of those other journeys we took 
 together. But I can’t think of those times 
 with any patience, when we might really 
 have had each other, and didn’t ! Do you 
 remember how long we had to wait at Cham- 
 bery ? and the numbers of military gentlemen 
 that waited too, with their little waists, and 
 their kisses when they met ? and that poor 
 married military gentleman, with the plain 
 wife and the two children, and a tarnished 
 uniform ? He seemed to be somehow in 
 misfortune, and his moustache hung down 
 in such a spiritless way, while all the 
 
14 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 other military moustaches about curled and 
 bristled with so much boldness. I think 
 salles d V attente everywhere are delightful ; 
 and there is such a community of interest in 
 them all, that when I come here only to go 
 out to Brookline, I feel myself a traveller 
 once more, — a blessed stranger in a strange 
 land. 0 dear, Basil, those were happy times 
 after all, when we might have had each 
 other and didn’t ! And now we ’re the 
 more precious for having been so long lost. ” 
 She drew closer and closer to him, and 
 looked at him in a way that threatened 
 betrayal of her bridal character. 
 
 ‘ i Isabel, you will be having your head on 
 my shoulder, next, ” said he. 
 
 “ Never !” she answered fiercely, recover- 
 ing her distance with a start. “ But, dear- 
 est, if you do see me going to — act absurdly, 
 you know, do stop me. ” 
 
 “I’m very sorry, but I’ve got myself to 
 stop. Besides, I didn’t undertake to pre- 
 serve the incognito of this bridal party.” 
 
 If any accident of the sort dreaded had 
 really happened, it would not have mattered 
 so much, for as yet they were the sole occu- 
 pants of the waiting-room. To be sure, the 
 ticket-seller was there, and the lady who 
 checked packages left in her charge ; but 
 
THE OUTSET. 
 
 15 
 
 these must have seen so many endearments 
 pass between passengers, that a fleeting car- 
 ess or two would scarcely have drawn their 
 notice to our pair. Yet Isabel did not so 
 much even as put her hand into her hus- 
 band’s ; and a 3 Basil afterwards said, it was 
 very good practice. 
 
 Our temporary state, whatever it is, is 
 often mirrored in all that come near us, and 
 our friends were fated to meet frequent 
 parodies of their happiness from first to last 
 on this journey. The travesty began with 
 the very first people who entered the wait- 
 ing-room after themselves, and who were a 
 very young couple starting like themselves 
 upon a pleasure tour, which also was evi- 
 dently one of the first tours of any kind that 
 they had made. It was of modest extent, 
 and comprised going to New York and back ; 
 but they talked of it with a fluttered and 
 joyful expectation as if it were a voyage to 
 Europe. Presently there appeared a bur- 
 lesque of their happiness (but with a touch 
 of tragedy) in that kind of young man who 
 is called by the females of his class a fellow, 
 and two young women of that kind known 
 to him as girls. He took a place between 
 these, and presently began a robust flirta- 
 tion with one of them. He possessed him- 
 
16 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 self, after a brief struggle, of her parasol, 
 and twirled it about, as he uttered, with a 
 sort of tender rudeness, inconceivable vapi- 
 dities, such as you would expect from none 
 but a man of the highest fashion. The girl 
 thus courted became selfishly unconscious of 
 everything but her own joy, and made no 
 attempt to bring the other girl within its 
 warmth, but left her to languish forgotten 
 on the other side. The latter sometimes 
 leaned forward, and tried to divert a little 
 of the flirtation to herself, but the flirters 
 snubbed her with short answers, and pre- 
 sently she gave up and sat still in the sad 
 patience of uncourted women. In this atti- 
 tude she became a burden to Isabel, who 
 was glad when the three took themselves 
 away, and were succeeded by a very stylish 
 couple — from New York, she knew as well 
 as if they had given her their address on 
 West 999th Street. The lady was not 
 pretty, and she was not, Isabel thought, 
 dressed in the perfect taste of Boston ; but 
 she owned frankly to herself that the New- 
 Yorkeress was stylish, undeniably effec- 
 tive. The gentleman bought a ticket for 
 New York, and remained at the window of 
 the office talking quite easily with the 
 seller. 
 
THE OUTSET. 
 
 17 
 
 “You couldn’t do that, my poor Basil,” 
 said Isabel, you ’d be afraid.” 
 
 “ 0 dear, yes ; I’m only too glad to get 
 off without browbeating ; though I must 
 say that this officer looks affable enough. 
 Really,” he added, as an acquaintance of 
 the ticket-seller came in and nodded to him 
 and said, “Hot, to-day!” “this is very 
 strange. I always felt as if these men had 
 no private life, no friendships like the rest 
 of us. On duty they seem so like sovereigns, 
 set apart from mankind, and above us all, 
 that it’s quite incredible they should have 
 the common personal relations.” 
 
 At intervals of their talk and silence there 
 came vivid flashes of lightning and quite 
 heavy shocks of thunder, very consoling to 
 our friends, who took them as so many com- 
 pliments to their prudence in not going by 
 the boat, and who had secret doubts of their 
 wisdom whenever these acknowledgments 
 were withheld. Isabel went so far as to say 
 that she hoped nothing would happen to the 
 boat, but I think she would cheerfully have 
 learnt that the vessel had been obliged to 
 put back to Newport, on account of the 
 storm, or even that it had been driven 
 ashore at a perfectly safe place. 
 
 People constantly came and went in the 
 
 B 
 
18 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 waiting-room, which was sometimes quite 
 full, and again empty of all but themselves. 
 In the course of their observations they 
 formed many cordial friendships and bitter 
 enmities upon the ground of personal appear- 
 ance, or particulars of dress, with people 
 whom they saw for half a minute upon an 
 average ; and they took such a keen interest 
 in every one, that it would be hard to say 
 whether they were more concerned in an old 
 gentleman with vigorously upright iron-grey 
 hair, who sat fronting them, and reading all 
 the evening papers, or a young man who 
 hurled himself through the door, bought a 
 ticket with terrific precipitation, burst out 
 again, and then ran down a departing train 
 before it got out of the station ; they loved 
 the old gentleman for a certain stubborn 
 benevolence of expression, and if they had 
 been friends of the young man and his 
 family for generations, and felt bound if 
 any harm befell him to go and break the 
 news gently to his parents, their nerves 
 could not have been more intimately wrought 
 upon by his hazardous behaviour. Still, 
 as they had their tickets for New York, 
 and he was going out on a merely local 
 train, — to Brookline, I believe, — they could 
 not, even in their anxiety, repress a feel- 
 
THE OUTSET. 
 
 19 
 
 ing of contempt for his unambitious destina- 
 tion. 
 
 They were already as completely cut off 
 from local associations and sympathies as 
 if they were a thousand miles and many 
 months away from Boston. They enjoyed 
 the lonely flaring of the gas-jets as a gust of 
 wind drew through the station ; they shared 
 the gloom and isolation of a man who took 
 a seat in the darkest corner of the room, 
 and sat there with folded arms, the genius 
 of absence. In the patronising spirit of 
 travellers in a foreign country they noted 
 and approved the vases of cut-flowers in the 
 booth of the lady who checked packages, 
 and the pots of ivy in her windows. ‘ ‘ These 
 poor Bostonians,” they said, “have some 
 love of the beautiful in their rugged natures. ” 
 
 But after all was said and thought, it was 
 only eight o’clock, and they still had an 
 hour to wait. 
 
 Basil grew restless, and Isabel said, with 
 a subtle interpretation of his uneasiness, 
 “ I don’t want anything to eat, Basil, but I 
 think I know the weaknesses of men ; and 
 you had better go and pass the next half- 
 hour over a plate of something indiges- 
 tible.” 
 
 This was said con stizza, the least little 
 
20 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 suggestion of it ; but Basil rose with shame- 
 ful alacrity. ‘ ‘ Darling, if it ’s your wish ” — 
 
 “ It ’s my fate, Basil,” said Isabel. 
 
 — “I’ll go,” he exclaimed, “because it 
 isn’t bridal, and will help us to pass for old 
 married people. ” 
 
 “No, no, Basil, be honest; fibbing isn’t 
 your forte : I wonder you went into the in- 
 surance business ; you ought to have been a 
 lawyer. Go because you like eating, and are 
 hungry, perhaps, or think you may be so be- 
 fore we get to New York. I shall amuse 
 myself well enough here.” 
 
 I suppose it is always a little shocking and 
 grievous to a wife when she recognises a 
 rival in butchers’-meat and the vegetables of 
 the season. With her slender relishes for 
 pastry and confectionery, and her dainty 
 habits of lunching, she cannot reconcile with 
 the ideal her husband’s capacity for break- 
 fasting, dining, supping, and hot meals at 
 all hours of the day and night — as they write 
 it on the sign-boards of barbaric eating- 
 houses. But Isabel would have only herself 
 to blame if she had not perceived this trait 
 of Basil’s before marriage. She recurred now, 
 as his figure disappeared down the station, 
 to memorable instances of his appetite in 
 their European travels during their first 
 
THE OUTSET. 
 
 21 
 
 engagement. “ Yes, he ate terribly at Susa, 
 when I was too full of the notion of getting 
 into Italy to care for bouillon and cold roast 
 chicken. At Rome I thought I must break 
 with him on account of the wild -boar ; and 
 at Heidelberg, the sausage and the ham ! — 
 how could he, in my presence ? But I took 
 him with all his faults, — and was glad to get 
 him,” she added, ending her meditation with 
 a little burst of candour ; and she did not 
 even think of Basil’s appetite when he re- 
 appeared. 
 
 With the thronging of many sorts of 
 people, in parties and singly, into the wait- 
 ing room, they became once again mere 
 observers of their kind, more or less critical 
 in temper, until the crowd grew so that 
 individual traits were merged in the char- 
 acter of multitude. Even then, they could 
 catch glimpses of faces so sweet or fine that 
 they made themselves felt like moments of 
 repose in the tumult, and here and there 
 was something so grotesque in dress or man- 
 ner that it showed distinct from the rest. 
 The ticket-seller’s stamp clicked incessantly 
 as he sold tickets to all points South and 
 West : to New York, Philadelphia, Charles- 
 ton ; to New Orleans, Chicago, Omaha ; to 
 St. Paul, Duluth, St. Louis ; and it would 
 
22 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 not have been hard to find in that anxious 
 bustle, that unsmiling eagerness, an image 
 of the whole busy affair of life. It was not 
 a particularly sane spectacle, that impatience 
 to be off to some place that lay not only in 
 the distance, but also in the future — to which 
 no line of road carries you with absolute cer- 
 tainty across an interval of time full of every 
 imaginable chance and influence. It is easy 
 enough to buy a ticket to Cincinnati, but it 
 is somewhat harder to arrive there. Say that 
 all goes well, is it exactly you who arrive ? 
 
 In the midst of the disquiet there entered 
 at last an old woman, so very infirm that 
 she had to be upheld on either hand by her 
 husband and the hackman who had brought 
 them, while a young girl went before with 
 shawls and pillows which she arranged upon 
 the seat. There the invalid lay down, and 
 turned towards the crowd a white, suffering 
 face, which was yet so heavenly meek and 
 peaceful that it comforted whoever looked 
 at it. In spirit our happy friends bowed 
 themselves before it and owned that there 
 was something better than happiness in it. 
 c * What is it like, Isabel ? ” 
 
 “ 0, I don’t know, darling,” she said ; 
 but she thought, “ Perhaps it is like some 
 blessed sorrow that takes us out of this 
 
THE OUTSET. 
 
 23 
 
 prison of a world, and sets us free of our 
 every-day hates and desires, our aims, our 
 fears, ourselves. Maybe a long and mortal 
 sickness might come to wear such a face in 
 one of us two, and the other could see it, 
 and not regret the poor mask of youth and 
 pretty looks that had fallen away.” 
 
 She rose and went over to the sick woman, 
 on whose face beamed a tender smile, as 
 Isabel spoke to her. A chord thrilled in 
 two lives hitherto unknown to each other ; 
 but what was said Basil would not ask when 
 the invalid had taken Isabel’s hand between 
 her own, as for adieu, and she came back to 
 his side with swimming eyes. Perhaps his 
 wife could have given no good reason for 
 her emotion, if he had asked it. But it 
 made her very sweet and dear to him ; and 
 I suppose that when a tolerably unselfish 
 man is once secure of a woman’s love, he is 
 ordinarily more affected by her compassion 
 and tenderness for other objects than by her 
 feelings towards himself. He likes well 
 enough to think, “ She loves me,” but still 
 better, ** How kind and good she is ! ” 
 
 They lost sight of the invalid in the hurry 
 of getting places on the cars, and they never 
 saw her again. The man at the wicket-gate 
 leading to the train had thrown it up, and 
 
24 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 the people were pressing furiously through 
 as if their lives hung upon the chance of 
 instant passage. Basil had secured his ticket 
 for the sleeping-car, and so he and Isabel 
 stood aside and watched the tumult. When 
 the rush was over they passed through, and 
 as they walked up and down the platform 
 beside the train, “I was thinking,” said 
 Isabel, 4 4 after I spoke to that poor old lady, 
 of what Clara Williams says : that she 
 wonders the happiest women in the world 
 can look each other in the face without 
 bursting into tears, their happiness is so 
 unreasonable, and so built upon and hedged 
 about with misery. She declares that there ’s 
 nothing so sad to her as a bride, unless it ’s 
 a young mother, or a little girl growing up 
 in the innocent gaiety of her heart. She 
 wonders they can live through it.” 
 
 4 4 Clara is very much of a reformer, and 
 would make an end of all of us men, I 
 suppose, — except her father, who supports 
 her in the leisure that enables her to do her 
 deep thinking. She little knows what we 
 poor fellows have to suffer, and how often 
 we break down in business hours, and sob 
 upon one another’s necks. Did that old 
 lady talk to you in the same strain ?” 
 
 44 0 no ! she spoke very calmly of her 
 
THE OUTSET. 
 
 25 
 
 sickness, and said she had lived a blessed 
 life. Perhaps it was that made me shed 
 those few small tears. She seemed a very 
 religions person.” 
 
 “Yes,” said Basil, “it is almost a pity 
 that religion is going out. But then you 
 are to have the franchise.” 
 
 “ All aboard !” 
 
 This warning cry saved him from what- 
 ever heresy he might have been about to 
 utter ; and presently the train carried them 
 out into the gas-sprinkled darkness, with 
 an ever-growing speed that soon left the 
 city lamps far behind. It is a phenomenon 
 whose commonness alone prevents it from 
 being most impressive, that departure of the 
 night-express. The two hundred miles it 
 is to travel stretch before it, traced by those 
 slender clews, to lose which is ruin, and 
 about which hang so many dangers. The 
 draw-bridges that gape upon the way, the 
 trains that stand smoking and steaming on 
 the track, the rail that has borne the wear 
 so long that it must soon snap under it, the 
 deep cut where the overhanging mass of rock 
 trembles to its fall, the obstruction that a 
 pitiless malice may have placed in your 
 path, — you think of these after the journey 
 is done, but they seldom haunt your fancy 
 
26 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 while it lasts. The knowledge of your help- 
 lessness in any circumstances is so perfect 
 that it begets a sense of irresponsibility, 
 almost of security ; and as you drowse upon 
 the pallet of the sleeping car, and feel your- 
 self hurled forward through the obscurity, 
 you are almost thankful that you can do 
 nothing, for it is upon this condition only 
 that you can endure it ; and some such con- 
 dition as this, I suppose, accounts for many 
 heroic facts in the world. To the fantastic 
 mood which possesses you equally, sleeping 
 or waking, the stoppages of the train have a 
 weird character ; and Worcester, Spring- 
 field, New Haven, and Stamford are rather 
 points in dream-land than well-known towns 
 of New England. As the train stops you 
 drowse if you have been waking, and wake 
 if you have been in a doze ; but in any case 
 you are aware of the locomotive hissing and 
 coughing beyond the station, of flaring gas- 
 jets, of clattering feet of passengers getting 
 on and off ; then of some one, conductor or 
 station-master, walking the whole length of 
 the train ; and then you are aware of an 
 insane satisfaction in renewed flight through 
 the darkness. You think hazily of the folk 
 in their beds in the town left behind, who 
 stir uneasily at the sound of your train’s 
 
THE OUTSET. 
 
 27 
 
 departing whistle ; and so all is a blank 
 vigil or a blank slumber. 
 
 By daylight Basil and Isabel found them- 
 selves at opposite ends of the car, struggling 
 severally with the problem of the morning’s 
 toilet. When the combat was ended, they 
 were surprised at the decency of their 
 appearance, and Isabel said, “I think I’m 
 presentable to an early Broadway public, 
 and I’ve a fancy for not going to a hotel. 
 Lucy will be expecting us out there before 
 noon ; and we can pass the time pleasantly 
 enough for a few hours just wandering 
 about.” She was a woman who loved any 
 cheap defiance of custom, and she had an 
 agreeable sense of adventure in what she 
 proposed. Besides, she felt that nothing 
 could be more in the unconventional spirit 
 in which they meant to make their whole 
 journey than a stroll about New York at 
 half -past six in the morning. 
 
 “Delightful!” answered Basil, who was 
 always charmed with these small original- 
 ities. “ You look well enough for an even- 
 ing party ; and besides, you won’t meet one 
 of your own critical class on Broadway at 
 this hour. We will breakfast at one of 
 those gilded metropolitan restaurants, and 
 then go round to Leonard’s, who will be 
 
28 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 able to give us just three unhurried seconds. 
 After that we ’ll push on out to his place.” 
 At that early hour there were not many 
 people astir on the wide avenue down which 
 our friends strolled when they left the 
 station ; but in the aspect of those they saw 
 there was something that told of a greater 
 heat than they had yet known in Boston, 
 and they were sensible of having reached a 
 more southern latitude. The air, though 
 freshened by the over-night’s storm, still 
 wanted the briskness and sparkle and pun- 
 gency of the Boston air, which is as delicious 
 in summer as it is terrible in winter ; and 
 the faces that showed themselves were 
 sodden from the yesterday’s heat and per- 
 spiration. A corner-grocer, seated in a sort 
 of fierce despondency upon a keg near his 
 shop door, had lightly equipped himself for 
 the struggle of the day in the battered armour 
 of the day before, and in a pair of roomy 
 pantaloons, and a baggy shirt of neutral 
 tint, — perhaps he had made a vow not to 
 change it whilst the siege of the hot weather 
 lasted, — now confronted the advancing sun- 
 light, before which the long shadows of the 
 buildings were slowly retiring. A marketing 
 mother of a family paused at a provision-store, 
 and looking weakly in at the white-aproned 
 
THE OUTSET. 
 
 29 
 
 butcher among his meats and flies, passed 
 without an effort to purchase. Hurried and 
 wearied shop-girls tripped by in the dra- 
 peries that betrayed their sad necessity to be 
 both fine and shabby ; from a boarding-house 
 door issued briskly one of those cool young 
 Hew Yorkers whom no circumstances can 
 oppress : breezy- coated, white -linened, clean, 
 with a good cigar in the mouth, a light cane 
 caught upon the elbow of one of the arms 
 holding up the paper from which the morn- 
 ing’s news is snatched, whilst the person 
 sways lightly with the walk ; in the street- 
 cars that slowly tinkled up and down were 
 rows of people with baskets between their 
 legs and papers before their faces ; and all 
 showed by some peculiarity of air or dress 
 the excess of heat which they had already 
 borne, and to which they seemed to look for- 
 ward, and gave by the scantiness of their 
 number a vivid impression of the uncounted 
 thousands within doors prolonging, before 
 the day’s terror began, the oblivion of 
 sleep. 
 
 As they turned into one of the nu- 
 merical streets to cross to Broadway, and 
 found themselves in a yet deeper seclu- 
 sion, Basil began to utter in a musing 
 tone : — 
 
30 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 “ A city against the world’s grey Prime, 
 
 Lost in some desert, far from Time, 
 
 Where noiseless Ages gliding through 
 Have only sifted sands and dew, — 
 
 Yet still a marble hand of man 
 Lying on all the haunted plan ; 
 
 The passions of the human heart 
 Beating the marble breast of Art, — 
 
 Were not more lone to one who first 
 Upon its giant silence burst. 
 
 Than this strange quiet, where the tide 
 Of life, upheaved on either side, 
 
 Hangs trembling, ready soon to beat 
 With human waves the Morning Street.” 
 
 £ ‘ How lovely ! ” said Isabel, swiftly catch- 
 ing at her skirt, and deftly escaping contact 
 with one of a long row of ash-barrels posted 
 sentinel-like on the edge of the pavement. 
 “ Whose is it, Basil ?” 
 
 “ Ah ! a poet’s,” answered her husband, 
 “ a man of whom we shall one day any of us 
 be glad to say that we liked him before he 
 was famous. What a nebulous sweetness 
 the first lines have, and what a clear, cool 
 light of day -break in the last ! ” 
 
 “ You could have been as good a poet as 
 that, Basil,” said the ever-personal and con- 
 cretely-speaking Isabel, who could not look 
 at a mountain without thinking what Basil 
 might have done in that way, if he had 
 tried. 
 
THE OUTSET. 
 
 31 
 
 “ 0 no, I couldn’t, dear. It’s very diffi- 
 cult being any poet at all, though it ’s easy 
 to be like one. But I ’ve done with it ; I 
 broke with the Muse the day you accepted 
 me. She came into my office, looking so 
 shabby, — not unlike one of those poor shop- 
 girls ; and as I was very well dressed from 
 having just been to see you, why, you know, 
 I felt the difference. ‘ Well, my dear ?’ said 
 I, not quite liking the look of reproach she 
 was giving me. ‘ You are going to leave 
 me,’ she answered sadly. ‘Well, yes; I 
 suppose I must. You see the insurance 
 business is very absorbing ; and besides, it 
 has a bad appearance, you ’re coming about 
 so in office hours, and in those clothes.’ ‘ 0 ’ 
 she moaned out, ‘ you used to welcome me at 
 all times, out in the country, and thought 
 me prettily dressed.’ ‘ Yes, yes ; but this is 
 Boston ; and Boston makes a great difference 
 in one’s ideas ; and I ’m going to be married, 
 too. Come, I don’t want to seem ungrate- 
 ful ; we have had many pleasant times to- 
 gether, I own it ; and I ’ve no objections to 
 your being present at Christmas and Thanks- 
 giving and birthdays, but really I must draw 
 the line there.’ She gave me a look that 
 made my heart ache, and went straight to 
 my desk and took out of a pigeon-hole a lot 
 
32 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 of papers, — odes upon your cruelty, Isabel ; 
 songs to you ; sonnets, — the sonnet, a mighty 
 poor one, I ’d made the day before, — and 
 threw them all into the grate. Then she 
 turned to me again, signed adieu with mute 
 lips, and passed out. I could hear the bot- 
 tom wire of the poor thing’s hoo^) -skirt click- 
 ing against each step of the stair-way, as 
 she went slowly and heavily down to the 
 street. ” 
 
 ‘‘0 don’t — don't , Basil,” said his wife, 
 “it seems like something wrong. I think 
 you ought to have been ashamed.” 
 
 “Ashamed! I was heart-broken. But 
 it had to come to that. As I got hopeful 
 about you, the Muse became a sad bore ; 
 and more than once I found myself smiling 
 at her when her back was turned. The 
 Muse doesn’t like being laughed at any 
 more than another woman would, and she 
 would have left me shortly. No, I couldn’t 
 be a poet like our Morning Street friend. 
 But see ! the human wave is beginning to 
 sprinkle the pavement with cooks and 
 second -girls.” 
 
 They were frowsy serving-maids and silent ; 
 each swept down her own door steps and the 
 pavement in front of her own house, and then 
 knocked her broom on the curb-stone and 
 
THE OUTSET. 
 
 33 
 
 vanished into the house, on which the hand 
 of change had already fallen. It was no 
 longer a street solely devoted to the domes- 
 tic gods, but had been invaded at more than 
 one point by the bustling deities of business ; 
 in such streets the irregular, inspired doctors 
 and doctresses come first with inordinate 
 door-plates ; then a milliner filling the par-' 
 lour window with new bonnets ; here even 
 a publisher had hung his sign beside a door, 
 through which the feet of young ladies used 
 to trip, and the feet of little children to pat- 
 ter. Here and there stood groups of dwell- 
 ings unmolested as yet outwardly ; but even 
 these had a certain careworn and guilty air, 
 as if they knew themselves to be cheapish 
 boarding-houses or furnished lodgings for 
 gentlemen, and were trying to hide it. To 
 these belonged the frowsy serving-women ; 
 to these the rows of ash-barrels, in which 
 the decrepit children and mothers of the 
 streets were clawing for bits of coal. 
 
 By the time Basil and Isabel reached 
 Broadway there were already some omni- 
 buses beginning their long day’s travel up 
 and down the handsome, tiresome length of 
 that avenue ; but for the most part it was 
 empty. There was, of course, a hurry of 
 foot-passengers upon the side-walks, but 
 c 
 
34 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 these were sparse and uncharacteristic, for 
 New York proper was still fast asleep. The 
 waiter at the restaurant into which our 
 friends stepped was so well aware of this, 
 and so perfectly assured they were not of 
 the city, that he could not forbear a little 
 patronage of them, which they did not resent. 
 He brought Basil what he had ordered in 
 barbaric abundance, and charged for it with 
 barbaric splendour. It is all but impossible 
 not to wish to stand well with your waiter : 
 I have myself been often treated with con- 
 spicuous rudeness by the tribe, yet I have 
 never been able to withhold the douceur that 
 marked me for a gentleman in their eyes, and 
 entitled me to their dishonourable esteem. 
 Basil was not superior to this folly, and left 
 the waiter with the conviction that, if he 
 was not a New Yorker, he was a high-bred 
 man of the world at any rate. 
 
 Vexed by a sense of his own pitifulness, 
 this man of the world continued his pilgrim- 
 age down Broadway, which even in that 
 desert state was full of a certain interest. 
 Troops of labourers straggled along the pave- 
 ments, each with his dinner-pail in hand ; 
 and in many places the eternal building up 
 and pulling down was already going on ; 
 carts were struggling up the slopes of vast 
 
THE OUTSET. 
 
 35 
 
 cellars, with loads of distracting rubbish ; 
 here stood the half-demolished walls of a 
 house, with a sad variety of wall-paper show- 
 ing in the different rooms ; there clinked the 
 trowel upon the brick, yonder the hammer 
 on the stone ; overhead swung and threat- 
 ened the marble block that the derrick was 
 lifting to its place. As yet these forces of 
 demolition and construction had the business 
 of the street almost to themselves. 
 
 ‘ ‘ Why, how shabby the street is ! ” said 
 Isabel, at last. “ When I landed, after 
 being abroad, I remember that Broadway 
 impressed me with its splendour.” 
 
 “ Ah ! but you were merely coming from 
 Europe then ; and now you arrive from 
 Boston, and are contrasting this poor Broad- 
 way with Washington Street. Don’t be hard 
 upon it, Isabel ; every street can’t be a Boston 
 street, you know,” said Basil. Isabel, her- 
 self a Bostonian of great intensity both by 
 birth and conviction, believed her husband 
 the only man able to have thoroughly baffled 
 the malignity of the stars in causing him to 
 be born out of Boston ; yet he sometimes 
 trifled with his hardly achieved triumph, 
 and even showed an indifference to it, with 
 an insincerity of which there can be no doubt 
 whatever. 
 
36 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 “0 stuff!” she retorted, “as if I had 
 any of that silly local pride ! Though you 
 know well enough that Boston is the best 
 place in the world. But Basil ! I suppose 
 Broadway strikes us as so fine, on coming 
 ashore from Europe, because we hardly ex- 
 pect anything of America then.” 
 
 “ Well, I don’t know. Perhaps the street 
 has some positive grandeur of its own, though 
 it needs a multitude of people in it to bring 
 out its best effects. I ’ll allow its disheart- 
 ening shabbiness and meanness in many 
 ways ; but to stand in front of Grace Church, 
 on a clear day, — a day of late September, 
 say, — and look down the swarming length 
 of Broadway, on the movement and the num- 
 bers, while the Niagara roar swelled and 
 swelled from those human rapids, was always 
 like strong new wine to me. I don’t think 
 the world affords such another sight ; and 
 for one moment, at such times, I’d have 
 been willing to be an Irish councilman, that 
 I might have some right to the pride I felt 
 in the capital of the Irish Republic. What 
 a fine thing it must be for each victim of six 
 centuries of oppression to reflect that he 
 owns at least a dozen Americans, and that, 
 with his fellows, he rules a hundred helpless 
 millionaires ! ” 
 
THE OUTSET. 
 
 37 
 
 Like all daughters of a free country, Isabel 
 knew nothing about politics, and she felt 
 that she was getting into deep water ; she 
 answered buoyantly, but she was glad to 
 make her weariness the occasion of hailing a 
 stage, and changing the conversation. The 
 further down town they went the busier the 
 street grew ; and about the Astor House, 
 where they alighted, there was already a 
 bustle that nothing but a fire could have 
 created at the same hour in Boston. A little 
 further on the steeple of Trinity rose high 
 into the scorching sunlight, while below, in 
 the shadow that was darker than it was 
 cool, slumbered the old graves among their 
 flowers. 
 
 “How still they lie !” mused the happy 
 wife, peering through the iron fence in pass- 
 ing. 
 
 “Yes, their wedding- journeys are ended, 
 poor things ! ” said Basil ; and through both 
 their minds flashed the wonder if they should 
 ever come to something like that ; but it ap- 
 peared so impossible that they both smiled 
 at the absurdity. 
 
 “It’s too early yet for Leonard,” con 
 tinued Basil ; “ what a pity the church- 
 yard is locked up ! We could spend the 
 time so delightfully in it. But, never mind ; 
 
38 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 let us go down to the Battery, — it’s not 
 a very pleasant place, but it’s near, and 
 it ’s historical, and it ’s open, — where these 
 drowsy friends of ours used to take the air 
 when they were in the fashion, and had 
 some occasion for the element in its fresh- 
 ness. You can imagine — it’s cheap — how 
 they used to see Mr. Burr and Mr. Hamilton 
 down there.” 
 
 All places that fashion has once loved and 
 abandoned are very melancholy ; but of all 
 such places, I think the Battery is the most 
 forlorn. Are there some sickly locust-trees 
 there that cast a tremulous and decrepit 
 shade upon the mangy grass-plots ? I believe 
 so, but I do not make sure ; I am certain only 
 of the mangy grass-plots, or rather the spaces 
 between the paths, thinly overgrown with 
 some kind of refuse and opprobrious weed, a 
 stunted and pauper vegetation proper solely 
 to the Hew York Battery. At that hour of 
 the summer morning when our friends, with 
 the aimlessness of strangers who are wait- 
 ing to do something else, saw the ancient 
 promenade, a few scant and hungry -eyed 
 little boys and girls were wandering over 
 this weedy growth, not playing, but moving 
 listlessly to and fro, fantastic in the wild 
 inaptness of their costumes. One of these 
 
THE OUTSET. 
 
 39 
 
 little creatures wore, with an odd involun- 
 tary jauntiness, the cast-off best dress of 
 some happier child, a gay little garment cut 
 low in the neck and short in the sleeves, 
 which gave her the grotesque effect of hav- 
 ing been at a party the night before. Pre- 
 sently came two jaded women, a mother 
 and a grandmother, that appeared, when 
 they had crawled out of their beds, to have 
 put on only so much clothing as the law 
 compelled. They abandoned themselves up- 
 on the green stuff, whatever it was, and, 
 with their lean hands clasped outside their 
 knees, sat and stared, silent and hopeless, 
 at the eastern sky, at the heart of the ter- 
 rible furnace, into which in those days the 
 world seemed cast to be burnt up, while the 
 child which the younger woman had brought 
 with her feebly wailed unheeded at her side. 
 On one side of these women were the shame- 
 less houses out of which they might have 
 crept, and which somehow suggested riotous 
 maritime dissipation ; on the other side were 
 those houses in which had once dwelt rich 
 and famous folk, but which were now drop- 
 ping down the boarding-house scale through 
 various unhomelike occupations to final dis- 
 honour and despair. Down nearer the water, 
 and not far from the castle that was once a 
 
40 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 playhouse and is now the depot of emigra- 
 tion, stood certain express wagons, and about 
 these lounged a few hard-looking men. Be- 
 yond laughed and danced the fresh blue 
 water of the bay, dotted with sails and 
 smoke-stacks. 
 
 “Well,” said Basil, “I think if I could 
 choose, I should like to be a friendless Ger- 
 man boy, setting foot for the first time on 
 this happy continent. Fancy his rapture on 
 beholding this lovely spot, and these charm- 
 ing American faces ! What a smiling aspect 
 life in the New World must wear to his 
 young eyes, and how his heart must leap 
 within him !” 
 
 “Yes, Basil; it’s all very pleasing, and 
 thank you for bringing me. But if you don’t 
 think of any other New York delights to 
 show me, do let us go and sit in Leonard’s 
 office £ill he comes, and then get out into the 
 country as soon as possible.” 
 
 Basil defended himself against the imputa- 
 tion that he had been trying to show New 
 York to his wife, or that he had any thought 
 but of whiling away the long morning hours, 
 until it should be time to go to Leonard. 
 He protested that a knowledge of Europe 
 made New York the most uninteresting town 
 in America, and that it was the last place 
 
THE OUTSET. 
 
 41 
 
 in the world where he should think of amus- 
 ing himself or any one else ; and then they 
 both upbraided the city’s bigness and dul- 
 ness with an enjoyment that none but 
 Bostonians can know. They particularly 
 derided the notion of New York’s being 
 loved by any one. It was immense, it was 
 grand in some ways, parts of it were exceed- 
 ingly handsome ; but it was too vast, too 
 coarse, too restless. They could imagine its 
 being liked by a successful young man of 
 business, or, by a rich young girl, ignorant 
 of life and with not too nice a taste in her 
 pleasures ; but that it should be dear to any 
 poet or scholar, or any woman of wisdom 
 and refinement, that they could not imagine. 
 They could not think of any one’s loving 
 New York as Dante loved Florence, or as 
 Madame de Stael loved Paris, or as Johnson 
 loved black, homely, home-like London. And 
 as they twittered their little dispraises, the 
 giant Mother of Commerce was growing more 
 and more conscious of herself, waking from 
 her night’s sleep and becoming aware of her 
 fleets and trains, and the myriad hands and 
 wheels that throughout the whole sea and 
 land move for her, and do her will even 
 while she sleeps. All about the wedding- 
 journey ers swelled the deep tide of life back 
 
42 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 from its night-long ebb. Broadway had 
 filled her length with people ; not yet the 
 most characteristic New York crowd, but the 
 not less interesting multitude of strangers 
 arrived by the early boats and trains, and 
 that easily distinguishable class of lately 
 New-Yorkised people from other places, 
 about whom in the metropolis still hung the 
 provincial traditions of early rising ; and 
 over all, from moment to moment, the eager, 
 audacious, well-dressed, proper life of the 
 mighty city was beginning to prevail, — 
 though this was not so notable where Basil 
 and Isabel had paused at a certain window. 
 It was the office of one of the English 
 steamers, and he was saying, “ It was by 
 this line I sailed, you know,” — and she was 
 interrupting him with, “ When who could 
 have dreamed that you would ever be telling 
 me of it here ? ” So the old marvel was 
 wondered over anew, till it filled the world 
 in which there was room for nothing but the 
 strangeness that they should have loved each 
 other so long and not made it known, that 
 they should ever have uttered it, and that, 
 being uttered, it should be so much more and 
 better than ever could have been dreamed. 
 The broken engagement was a fable of dis- 
 aster that only made their present fortune 
 
THE OUTSET. 
 
 43 
 
 more prosperous. The city ceased about 
 them, and they walked on up the street, 
 the first man and first woman in the garden 
 of the new-made earth. As they were both 
 very conscious people, they recognised in 
 themselves some sense of this, and presently 
 drolled it away, in the opulence of a time 
 when every moment brought some beautiful 
 dream, and the soul could be prodigal of its 
 bliss. 
 
 ‘ ‘ I think if I had the naming of the ani- 
 mals over again, this morning, I shouldn’t 
 call snakes snakes ; should you, Eve?” 
 laughed Basil in intricate acknowledgment 
 of his happiness. 
 
 “ 0 no, Adam ; we ’d look out all the most 
 graceful euphemisms in the newspapers, and 
 we wouldn’t hurt the feelings of a spider.” 
 
44 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 II. 
 
 A midsummer-day’s dream. 
 
 T HEY had waited to see Leonard, in order 
 that they might learn better how to 
 find his house in the country ; and now, 
 when they came in upon him at nine o’clock, 
 he welcomed them with all his friendly 
 heart. He rose from the pile of morning’s 
 letters to which he had but just sat down ; 
 he placed them the easiest chairs ; he made 
 a feint of its not being a busy hour with 
 him, and would have had them look upon 
 his office, which was still damp and odorous 
 from the porter’s broom, as a kind of down- 
 town parlour ; but after they had briefly 
 accounted to his amazement for their ap- 
 pearance then and there, and Isabel had 
 boasted of the original fashion in which 
 they had that morning seen New York, they 
 took pity on him, and bade him adieu till 
 evening. 
 
 They crossed from Broadway to the noi- 
 some street by the ferry, and in a little 
 
A midsummer-day’s dream. 45 
 
 while had taken their places in the train on 
 the thither side of the water. 
 
 “ Don’t tell me, Basil,” said Isabel, 
 “ that Leonard travels fifty miles every day 
 by rail going to and from his work ! ” 
 
 “ I must, dearest, if I would be truthful.” 
 “ Then, darling, there are worse things in 
 this world than living up at the South End, 
 aren’t there ? ” And in agreement upon 
 Boston as a place of the greatest natural 
 advantages, as well as all acquirable merits, 
 with after talk that need not be recorded, 
 they arrived in the best humour at the little 
 country station near which the Leonards 
 dwelt. 
 
 I must inevitably follow Mrs. Isabel 
 thither, though I do it at the cost of the 
 reader, who suspects the excitements which 
 a long description of the movement would 
 delay. The ladies were very old friends, 
 and they had not met since Isabel’s return 
 from Europe and renewal of her engage- 
 ment. Upon the news of this, Mrs. Leonard 
 had swallowed with surprising ease all that 
 she had said in blame of Basil’s conduct 
 during the rupture, and exacted a promise 
 from her friend that she should pay her the 
 first visit after their marriage. And now 
 that they had come together, their only talk 
 
46 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 was of husbands, whom they viewed in every 
 light to which husbands could be turned, 
 and still found an inexhaustible novelty in 
 the theme. Mrs. Leonard beheld in her 
 friend’s joy the sweet reflection of her own 
 honeymoon, and Isabel was pleased to look 
 upon the prosperous marriage of the former 
 as the image of her future. Thus, with 
 immense profit and comfort, they reassured 
 one another by every question and answer, 
 and in their weak content lapsed far behind 
 the representative women of our age, when 
 husbands are at best a necessary evil, and 
 the relation of wives to them is known to be 
 one of pitiable subjection. When these two 
 pretty fogies put their heads of false hair 
 together, they were as silly and benighted 
 as their great-grandmothers could have been 
 in the same circumstances, and, as I say, 
 shamefully encouraged each other in their 
 absurdity. The absurdity appeared too good 
 and blessed to be true. “ Do you really 
 suppose, Basil,” Isabel would say to her 
 oppressor, after having given him some 
 elegant extract from the last conversation 
 upon husbands, ‘ ‘ that we shall get on as 
 smoothly as the Leonards when we have 
 been married ten years ? Lucy says that 
 things go more hitchily the first year than 
 
a midsummer-day’s dream. 47 
 
 ever they do afterwards, and that people 
 love each other better and better just be- 
 cause they ’ve got used to it. Well, our 
 bliss does seem a little crude and garish 
 compared with their happiness ; and yet” — 
 she put up both her palms against his, and 
 gave a vehement little push — “ there is some- 
 thing agreeable about it, even at this stage 
 of the proceedings.” 
 
 ‘ ‘ Isabel, ” said her husband with severity, 
 “ this is bridal ! ” 
 
 “No matter ! I only want to seem an old 
 married woman to the general public. But 
 the application of it is that you must be 
 careful not to contradict me, or cross me in 
 anything, so that we can be like the Leon- 
 ards very much sooner than they became so. 
 The great object is not to have any hitchi- 
 ness ; and you know you are provoking — at 
 times. ” 
 
 They both educated themselves for con- 
 tinued and tranquil happiness by the example 
 and precept of their friends ; and the time 
 passed swiftly in the pleasant learning, and 
 in the novelty of the life led by the Leonards. 
 This indeed merits a closer study than can 
 be given here, for it is the life led by vast 
 numbers of prosperous New Yorkers who 
 love both the excitement of the city and the 
 
48 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 repose of the country, and who aspire to 
 unite the enjoyment of both in their daily 
 existence. The suburbs of the metropolis 
 stretch landward fifty miles in every direc- 
 tion ; and everywhere are handsome villas 
 like Leonard’s, inhabited by men like him- 
 self, whom strict study of the time-table 
 enables to spend all their working hours in 
 the city and all their smoking and sleeping * 
 hours in the country. 
 
 The home and the neighbourhood of the 
 Leonards put on their best looks for our 
 bridal pair, and they were charmed. They 
 all enjoyed the visit, said guests and hosts, 
 they were all sorry to have it come to an 
 end ; yet they all resigned themselves to 
 this conclusion. Practically, it had no other 
 result than to detain the travellers into the 
 very heart of the hot weather. In that 
 weather it was easy to do anything that did 
 not require an active effort, and resignation 
 was so natural with the mercury at ninety, 
 that I am not sure but there was something 
 sinful in it. 
 
 They had given up their cherished pur- 
 pose of going to Albany by the day boat, 
 which was represented to them in every 
 impossible phase. It would be dreadfully 
 crowded, and whenever it stopped the heat 
 
a midsummer-day’s dream. 49 
 
 would be insupportable. Besides it would 
 bring them to Albany at an hour when they 
 must either spend the night there, or push 
 on to Niagara by the night train. “You 
 had better go by the evening boat. It will 
 be light almost till you reach West Point, 
 and you ’ll see all the best scenery. Then 
 you can get a good night’s rest, and start 
 fresh in the morning.” So they were coun- 
 selled, and they assented, as they would 
 have done if they had been advised : “You 
 had better go by the morning boat. It ’s de- 
 liciously cool, travelling ; you see the whole 
 of the river ; you reach Albany for supper, 
 and you push through to Niagara that night 
 and are done with it.” 
 
 They took leave of Leonard at breakfast 
 and of his wife at noon, and fifteen minutes 
 later they were rushing from the heat of the 
 country into the heat of the city, where 
 some affairs and pleasures were to employ 
 them till the evening boat should start. 
 
 Their spirits were low, for the terrible 
 spell of the great heat brooded upon them. 
 All abroad burned the fierce white light of 
 the sun, in which not only the earth seemed 
 to parch and thirst, but the very air with- 
 ered, and was faint and thin to the troubled 
 respiration. Their train was full of people 
 
 D 
 
50 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 who had come long journeys from broiling 
 cities of the West, and who were dusty and 
 ashen and reeking in the slumbers at which 
 some of them still vainly caught. On every 
 one lay an awful languor. Here and there 
 stirred a fan, like the broken wing of a dying 
 bird ; now and then a sweltering young 
 mother shifted her hot baby from one arm 
 to another ; after every station the desperate 
 conductor swung through the long aisle and 
 punched the ticket, which each passenger 
 seemed to yield him with a tacit maledic- 
 tion ; a suffering child hung about the empty 
 tank, which could only gasp out a cindery 
 drop or two of ice-water. The wind buffeted 
 faintly at the windows ; when the door 
 was opened, the clatter of the rails struck 
 through and through the car like a demoniac 
 yell. 
 
 Yet when they arrived at the station by 
 the ferry-side, they seemed to have entered 
 its stifling darkness from fresh and vigorous 
 atmosphere, so close and dead and mixed 
 with the carbonic breath of the locomotives 
 was the air of the place. The thin old 
 wooden walls that shut out the glare of the 
 sun transmitted an intensified warmth ; the 
 roof seemed to hover lower and lower, and 
 in its coal-smoked, raftery hollow to gene- 
 
a midsummer-day’s dream. 51 
 
 rate a heat deadlier than that poured upon 
 it from the skies. 
 
 In a convenient place in the station hung a 
 thermometer, before which every passenger, 
 on going aboard the ferry-boat, paused as at 
 a shrine, and mutely paid his devotions. At 
 the altar of this fetich our friends also paused, 
 and saw that the mercury was above ninety, 
 and, exulting with the pride that savages 
 take in the cruel might of their idols, bowed 
 their souls to the great god Heat. 
 
 On the boat they found a place where the 
 breath of the sea struck cool across their 
 faces, and made them forget the thermo- 
 meter for the brief time of the transit. But 
 presently they drew near that strange, irre- 
 gular row of wooden buildings and jutting 
 piers which skirts the river on the New York 
 side, and before the boat’s motion ceased the 
 air grew thick and warm again, and tainted 
 with the foulness of the street on which the 
 buildings front. Upon this the boat’s pas- 
 sengers issued, passing up through a gang- 
 way, on one side of which a throng of return- 
 passengers was pent by a gate of iron bars, 
 like a herd of wild animals. They were 
 streaming with perspiration, and, according 
 to their different temperaments, had faces 
 of deep crimson or deadly pallor. 
 
THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 “ Now the question is, my dear,” said 
 Basil when, free of the press, they lingered 
 for a moment in the shade outside, ‘ ‘ whether 
 we had better walk up to Broadway, at an 
 immediate sacrifice of fibre, and get a stage 
 there, or take one of these cars here, and be 
 landed a little nearer, with half the exertion. 
 By this route we shall have sights and smells 
 which the other can’t offer us, but whichever 
 we take we shall be sorry.” 
 
 “Then I say take this,” decided Isabel. 
 * * I want to be sorry upon the easiest pos- 
 sible terms, this weather.” 
 
 They hailed the first car that passed, and 
 got into it. Well for them both if she could 
 have exercised this philosophy with regard 
 to the whole day’s business, or if she could 
 have given up her plans for it with the same 
 resignation she had practised in regard, to 
 the day boat ! It seems to me a proof of 
 the small advance our race has made in true 
 wisdom, that we find it so hard to give up 
 doing anything we have meant to do. It 
 matters very little whether the affair is one 
 of enjoyment or of business, we feel the 
 same bitter need of pursuing it to the end. 
 The mere fact of intention gives it a flavour 
 of duty ; and dutiolatry, as one may call the 
 devotion, has passed so deeply into our life 
 
A midsummer-day’s dream. 53 
 
 that we have scarcely a sense any more of 
 the sweetness of even a neglected pleasure. 
 We will not taste the fine, guilty rapture of 
 a deliberate dereliction ; the gentle sin of 
 omission' is all but blotted from the calendar 
 of our crimes. If I had been Columbus, I 
 should have thought twice before setting 
 sail, when I was quite ready to do so ; and 
 as for Plymouth Rock, I should have sternly 
 resisted the blandishments of those twin 
 sirens, Starvation and Cold, who beckoned 
 the Puritans shoreward, and as soon as ever 
 I came in sight of their granite perch should 
 have turned back to England. But it is 
 now too late to repair these errors, and so, 
 on one of the hottest days of last year, 
 behold my obdurate bridal pair, in a Tenth 
 or Twentieth Avenue horse-car, setting forth 
 upon the fulfilment of a series of intentions, 
 any of which had wiselier been left un- 
 accomplished. Isabel had said they would 
 call upon certain people in Fiftieth Street, 
 and then shop slowly down, ice-creaming 
 and staging and variously cooling and calm- 
 ing by the way, until they reached the 
 ticket-office on Broadway, whence they 
 could indefinitely betake themselves to the 
 steamboat an hour or two before her depart- 
 ure. She felt that they had yielded suffi- 
 
54 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 ciently to circumstances and conditions 
 already on this journey, and she was re- 
 solved that the present half-day in New 
 York should be the half-day of her original 
 design. 
 
 It was not the most advisable thing, as I 
 have allowed, but it was inevitable, and it 
 afforded them a spectacle which is by no 
 means wanting in sublimity, and which is 
 certainly unique, — the spectacle of that 
 great city on a hot day, defiant of the ele- 
 ments, and prospering on with every form 
 of labour, and at a terrible cost of life. The 
 man carrying the hod to the top of the walls 
 that rankly grow and grow as from his life’s 
 blood, will only lay down his load when he 
 feels the mortal glare of the sun blaze in 
 upon heart and brain ; the plethoric million- 
 aire for whom he toils will plot and plan in 
 his office till he swoons at the desk ; the 
 trembling beast must stagger forward while 
 the flame -faced tormentor on the box has 
 strength to lash him on ; in all those vast 
 palaces of commerce there are ceaseless sale 
 and purchase, packing and unpacking, lifting 
 up and laying down, arriving and departing 
 loads ; in thousands of shops is the unspared 
 and unsparing weariness of selling ; in the 
 street, filled by the hurry and suffering of 
 
a midsummer-day’s dream. 55 
 
 tens of thousands, is the weariness of buy- 
 ing. 
 
 Their afternoon’s experience was some- 
 thing that Basil and Isabel could, when it 
 was past, look upon only as a kind of vision, 
 magnificent at times, and at other times full 
 of indignity and pain. They seemed to have 
 dreamed of a long horse-car pilgrimage 
 through that squalid street by the river-side, 
 where presently they came to a market, 
 opening upon the view hideous vistas of car- 
 nage, and then into a wide avenue, with pro- 
 cessions of cars like their own coming and 
 going up and down the centre of a foolish 
 and useless breadth, which made even the 
 tall buildings (rising gauntly up among the 
 older houses of one or two stories) on either 
 hand look low, and let in the sun to bake the 
 dust that the hot breaths of wind caught up 
 and sent swirling into the shabby shops. 
 Here they dreamed of the eternal demolition 
 and construction of the city, and further 
 on of vacant lots full of granite boulders, 
 clambered over by goats. In their dream 
 they had fellow-passengers, whose sufferings 
 made them odious, and whom they were glad 
 to leave behind when they alighted from the 
 car, and running out of the blaze of the 
 avenue, quenched themselves in the shade 
 
56 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 of the cross -street. A little strip of shadow 
 lay along the row of brown-stone fronts, 
 but there were intervals where the vacant 
 lots cast no shadow. With great bestowal 
 of thought they studied hopelessly how to 
 avoid these spaces as if they had been diffi- 
 cult torrents or vast expanses of desert sand : 
 they crept slowly along till they came to 
 such a place, and dashed swiftly across it, 
 and then, fainter than before, moved on. 
 They seemed now and then to stand at doors, 
 and to be told that people were out, and 
 again that they were in ; and they had a 
 sense of cool dark parlours, and the airy 
 rustling of light-muslined ladies, of chat and 
 of fans and ice-water, and then they came 
 forth again ; and evermore 
 
 “ The day increased from heat to heat.” 
 
 At last they were aware of an end of their 
 visits, and of a purpose to go down town 
 again, and of seeking the nearest car by 
 endless blocks of brown-stone fronts, which 
 with their eternal brown- stone flights of 
 steps, and their handsome, intolerable uni- 
 formity, oppressed them like a procession 
 of houses trying to pass a given point and 
 never getting by. Upon these streets there 
 was seldom a soul to be seen, so that w T hen 
 
A MIDSUMMER-DAY’S DREAM. 57 
 
 their ringing at a door had evoked answer, 
 it had startled them with a vague, sad sur- 
 prise. In the distance on either hand they 
 could see cars and carts and wagons toiling 
 up and down the avenues, and on the next 
 intersecting pavement sometimes a labourer 
 with his jacket slung across his shoulder, or 
 a dog that had plainly made up his mind to 
 go mad. Up to the time of their getting 
 into one of these phantasmal cars for the 
 return down-townwards they had kept up a 
 show of talk in their wretched dream ; they 
 had spoken of other hot days that they had 
 known elsewhere ; and they had wondered 
 that the tragical character of heat had been 
 so little recognised. They said that the 
 daily New York murder might even at that 
 moment be somewhere taking place ; and 
 that no murder of the whole homicidal year 
 could have such proper circumstance ; they 
 morbidly wondered what that day’s murder 
 would be, and in what swarming tenement- 
 house, or den of the assassin streets by the 
 river-sides, — if indeed it did not befall in 
 some such high, close-shuttered, handsome 
 dwelling as those they passed, in whose twi- 
 light it would be so easy to strike down the 
 master and leave him undiscovered and un- 
 mourned by the family ignorantly absent at 
 
58 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 the mountains or the seaside. They conjec- 
 tured of the horror of midsummer battles, 
 and pictured the anguish of ship -wrecked 
 men upon a tropical coast, and the grimy 
 misery of stevedores unloading shiny car- 
 goes of anthracite coal at city docks. But 
 now at last, as they took seats opposite one 
 another in the crowded car, they seemed to 
 have drifted infinite distances and long epochs 
 asunder. They looked hopelessly across the 
 intervening gulf, and mutely questioned when 
 it was and from what far city they or some 
 remote ancestors of theirs had set forth upon 
 a wedding journey. They bade each other 
 a tacit farewell, and with patient, pathetic 
 faces awaited the end of the world. 
 
 When they alighted, they took their way 
 up through one of the streets of the great 
 wholesale businesses, to Broadway. On this 
 street was a throng of trucks and wagons 
 lading and unlading ; bales and boxes rose 
 and sank by pulleys overhead ; the footway 
 was a labyrinth of packages of every shape 
 and size ; there was no flagging of the piti- 
 less energy that moved all forward, no sign 
 of how heavy a weight lay on it, save in 
 the reeking faces of its helpless instruments. 
 But when the wedding-joumeyers emerged 
 upon Broadway, the other passages and 
 
a midsummer-day’s dream. 59 
 
 incidents of their dream faded before the 
 superior fantasticality of the spectacle. It 
 was four o’clock, the deadliest hour of the 
 deadly summer day. The spiritless air 
 seemed to have a quality of blackness in it, 
 as if filled with the gloom of low-hovering 
 wings. One half the street lay in shadow, 
 and one half in sun ; bi£t the sunshine itself 
 was dim, as if a heat greater than its own 
 had smitten it with languor. Little gusts 
 of sick, warm wind blew across the great 
 avenue at the corners of the intersecting 
 streets. In the upward distance, at which 
 the journeyers looked, the loftier roofs and 
 steeples lifted themselves dim out of the 
 livid atmosphere, and far up and down the 
 length of the street swept a stream of tor- 
 mented life. All sorts of wheeled things 
 thronged it, conspicuous among which rolled 
 and jarred the gaudily painted stages, with 
 quivering horses driven each by a man who sat 
 in the shade of a branching white umbrella, 
 and suffered with a moody truculence of 
 aspect, and as if he harboured the bitterness 
 of death in his heart for the crowding pas- 
 sengers within, when one of them pulled the 
 strap about his legs, and summoned him to 
 halt. Most of the foot-passengers kept to 
 the shady side, and to the unaccustomed 
 
60 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 eyes of the strangers they were not less in 
 number than at any other time, though there 
 were fewer women among them. Indomit- 
 ably resolute of soul, they held their course 
 with the swift pace of custom, and only 
 here and there they showed the effect of the 
 heat. One man, collarless, with waistcoat 
 unbuttoned, and hat set far back from his 
 forehead, waved a fan before his death-white 
 flabby face, and set down one foot after the 
 other with the heaviness of a somnambulist. 
 Another, as they passed him, was saying 
 huskily to the friend at his side, ‘ ‘ I can’t 
 stand this much longer. My hands tingle 
 as if they had gone to sleep ; my heart” — 
 But still the multitude hurried on, passing, 
 repassing, encountering, evading, vanishing 
 into shop-doors and emerging from them, dis- 
 persing down the side streets, and swarming 
 out of them. It was a scene that possessed 
 the beholder with singular fascination, and 
 in its effect of universal lunacy, it might 
 well have seemed the last phase of a world 
 presently to be destroyed. They who were 
 in it but not of it, as they fancied, — though 
 there was no reason for this, — looked on it 
 amazed, and at last their own errands being 
 accomplished, and themselves so far cured 
 of the madness of purpose, they cried with 
 
a midsummer-day’s dream. 61 
 
 one voice, that it was a hideous sight, and 
 strove to take refuge from it in the nearest 
 place where the soda-fountain sparkled. It 
 was a vain desire. At the front door of the 
 apothecary’s hung a thermometer, and as 
 they entered they heard the next comer cry 
 out with a maniacal pride in the affliction 
 laid upon mankind, “ Ninety-seven de- 
 grees !” Behind them at the door there 
 poured in a ceaseless stream of people, 
 each pausing at the shrine of heat, before he 
 tossed off the hissing draught that two pale, 
 close-clipped boys served them from either 
 side of the fountain. Then in the order of 
 their coming they issued through another 
 door upon the side street, each, as he dis- 
 appeared, turning his face half round, and 
 casting a casual glance upon a little group 
 near another counter. The group was of a 
 very patient, half-frightened, half-puzzled 
 looking gentleman who sat perfectly still on 
 a stool, and of a lady who stood beside him, 
 rubbing all over his head a handkerchief 
 full of pounded ice, and easing one hand 
 with the other when the first became tired. 
 Basil drank his soda and paused to look 
 upon this group, which he felt would com- 
 mend itself to realistic sculpture as eminently 
 characteristic of the local life, and as “ The 
 
62 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 Sunstroke” would sell enormously in the hot 
 season. “ Better take a little more of that,” 
 the apothecary said, looking up from his pre- 
 scription, and, as the organised sympathy of 
 the seemingly indifferent crowd, smiling very 
 kindly at his patient, who thereupon tasted 
 something in the glass he held. “Do you 
 still feel like fainting?” asked the humane 
 authority. “Slightly, now and then,” an- 
 swered the other, “ but I’m hanging on 
 hard to the bottom curve of that icicled S 
 on your soda-fountain, and I feel that I ’m 
 all right as long as I can see that. The 
 people get rather hazy, occasionally, and 
 have no features to speak of. But I don’t 
 know that I look very impressive myself,” 
 he added in the jesting mood which seems 
 the natural condition of Americans in the 
 face of all embarrassments. 
 
 “ 0, you ’ll do ! ” the apothecary answered, 
 with a laugh ; but he said, in answer to an 
 anxious question from the lady, ‘ ‘ He mustn’t 
 be moved for an hour yet,” and gaily pestled 
 away at a prescription, while she resumed 
 her office of grinding the pounded ice round 
 and round upon her husband’s skull. Isabel 
 offered her the commiseration of friendly 
 words, and of looks kinder yet, and then 
 seeing that they could do nothing, she and 
 
a midsummer-day’s dream. 63 
 
 Basil fell into the endless procession, and 
 passed out of the side door. “ What a 
 shocking thing!” she whispered. “Did 
 you see how all the people looked, one after 
 another, so indifferently at that couple, and 
 evidently forgot them the next instant ? It 
 was dreadful. I shouldn’t like to have you 
 sun-struck in New York.” 
 
 “That’s very considerate of you; but 
 place for place, if any accident must happen 
 to me among strangers, I think I should 
 prefer to have it in New York. The biggest 
 place is always the kindest as well as the 
 cruellest place. Amongst the thousands of 
 spectators the good Samaritan as well as the 
 Levite would be sure to be. As for a sun- 
 stroke, it requires peculiar gifts. But if you 
 compel me to a choice in the matter, then I 
 say, give me the busiest part of Broadway 
 for a sun-stroke. There is such experience 
 of calamity there that you could hardly fall 
 the first victim to any misfortune. Probably 
 the gentleman at the apothecary’s was merely 
 exhausted by the heat, and ran in there for 
 revival. The apothecary has a case of the 
 kind on his hands every blazing afternoon, 
 and knows just what to do. The crowd 
 may be a little ennuy6 of sun-strokes, and to 
 that degree indifferent, but they most likely 
 
64 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 know that they can only do harm by an ex- 
 pression of sympathy, and so they delegate 
 their pity as they have delegated their help- 
 fulness to the proper authority, and go about 
 their business. If a man was overcome in 
 the middle of a village street, the blundering 
 country druggist wouldn’t know what to do, 
 and the tender-hearted people would crowd 
 about so that no breath of air could reach 
 the victim.” 
 
 “ May be so, dear,” said the wife, pen- 
 sively ; “ but if anything did happen to you 
 in New York, I should like to have the spec- 
 tators look as if they saw a human being in 
 trouble. Perhaps I ’m a little exacting.” 
 
 “ I think you are. Nothing is so hard as 
 to understand that there are human beings 
 in this world besides one’s self and one’s set. 
 But let us be selfishly thankful that it isn’t 
 you and I there in the apothecary’s shop, 
 as it might very well be ; and let us get to 
 the boat as soon as we can, and end this 
 horrible midsummer-day’s dream. We must 
 have a carriage,” he added with tardy 
 wisdom, hailing an empty hack, 1 ‘ as we 
 ought to have had all day ; though I ’m not 
 sorry, now the worst ’s over, to have seen 
 the worst.” 
 
THE NIGHT BOAT. 
 
 65 
 
 III. 
 
 THE NIGHT BOAT. 
 
 T HERE is little proportion about either 
 pain or pleasure ; a headache darkens 
 the universe while it lasts, a cup of tea really 
 lightens the spirit bereft of all reasonable 
 consolations. Therefore I do not think it 
 trivial or untrue to say that there is for the 
 moment nothing more satisfactory in life 
 than to have bought your ticket on the night 
 boat up the Hudson and secured your state- 
 room key an hour or two before departure, 
 and some time even before the pressure at 
 the clerk’s office has begun. In the trans- 
 action with this castellated baron, you have 
 of course been treated with haughtiness, but 
 not with ferocity, and your self-respect 
 swells with a sense of having escaped posi- 
 tive insult ; your key clicks cheerfully in 
 your pocket against its gutta-percha number, 
 and you walk up and down the gorgeously 
 carpeted, single-columned, two-story cabin, 
 amid a multitude of plush sofas and chairs, 
 
 E 
 
66 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 a glitter of glass, and a tinkle of prismatic 
 chandeliers overhead, unawed even by the 
 aristocratic gloom of the yellow waiters. 
 Your own state-room as you enter it from 
 time to time is an ever-new surprise of 
 splendours, a magnificent effect of ampli- 
 tude, of mahogany bedstead, of lace cur- 
 tains, and of marble-topped wash-stand. In 
 the mere wantonness of an unalloyed pros- 
 perity you say to the saffron nobleman 
 nearest your door, ‘ ‘ Bring me a pitcher of 
 ice-water, quick, please !” and you do not 
 find the half-hour that he is gone very long. 
 
 If the ordinary wayfarer experiences so 
 much pleasure from these things, then 
 imagine the infinite comfort of our wedding- 
 journey ers, transported from Broadway on 
 that pitiless afternoon to the shelter and 
 the quiet of that absurdly palatial steam- 
 boat. It was not yet crowded, and by the 
 river-side there was almost a freshness in 
 the air. They disposed of their troubling 
 bags and packages ; they complimented the 
 ridiculous princeliness of their state-room, 
 and then they betook themselves to the 
 sheltered space aft of the saloon, where 
 they sat down for the tranquiller observance 
 of the wharf and whatever should come to 
 be seen by them. Like all people who have 
 
THE NIGHT BOAT. 
 
 67 
 
 just escaped with their lives from some 
 menacing calamity, they were very philo- 
 sophical in spirit ; and having got aboard of 
 their own motion, and being neither of them 
 apparently the worse for the ordeal they 
 had passed through, were of a light, conver- 
 sational temper. 
 
 ‘ ‘ What an amusingly superb affair ! ” 
 Basil cried as they glanced through an open 
 window down the long vista of the saloon. 
 “ Good heavens ! Isabel, does it take all 
 this to get us plain republicans to Albany 
 in comfort and safety, or are we really a 
 nation of princes in disguise ? Well, I shall 
 never be satisfied with less hereafter,” he 
 added. “I am spoilt for ordinary paint 
 and upholstery from this hour ; I am a 
 ruinous spendthrift, and a humble three - 
 story swell-front up at the South End is no 
 longer the place for me. Dearest, 
 
 * ‘ Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal 
 mind,’ 
 
 never to leave this Aladdin’s-palace-like 
 steamboat, but spend our lives in perpetual 
 trips up and down the Hudson.” 
 
 To which not very costly banter Isabel 
 responded in kind, and rapidly sketched the 
 life they could lead aboard. Since they 
 
68 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 could not help it, they mocked the public 
 provision which, leaving no interval between 
 disgraceful squalor and ludicrous splendour, 
 accommodates our democratic menage to the 
 taste of the richest and most extravagant 
 plebeian amongst us. He, unhappily, minds 
 danger and oppression as little as he minds 
 money, so long as he has a spectacle and a 
 sensation, and it is this ruthless imbecile 
 who will have lace curtains to the steamboat 
 berth into which he gets with his pantaloons 
 on, and out of which he may be blown by an 
 exploding boiler at any moment ; it is he 
 who will have for supper that overgrown and 
 shapeless dinner in the lower saloon, and 
 will not let any one else buy tea or toast for 
 a less sum than he pays for his surfeit ; it is 
 he who perpetuates the insolence of the clerk 
 and the reluctance of the waiters ; it is he, 
 in fact, who now comes out of the saloon, 
 with his womankind, and takes chairs under 
 the awning where Basil and Isabel sit. Per- 
 sonally, he is not so bad ; he is good-looking, 
 like all of us ; he is better dressed than most 
 of us ; he behaves himself quietly, if not 
 easily ; and no lord so loathes a scene. Next 
 year he is going to Europe, where he will 
 not show to so much advantage as here ; but 
 for the present it would be hard to say in 
 
THE NIGHT BOAT. 
 
 69 
 
 what way he is vulgar, and perhaps vul- 
 garity is not so common a thing after all. 
 
 It was something besides the river that 
 made the air so much more sufferable than 
 it had been. Over the city, since our friends 
 had come aboard the boat, a black cloud had 
 gathered and now hung low upon it, while 
 the wind from the face of the water took the 
 dust in the neighbouring streets, and fro- 
 licked it about the house-tops, and in the 
 faces of the arriving passengers, who, as the 
 moment of departure drew near, appeared in 
 constantly increasing numbers and in greater 
 variety, with not only the trepidation of 
 going upon them, but also with the electrical 
 excitement people feel before a tempest. The 
 breast of the black cloud was now zigzagged 
 from moment to moment by lightning, and 
 claps of deafening thunder broke from it. 
 At last the long endurance of the day was 
 spent, and out of its convulsion burst floods 
 of rain, again and again sweeping the pro- 
 menade-deck where the people sat, and driv- 
 ing them disconsolate into the saloon. The 
 air was darkened as by night, and with many 
 regrets for the vanishing prospect, mingled 
 with a sense of relief from the heat, our 
 friends felt the boat tremble away from her 
 moorings and set forth upon her trip. 
 
70 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 “ Ah ! if we had only taken the day 
 boat !” moaned Isabel. “ Now we shall see 
 nothing of the river landscape, and we shall 
 never be able to put ourselves down when 
 we long for Europe, by declaring that the 
 scenery of the Hudson is much finer than 
 that of the Rhine. ” 
 
 Yet they resolved, this indomitably good- 
 natured couple, that they would be just even 
 to the elements, which had by no means been 
 generous to them ; and they owned that if 
 so noble a storm had celebrated their depar- 
 ture upon some storied river from some more 
 romantic port than New York, they would 
 have thought it an admirable thing. Even 
 whilst they contented themselves, the storm 
 passed, and left a veiled and humid sky over- 
 head, that gave a charming softness to the 
 scene on which their eyes fell when they 
 came out of the saloon again, and took their 
 places with a largely increased companion- 
 ship on the deck. 
 
 They had already reached that part of the 
 river where the uplands begin, and their 
 course was between stately walls of rocky 
 steepness, or wooded slopes, or grassy hol- 
 lows, the scene for ever losing and taking 
 grand and lovely shape. Wreaths of mist 
 hung about the tops of the loftier headlands, 
 
THE NIGHT BOAT. 
 
 71 
 
 and long shadows draped their sides. As 
 the night grew, lights twinkled from a lonely 
 house here and there in the valleys ; a swarm 
 of lamps showed a town where it lay upon 
 the lap or at the foot of the hills. Behind 
 them stretched the great grey river, haunted 
 with many sails ; now a group of canal-boats 
 grappled together, and having an air of cosi- 
 ness in their adventure upon this strange 
 current out of their own sluggish waters, 
 drifted out of sight ; and now a smaller and 
 slower steamer, making a laborious show of 
 keeping up was passed, and reluctantly fell 
 behind ; along the water’s edge rattled and 
 hooted the frequent trains. They could not 
 tell at any time what part of the river they 
 were on, and they could not, if they would, 
 have made its beauty a matter of conscien- 
 tious observation ; but all the more, there- 
 fore, they deeply enjoyed it without reference 
 to time or place. They felt some natural 
 pain when they thought that they might 
 unwittingly pass the scenes that Irving has 
 made part of the common dream-land, and 
 they would fain have seen the lighted win- 
 dows of the house out of which a cheerful 
 ray has penetrated to so many hearts ; but 
 being sure of nothing, as they were, they 
 had the comfort of finding the Tappan Zee 
 
72 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 in every expanse of the river, and of dis- 
 covering Snnny-Side on every pleasant slope. 
 By virtue of this helplessness, the Hudson, 
 without ceasing to be the Hudson, became 
 from moment to moment all fair and stately 
 streams upon which they had voyaged or 
 read of voyaging, from the Nile to the Mis- 
 sissippi. There is no other travel like river 
 travel ; it is the perfection of movement, and 
 one might well desire never to arrive at one’s 
 destination. The abundance of room, the 
 free, pure air, the constant delight of the 
 eyes in the changing landscape, the soft 
 tremor of the boat, so steady upon her keel, 
 the variety of the little world on board, — all 
 form a charm which no good heart in a sound 
 body can resist. So, whilst the twilight 
 held, well content, in contiguous chairs, 
 they purred in flattery of their kindly fate, 
 imagining different pleasures, certainly, but 
 none greater, and tasting to its subtlest 
 flavour the happiness conscious of itself. 
 
 Their own satisfaction, indeed, was so 
 interesting to them in this objective light, 
 that they had little desire to turn from its 
 contemplation to the people around them ; 
 and when at last they did so, it was still 
 with lingering glances of self-recognition 
 and enjoyment. They divined rightly that 
 
THE NIGHT BOAT. 
 
 73 
 
 one of the main conditions of their present 
 felicity was the fact that they had seen so 
 much of time and of the world, that they 
 had no longer any desire to take beholding 
 eyes, or to make any sort of impressive 
 figure, and they understood that their pros- 
 perous love accounted as much as years and 
 travel for this result. If they had had a 
 loftier opinion of themselves, their indiffer- 
 ence to others might have made them offen- 
 sive ; but with their modest estimate of 
 their own value in the world, they could 
 have all the comfort of self-sufficiency, with- 
 out its vulgarity. 
 
 ‘ 4 0 yes ! ” said Basil, in answer to some 
 apostrophe to their bliss from Isabel, “it’s 
 the greatest imaginable satisfaction to have 
 lived past certain things. I always knew 
 that I was not a very handsome or otherwise 
 captivating person, but I can remember 
 years — now blessedly remote — when I never 
 could see a young girl without hoping she 
 would mistake me for something of that 
 sort. I couldn’t help desiring that some 
 fascination of mine, which had escaped my 
 own analysis, would have an effect upon her. 
 I daresay all young men are so. I used to 
 live for the possible interest I might inspire 
 in your sex, Isabel. They controlled my 
 
74 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 movements, my attitudes ; they forbade me 
 repose ; and yet I believe I was no ass, but 
 a tolerably sensible fellow. Blessed be mar- 
 riage, I am free at last ! All the loveliness 
 that exists outside of you, dearest, — and 
 it’s mighty little, — is mere pageant to me ; 
 and I thank Heaven that I can meet the 
 most stylish girl now upon the broad level 
 of our common humanity. Besides, it seems 
 to me that our experience of life has quieted 
 us in many other ways. What a luxury it 
 is to sit here, and reflect that we do not 
 want any of these people to suppose us rich, 
 or distinguished, or beautiful, or well dressed, 
 and do not care to show off in any sort of 
 way before them !” 
 
 This content was heightened, no doubt, 
 by a just sense of their contrast to the group 
 of people nearest them, — a young man of 
 the second or third quality and two young 
 girls. The eldest of these was carrying on 
 a vivacious flirtation with the young man, 
 who was apparently an acquaintance of brief 
 standing ; the other was scarcely more than 
 a child, and sat somewhat abashed at the 
 sparkle of the colloquy. They were, conjee - 
 turally, sisters going home from some visit, 
 and not skilled in the world, but of a certain 
 repute in their country neighbourhood for 
 
THE NIGHT BOAT. 
 
 75 
 
 beauty and wit. The young man presently 
 gave himself out as one who, in pursuit of 
 trade for the dry -goods house he represented, 
 had travelled many thousands of miles in all 
 parts of the country. The encounter was 
 visibly that kind of adventure which both 
 would treasure up for future celebration to 
 their different friends ; and it had a brilli- 
 ancy and interest which they could not even 
 now consent to keep to themselves. They 
 talked to each other and at all the company 
 within hearing, and exchanged curt speeches 
 which had for them all the sensation of re- 
 partee. 
 
 Young Man . — They say that beauty un- 
 adorned is adorned the most. 
 
 Young Woman (bridling, and twitching 
 her head from side to side, in the high ex- 
 citement of the dialogue). — Flattery is out 
 of place. 
 
 Young Man . — Well, never mind. If you 
 don’t believe me, you ask your mother when 
 you get home. 
 
 (Titter from the younger sister. ) 
 
 Young Woman (scornfully). — Umph ! my 
 mother has no control over me ! 
 
 Young Man . — Nobody else has, either, I 
 should say. (Admiringly. ) 
 
 Young Woman. — Yes, you’ve told the 
 
76 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 truth for once, for a wonder. I ’m able to 
 take care of myself, — perfectly. (Almost 
 
 hoarse with a sense of sarcastic perform- 
 ance. ) 
 
 Young Man . — “ Whole team and big dog 
 under the wagon,” as they say out West. 
 
 Young Woman . — Better a big dog than a 
 puppy, any day. 
 
 (Giggles and horror from the younger sister, 
 sensation in the young man, and so much rap- 
 ture in the young woman that she drops the 
 key of her state-room from her hand. They 
 both stoop, and a jocose scuffle for it ensues, 
 after which the talk takes an autobiogra- 
 phical turn on the part of the young man, 
 and drops into an unintelligible murmur. 
 Ah ! poor Real Life, which I love, can I make 
 others share the delight I find in thy foolish 
 and insipid face ?) 
 
 Not far from this group sat two Hebrews, 
 one young and the other old, talking of some 
 business out of which the latter had retired. 
 The younger had been asked his opinion upon 
 some point, and he was expanding with a 
 flattered consciousness of the elder’s percep- 
 tion of his importance, and toadying to him 
 with the pleasure which all young men feel 
 in winning the favour of seniors in their voca- 
 tion. “ Well, as I was a-say’n’, Isaac don’t 
 
THE NIGHT BOAT. 
 
 77 
 
 seem to haf no natcheral pent for the glotliing 
 business. Man gomes in and wands a goat,” 
 — he seemed to be speaking of a garment 
 and not a domestic animal, — “ Isaac ’ll zell 
 him the goat he wands him to puy, and he ’ll 
 make him pelieve it ’s the goat he was a 
 lookin’ for. Well, now, that’s well enough 
 as far as it goes ; but you know and I know, 
 Mr. Rosenthal, that that ’s no way to do 
 business. A man gan’t zugzeed that goes 
 upon that brincible. Id ’s wrong. Id ’s easy 
 enough to make a man puy the goat you wand 
 him to, if he wands a goat, but the thing is 
 to maJce him puy the goat that you wand to zell 
 when he don’t wand no goat at all . You ’ve 
 asked me what I thought, and I ’ve dold you. 
 Isaac ’ll never zugzeed in the redail glothing- 
 business in the world ! ” 
 
 4 4 Well,” sighed the elder, who filled his 
 arm-chair quite full, and quivered with a 
 comfortable jelly-like tremor in it, at every 
 pulsation of the engine, “I was afraid of 
 something of the kind. As you say, Ben- 
 jamin, he don’t seem to have no pent for it. 
 And yet I proughd him up to the business ; 
 I drained him to it, myself.” 
 
 Besides these talkers, there were scattered 
 singly, or grouped about in twos and threes 
 and fours, the various people one encounters 
 
78 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 on a Hudson River boat, who are on the 
 whole different from the passengers on other 
 rivers, though they all have features in com- 
 mon. There was that man of the sudden 
 gains, who has already been typified ; and 
 there was also the smoother rich man of in- 
 herited wealth, from whom you can somehow 
 know the former so readily. They were each 
 attended by their several retinues of woman- 
 kind, the daughters all much alike, but the 
 mothers somewhat different. They were 
 going to Saratoga, where perhaps the exigen- 
 cies of fashion would bring them acquainted, 
 and where the blue blood of a quarter of a 
 century would be kind to the yesterday’s 
 fluid of warmer hue. There was something 
 pleasanter in the face of the hereditary aris- 
 tocrat, but not so strong, nor, altogether, so 
 admirable ; particularly if you reflected that 
 he really represented nothing in the world, 
 no great culture, no political influence, no 
 civic aspiration, not even a pecuniary force, 
 nothing but a social set, an alien club -life, a 
 tradition of dining. We live in a true fairy- 
 land after all, where the hoarded treasure 
 turns to a heap of dry leaves. The almighty 
 dollar defeats itself, and finally buys nothing 
 that a man cares to have. The very highest 
 pleasure that such an American’s money can 
 
THE NIGHT BOAT. 
 
 79 
 
 purchase is exile, and to this rich man 
 doubtless Europe is a twice-told tale. Let 
 us clap our empty pockets, dearest reader, 
 and be glad. 
 
 We can be as glad, apparently, and with 
 the same reason as the poorly dressed young 
 man standing near beside the guard, whose 
 face Basil and Isabel chose to fancy that of 
 a poet, and concerning whom they romanced 
 that he was going home, wherever his home 
 was, with the manuscript of a rejected book 
 in his pocket. They imagined him no great 
 things of a poet, to be sure, but his pensive 
 face claimed delicate feeling for him, and a 
 graceful, sombre fancy, and they conjectured 
 unconsciously caught flavours of Tennyson 
 and Browning in his verse, with a moderner 
 tint from Morris ; for was it not a story out 
 of mythology, with gods and heroes of the 
 nineteenth century, that he was now carry- 
 ing back from New York with him ? Basil 
 sketched from the colours of his own long- 
 accepted disappointments a moving little 
 picture of this poor imagined poet’s adven- 
 tures ; with what kindness and unkindness 
 he had been put to shame by publishers, 
 and how, descending from his high hopes of 
 a book, he had tried to sell to the magazines 
 some of the shorter pieces out of the * ‘ And 
 
80 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 other Poems ” which were to have filled up 
 the volume. ‘ 4 He ’s going back rather 
 stunned and bewildered ; but it ’s some- 
 thing to have tasted the city, and its bitter 
 may turn to sweet on his palate, at last, till 
 he finds himself longing for the tumult that 
 he abhors now. Poor fellow ! one com- 
 passionate cut-throat of a publisher even 
 asked him to lunch, being struck, as we are, 
 with something fine in his face. I hope 
 he ’s got somebody who believes in him, at 
 home. Otherwise he ’d be more comfortable, 
 for the present, if he went over the railing 
 there.” 
 
 So the play of which they were both 
 actors and spectators went on about them. 
 Like all passages of life, it seemed now a 
 grotesque mystery, with a bluntly enforced 
 moral, now a farce of the broadest, now a 
 latent tragedy folded in the disguises of 
 comedy. All the elements, indeed, of either 
 were at work there, and this was but one 
 brief scene of the immense complex drama 
 which was to proceed so variously in such 
 different times and places, and to have its 
 denoument only in eternity. The contrasts 
 were sharp : each group had its travesty in 
 some other ; the talk of one seemed the 
 rude burlesque, the bitter satire of the next ; 
 
THE NIGHT BOAT. 
 
 81 
 
 but of all these parodies none was so terribly 
 effective as the two women, who sat in the 
 midst of the company, yet were somehow 
 distinct from the rest. One wore the deepest 
 black of widowhood, the other was dressed 
 in bridal white, and they were both alike 
 awful in their mockery of guiltless sorrow 
 and guiltless joy. They were not old, but 
 the soul of youth was dead in their pretty, 
 lamentable faces, and ruin ancient as sin 
 looked from their eyes ; their talk and laugh- 
 ter seemed the echo of an innumerable multi- 
 tude of the lost haunting the world in every 
 land and time, each solitary for ever, yet all 
 bound together in the unity of an imperish- 
 able slavery and shame. 
 
 What a stale effect ! What hackneyed 
 characters ! Let us be glad the night drops 
 her curtain upon the cheap spectacle, and 
 shuts these with the other actors from our 
 view. 
 
 Within the cabin, through which Basil 
 and Isabel now slowly moved, there were 
 numbers of people lounging about on the 
 sofas, in various attitudes of talk or vacancy ; 
 and at the tables there were others reading 
 “ Lothair,” a new book in the remote epoch 
 of which I write, and a very fashionable 
 book indeed. There was in the air that 
 
 F 
 
82 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 odour of paint and carpet which prevails on 
 steamboats ; the glass drops of the chande- 
 liers ticked softly against each other, as 
 the vessel shook with her respiration, like a 
 comfortable sleeper, and imparted a deli- 
 cious feeling of cosiness and security to our 
 travellers. 
 
 A few hours later they struggled awake 
 at the sharp sound of the pilot’s bell signal- 
 ling the engineer to slow the boat. There 
 was a moment of perfect silence ; then all 
 the drops of the chandeliers in the saloon 
 clashed musically together ; then fell another 
 silence ; and at last came wild cries for 
 help, strongly qualified with blasphemies 
 and curses. “ Send out a boat ! ” “ There 
 
 was a woman aboard that steamboat ! ” 
 “ Lower your boats ! 55 “ Run a craft right 
 
 down, with your big boat ! ” “ Send out a 
 
 boat and pick up the crew ! ” The cries rose 
 and sank, and finally ceased ; through the 
 lattice of the state-room window some lights 
 shone faintly on the water at a distance. 
 
 “ Wait here, Isabel !” said her husband. 
 “We ’ve run down a boat. We don’t seem 
 hurt ; but I ’ll go see. I ’ll be back in a 
 minute.” 
 
 Isabel had emerged into a world of dis- 
 habille, a world wildly unbuttoned and un- 
 
THE NIGHT BOAT. 
 
 83 
 
 laced, where it was the fashion for ladies to 
 wear their hair down their backs, and to 
 walk about in their stockings, and to speak 
 to each other without introduction. The 
 place with which she had felt so familiar a 
 little while before was now utterly estranged. 
 There was no motion of the boat, and in the 
 momentary suspense a quiet prevailed, in 
 which those grotesque shapes of disarray 
 crept noiselessly round whispering panic- 
 stricken conjectures. There was no rushing 
 to and fro, nor tumult of any kind, and there * 
 was not a man to be seen, for apparently they 
 had all gone like Basil to learn the extent of 
 the calamity. A mist of sleep involved the 
 whole, and it was such a topsy-turvy world 
 that it would have seemed only another 
 dream-land, but that it was marked for 
 reality by one signal fact. With the rest 
 appeared the woman in bridal white and the 
 woman in widow’s black, and there, amidst 
 the fright that made all others friends, and 
 for aught that most knew, in the presence 
 of death itself, these two moved together 
 shunned and friendless. 
 
 Somehow, even before Basil returned, it 
 had become known to Isabel and the rest that 
 their own steamer had suffered no harm, but 
 that she had struck and sunk another con- 
 
84 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 voying a flotilla of canal-boats, from which 
 those alarming cries and curses had come. 
 The steamer was now lying by for the small 
 boats she had sent out to pick up the crew 
 of the sunken vessel. 
 
 44 Why, I only heard a little tinkling of 
 the chandeliers, ” said one of the ladies. ‘ ‘ Is 
 it such a very slight matter to run down 
 another boat and sink it ?” 
 
 She appealed indirectly to Basil, who an- 
 swered lightly, 4 4 1 don’t think you ladies 
 ought to have been disturbed at all. In 
 running over a common tow-boat on a per- 
 fectly clear night like this there should have 
 been no noise and no perceptible jar. They 
 manage better on the Mississippi, and both 
 boats often go down without waking the 
 lightest sleeper on board.” 
 
 The ladies, perhaps from a deficient sense 
 of humour, listened with undisguised dis- 
 pleasure to this speech. It dispersed them, 
 in fact ; some turned away to bivouac for 
 the rest of the night upon the arm-chairs 
 and sofas, while others returned to their 
 rooms. With the latter went Isabel. 44 Lock 
 me in, Basil,” she said, with a bold meek- 
 ness, 44 and if anything more happens don’t 
 wake me till the last moment. ” It was hard 
 to part from him, but she felt that his vigil 
 
THE NIGHT BOAT. 
 
 85 
 
 would somehow be useful to the boat, and 
 she confidingly fell into a sleep that lasted 
 till daylight. 
 
 Meantime, her husband, on whom she had 
 tacitly devolved so great a responsibility, 
 went forward to the promenade in front of 
 the saloon, in hopes of learning something 
 more of the catastrophe from the people 
 whom he had already found gathered there. 
 
 A large part of the passengers were still 
 there, seated or standing about in earnest 
 colloquy. They were in that mood which 
 follows great excitement, and in which the 
 feeblest-minded are sure to lead the talk. 
 At such times one feels that a sensible frame 
 of mind is unsympathetic, and if expressed, 
 unpopular, or perhaps not quite safe ; and 
 Basil, warned by his fate with the ladies, 
 listened gravely to the voice of the common 
 imbecility and incoherence. 
 
 The principal speaker was a tall person, 
 wearing a silk travelling- cap. He had a face 
 of stupid benignity and a self-satisfied 
 smirk ; and he was formally trying to put at 
 his ease, and hopelessly confusing, the loutish 
 youth before him. “ You say you saw the 
 whole accident, and you ’re probably the 
 only passenger that did see it. You’ll be 
 the most important witness at the trial,” he 
 
86 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 added, as if there would ever be any trial 
 about it. “Now, how did the tow-boat hit 
 
 us?” 
 
 “ Well, she came bows on.” 
 
 “Ah ! bows on,” repeated the other, with 
 great satisfaction ; and a little murmur of 
 “ Bows on !” ran round the listening circle. 
 
 “ That is,” added the witness, “ it seemed 
 as if we struck her amidships, and cut her 
 in two, and sunk her.” 
 
 “Just so,” continued the examiner, ac- 
 cepting the explanation, “ bows on. Now 
 I want to ask if you saw our captain or any 
 of the crew about ? ” 
 
 “Not a soul,” said the witness, with the 
 solemnity of a man already on oath. 
 
 ‘ * That ’ll do, ” exclaimed the other. ‘ ‘ This 
 gentleman’s experience coincides exactly with 
 my own. I didn’t see the collision, but I 
 did see the cloud of steam from the sinking 
 boat, and I saw her go down. There wasn’t 
 an officer to be found anywhere on board our 
 boat. I looked about for the captain and 
 the mate myself, and couldn’t find either of 
 them high or low.” 
 
 “ The officers ought all to have been sit- 
 ting here on the promenade deck,” sug- 
 gested one ironical spirit in the crowd, but 
 no one noticed him. 
 
THE NIGHT BOAT. 
 
 87 
 
 The gentleman in the silk travelling- cap 
 now took a chair, and a number of sympa- 
 thetic listeners drew their chairs about him, 
 and then began an interchange of experience, 
 in which each related to the last particular 
 all that he felt, thought, and said, and, if 
 married, what his wife felt, thought, and 
 said, at the moment of the calamity. They 
 turned the disaster over and over in their 
 talk, and rolled it under their tongues. Then 
 they reverted to former accidents in which 
 they had been concerned ; and the silk-capped 
 gentleman told, to the common admiration, 
 of a fearful escape of his, on the Erie Road, 
 from being thrown down a steep embank- 
 ment fifty feet high by a piece of rock that 
 had fallen on the track. “Now just see, 
 gentlemen, what a little thing, humanly 
 speaking, life depends upon. If that old 
 woman had been able to sleep, and hadn’t 
 sent that boy down to warn the train, we 
 should have run into the rock and been 
 dashed to pieces. The passengers made up a 
 purse for the boy, and I wrote a full account 
 of it to the papers.” 
 
 “ Well,” said one of the group, a man in a 
 hard hat, “ I never lie down on a steamboat 
 or a railroad train. I want to be ready for 
 whatever happens. ” 
 
88 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 The others looked at this speaker with 
 interest, as one who had invented a safe 
 method of travel. 
 
 “ I happened to be up to-night, but I al- 
 most always undress and go to bed, just as if 
 I were in my own house,” said the gentleman 
 -of the silk cap. “ I don’t say your way isn’t 
 the best, but that ’s my way. ” 
 
 The champions of the rival systems de- 
 bated their merits with suavity and mutual 
 respect, but they met with scornful silence 
 a compromising spirit who held that it was 
 better to throw off your coat and boots, but 
 keep your pantaloons on. Meanwhile, the 
 steamer was hanging idle upon the current, 
 against which it now and then stirred a care- 
 less wheel, still waiting for the return of the 
 small boats. Thin grey clouds, through rifts 
 of which a star sparkled keenly here and 
 there, veiled the heavens ; shadowy bluffs 
 loomed up on either hand ; in a hollow on 
 the left twinkled a drowsy little town ; a 
 beautiful stillness lay on all. 
 
 After an hour’s interval a shout was heard 
 from far down the river ; then later the plash 
 of oars ; then a cry hailing the approaching 
 boats, and the answer, “All safe!” Pre- 
 sently the boats had come alongside, and the 
 passengers crowded down to the guard to 
 
THE NIGHT BOAT. 
 
 89 
 
 learn the details of the search. Basil heard 
 a hollow, moaning, gurgling sound, regular 
 as that of the machinery, for some note of 
 which he mistook it. “ Clear the gangway 
 there ! ” shouted a gruff voice ; “ man scalded 
 here ! ” And a burden was carried by from 
 which fluttered, with its terrible regularity, 
 that utterance of mortal anguish. 
 
 Basil went again to the forward pro- 
 menade, and sat down to see the morning 
 come. 
 
 The boat swiftly ascended the current, 
 and presently the steeper shores were left 
 behind and the banks fell away in long up- 
 ward sloping fields, with farm-houses and 
 with stacks of harvest dimly visible in the 
 generous expanses. By-and-by they passed 
 a fisherman drawing his nets, and bending 
 from his boat, there near Albany, N. Y. , 
 in the picturesque immortal attitudes of 
 Raphael’s Galilean fisherman ; and now a 
 flush mounted the pale face of the east, and 
 through the dewy coolness of the dawn there 
 came, more to the sight than any other sense, 
 a vague menace of heat. But as yet the air 
 was deliciously fresh and sweet, and Basil 
 bathed his weariness in it, thinking with a 
 certain luxurious compassion of the scalded 
 man, and how he was to fare that day. This 
 
90 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 poor wretch seemed of another order of beings, 
 as the calamitous always seem to the happy, 
 and Basil’s pity was quite an abstraction ; 
 which, again, amused and shocked him, and 
 he asked his heart of bliss to consider of sor- 
 row a little more earnestly as the lot of all 
 men, and not merely of an alien creature here 
 and there. He dutifully tried to imagine 
 another issue to the disaster of the night, 
 and to realise himself suddenly bereft of her 
 who so filled his life. He bade his soul re- 
 member that, in the security of sleep, Death 
 had passed them both so close that his pre- 
 sence might well have chilled their dreams, 
 as the iceberg that grazes the ship in the 
 night freezes all the air about it. But it was 
 quite idle : where love was, life only was ; 
 and sense and spirit alike put aside the bur- 
 den that he would have laid upon them ; his 
 reverie reflected with delicious caprice the 
 looks, the tones, the movements that he loved, 
 and bore him far away from the sad images 
 that he had invited to mirror themselves 
 in it. 
 
A day’s railroading. 
 
 91 
 
 IV. 
 
 a day’s railroading. 
 
 H APPINESS has commonly a good appe- 
 tite ; and the thought of the fortu- 
 nately ended adventures of the night, the 
 fresh morning air, and the content of their 
 own hearts, gifted our friends, by the time 
 the boat reached Albany, with a wholesome 
 hunger, so that they debated with spirit the 
 question of breakfast and the best place of 
 breakfasting in a city which neither of them 
 knew, save in the most fugitive and sketchy 
 way. 
 
 They decided at last, in view of the early 
 departure of the train, and the probability 
 that they would be more hurried at a hotel, 
 to breakfast at the station, and thither they 
 went and took places at one of the many 
 tables within, where they seemed to have 
 been expected only by the flies. The wait- 
 ress plainly had not looked for them, and 
 for a time found their presence so incredible 
 that she would not acknowledge the rattling 
 
92 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 that Basil was obliged to make on his glass. 
 Then it appeared that the cook would not 
 believe in them, and he did not send them, 
 till they were quite faint, the peppery and 
 muddy draught which impudently affected 
 to be coffee, the oily slices of fugacious 
 potatoes slipping about in their shallow dish 
 and skilfully evading pursuit, the pieces of 
 beef that simulated steak, the hot, greasy 
 biscuit, steaming evilly up into the face when 
 opened, and then soddening into masses of 
 condensed dyspepsia. 
 
 The wedding- journeyers looked at each 
 other with eyes of sad amaze. They bowed 
 themselves for a moment to the viands, and 
 then by an equal impulse refrained. They 
 were sufficiently young, they were happy, 
 they were hungry ; nature is great and 
 strong, but art is greater, and before these 
 triumphs of the cook at the Albany depot 
 appetite succumbed. By a terrible tour cle 
 force they swallowed the fierce and turbid 
 liquor in their cups, and then speculated 
 fantastically upon the character and history 
 of the materials of that breakfast. 
 
 Presently Isabel paused, played a little 
 with her knife, and, after a moment, looked 
 up at her husband with an arch regard, and 
 said : “I was just thinking of a small station 
 
A day’s railroading. 
 
 93 
 
 somewhere in the South of France where our 
 train once stopped for breakfast. I remem- 
 ber the freshness and brightness of every- 
 thing on the little tables, — the plates, the 
 napkins, the gleaming half -bottles of wine. 
 They seemed to have been preparing that 
 breakfast for us from the beginning of time, 
 and we were hardly seated before they served 
 us with great cups of cafe-au-lait , and the 
 sweetest rolls and butter ; then a delicate 
 cutlet, with an unspeakable gravy, and 
 potatoes, — such potatoes ! Dear me, how 
 little I ate of it ! I wish, for once, I ’d had 
 your appetite, Basil ; I do indeed.” 
 
 She ended with a heartless laugh, in which, 
 despite the tragical contrast her words had 
 suggested, Basil finally joined. So much 
 amazement had probably never been got 
 before out of the misery inflicted in that 
 place ; but their lightness did not at all 
 commend them. The waitress had not liked 
 it from the first, and had served them with 
 reluctance ; and the proprietor did not like 
 it, and kept his eye upon them as if he be- 
 lieved them about to escape without pay- 
 ment. Here, then, they had enforced a 
 great fact of travelling, — that people who 
 serve the public are kindly and pleasant in 
 proportion as they serve it well. The unjust 
 
94 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 and the inefficient have always that con- 
 sciousness of evil which will not let a man 
 forgive his victim, or like him to be cheerful. 
 
 Our friends, however, did not heat them- 
 selves over the fact. There was already such 
 heat from without, even at eight o’clock in 
 the morning, that they chose to be as cool as 
 possible in mind, and they placidly took their 
 places in the train, which had been made up 
 for departure. They had deliberately re- 
 jected the notion of a drawing-room car as 
 affording a less varied prospect of humanity, 
 and as being less in the spirit of ordinary 
 American travel. Now, in reward, they 
 found themselves quite comfortable in the 
 common passenger-car, and disposed to view 
 the scenery, into which they struck an hour 
 after leaving the city, with much compla- 
 cency. There was sufficient draught through 
 the open window to make the heat tolerable, 
 and the great brooding warmth gave to the 
 landscape the charm which it alone can im- 
 part. It is a landscape that I greatly love 
 for its mild beauty and tranquil picturesque- 
 ness,, and it is in honour of our friends that 
 I say they enjoyed it. There are nowhere 
 any considerable hills, but everywhere gen- 
 erous slopes and pleasant hollows and the 
 wide meadows of a grazing country, with 
 
A day’s railroading. 
 
 95 
 
 the pretty brown Mohawk River rippling 
 down through all, and at frequent intervals 
 the life of the canal, now near, now far away, 
 with the lazy boats that seem not to stir, 
 and the horses that the train passes with 
 a whirl, and leaves slowly stepping for- 
 ward and. swiftly slipping backward. There 
 are farms that had once, or still have, the 
 romance to them of being Dutch farms, — if 
 there is any romance in that, — and one con- 
 jectures a Dutch thrift in their waving grass 
 and grain. Spaces of woodland here and 
 there dapple the slopes, and the cosy red 
 farm-houses repose by the side of their capa- 
 cious red barns. Truly, there is no ground 
 on which to defend the idleness, and yet as 
 the train strives furiously onward amid these 
 scenes of fertility and abundance, I like in 
 fancy to loiter behind it, and to saunter at 
 will up and down the landscape. I stop at 
 the farm-yard gates, and sit upon the porches 
 or thresholds, and am served with cups of 
 buttermilk by old Dutch ladies who have 
 done their morning’s work and have leisure 
 to be knitting or sewing ; or if there are no 
 old ladies, with decent caps upon their grey 
 hair, then I do not complain if the drink is 
 brought me by some red-cheeked, comely 
 young girl, out of Washington Irving’s 
 
96 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 pages, with no cap on her golden braids, 
 who mirrors my diffidence, and takes an 
 attitude of pretty awkwardness while she 
 waits till I have done drinking. In the 
 same easily contented spirit as I lounge 
 through the barn -yard, if I find the old hens 
 gone about their family affairs, I do not 
 mind a meadow-lark’s singing in the top of 
 the elm-tree beside the pump. In these 
 excursions the watch-dogs know me for a 
 harmless person, and will not open then- 
 eyes as they lie coiled up in the sun before 
 the gate. At all the places, I have the 
 people keep bees, and, in the garden full 
 of worthy pot-herbs, such idlers in the vege- 
 table world as hollyhocks and larkspurs and 
 four-o’-clocks, near a great bed in which 
 the asparagus has gone to sleep for the sea- 
 son with a dream of delicate spray hanging 
 over it. I walk unmolested through the 
 farmer’s tall grass, and ride with him upon 
 the perilous seat of his voluble mowing- 
 machine, and learn to my heart’s content 
 that his name begins with Van, and that 
 his family has owned that farm ever since 
 the days of the Patroon ; which I dare say 
 is not true. Then I fall asleep in a corner 
 of the hay-field, and wake up on the tow- 
 path of the canal beside that wonderfully 
 
A day’s railroading. 
 
 97 
 
 lean horse, whose bones you cannot count 
 only because they are so many. He never 
 wakes up, but with a faltering uncler-lip 
 and half-shut eyes, hobbles stiffly on, uncon- 
 scious of his anatomical interest. The cap- 
 tain hospitably asks me on board, with a 
 twist of the rudder swinging the stern of 
 the boat up to the path, so that I can step 
 on. She is laden with flour from the valley 
 of the Genesee, and may have started on her 
 voyage shortly after the canal was made. 
 She is succinctly manned by the captain, the 
 driver, and the cook, a fiery-haired lady of 
 imperfect temper ; and the cabin, which I 
 explore, is plainly furnished with a cook- 
 stove and a flask of whiskey. Nothing but 
 profane language is allowed on board ; and 
 so, in a life of wicked jollity and ease, we 
 glide imperceptibly down the canal, unvexed 
 by the far-off future of arrival. 
 
 Such, I say, are my own unambitious 
 mental pastimes, but I am aware that less 
 superficial spirits could not be satisfied with 
 them, and I do not pretend that my wedding- 
 journey ers were so. They cast an absurd 
 poetry over the landscape, they invited them- 
 selves to be reminded of passages of Euro- 
 pean travel by it ; and they placed villas 
 and castles and palaces upon all the eligible 
 G 
 
98 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 building-sites. Ashamed of these devices, 
 presently, Basil patriotically tried to recon- 
 struct the Dutch and Indian past of the 
 Mohawk Valley, but here he was foiled by 
 the immense ignorance of his wife, who as a 
 true American woman, knew nothing of the 
 history of her own country, and less than 
 nothing of the barbarous regions beyond the 
 borders of her native province. She proved 
 a bewildering labyrinth of error concerning 
 the events which Basil mentioned ; and she 
 had never even heard of the massacres by 
 the French and Indians at Schenectady, 
 which he in his boyhood had known so 
 vividly that he was scalped every night in 
 his dreams, and woke up in the morning 
 expecting to see marks of the tomahawk on 
 the head-board. So, failing at last to extract 
 any sentiment from the scenes without, they 
 turned their faces from the window, and 
 looked about them for amusement within 
 the car. 
 
 It was in all respects an ordinary carful 
 of human beings, and it was perhaps the 
 more worthy to be studied on that account. 
 As in literature the true artist will shun the 
 use even of real events if they are of an im- 
 probable character, so the sincere observer 
 of man will not desire to look upon his heroic 
 
A day’s railroading. 99 
 
 or occasional phases, but will seek him in 
 his habitual moods of vacancy and tiresome- 
 ness. To me, at any rate, he is at such times 
 very precious ; and I never perceive him to 
 be so much a man and a brother as when I 
 feel the pressure of his vast, natural, un- 
 affected dulness. Then I am able to enter 
 confidently into his life and inhabit there, 
 to think his shallow and feeble thoughts, to 
 be moved by his dumb, stupid desires, to be 
 dimly illumined by his stinted inspirations, 
 to share his foolish prejudices, to practise 
 his obtuse selfishness. Yes, it is a very 
 amusing world, if you do not refuse to be 
 amused ; and our friends were very willing 
 to be entertained. They delighted in the 
 precise, thick -fingered old ladies who bought 
 sweet apples of the boys come aboard with 
 baskets, and who were so long in finding the 
 right change, that our travellers, leaping in 
 thought with the boys from the moving train, 
 felt that they did so at the peril of their 
 lives. Then they were interested in people 
 who went out~and found their friends wait- 
 ing for them, or else did not find them, and 
 wandered disconsolately up and down before 
 the country stations, carpet-bag in hand ; in 
 women who came aboard, and were awk- 
 wardly shaken hands with or sheepishly 
 
100 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 kissed by those who hastily got seats for 
 them, and placed their bags or their babies 
 in their laps, and turned for a nod at the 
 door : in young ladies who were seen to 
 places by young men ( the latter seemed not 
 to care if the train did go off with them), 
 and then threw up their windows and talked 
 with girl-friends on the platform without, 
 till the train began to move, and at last 
 turned with gleaming eyes and moist red lips, 
 and panted hard in the excitement of think- 
 ing about it, and could not calm themselves 
 to the dull level of the travel around them ; 
 in the conductor, coldly and inaccessibly 
 vigilant, as he went his rounds, reaching 
 blindly for the tickets with one hand while 
 he bent his head from time to time, and 
 listened with a faint sarcastic smile to the 
 questions of passengers who supposed they 
 were going to get some information out of 
 him ; in the train -boy, who passed through 
 on his many errands with prize candies, 
 gum- drops, pop-corn, papers and magazines, 
 and distributed books and the police journals 
 with a blind impartiality, or a prodigious 
 ignorance, or a supernatural perception of 
 character in those who received them. 
 
 A through train from East to West pre- 
 sents some peculiar features as well as the 
 
A day’s railroading. 
 
 101 
 
 traits common to all railway travel ; and 
 our friends decided that this was not a very 
 well-dressed company, and would contrast 
 with the people on an express-train between 
 Boston and New York to no better advantage 
 than these would show beside the average pas- 
 sengers between London and Paris. And it 
 seems true that on a westering line, the 
 blacking fades gradually from the boots, the 
 hat softens and sinks, the coat loses its rigour 
 of cut, and the whole person lounges into in- 
 creasing informality of costume. I speak of 
 the undressful sex alone : woman, wherever 
 she is, appears in the last attainable effects 
 of fashion, which are now all but telegraphic 
 and universal. But most of the passengers 
 here were men, and they were plainly of 
 the free-and-easy West rather than the 
 dapper East. They wore faces thoughtful 
 with the problem of buying cheap and selling- 
 dear, and they could be known by their 
 silence from the loquacious, acquaintance- 
 making way -travellers. In these the mere 
 coming aboard seemed to beget an aggre ™ 
 sively confidential mood. Perhaps they 
 clutched recklessly at any means of relieving 
 their ennui ; or they felt that they might here 
 indulge safely in the pleasures of auto- 
 biography, so dear to all of us ; or else, in 
 
102 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 view of the many possible catastrophes, they 
 desired to leave some little memory of them- 
 selves behind. At any rate, whenever the 
 train stopped, the wedding- journey ers caught 
 fragments of the personal histories of their 
 fellow-passengers which had been rehearsing 
 to those that sat next the narrators. It 
 was no more than fair that these should 
 somewhat magnify themselves, and put the 
 best complexion on their actions and the 
 worst upon their sufferings ; that they should 
 all appear the luckiest or the unluckiest, the 
 healthiest or the sickest, people that ever 
 were, and should all have made or lost the 
 most money. There was a prevailing desire 
 among them to make out that they came 
 from or were going to some very large place ; 
 and our friends fancied an actual mortifica- 
 tion in the face of a modest gentleman who 
 got out at Penelope (or some other insignifi- 
 cant classical station, in the ancient Greek 
 and Roman part of New York State), after 
 having listened to the life of a somewhat 
 rustic-looking person who had described 
 himself as belonging near New York City. 
 
 Basil also found diversion in the tender 
 couples, who publicly comported themselves 
 as if in a sylvan solitude, and, as it had been 
 on the bank of some umbrageous stream, far 
 
A day’s railroading. 
 
 103 
 
 from the ken of envious or unsympathetic 
 eyes, reclined upon each other’s shoulders 
 and slept ; but Isabel declared that this 
 behaviour was perfectly indecent. She 
 granted, of course, that they were foolish, 
 innocent people, who meant no offence, and 
 did not feel guilty of an impropriety, but she 
 said that this sort of thing was a national 
 reproach. If it were merely rustic lovers, 
 she should not care so much ; but you saw 
 people who ought to know better, well- 
 dressed, stylish people, flaunting their devo- 
 tion in the face of the world, and going to 
 sleep on each other’s shoulders on every rail- 
 road train. It was outrageous, it was scan- 
 dalous, it was really infamous. Before she 
 would allow herself to do such a thing she 
 would — well, she hardly knew what she 
 would not do ; she would have a divorce, at 
 any rate. She wondered that Basil could 
 laugh at it ; and he would make her hate 
 him if he kept on. 
 
 From the seat behind their own they were 
 now made listeners to the history of a ten 
 weeks’ typhoid fever, from the moment when 
 the narrator noticed that he had not felt very 
 well for a day or two back, and all at once 
 a kind of shiver took him, till he lay four- 
 teen days perfectly insensible, and could eat 
 
104 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 nothing but a little pounded ice — and his 
 wife — a small woman, too — used to lift him 
 back and forth between the bed and sofa 
 like a feather, and the neighbours did not 
 know half the time whether he was dead or 
 alive. This history, from which not the 
 smallest particular or the least significant 
 symptom of the case was omitted, occupied 
 an hour in recital, and was told, as it seemed, 
 for the entertainment of one who had been 
 five minutes before it began a stranger to the 
 historian. 
 
 At last the train came to a stand, and 
 Isabel wailed forth in accents of desperation 
 the words, “0, disgusting!” The mono- 
 tony of the narrative in the seat behind, 
 fatally combining with the heat of the day, 
 had lulled her into slumbers from which she 
 awoke at the stopping of the train, to find 
 her head resting tenderly upon her husband’s 
 shoulder. 
 
 She confronted his merriment with eyes of 
 mournful rebuke ; but as she could not find 
 him, by the harshest construction, in the 
 least to blame, she was silent. 
 
 “Never mind, dear, never mind,” he 
 coaxed, “ you were really not responsible. 
 It was fatigue, destiny, the spite of fortune, 
 — whatever you like. In the case of the 
 
A day’s railroading. 
 
 105 
 
 others, whom you despise so justly, I dare 
 say it is sheer, disgraceful affection. But 
 see that ravishing placard, swinging from 
 the roof : ‘ This train stops twenty minutes 
 for dinner at Utica.’ In a few minutes 
 more we shall be at Utica. If they have 
 anything edible there, it shall never contract 
 my powers. I could dine at the Albany sta- 
 tion, even.” 
 
 In a little while they found themselves in 
 an airy, comfortable dining-room, eating a 
 dinner, which it seemed to them France in 
 the flush of her prosperity need not have 
 blushed to serve ; for if it wanted a little in 
 the last graces of art, it redeemed itself in 
 abundance, variety, and wholesomeness. At 
 the elbow of every famishing passenger stood 
 a beneficent coal-black glossy fairy, in a 
 white linen apron and jacket, serving him 
 with that alacrity and kindliness and grace 
 which make the negro waiter the master, 
 not the slave of his calling, which disenthral 
 it of servility, and constitute him your eager 
 host, not your menial, for the moment. From 
 table to table passed a calming influence in 
 the person of the proprietor, who, as he took 
 his richly earned money, checked the rising 
 fears of the guests by repeated proclamations 
 that there was plenty of time, and that he 
 
106 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 would give them due warning before the 
 train started. Those who had flocked out 
 of the cars, to prey with beak and claw, as 
 the vulture-like fashion is, upon everything 
 in reach, remained to eat like Christians ; 
 and even a poor, scantily-Englished French- 
 man, who wasted half his time in trying to 
 ask how long the cars stopped, and in looking 
 at his watch, made a good dinner in spite of 
 himself. 
 
 “ 0 Basil, Basil ! ” cried Isabel, when the 
 train was again in motion, ‘ 4 have we really 
 dined once more ? It seems too good to be 
 true. Cleanliness, plenty, wholesomeness, 
 civility ! Yes, as you say, they cannot be 
 civil where they are not just ; honesty and 
 courtesy go together ; and wherever they 
 give you outrageous things to eat, they add 
 indigestible insults. Basil, dear, don’t be 
 jealous ; I shall never meet him again ; but 
 I’m in love with that black waiter at our 
 table. I never saw such perfect manners, 
 such a winning and affectionate politeness. 
 He made me feel that every mouthful I ate 
 was a personal favour to him. What a com- 
 plete gentleman ! There ought never to be 
 a white waiter. None but negroes are able 
 to render their service a pleasure and dis- 
 tinction to you.” 
 
A day’s railroading. 107 
 
 So they prattled on, doing, in their eager- 
 ness to be satisfied, a homage perhaps beyond 
 its desert to the good dinner and the decent 
 service of it. But here they erred in the 
 right direction, and I find nothing more 
 admirable in their behaviour throughout a 
 wedding journey which certainly had its 
 trials, than their willingness to make the 
 very best of whatever would suffer itself to 
 be made anything at all of. They celebrated 
 its pleasures with magnanimous excess, they 
 passed over its griefs with a wise forbear- 
 ance. That which they found the most 
 difficult of management was the want of 
 incident for the most part of the time ; and 
 I who write their history might also sink 
 under it, but that I am supported by the 
 fact that it is so typical in this respect. I 
 even imagine that ideal reader for whom 
 one writes as yawning over these barren 
 details with the life-like weariness of an 
 actual travelling companion of theirs. Their 
 own silence often sufficed my wedded lovers, 
 or then, when there was absolutely nothing 
 to engage them, they fell back upon the 
 story of their love, which they were never 
 tired of hearing as they severally knew it. 
 Let it not be a reproach to human nature or 
 to me if I say that there was something in 
 
108 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 the comfort of having well dined which now 
 touched the springs of sentiment with magi- 
 cal effect, and that they had never so re- 
 joiced in these tender reminiscences. 
 
 They had planned to stop over at Roches- 
 ter till the morrow, that they might arrive 
 at Niagara by daylight, and at Utica they 
 had suddenly resolved to make the rest of 
 the day’s journey in a drawing-room car. 
 The change gave them an added reason for 
 content ; and they realised how much they 
 had previously sacrificed to the idea of travel- 
 ling in the most American manner, without 
 achieving it after all, for this seemed a touch 
 of Americanism beyond the old-fashioned 
 car. They reclined in luxury upon the easy- 
 cushioned, revolving chairs ; they surveyed 
 with infinite satisfaction the elegance of the 
 flying-parlour in which they sat, or turned 
 their contented regard through the broad 
 plate-glass windows upon the landscape with- 
 out. They said that none but Americans or 
 enchanted princes in the “ Arabian Nights ” 
 ever travelled in such state ; and when the 
 stewards of the car came round successively 
 with tropical fruits, ice-creams, and claret- 
 punches, they felt a heightened assurance 
 that they were either enchanted princes — or 
 Americans. There were more ladies and 
 
A day’s railroading. 109 
 
 more fashion than in the other cars ; and 
 prettily dressed children played about on the 
 carpet ; but the general appearance of the 
 passengers hardly suggested greater wealth 
 than elsewhere ; and they were plainly in 
 that car because they were of the American 
 race, which finds nothing too good for it that 
 its money can buy. 
 
110 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 y. 
 
 THE ENCHANTED CITY, AND BEYOND. 
 
 T HEY knew none of the hotels in Roches- 
 ter, and they had chosen a certain one 
 in reliance upon their hand-book. When 
 they named it there stepped forth a porter 
 of an incredibly cordial and pleasant counte- 
 nance, who took their travelling-bags, and 
 led them to the omnibus. As they were 
 his only passengers, the porter got inside 
 with them, and seeing their interest in the 
 streets through which they rode, he des- 
 canted in a strain of cheerful pride upon the 
 city’s prosperity and character, and gave the 
 names of the people who lived in the finer 
 houses, just as if it had been an Old-World 
 town, and he some eager historian expecting 
 reward for his comment upon it. He cast 
 quite a glamour over Rochester, so that in 
 passing a body of water, bordered by houses 
 and overlooked by odd balconies and gal- 
 leries, and crossed in the distance by a bridge 
 upon which other houses were built, they 
 
THE ENCHANTED CITY, AND BEYOND. Ill 
 
 boldly declared, being at their wit’s end for 
 a comparison, and taken wdth the unhoped- 
 for picturesqueness, that it put them in mind 
 of Verona. Thus they reached their hotel 
 in almost a spirit of foreign travel, and very 
 willing to verify the pleasant porter’s assur- 
 ance that they would like it, for everybody 
 liked it ; and it was with a sudden sinking 
 of the heart that Basil beheld presiding over 
 the register the conventional American hotel 
 clerk. He was young, he had a neat mous- 
 tache and well-brushed hair ; jewelled studs 
 sparkled in his shirt-front, and rings on his 
 white hands ; a gentle disdain of the travel- 
 ling public breathed from his person in the 
 mystical odours of Ihlang ihlang. He did 
 not lift his haughty head to look at the way- 
 farer who meekly wrote his name in the 
 register ; he did not answer him when he 
 begged for a cool room ; he turned to the 
 board on which the keys hung, and, pluck- 
 ing one from it, slid it towards Basil on the 
 marble counter, touched a bell for a call- 
 boy, whistled a bar of Offenbach, and as 
 he wrote the number of the room against 
 Basil’s name, said to a friend lounging 
 near him, as if resuming a conversation, 
 “ Well, she ’s a mighty pooty gul, any way, 
 Chawley !” 
 
112 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 When I reflect that this was a type of the 
 hotel clerk throughout the United States, 
 that behind unnumbered registers at this 
 moment he is snubbing travellers into the 
 dust, and that they are suffering and per- 
 petuating him, I am lost in wonder at the 
 national meekness. Not that I am one to 
 refuse the humble pie his jewelled fingers 
 offer me. Abjectly I take my key, and 
 creep off up-stairs after the call-boy, and try 
 to give myself the genteel air of one who 
 has not been stepped upon. But I think 
 homicidal things all the same, and I rejoice 
 that in the safety of print I can cry out 
 against the despot, whom I have not the 
 presence to defy. “You vulgar and cruel 
 little soul,” I say, and I imagine myself 
 breathing the words to his teeth, ‘ 4 why do 
 you treat a weary stranger with this igno- 
 miny ? I am to pay well for what I get, 
 and I shall not complain of that. But look 
 at me, and own my humanity ; confess by 
 some civil action, by some decent phrase, 
 that I have rights, and that they shall be 
 respected. Answer my proper questions ; 
 respond to my fair demands. Do not slide 
 my key at me ; do not deny me the poor 
 politeness of a nod as you give it in my 
 hand. I am not your equal ; few men are ; 
 
THE ENCHANTED CITY, AND BEYOND. 113 
 
 but I shall not presume upon your clemency. 
 Come, I also am human !” 
 
 Basil found that, for his sin in asking for 
 a cool room, the clerk had given them a 
 chamber into which the sun had been shining 
 the whole afternoon ; but when his luggage 
 had been put in it seemed useless to protest, 
 and like a true American, like you, like me, 
 he shrank from asserting himself. When 
 the sun went down it would be cool enough ; 
 and they turned their thoughts to supper, 
 not venturing to hope that, as it proved, 
 the handsome clerk was the sole blemish of 
 the house. 
 
 Isabel viewed with innocent surprise the 
 evidences of luxury afforded by all the 
 appointments of a hotel so far west of 
 Boston, and they both began to feel that 
 natural ease and superiority which an inn 
 always inspires in its guests, and which our 
 great hotels, far from impairing, enhance in 
 flattering degree ; in fact, the clerk once 
 forgotten, I protest, for my own part, I am 
 never more conscious of my merits and riches 
 in any other place. One has there the 
 romance of being a stranger and a mystery 
 to every one else, and lives in the alluring 
 possibility of not being found out a most 
 ordinary person. 
 
 H 
 
114 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 They were so late in coming to the supper- 
 room, that they found themselves alone in it. 
 At the door they had a how from the head- 
 waiter, who ran before them and drew out 
 chairs for them at a table, and signalled 
 waiters to serve them, first laying before 
 them with a gracious flourish the bill of 
 fare. 
 
 A force of servants flocked about them, as 
 if to contest the honour of ordering their 
 supper ; one set upon the table a heaping 
 vase of strawberries, another flanked it with 
 flagons of cream, a third accompanied it with 
 cates of varied flavour and device ; a fourth 
 obsequiously smoothed the table-cloth ; a 
 fifth, the youngest of the five, with folded 
 arms stood by and admired the satisfaction 
 the rest were giving. When these had been 
 despatched for steak, for broiled white-fish 
 of the lakes, — noblest and delicatest of the 
 fish that swim, — for broiled chicken, for 
 fried potatoes, for muffins, for whatever the 
 lawless fancy, and ravening appetites of the 
 wayfarers could suggest, this fifth waiter 
 remained to tempt them to further excess, 
 and vainly proposed some kind of eggs, — 
 fried eggs, poached eggs, scrambled eggs, 
 boiled eggs, or omelette. 
 
 “ 0, you ’re sure, dearest, that this isn’t a 
 
THE ENCHANTED CITY, AND BEYOND. 115 
 
 vision of fairy-land, which will vanish pre- 
 sently, and leave us empty and forlorn?” 
 plaintively murmured Isabel, as the menial 
 train reappeared, bearing the supper they 
 had ordered, and set it smoking down. 
 
 Suddenly a look of apprehension dawned 
 upon her face, and she let fall her knife and 
 fork. 4 ‘ You don’t think, Basil, ” she faltered, 
 
 ‘ ‘ that they could have found out we ’re a 
 bridal party, and that they ’re serving us so 
 magnificently because — because — 0, I shall 
 be miserable every moment we ’re here ! ” 
 she concluded desperately. 
 
 She looked, indeed, extremely wretched 
 for a woman with so much broiled white- 
 fish on her plate, and such a banquet array 
 about her ; and her husband made haste to 
 reassure her. “You’re still demoralised, 
 Isabel, by our sufferings at the Albany depot, 
 and you exaggerate the blessings we enjoy, 
 though I should be sorry to undervalue them. 
 I suspect it ’s the custom to use people well 
 at this hotel ; or if we are singled out for 
 uncommon favour, I think I can explain the 
 cause. It has been discovered by the regis- 
 ter that we are from Boston, and we are 
 merely meeting the reverence, affection, and 
 homage which the name everywhere com- 
 mands. It ’s our fortune to represent for 
 
116 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 the time being the intellectual and moral 
 virtue of Boston. This supper is not a tri- 
 bute to you as a bride, but as a Bostonian.” 
 
 It was a cheap kind of raillery, to be sure, 
 but it served. It kindled the local pride of 
 Isabel to self-defence, and in the distraction 
 of the effort she forgot her fears ; she re- 
 turned with renewed appetite to the supper, 
 and in its excellence they both let fall their 
 dispute, — which ended, of course, in Basil's 
 abject confession that Boston was the best 
 place in the world, and nothing but banish- 
 ment could make him live elsewhere, — and 
 gave themselves up, as usual, to the delight 
 of being just what and where they were. 
 At last, the natural course brought them to 
 the strawberries, and when the fifth waiter 
 approached from the corner of the table at 
 which he stood, to place the vase near them, 
 he did not retire at once, but presently asked 
 if they were from the West. 
 
 Isabel smiled, and Basil answered that 
 they were from the East. 
 
 He faltered at this, as if doubtful of the 
 result if he went further, but took heart, 
 then, and asked, “Don’t you think this is 
 a pretty nice hotel ” — hastily adding as a 
 concession of the probable existence of much 
 finer things at the East — “ for a small hotel ? ” 
 
THE ENCHANTED CITY, AND BEYOND. 117 
 
 They imagined this waiter as new to his 
 station in life, as perhaps just risen to it 
 from some country tavern, and unable to 
 repress his exultation in what seemed their 
 sympathetic presence. They were charmed 
 to have invited his guileless confidence, to 
 have evoked possibly all the simple poetry 
 of his soul ; it was what might have hap- 
 pened in Italy, only there so much naivete 
 would have meant money ; they looked at 
 each other with rapture, and Basil answered 
 warmly while the waiter flushed as at a 
 personal compliment : “Yes, it ’s a nice 
 hotel ; one of the best I ever saw, East or 
 West, in Europe or America.” 
 
 They rose and left the room, and were 
 bowed out by the head-waiter. 
 
 “How perfectly idyllic!” cried Isabel. 
 “ Is this Rochester, New York, or is it some 
 vale of Arcady ? Let ’s go out and see. ” 
 They walked out into the moonlit city, 
 up and down streets that seemed very stately 
 and fine, amidst a glitter of shop-window 
 lights ; and then, less of their own motion 
 than of mere error, they quitted the business 
 quarter, and found themselves in a quiet 
 avenue of handsome residences, — the Beacon 
 Street of Rochester, whatever it was called. 
 They said it was a night and a place for 
 
118 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 lovers, for none but lovers, for lovers newly 
 plighted, and they made believe to bemoan 
 themselves that, hold each other dear as 
 they would, the exaltation, the thrill, the 
 glory of their younger love was gone. Some 
 of the houses had gardened spaces about 
 them, from which stole, like breaths of sweet- 
 est and saddest regret, the perfume of mid- 
 summer flowers, — the despair of the rose for 
 the bud. As they passed a certain house, a 
 song fluttered out of the open window and 
 ceased, the piano warbled at the final rush of 
 fingers over its chords, and they saw her with 
 her fingers resting lightly on the keys, and 
 her graceful head lifted to look into his ; 
 they saw him with his arm yet stretched 
 across to the leaves of music he had been 
 turning, and his face lowered to meet her 
 gaze. 
 
 “ Ah, Basil, I wish it was we, there !” 
 
 “ And if they knew that we, on our wed- 
 ding journey, stood outside, would not they 
 wish it was they, here ?” . 
 
 “I suppose so, dearest, and yet, once- 
 upon-a-time was sweet. Pass on ; and let 
 us see what charm we shall find next in this 
 enchanted city.” 
 
 “Yes, it is an enchanted city to us,” 
 mused Basil, aloud, as they wandered on, 
 
THE ENCHANTED CITY, AND BEYOND. 119 
 
 4 4 and all strange cities are enchanted. What 
 is Rochester to the Rochesterese ? A place 
 of a hundred thousand people, as we read in 
 our guide, an immense flour interest, a great 
 railroad entrepot , an unrivalled nursery trade, 
 a university, two commercial colleges, three 
 collegiate institutes, eight or ten newspapers, 
 and a free library. I dare say any respect- 
 able resident would laugh at us sentimental- 
 ising over his city. But Rochester is for us, 
 who don't know it at all, a city of any time 
 or country, moonlit, filled with lovers hover- 
 ing over piano-fortes, of a palatial hotel 
 with pastoral waiters and porters, — a city of 
 handsome streets wrapt in beautiful quiet 
 and dreaming of the golden age. The only 
 definite association with it in our minds is 
 the tragically romantic thought that here 
 Sam Patch met his fate.” 
 
 “ And who in the world was Sam Patch ?” 
 4 4 Isabel, your ignorance of all that an 
 American woman should be proud of dis- 
 tresses me. Have you really, then, never 
 heard of the man who invented the saying, 
 
 4 Some things can be done as well as others/ 
 and proved it by jumping over Niagara Falls 
 twice ? Spurred on by this belief, he at- 
 tempted the leap of the Genesee Falls. The 
 leap was easy enough, but the coming up 
 
120 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 again was another matter. He failed in 
 that. It was the one thing that could not 
 be done as well as others.” 
 
 ‘ ‘ Dreadful ! ” said Isabel, with the cheer- 
 fullest satisfaction. ‘ ‘ But what has all that 
 to do with Rochester ? ” 
 
 “ Now, my dear ! You don’t mean to say 
 you didn’t know that the Genesee Falls were 
 at Rochester ? Upon my word, I ’m ashamed. 
 Why, we ’re within ten minutes’ walk of 
 them now. ” 
 
 “ Then walk to them at once!” cried 
 Isabel, wholly unabashed, and in fact un- 
 able to see what he had to be ashamed 
 of. ‘ ‘ Actually, I believe you would have 
 allowed me to leave Rochester without tell- 
 ing me the Falls were here, if you hadn’t 
 happened to think of Sam Patch.” 
 
 Saying this she persuaded herself that a 
 chief object of their journey had been to 
 visit the scene of Sam Patch’s fatal exploit, 
 and she drew Basil with a nervous swiftness 
 in the direction of the railroad station, 
 beyond which he said were the Falls. Pre- 
 sently, after threading their way among a 
 multitude of locomotives, with and without 
 trains attached, that backed and advanced, 
 or stood still, hissing impatiently on every 
 side, they passed through the station to a 
 
THE ENCHANTED CITY, AND BEYOND. 121 
 
 broad planking above the river on the other 
 side, and thence, after encounter of more 
 locomotives, they found, by dint of much 
 asking, a street winding up the hill-side to 
 the left, and leading to the German Bierhaus 
 that gives access to the best view of the 
 cataract. 
 
 The Americans have characteristically 
 bordered the river with manufactures, making 
 every drop work its passage to the brink ; 
 while the Germans have as characteristically 
 made use of the beauty left over, and have 
 built a Bierhaus where they may regale both 
 soul and sense in the presence of the cataract. 
 Our travellers might, in another mood and 
 place, have thought it droll to arrive at that 
 sublime spectacle through a Bierhaus, but 
 in this enchanted city it seemed to have a 
 peculiar fitness. 
 
 A narrow corridor gave into a wide festi- 
 val space occupied by many tables, each of 
 which was surrounded by a group of clamor- 
 ous Germans of either sex and every age, 
 with tall beakers of beaded lager before 
 them, and slim flasks of Rhenish ; overhead 
 flamed the gas in globes of vari-coloured 
 glass ; the walls were painted like those of 
 such haunts in the fatherland ; and the wed- 
 ding- journeyers were fain to linger on their 
 
122 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 way, to dwell upon that scene of honest en- 
 joyment, to inhale the mingling odours of 
 beer and of pipes, and of the pungent cheeses 
 in which the children of the fatherland de- 
 light. Amidst the inspiriting clash of plates 
 and glasses, the rattle of knives and forks, 
 and the hoarse rush of gutturals, they could 
 catch the words Franzosen, Kaiser, Konig, 
 and Schlacht, and they knew that festive 
 company to be exulting in the first German 
 triumphs of the war, which were then the 
 day’s news ; they saw fists shaken at noses 
 in fierce exchange of joy, arms tossed abroad 
 in wild congratulation, and health-pouring 
 goblets of beer lifted in air. Then they 
 stepped into the moonlight again, and heard 
 only the solemn organ stops of the cataract. 
 Through garden -ground they were led by the 
 little maid, their guide, to a small pavilion, 
 that stood on the edge of the precipitous 
 shore, and commanded a perfect view of the 
 Falls. As they entered this pavilion, a youth 
 and maiden, clearly lovers, passed out, and 
 they were left alone with that sublime pre- 
 sence. Something of definiteness was to be 
 desired in the spectacle, but there was ample 
 compensation in the mystery with which the 
 broad effulgence and the dense unluminous 
 shadows of the moonshine invested it. The 
 
THE ENCHANTED CITY, AND BEYOND. 123 
 
 light touched all the tops of the rapids, that 
 seemed to writhe away from the brink of the 
 cataract, and then desperately breaking and 
 perishing to fall, the white disembodied 
 ghosts of rapids, down to the bottom of the 
 vast and deep ravine through which the 
 river rushed away. Now the waters seemed 
 to mass themselves a hundred feet high in a 
 wall of snowy compactness, now to disperse 
 into their multitudinous particles and hang 
 like some vaporous cloud from the cliff. 
 Every moment renewed the vision of beauty 
 in some rare and fantastic shape ; and its 
 loveliness isolated it, in spite of the great 
 town on the other shore, the station with its 
 bridge and its trains, the mills that supplied 
 their feeble little needs from the cataract’s 
 strength. 
 
 At last Basil pointed out the table-rock in 
 the middle of the Fall, from which Sam Patch 
 had made his fatal leap ; but Isabel refused 
 to admit that tragical figure to the honours 
 of her emotions. “ I don’t care for him ! ” 
 she said fiercely. “ Patch ! What a name 
 to be linked in our thoughts with this superb 
 cataract. ” 
 
 “ Well, Isabel, I think you are very un- 
 just. It ’s as good a name as Leander, to 
 my thinking, and it was immortalised in 
 
124 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 support of a great idea, — the feasibility of 
 all things ; while Leander’s has come down 
 to us as that of the weak victim of a passion. 
 We shall never have a poetry of our own till 
 we get over this absurd reluctance from facts, 
 till we make the ideal embrace and include 
 the real, till we consent to face the music in 
 our simple common names, and put Smith 
 into a lyric and Jones into a tragedy. The 
 Germans are braver than we, and in them 
 you find facts and dreams continually blended 
 and confronted. Here is a fortunate illustra- 
 tion. The people we met coming out of this 
 pavilion were lovers, and they had been here 
 sentimentalising on this superb cataract, as 
 you call it, with which my heroic Patch is 
 not worthy to be named. No doubt they 
 had been quoting Uhland or some other of 
 their romantic poets, perhaps singing some 
 of their tender German love-songs, — the 
 tenderest, unear thliest love- songs in the 
 world. At the same time they did not 
 disdain the matter-of-fact corporeity in 
 which their sentiment was enshrined ; they 
 fed it heartily and abundantly with the 
 banquet whose relics we see here.” 
 
 On a table before them stood a pair of 
 beer-glasses, in the bottoms of which lurked 
 scarce the foam of the generous liquor lately 
 
THE ENCHANTED CITY, AND BEYOND. 125 
 
 brimming them ; some shreds of sausage, 
 some rinds of Swiss cheese, bits of cold ham, 
 crusts of bread, and the ashes of a pipe. 
 
 Isabel shuddered at the spectacle, but 
 made no comment, and Basil went on : “ Do 
 you suppose they scorned the idea of Sam 
 Patch as they gazed upon the Falls? On 
 the contrary, I ’ve no doubt that he recalled 
 to her the ballad which a poet of their lan- 
 guage made about him. It used to go the 
 rounds of the German newspapers, and I 
 translated it, a long while ago, when I 
 thought that I too was in Arkadien geboren. 
 
 “ * In the Bierhausgarten I linger 
 By the Falls of the Genesee : 
 
 From the Table-Rock in the middle 
 Leaps a figure bold and free. 
 
 “ ‘ Aloof in the air it rises 
 
 O’er the rush, the plunge, the death ; 
 
 On the thronging banks of the river 
 There is neither pulse nor breath. 
 
 “ ‘For ever it hovers and poises 
 Aloof in the moonlit air ; 
 
 As light as mist from the rapids. 
 
 As heavy as nightmare. 
 
 “ ‘ In anguish I cry to the people. 
 
 The long-since vanished hosts ; 
 
 I see them stretch forth in answer 
 The helpless hands of ghosts.’ 
 
126 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 I once met the poet who wrote this. He 
 drank too much beer.” 
 
 ‘ ‘ I don’t see that he got in the name of 
 Sam Patch, after all,” said Isabel. 
 
 ‘ ‘ 0 yes, he did ; but I had to yield to our 
 taste, and where he said, ‘ Springt der Sam 
 Patsch klihn und frei,’ I made it ‘Leaps a 
 figure bold and free.’” 
 
 As they passed through the house on their 
 way out, they saw the youth and maiden 
 they had met at the pavilion door. They 
 were seated at a table ; two glasses of beer 
 towered before them ; on their plates were 
 odorous crumbs of Limburger cheese. They 
 both wore a pensive air. 
 
 The next morning the illusion that had 
 wrapt the whole earth was gone with the 
 moonlight. By nine o’clock, when the 
 wedding- journey ers resumed their way to- 
 ward Niagara, the heat had already set in 
 with the effect of ordinary midsummer’s 
 heat at high noon. The car into which 
 they got had come the past night from 
 Albany, and had an air of almost conscious 
 shabbiness, griminess, and over-use. The 
 seats were covered with cinders, which also 
 crackled under foot. Dust was on every- 
 thing, especially the persons of the crumpled 
 
THE ENCHANTED CITY, AND BEYOND. 127 
 
 and weary passengers of over-night. Those 
 who came aboard at Rochester failed to 
 lighten the spiritual gloom, and presently 
 they sank into the common bodily wretched- 
 ness. The train was somewhat belated, and 
 as it drew nearer Buffalo they knew the 
 conductor to have abandoned himself to that 
 blackest of the arts, making time. The long 
 irregular jolt of the ordinary progress was 
 reduced to an incessant shudder and a quick 
 lateral motion. The air within the car was 
 deadly ; if a window was raised, a storm of 
 dust and cinders blew in, and quick gusts 
 caught away the breath. So they sat with 
 closed windows, sweltering and stifling, and 
 all the faces on which a lively horror was not 
 painted were dull and damp with apathetic 
 misery. 
 
 The incidents were in harmony with the 
 abject physical tone of the company. There 
 was a quarrel between a thin, shrill-voiced, 
 highly dressed, much-bedizened Jewess, on 
 the one side, and a fat, greedy old woman, 
 half asleep, and a boy with large pink trans- 
 parent ears that stood out from his head like 
 the handles of a jar, on the other side, about 
 a seat which the Hebrew wanted, and which 
 the others had kept filled with packages on 
 the pretence that it was engaged. It was a 
 
128 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 loud and fierce quarrel enough, but it won 
 no sort of favour ; and when the Jewess had 
 given a final opinion that the greedy old 
 woman was no lady, and the boy, who dis- 
 puted in an ironical temper, replied, “Highly 
 complimentary, I must say,” there was no 
 sign of relief or other acknowledgment in 
 any of the spectators, that there had been a 
 quarrel. 
 
 There was a little more interest taken in 
 the misfortune of an old purblind German 
 and his son, who were found by the con- 
 ductor to be a few hundred miles out of the 
 direct course to their destination, and were 
 with some trouble and the aid of an Ameri- 
 canised 'fellow-countryman made aware of 
 the fact. The old man then fell back in the 
 prevailing apathy, and the child naturally 
 cared nothing. By -and -by came the un- 
 
 sparing train-boy on his rounds, bestrewing 
 the passengers successively with papers, 
 magazines, fine-cut tobacco, and packages 
 of candy. He gave the old man a package 
 of candy, and passed on. The German took 
 it as the bounty of the American people, 
 oddly manifested in a situation where he 
 could otherwise have had little proof of 
 their care. He opened it, and was sharing 
 it with his son when the train-boy came 
 
THE ENCHANTED CITY, AND BEYOND. 129 
 
 back, and metallically, like a part of the 
 machinery, demanded, “Ten cents !” The 
 German stared helplessly, and the boy re- 
 peated, “ Ten cents ! ten cents !” with tire- 
 some patience, while the other passengers 
 smiled. When it had passed through the 
 alien’s head that he was to pay for this 
 national gift, and he took with his tremulous 
 fingers from the recesses of his pocket-book 
 a ten cent note and handed it to his tormen- 
 tor, some of the people laughed. Among 
 the rest, Basil and Isabel laughed, and then 
 looked at each other with eyes of mutual 
 reproach. 
 
 “Well, upon my word, my dear,” he 
 said, 1 6 I think we Ve fallen pretty low. 
 I’ve never felt such a poor shabby ruffian 
 before. Good heavens ! To think of our 
 immortal souls being moved to mirth by 
 such a thing as this, — so stupid, so barren 
 of all reason of laughter. And then the 
 cruelty of it ! What ferocious imbeciles we 
 are ! Whom have I married ? A woman 
 with neither heart nor brain ! ” 
 
 “ 0 Basil, dear, pay him back the money 
 — do. ” 
 
 “ I can ’t. That’s the worst of it. He ’s 
 money enough, and might justly take offence. 
 What breaks my heart is that we could have 
 
130 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 the depravity to smile at the mistake of a 
 friendless stranger, who supposed he had 
 at last met with an act of pure kindness. 
 It’s a thing to weep over. Look at these 
 grinning wretches ! What a fiendish effect 
 their smiles have, through their cinders and 
 sweat ! 0, it ’s the terrible weather ; the 
 
 despotism of the dust and heat ; the wicked- 
 ness of the infernal air. What a squalid 
 and loathsome company ! ” 
 
 At Buffalo, where they arrived late, they 
 found themselves with several hours’ time 
 on their hands before the train started for 
 Niagara, and in the first moments of tedium, 
 Isabel forgot herself into saying, ‘ ‘ Don’t you 
 think we ’d have done better to go directly 
 from Rochester to the Falls, instead of com- 
 ing this way ?” 
 
 “ Why certainly. I didn’t propose coming 
 this way. ” 
 
 “I know it, dear. I was only asking,” 
 said Isabel, meekly. * ‘ But I should think 
 you ’d have generosity enough to take a 
 little of the blame, when I wanted to come 
 out of a romantic feeling for you.” 
 
 This romantic feeling referred to the fact 
 that, many years before, when Basil made 
 his first visit to Niagara, he had approached 
 
THE ENCHANTED CITY, AND BEYOND. 131 
 
 from the west by way of Buffalo ; and Isabel, 
 who tenderly begrudged his having existed 
 before she knew him, and longed to ally 
 herself retrospectively with his past, was 
 resolved to draw near the great cataract by 
 no other route. 
 
 She fetched a little sigh which might mean 
 the weather or his hard-heartedness. The 
 sigh touched him, and he suggested a carriage- 
 ride through the city ; she assented with 
 eagerness, for it was what she had been 
 thinking of. She had never seen a lake -side 
 city before, and she was taken by surprise. 
 “If ever we leave Boston,” she said, “we 
 will not live at Rochester, as I thought last 
 night ; we ’ll come to Buffalo. ” She found 
 that the place had all the picturesqueness of 
 a sea-port, without the ugliness that attends 
 the rising and falling tides. A delicious 
 freshness breathed from the lake, which lying 
 so smooth, faded into the sky at last, with 
 no line between sharper than that which 
 divides drowsing from dreaming. But the 
 colour was the most charming thing, that 
 delicate blue of the lake, without the depth 
 of the sea-blue, but infinitely softer and 
 lovelier. The nearer expanses rippled with 
 dainty waves, silver and lucent ; the further 
 levels made, with the sun-dimmed sum- 
 
132 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 mer sky, a vague horizon of turquoise and 
 amethyst, lit by the white sails of ships, 
 and stained by the smoke of steamers. 
 
 “ Take me away now,” said Isabel, when 
 her eyes had feasted upon all this, “ and 
 don’t let me see another thing till I get to 
 Niagara. Nothing less sublime is worthy 
 the eyes that have beheld such beauty.” 
 
 However, on the way to Niagara she con- 
 sented to glimpses of the river which carries 
 the waters of the lake for their mighty 
 plunge, and which shows itself very nobly 
 from time to time as you draw toward the 
 cataract, with wooded or cultivated islands, 
 and rich farms along its low shores, and at 
 last flashes upon the eye the shining white 
 of the rapids, — a hint, no more, of the splen- 
 dour and awfulness to be revealed. 
 
NIAGARA. 
 
 133 
 
 VI. 
 
 NIAGARA. 
 
 S the train stopped, Isabel’s heart beat 
 
 with a child-like exultation, as I be- 
 lieve every one’s heart must who is worthy 
 to arrive at Niagara. She had been trying 
 to fancy, from time to time, that she heard 
 the roar of the cataract, and now, when she 
 alighted from the car, she was sure she should 
 have heard it but for the vulgar little noises 
 that attend the arrival of trains at Niagara 
 as well as everywhere else. “Never mind, 
 dearest ; you shall be stunned with it before 
 you leave,” promised her husband ; and, not 
 wholly disconsolate, she rode through the 
 quaint streets of the village, where it re- 
 mains a question whether the lowliness of 
 the shops and private houses makes the hotels 
 look so vast, or the bigness of the hotels 
 dwarfs all the other buildings. The immense 
 caravansaries swelling up from among the 
 little bazaars ( where they sell feather fans, 
 and miniature bark canoes, and jars and vases 
 
134 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 and bracelets and brooches carved out of 
 the local rocks), made our friends with their 
 trunks very conscious of their disproportion 
 to the accommodations of the smallest. They 
 were the sole occupants of the omnibus, and 
 they were embarrassed to be received at their 
 hotel with a burst of minstrelsy from a whole 
 band of music. Isabel felt that a single 
 stringed instrument of some timid note would 
 have been enough ; and Basil was going to 
 express his own modest preference for a 
 jew’s-harp, when the music ceased with a 
 sudden clash of the cymbals. But the next 
 moment it burst out with fresh sweetness, 
 and in alighting they perceived that another 
 omnibus had turned the corner and was 
 drawing up to the pillared portico of the 
 hotel. A small family dismounted, and the 
 feet of the last had hardly touched the pave- 
 ment when the music again ended as abruptly 
 as those flourishes of trumpets that usher 
 player-kings upon the stage. Isabel could 
 not help laughing at this melodious parsi- 
 mony. “I hope they don’t let on the cat- 
 aract and shut it off in this frugal style ; do 
 they, Basil?” she asked, and passed jesting 
 through a pomp of unoccupied porters and 
 call-boys. Apparently there were not many 
 people stopping at this hotel, or else they 
 
NIAGARA. 
 
 135 
 
 were all out looking at the Falls or confined 
 to their rooms. However, our travellers took 
 in the almost weird emptiness of the place 
 with their usual gratitude to fortune for all 
 queerness in life, and followed to the plea- 
 sant quarters assigned them. There was 
 time before supper for a glance at the catar- 
 act, and after a brief toilet they sallied out 
 again upon the holiday street, with its parade 
 of gay little shops, and thence passed into 
 the grove beside the Falls, enjoying at every 
 instant their feeling of arrival at a sublime 
 destination. 
 
 In this sense Niagara deserves almost to 
 rank with Rome, the metropolis of history 
 and religion ; with Venice, the chief city 
 of sentiment and fantasy. In either you are 
 at once made at home by a perception of its 
 greatness, in which there is no quality of 
 aggression, as there always seems to be in 
 minor places as well as in minor men, and 
 you gratefully accept its sublimity as a fact 
 in no way contrasting with your own insig- 
 nificance. 
 
 Our friends were beset of course by many 
 carriage-drivers, whom they repelled with 
 the kindly firmness of experienced travel. 
 Isabel even felt a compassion for these poor 
 fellows who had seen Niagara so much as to 
 
136 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 have forgotten that the first time one must 
 see it alone or only with the next of friend- 
 ship. She was voluble in her pity of Basil 
 that it was not as new to him as to her, till 
 between the trees they saw a white cloud of 
 spray, shot through and through with sun- 
 set, rising, rising, and she felt her voice 
 softly and steadily beaten down by the 
 diapason of the cataract. 
 
 I am not sure but the first emotion on 
 viewing Niagara is that of familiarity. Ever 
 after, its strangeness increases ; but in that 
 earliest moment, when you stand by the side 
 of the American Fall, and take in so much 
 of the whole as your glance can compass, an 
 impression of having seen it often before is 
 certainly very vivid. This may be an effect 
 of that grandeur which puts you at your ease 
 in its presence ; but it also undoubtedly re- 
 sults in part from lifelong acquaintance with 
 every variety of futile picture of the scene. 
 You have its outward form clearly in your 
 memory ; the shores, the rapids, the islands, 
 the curve of the Falls, and the stout rainbow 
 with one end resting on their top and the 
 other lost in the mists that rise from the 
 gulf beneath. On the whole I do not account 
 this sort of familiarity a misfortune. The 
 surprise is none the less a surprise because 
 
NIAGARA. 
 
 137 
 
 it is kept till the last, and the marvel, 
 making itself finally felt in every nerve, and 
 not at once through a single sense, all the 
 more fully possesses you. It is as if Niagara 
 reserved her magnificence, and preferred to 
 win your heart with her beauty ; and so 
 Isabel, who was instinctively prepared for 
 the reverse, suffered a vague disappointment, 
 for a little instant, as she looked along the 
 verge from the water that caressed the shore 
 at her feet before it flung itself down, to 
 the wooded point that divides the American 
 from the Canadian Fall, beyond which 
 showed dimly through its veil of golden and 
 silver mists the emerald wall of the great 
 Horse-Shoe. “How still it is!” she said, 
 amidst the roar that shook the ground under 
 their feet and made the leaves tremble over- 
 head, and “How lonesome!” amidst the 
 people lounging and sauntering about in 
 every direction among the trees. In fact 
 that prodigious presence does make a soli- 
 tude and silence round every spirit worthy to 
 perceive it, and it gives a kind of dignity to 
 all its belongings, so that the rocks and 
 pebbles in the water’s edge, and the weeds 
 and grasses that nod above it, have a value 
 far beyond that of such common things else- 
 where. In all the aspects of Niagara there 
 
138 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 seems a grave simplicity which is perhaps 
 a reflection of the spectator’s soul for once 
 utterly dismantled of affectation and conven- 
 tion. In the vulgar reaction from this, you 
 are of course as trivial, if you like, at Niagara, 
 as anywhere. 
 
 Slowly Isabel became aware that the 
 sacred grove beside the Fall was profaned by 
 some very common presences indeed, that 
 tossed bits of stone and sticks into the con- 
 secrated waters, and struggled for hand- 
 kerchiefs and fans, and here and there put 
 their arms about each other’s waists, and 
 made a show of laughing and joking. They 
 were a picnic party of rude, silly folks of the 
 neighbourhood, and she stood pondering 
 them in sad wonder if anything could be 
 worse, when she heard a voice saying to 
 Basil, “ Take you next, Sir ? Plenty of light 
 yet, and the wind’s down the river, so the 
 spray won’t interfere. Make a capital pic- 
 ture of you ; Falls in the background.” It 
 was the local photographer urging them to 
 succeed the young couple he had just posed 
 at the brink : the gentleman was sitting 
 down, with his legs crossed and his hands 
 elegantly disposed ; the lady was standing 
 at his side, with one arm thrown lightly 
 across his shoulder, while with the other 
 
NIAGARA. 
 
 139 
 
 hand she thrust his cane into the ground ; 
 you could see it was going to be a splendid 
 photograph. 
 
 Basil thanked the artist, and Isabel said, 
 trusting as usual to his sympathy for percep- 
 tion of her train of thought, “Well, I’ll 
 never try to be high-strung again. But 
 shouldn’t you have thought, dearest, that I 
 might expect to be high-strung with success 
 at Niagara if anywhere ? ” She passively 
 followed him into the long, queer, down- 
 ward-sloping edifice on the border of the 
 grove, unflinchingly mounted the car that 
 stood ready, and descended the incline. 
 Emerging into the light again, she found her- 
 self at the foot of the Fall by whose top she 
 had just stood. 
 
 At first she was glad there were other peo- 
 ple down there, as if she and Basil were not 
 enough to bear it alone, and she could almost 
 have spoken to the two hopelessly pretty 
 brides, with parasols and impertinent little 
 boots, whom their attendant husbands were 
 helping over the sharp and slippery rocks, so 
 bare beyond the spray, so green and mossy 
 within the fall of mist. But in another 
 breath she forgot them, as she looked on 
 that dizzied sea, hurling itself from the high 
 summit in huge white knots, and breaks and 
 
140 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 masses, and plunging into the gulf beside her, 
 while it sent continually up a strong voice 
 of lamentation, and crawled away in vast 
 eddies, with somehow a look of human ter- 
 ror, bewilderment, and pain. It was bathed 
 in snowy vapour to its crest, but now and 
 then heavy currents of air drew this aside, 
 and they saw the outline of the Tails almost 
 as far as the Canada side. They remembered 
 afterwards how they were able to make use 
 of but one sense at a time, and how when 
 they strove to take in the forms of the de- 
 scending flood, they ceased to hear it ; but 
 as soon as they released their eyes from this 
 service, every fibre in them vibrated to the 
 sound, and the spectacle dissolved away in 
 it. They were aware, too, of a strange capri- 
 ciousness in their senses, and of a tendency 
 of each to palter with the things perceived. 
 The eye could no longer take truthful note 
 of quality, and now beheld the tumbling 
 deluge as a Gothic wall of carven marble, 
 Avliite, motionless, and now as a fall of light- 
 est snow, with movement in all its atoms, 
 and scarce so much cohesion as would hold 
 them together ; and again they could not 
 discern if this course were from above or 
 from beneath, whether the water rose from 
 the abyss or dropped from the height. The 
 
NIAGARA. 
 
 141 
 
 ear could give the brain no assurance of the 
 sound that filled it, and whether it were 
 great or little ; the prevailing softness of 
 the cataract’s tone seemed so much opposed 
 to ideas of prodigious force or of prodigious 
 volume. It was only when the sight, so idle 
 in its own behalf, came to the aid of the 
 other sense, and showed them the mute 
 movement of each other’s lips, that they 
 dimly appreciated the depth of sound that 
 involved them. 
 
 “ I think you might have been high-strung 
 there, for a second or two,” said Basil, when, 
 ascending the incline, he could make himself 
 heard. “ We will try the bridge next.” 
 
 Over the river, so still with its oily eddies 
 and delicate wreaths of foam, just below the 
 Falls they have in late years woven a web 
 of wire high in air, and hung a bridge from 
 precipice to precipice. Of all the bridges 
 made with hands it seems the lightest, most 
 ethereal ; it is ideally graceful, and droops 
 from its slight towers like a garland. It is 
 worthy to command, as it does, the whole 
 grandeur of Niagara, and to show the travel- 
 ler the vast spectacle, from the beginning of 
 the American Fall to the furthest limit of 
 the Horse-Shoe, with all the awful pomp 
 of the rapids, the solemn darkness of the 
 
142 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 wooded islands, the mystery of the vaporous 
 gulf, the indomitable wildness of the shores, 
 as far as the eye can reach up or down the 
 fatal stream. 
 
 To this bridge our friends now repaired, 
 by a path that led through another of those 
 groves which keep the village back from the 
 shores of the river on the American side, and 
 greatly help the sight-seer’s pleasure in the 
 place. The exquisite structure, which sways 
 so tremulously from its towers, and seems to 
 lay so slight a hold on earth where its cables 
 sink into the ground, is to other bridges what 
 the blood horse is to the common breed of 
 roadsters ; and now they felt its sensitive 
 nerves quiver under them and sympatheti- 
 cally through them as they advanced further 
 and further toward the centre. Perhaps 
 their sympathy with the bridge’s trepidation 
 was too great for unalloyed delight, and yet 
 the thrill was a glorious one, to be known 
 only there ; and afterwards, at least, they 
 would not have had their airy path seem 
 more secure. 
 
 The last hues of sunset lingered in the 
 mists that sprung from the base of the Falls 
 with a mournful, tremulous grace, and a 
 movement weird as the play of the northern 
 lights. They were touched with the most 
 
NIAGARA. 
 
 143 
 
 delicate purples and crimsons, that darkened 
 to deep red, aud then faded from them at a 
 second look, and they flew upward, swiftly 
 upward, like troops of pale, transparent 
 ghosts ; while a perfectly clear radiance, 
 better than any other for local colour, dwelt 
 upon the scene. Far under the bridge the 
 river smoothly swam, the under-currents 
 for ever unfolding themselves upon the 
 surface with a vast rose -like evolution, 
 edged all round with faint lines of white, 
 where the air that filled the water freed 
 itself in foam. What had been clear 
 green on the face of the cataract was here 
 more like rich verd-antique, and had a 
 look of firmness almost like that of the stone 
 itself. So it showed beneath the bridge, and 
 down the river till the curving shores hid it. 
 These, springing abruptly from the water’s 
 brink, and shagged with pine and cedar, 
 displayed the tender verdure of grass and 
 bushes intermingled with the dark ever- 
 greens that climb from ledge to ledge, till 
 they point their speary tops above the crest 
 of bluffs. In front, where tumbled rocks and 
 expanses of naked clay varied the gloomier 
 and gayer green, sprung those spectral mists ; 
 and through them loomed out, in its mani- 
 fold majesty, Niagara, with the seemingly 
 
144 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 immoveable white Gothic screen of the Ameri- 
 can Fall, and the green massive curve of the 
 Horse- Shoe, solid and simple and calm as 
 an Egyptian wall ; while behind this, with 
 their white and black expanses broken by 
 dark-foliaged little isles, the steep Canadian 
 rapids billowed down between their heavily 
 wooded shores. 
 
 The wedding- journeyers hung, they knew 
 not how long, in rapture on the sight ; and 
 then, looking back from the shore to the 
 spot where they had stood, they felt relieved 
 that unreality should possess itself of all, 
 and that the bridge should swing there in 
 mid-air like a filmy web, scarce more pass- 
 able than the rainbow that flings its arch 
 above the mists. 
 
 On the portico of the hotel they found 
 half a score of gentlemen smoking, and cre- 
 ating together that collective silence which 
 passes for sociality on our continent. Some 
 carriages stood before the door, and within, 
 around the base of a pillar, sat a circle of 
 idle call-boys. There were a few trunks 
 heaped together in one place, with a porter 
 standing guard over them ; a solitary guest 
 was buying a cigar at the newspaper stand 
 in one corner ; another friendless creature 
 was writing a letter in the reading-room ; 
 
NIAGARA. 
 
 145 
 
 the clerk, in a seersucker coat and a lavish 
 shirt-bosom, tried to give the whole an effect 
 of watering-place gaiety and bustle, as he 
 provided a newly arrived guest with a room. 
 
 Our pair took in these traits of solitude 
 and repose with indifference. If the hotel 
 had been thronged wdth brilliant company, 
 they would have been no more and no less 
 pleased ; and when, after supper, they came 
 into the grand parlour, and found nothing 
 there but a marble-topped centre-table, with 
 a silver-plated ice-pitcher and a small com- 
 pany of goblets, they sat down perfectly 
 content in a secluded window-seat. They 
 were not seen by the three people who 
 entered soon after, and halted in the centre 
 of the room. 
 
 “Why, Kitty!” said one of the two 
 ladies who must be in any travelling-party 
 of three, * ‘ this is more inappropriate to 
 your gorgeous array than the supper-room, 
 even. ” 
 
 She who was called Kitty was armed, as 
 for social conquest, in some kind of airy 
 evening-dress, and was looking round with 
 bewilderment upon that forlorn waste of 
 carpeting and upholstery. She owned, with 
 a smile, that she had not seen so much of 
 the world yet as she had been promised ; 
 
 K 
 
146 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 but she liked Niagara very much, and per- 
 haps they should find the world at break- 
 fast. 
 
 “No,” said the other lady, who was as 
 unquiet as Kitty was calm, and who seemed 
 resolved to make the most of the worst, “it 
 isn’t probable that the hotel will fill up over- 
 night ; and I feel personally responsible for 
 this state of things. Who would ever have 
 supposed that Niagara would be so empty ? 
 I thought the place was thronged the whole 
 summer long. How do you account for it, 
 Richard ?” 
 
 The gentleman looked fatigued, as from a 
 long- continued discussion elsewhere of the 
 matter in hand, and he said that he had not 
 been trying to account for it. 
 
 4 4 Then you don ’t care for Kitty’s pleasure 
 at all, and you don’t want her to enjoy her- 
 self. Why don’t you take some interest in 
 the matter?” 
 
 ‘ 4 Why, if I accounted for the emptiness 
 of Niagara in the most satisfactory way, it 
 wouldn’t add a soul to the floating popula T 
 tion. Under the circumstances I prefer to 
 leave it unexplained.” 
 
 4 4 Do you think it ’s because it ’s such a 
 hot summer ? Do you suppose it ’s not ex- 
 actly the season ? Didn’t you expect there ’d 
 
NIAGARA. 147 
 
 be more people ? Perhaps Niagara isn’t as 
 fashionable as it used to be.” 
 
 “ It looks something like that.” 
 
 “ Well, what under the sun do you think 
 is the reason ?” 
 
 “ I don’t know.” 
 
 ‘‘Perhaps,” interposed Kitty, placidly, 
 ‘ ‘ most of the visitors go to the other hotel, 
 now.” 
 
 “It’s altogether likely,” said the other 
 lady, eagerly. “ There are just such ca- 
 prices.” 
 
 “ Well,” said Richard, “ I wanted you to 
 go there.” 
 
 ‘ ‘ But you said that you always heard this 
 was the most fashionable.” 
 
 ‘ ‘ I know it. I didn’t want to come here 
 for that reason. But fortune favours the 
 brave.” 
 
 “Well, it ’s too bad ! Here we ’ve asked 
 Kitty to come to Niagara with us, just to 
 give her a little peep into the world, and 
 you ’ve brought us to a hotel where we ’re ” — 
 
 ‘ e ‘ Monarchs of all we survey, ’ ” suggested 
 Kitty. 
 
 “ Yes, ‘ and start at the sound of our 
 own,’ ” added the other lady, helplessly. 
 
 “ Come now, Fanny,” said the gentleman, 
 who was but too clearly the husband of the 
 
148 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 last speaker. “You know you insisted, 
 against all I could say or do, upon coming 
 to this house ; I implored you to go to the 
 other, and now you blame me for bringing 
 you here.” 
 
 “Sol do. If you ’d let me have my own 
 way without opposition about coming here, 
 I dare say I should have gone to the other 
 place. But never mind. Kitty knows whom 
 to blame, I hope. She ’s your cousin.” 
 
 Kitty was sitting with her hands quies- 
 cently folded in her lap. She now rose and 
 said that she did not know anything about 
 the other hotel, and perhaps it was just as 
 empty as this. 
 
 “It can’t be. There can’t be two hotels 
 so empty,” said Fanny. “It don’t stand 
 to reason.” 
 
 1 ‘ If you wish Kitty to see the world so 
 much,” said the gentleman, “ why don’t you 
 take her on to Quebec, with us ?” 
 
 Kitty had left her seat beside Fanny, and 
 was moving with a listless content about 
 the parlour. 
 
 “I wonder you ask, Richard, when you 
 know she ’s only come for the night, and 
 has nothing with her but a few cuffs and 
 collars ! I certainly never heard of any- 
 thing so absurd before ! ” 
 
NIAGARA. 
 
 149 
 
 The absurdity of the idea then seemed to 
 cast its charm upon her, for, after a silence, 
 “I could lend her some things,” she said 
 musingly. “ But don’t speak of it to-night, 
 please. It’s too ridiculous. Kitty!” she 
 called out, and, as the young lady drew 
 near, she continued, ‘ ‘ How would you like 
 to go to Quebec, with us ? ” 
 
 “0 Fanny !” cried Kitty, with rapture ; 
 and then, with dismay, “ How can I ?” 
 “Why, very well, I think. You’ve got 
 this dress, and your travelling suit ; and I 
 can lend you whatever you want. Come ! ” 
 she added joyously, “let’s go up to your 
 room, and talk it over ! ” 
 
 The two ladies vanished upon this impulse, 
 and the gentleman followed. To their own 
 relief the guiltless eaves-droppers, who found 
 no moment favourable for revealing them- 
 selves after the comedy began, issued from 
 their retiracy. 
 
 “What a remarkable little lady!” said 
 Basil, eagerly turning to Isabel for sympathy 
 in his enjoyment of her inconsequence. 
 
 “Yes, poor thing!” returned his wife; 
 “ it ’s no light matter to invite a young lady 
 to take a journey with you, and jDromise her 
 all sorts of gaiety, and perhaps beaux and 
 flirtations, and then find her on your hands 
 
150 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 in a desolation like this. It’s dreadful, I 
 think.” 
 
 Basil stared. “0 certainly,” he said. 
 “ But what an amusingly illogical little 
 body !” 
 
 ‘ ‘ I don’t understand what you mean, Basil. 
 It was the only thing that she could do, to 
 invite the young lady to go on with them. 
 I wonder her husband had the sense to think 
 of it first. Of course she ’ll have to lend her 
 things.” 
 
 “ And you didn’t observe anything pecu- 
 liar in her way of reaching her conclusions?” 
 
 “ Peculiar ? What do you mean ?” 
 
 “ Why, her blaming her husband for let- 
 ting her have her own way about the hotel ; 
 and her telling him not to mention his pro- 
 posal to Kitty, and then doing it herself, 
 just after she ’d pronounced it absurd and 
 impossible.” He spoke with heat at being 
 forced to make what he thought a needless 
 explanation. 
 
 “ 0 !” said Isabel, after a moment’s reflec- 
 tion. “ That! Did you think it so very 
 odd?” 
 
 Her husband looked at her with the gra- 
 vity a man must feel when he begins to 
 perceive that he has married the whole 
 mystifying world of womankind in the 
 
NIAGARA. 
 
 151 
 
 woman of his choice, and made no answer. 
 But to his own soul he said : “I supposed 
 I had the pleasure of my wife’s acquaint- 
 ance. It seems I have been flattering my- 
 self.” 
 
 The next morning they went out as they 
 had planned, for an exploration of Goat 
 Island, after an early breakfast. As they 
 sauntered through the village’s contrasts of 
 pigmy and colossal in architecture, they 
 praisefully took in the unalloyed holiday 
 character of the place, enjoying equally the 
 lounging tourists at the hotel doors, the 
 drivers and their carriages to let, and the 
 little shops, with nothing but mementos of 
 Niagara, and Indian beadwork, and other 
 trumpery, to sell. Shops so useless, they 
 agreed, could not be found outside the Palais 
 Royal, or the Square of St. Mark, or any- 
 where else in the world but here. They felt 
 themselves once more a part of the tide of 
 mere sight-seeing pleasure-travel, on which 
 they had drifted in other days, and in an 
 eddy of which their love itself had opened its 
 white blossom, and lily-like dreamed upon 
 the wave. 
 
 They were now also part of the great 
 circle of newly wedded bliss, which, involving 
 the whole land during the season of bridal- 
 
152 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 tours, may be said to show richest and fair- 
 est at Niagara, like the costly jewel of a pre- 
 cious ring. The place is, in fact, almost 
 abandoned to bridal couples, and any one out 
 of his honey-moon is in some degree an alien 
 there, and must discern a certain immodesty 
 in his intrusion. Is it for his profane eyes 
 to look upon all that blushing and trembling 
 joy ? A man of any sensibility must desire 
 to veil his face, and, bowing his excuses to 
 the collective rapture, take the first train 
 for the wicked outside world to which he 
 belongs. Everywhere, he sees brides and 
 brides. Three or four with the benediction 
 still on them, come down in the same car 
 with him ; he hands her travelling- shawl 
 after one as she springs from the omnibus 
 into her husband’s arms ; there are two or 
 three walking back and forth with their 
 new lords upon the porch of the hotel ; at 
 supper they are on every side of him, and he 
 feels himself suffused, as it were, by a rose- 
 ate atmosphere of youth and love and hope. 
 At breakfast it is the same, and then, in his 
 wanderings about the place he constantly 
 meets them. They are of all manners of 
 beauty, fair and dark, slender and plump, 
 tall and short ; but they are all beautiful 
 with the radiance of loving and being loved. 
 
NIAGARA. 
 
 153 
 
 Now, if ever in their lives, they are charm- 
 ingly dressed, and ravishing toilets take the 
 willing eye from the objects of interest. 
 How high the heels of the pretty boots, how 
 small the tender-tinted gloves, how electri- 
 cal the flutter of the snowy skirts ! What 
 is Niagara to these things ? 
 
 Isabel was not willing to own her bridal 
 sisterhood to these blessed souls ; but she 
 secretly rejoiced in it, even while she joined 
 Basil in noting their number and smiling 
 at their innocent abandon. She dropped his 
 arm at encounter of the first couple, and 
 walked carelessly at his side ; she made a 
 solemn vow never to take hold of his watch- 
 chain in speaking to him ; she trusted that 
 she might be preserved from putting her face 
 very close to his at dinner in studying the 
 bill of fare ; getting out of carriages, she for- 
 bade him ever to take her by the waist. All 
 ascetic resolutions are modified by experi- 
 ment ; but if Isabel did not rigorously keep 
 these, she is not the less to be praised for 
 having formed them. 
 
 Just before they reached the bridge to Goat 
 Island, they passed a little group of the 
 Indians still lingering about Niagara, who 
 make the barbaric wares in which the shops 
 abound, and, like the woods and the wild 
 
154 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 faces of the cliffs and precipices, help to keep 
 the cataract remote, and to invest it with 
 the charm of primeval loneliness. This group 
 were women, and they sat motionless on the 
 ground, smiling sphinx-like over their laps 
 full of bead-work, and turning their dark 
 liquid eyes of invitation upon the passers. 
 They wore bright kirtles, and red shawls fell 
 from their heads over their plump brown 
 cheeks and down their comfortable persons. 
 A little girl with them was attired in like 
 gaiety of colour. “ What is her name?” 
 asked Isabel, paying for a bead pincushion. 
 “ Daisy Smith,” said her mother, in distress- 
 ingly good English. “ But her Indian name ? ” 
 “ She has none,” answered the woman, who 
 told Basil that her village numbered five 
 hundred people, and that they were Pro- 
 testants. While they talked they were 
 joined by an Indian, whom the women 
 saluted musically in their native tongue. 
 This was somewhat consoling ; but he wore 
 trousers and a waistcoat, and it could have 
 been wished that he had not a silk hat 
 on. 
 
 “ Still,” said Isabel, as they turned away, 
 ‘‘I’m glad he hasn’t Lisle-thread gloves, like 
 that chieftain we saw putting his forest queen 
 on board the train at Oneida. But how 
 
NIAGARA. 
 
 155 
 
 shocking that they should be Christians, 
 and Protestants ! It would have been bad 
 enough to have them Catholics. And that 
 woman said that they were increasing. They 
 ought to be fading away. ” 
 
 On the bridge, they paused and looked up 
 and down the rapids rushing down the slope 
 in all their wild variety, with the white 
 crests of breaking surf, the dark massiveness 
 of heavy-climbing waves, the fleet, smooth 
 sweep of currents over broad shelves of 
 sunken rock, the dizzy swirl and suck of 
 whirlpools. 
 
 Spell-bound, the journeyers pored upon 
 the deathful course beneath their feet, gave 
 a shudder to the horror of being cast upon 
 it, and then hurried over the bridge to the 
 island, in the shadow of whose wildness they 
 sought refuge from the sight and sound. 
 
 There had been rain in the night ; the air 
 was full of forest fragrance, and the low, 
 sweet voice of twittering birds. Presently 
 they came to a bench set in a corner of the 
 path, and commanding a pleasant vista of 
 sunlit foliage, with a mere gleam of the foam- 
 ing river beyond. As they sat down here 
 loverwise, Basil, as in the early days of their 
 courtship, began to recite a poem. It was 
 one which had been haunting him since his 
 
156 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 first sight of the rapids, one of many that he 
 used to learn by heart in his youth — the 
 rhyme of some poor newspaper poet, whom 
 the third or fourth editor copying his verses 
 consigned to oblivion by carelessly clipping 
 his name from the bottom. It had always 
 lingered in Basil’s memory, rather from the 
 interest of the awful fact it recorded, than 
 from any merit of its own ; and now he re- 
 called it with a distinctness that surprised 
 him. 
 
 AVERY. 
 
 I. 
 
 All night long they heard in the houses beside the 
 shore, 
 
 Heard, or seemed to hear, through the multitudinous 
 roar, 
 
 Out of the hell of the rapids as ’twere a lost soul's 
 cries : 
 
 Heard and could not believe ; and the morning mocked 
 their eyes, 
 
 Showing, where wildest and fiercest the waters leaped 
 up and ran 
 
 Raving round him and past, the visage of a man 
 
 Clinging, or seeming to cling, to the trunk of a tree 
 that, caught 
 
 Fast in the rocks below, scarce out of the surges 
 rauglit. 
 
 Was it a life, could it be, to yon slender hope that 
 clung ? 
 
 Shrill, above all the tumult the answering terror rung. 
 
NIAGARA. 
 
 157 
 
 II. 
 
 Under the weltering rapids a boat from the bridge is 
 drowned, 
 
 Over the rocks the lines of another are tangled and 
 wound, 
 
 And the long, fateful hours of the morning have 
 wasted soon, 
 
 As it had been in some blessed trance, and now it is 
 noon. 
 
 Hurry, now with the raft ! But O, build it strong 
 and stanch, 
 
 And to the lines and the treacherous rocks look well 
 as you launch 
 
 Over the foamy tops of the waves, and their foam- 
 sprent sides, 
 
 Over the hidden reefs, and through the embattled 
 tides, 
 
 Onward rushes the raft, with many a lurch and leap, — 
 
 Lord ! if it strike him loose from the hold he scarce 
 can keep I 
 
 No ! through all peril unharmed, it reaches him harm- 
 less at last, 
 
 And to its proven strength he lashes his weakness 
 fast. 
 
 Now, for the shore ! But steady, steady, my men, 
 and slow ; 
 
 Taut, now, the quivering lines ; now slack ; and so, 
 let her go ! 
 
 Thronging the shores around stands the pitying 
 multitude ; 
 
 Wan as his own are their looks, and a nightmare 
 seems to brood 
 
 Heavy upon them, and heavy the silence hangs on all, 
 
 Save for the rapids’ plunge, and the thunder of the 
 Fall. 
 
158 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 But on a sudden thrills from the people still and pale, 
 Chorussing his unheard despair, a desperate wail ; 
 Caught on a lurking point of rock it sways and swings, 
 Sport of the pitiless waters, the raft to which he clings. 
 
 III. 
 
 All the long afternoon it idly swings and sways ; 
 
 And on the shore the crowd lifts up its hands and 
 prays : 
 
 Lifts to heaven and wrings the hands so helpless to 
 save, 
 
 Prays for the mercy of God on him whom the rock 
 and the wave 
 
 Battle for, fettered betwixt them, and who amidst 
 their strife 
 
 Struggles to help his helpers, and fights so hard for 
 his life, — 
 
 Tugging at rope and at reef, while men weep and 
 women swoon. 
 
 Priceless second by second, so wastes the afternoon. 
 
 And it is sunset now ; and another boat and the last 
 
 Down to him from the bridge through the rapids has 
 safely passed. 
 
 IY. 
 
 Wild through the crowd comes flying a man that 
 nothing can stay 
 
 Maddening against the gate that is locked athwart 
 his way. 
 
 “ No ! we keep the bridge for them that can help him. 
 You, 
 
 Tell us, who are you ?” “ His brother !” “God help 
 
 you both ! Pass through.” 
 
NIAGARA. 
 
 159 
 
 Wild, with wide arms of imploring he calls aloud to 
 him, 
 
 Unto the face of his brother, scarce seen in the dis- 
 tance dim ; 
 
 But in the roar of the rapids his fluttering words are 
 lost 
 
 As in a wind of autumn the leaves of autumn are 
 tossed. 
 
 And from the bridge he sees his brother sever the rope 
 Holding him to the raft, and rise secure in his hope ; 
 Sees all as in a dream the terrible pageantry, — 
 Populous shores, the woods, the sky, the birds flying 
 free ; 
 
 Sees, then, the form — that, spent with effort and 
 fasting and fear, 
 
 Flings itself feebly and fails of the boat that is lying 
 so near, — 
 
 Caught in the long-baffled clutch of the rapids, and 
 rolled and hurled 
 
 Headlong on to the cataract’s brink, and out of the 
 world. 
 
 “ 0 Basil !” said Isabel, with a long sigh 
 breaking the hush that best praised the un- 
 known poet’s skill, “ it isn’t true, is it ?” 
 
 * ‘ Every word, almost, even to the brother’s 
 coming at the last moment. It ’s a very well 
 known incident,” he added, and I am sure 
 the reader whose memory runs back twenty 
 years cannot have forgotten it. 
 
 Niagara, indeed, is an awful homicide ; 
 nearly every point of interest about the place 
 has killed its man, and there might well be 
 
160 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 a deeper stain of crimson than it ever wears 
 in that pretty bow over-arching the Falls. 
 Its beauty is relieved against an historical 
 background as gloomy as the lightest-hearted 
 tourist could desire. The abominable sav- 
 ages, revering the cataract as a kind of august 
 devil, and leading a life of demoniacal misery 
 and wickedness, whom the first Jesuits found 
 here two hundred years ago ; the ferocious 
 Iroquois bloodily driving out these squalid 
 devil-worshippers ; the French planting the 
 fort that yet guards the mouth of the river, 
 and therewith the seeds of war that fruited 
 afterwards in murderous strifes throughout 
 the whole Niagara country ; the struggle for 
 the military posts on the river, during the 
 wars of France and England ; the awful 
 scene in the conspiracy of Pontiac, where a 
 detachment of English troops was driven by 
 the Indians over the precipice near the great 
 whirlpool ; the sorrow and havoc visited upon 
 the American settlements in the Revolution 
 by the savages who prepared their attacks 
 in the shadow of Fort Niagara ; the battles of 
 Chippewa and of Lundy’s Lane, that mixed 
 the roar of their cannon with that of the 
 Fall ; the savage forays with tomahawk and 
 scalping-knife, and the blazing villages on 
 either shore in the War of 1812, — these are 
 
NIAGARA. 
 
 161 
 
 the memories of the place, the links in a 
 chain of tragical interest scarcely broken 
 before our time since the white man first 
 beheld the mist- veiled face of Niagara. The 
 facts lost nothing of their due effect as Basil, 
 in the ramble across Goat Island, touched 
 them with the reflected light of Mr. Park- 
 man’s histories, — those precious books that 
 make our meagre past wear something of 
 the rich romance of old European days, 
 and illumine its savage solitudes with the 
 splendour of mediaeval chivalry, and the 
 glory of mediaeval martyrdom, — and then, 
 lacking this light, turned upon them the 
 feeble glimmer of the guide-books. He and 
 Isabel enjoyed the lurid picture with all the 
 zest of sentimentalists dwelling upon the 
 troubles of other times from the shelter of 
 the safe and peaceful present. They were 
 both poets in their quality of bridal couple, 
 and so long as their own nerves were un- 
 shaken they could transmute all facts to 
 entertaining fables. They pleasantly exer- 
 cised their sympathies upon those who every 
 year perish at Niagara in the tradition of its 
 awful power ; only they refused their cheap 
 and selfish compassion to the Hermit of Goat 
 Island, who dwelt so many years in its con- 
 spicuous seclusion, and was finally carried 
 L 
 
162 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 over the cataract. This public character 
 they suspected of design in his death as in 
 his life, and they would not be moved by his 
 memory ; though they gave a sigh to that 
 dream, half pathetic, half ludicrous, yet not 
 ignoble, of Mordecai Noah, who thought to 
 assemble all the J ews of the world, and all 
 the Indians, as remnants of the lost tribes, 
 upon Grand Island, there to re-build Jeru- 
 salem, and who actually laid the corner- 
 stone of the new temple there. 
 
 Goat Island is marvellously wild for a 
 place visited by so many thousands every 
 year. The shrubbery and undergrowth 
 remain unravaged, and form a deceitful 
 privacy, in which, even at that early hour 
 of the day, they met many other pairs. It 
 seemed incredible that the village and the 
 hotels should be so full, and that the wilder- 
 ness should also abound in them ; yet on 
 every embowered seat, and going to and 
 from all points of interest and danger, were 
 these new-wedded lovers with their inter- 
 lacing arms and their fond attitudes, in 
 which each seemed to support and lean 
 upon the other. Such a pair stood pro- 
 minent before them when Basil and Isabel 
 emerged at last from the cover of the woods 
 at the head of the island, and glanced up 
 
NIAGARA. 
 
 163 
 
 the broad swift stream to the point where it 
 ran smooth before breaking into the rapids ; 
 and as a soft pastoral feature in the fore- 
 ground of that magnificent landscape, they 
 found them far from unpleasing. Some such 
 pair is in the foreground of every famous 
 American landscape ; and when I think of 
 the amount of public love-making in the sea- 
 son of pleasure-travel, from Mount Desert to 
 the Yosemite, and from the parks of Colorado 
 to the Keys of Florida, I feel that our con- 
 tinent is but a larger Arcady, that the middle 
 of the nineteenth century is the golden age, 
 and that we want very little of being a nation 
 of shepherds and shepherdesses. 
 
 Our friends returned by the shore of the 
 Canadian rapids, having traversed the island 
 by a path through the heart of the woods, 
 and now drew slowly near the Falls again. 
 All parts of the prodigious pageant have an 
 eternal novelty, and they beheld the ever- 
 varying effect of that constant sublimity 
 with the sense of discoverers, or rather of 
 people whose great fortune it is to see the 
 marvel in its beginning, and new from the 
 creating hand. The morning hour lent its 
 sunny charm to this illusion, while in the 
 cavernous precipices of the shores, dark with 
 evergreens, a mystery as of primeval night 
 
164 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 seemed to linger. There was a wild flutter- 
 ing of their nerves, a rapture with an under- 
 consciousness of pain, the exaltation of peril 
 and escape, when they came to the three 
 little isles that extend from Goat Island, one 
 beyond another far out into the furious chan- 
 nel. Three pretty suspension-bridges con- 
 nect them now with the larger island, and 
 under each of these flounders a huge rapid, 
 and hurls itself away to mingle with the ruin 
 of the fall. The Three Sisters are mere frag- 
 ments of wilderness, clumps of vine-tangled 
 woods, planted upon masses of rock ; but 
 they are part of the fascination of Niagara 
 which no one resists ; nor could Isabel have 
 been persuaded from exploring them. It 
 wants no courage to do this, but merely 
 submission to the local sorcery, and the 
 adventurer has no other reward than the 
 consciousness of having been where but a 
 few years before no human being had perhaps 
 set foot. She crossed from bridge to bridge 
 with a quaking heart, and at last stood upon 
 the outermost isle, whence, through the 
 screen of vines and boughs, she gave fearful 
 glances at the heaving and tossing flood 
 beyond, from every wave of which at every 
 instant she rescued herself with a desperate 
 struggle. The exertion told heavily upon 
 
NIAGARA. 
 
 165 
 
 her strength unawares, and she suddenly 
 made Basil another revelation of character. 
 Without the slightest warning she sank down 
 at the root of a tree, and said, with serious 
 composure, that she could never go back on 
 those bridges ; they were not safe. He 
 stared at her cowering form in blank amaze, 
 and put his hands in his pockets. Then it 
 occurred to his dull masculine sense that it 
 must be a joke ; and he said, “ Well, I’ll 
 have you taken off in a boat.” 
 
 “ 0 do, Basil, do, have me taken off in a 
 boat!” implored Isabel. “You see your- 
 self the bridges are not safe. Do get a 
 boat.” 
 
 “ Or a balloon,” he suggested, humouring 
 the pleasantry. 
 
 Isabel burst into tears ; and now he went 
 on his knees at her side, and took her hands 
 in his. Isabel ! Isabel ! Are you crazy ? ” 
 he cried, as if he meant to go mad himseff. 
 She moaned and shuddered in reply ; he said, 
 to mend matters, that it was a jest, about 
 the boat ; and he was driven to despair when 
 Isabel repeated, “I never can go back by 
 the bridges, never.” 
 
 “ But what do you propose to do ?” 
 
 ‘ ‘ I don’t know, I don’t know ! ” 
 
 He would try sarcasm. “ Do you intend 
 
166 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 to set up a hermitage here, and have your 
 meals sent out from the hotel ? It ’s a charm- 
 ing spot, and visited pretty constantly ; but 
 it ’s small even for a hermitage.” 
 
 Isabel moaned again with her hands still 
 on her eyes, and wondered that he was not 
 ashamed to make fun of her. 
 
 He would try kindness. , £ f Perhaps, dar- 
 ling, you ’ll let me carry you ashore.” 
 
 “No, that will bring double the weight 
 on the bridge at once.” 
 
 “ Couldn’t you shut your eyes, and let me 
 lead you ?” 
 
 “Why, it isn’t the siglpt of the rapids,” 
 she said, looking up fiercely. “ The bridges 
 are not safe . I ’m not a child , Basil. 0, 
 what shall we do ?” 
 
 “ I don’t know,” said Basil, gloomily. 
 “It’s an exigency for which I wasn’t pre- 
 pared.” Then he silently gave himself to 
 the Evil One, for having probably over- 
 wrought Isabel’s nerves by repeating that 
 poem about Avery, and by the ensuing talk 
 about Niagara, which she had seemed to 
 enjoy so much. He asked her if that was it ; 
 and she answered, £ ‘ Oh no, it ’s nothing but 
 the bridges.” He proved to her that the 
 bridges, upon all known principles, were 
 perfectly safe, and that they could not give 
 
NIAGARA. 167 
 
 way. She shook her head, but made no 
 answer, and he lost his patience. 
 
 “Isabel,” he cried, “I’m ashamed of 
 you ! ” 
 
 4 4 Don’t say anything you ’ll be sorry for 
 afterwards, Basil, ” she replied, with the 
 forbearance of those who have reason and 
 justice on their side. 
 
 The rapids beat and shouted round their 
 little prison-isle, each billow leaping as if 
 possessed by a separate demon. The absurd 
 horror of the situation overwhelmed him. 
 He dared not attempt to carry her ashore, 
 for she might spring from his grasp into the 
 flood. He could not leave her to call for 
 help ; and what if nobody came till she lost 
 her mind from terror ? Or, what if somebody 
 should come and find them in that ridiculous 
 affliction ? 
 
 Somebody was coming ! 
 
 44 Isabel!” he shouted in her ear, 44 here 
 come those people we saw in the parlour last 
 night. ” 
 
 Isabel dashed her veil over her face, 
 clutched Basil’s with her icy hand, rose, 
 drew her arm convulsively through his, and 
 walked ashore without a word. 
 
 In a sheltered nook they sat down, and 
 she quickly 44 repaired her drooping head 
 
168 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 and tricked her beams” again. He could 
 see her tearfully smiling through her veil. 
 “My dear,” he said, “I don’t ask an ex- 
 planation of your fright, for I don’t suppose 
 you could give it. But should you mind 
 telling me why those people were so sove- 
 reign against it ?” 
 
 ‘ ‘ Why, dearest ! Don’t you understand ? 
 That Mrs. Richard — whoever she is — is so 
 much like me.” 
 
 She looked at him as if she had made the 
 most satisfying statement, and he thought 
 he had better not ask further then, but wait 
 in hope that the meaning would come to him. 
 They walked on in silence till they came to 
 the Biddle Stairs, at the head of which is a 
 notice that persons have been killed by pieces 
 of rock from the precipice overhanging the 
 shore below, and warning people that they 
 descend at their peril. Isabel declined to visit 
 the Cave of the Winds, to which these stairs 
 lead, but was willing to risk the ascent of 
 "Terrapin Tower. “Thanks; no,” said her 
 husband. “You might find it unsafe to 
 come back the way yon went up. We can’t 
 count certainly upon the appearance of the 
 lady who is so much like you ; and I ’ve 
 no fancy for spending my life on Terrapin 
 Tower. ” So he found her a seat, and went 
 
NIAGARA. 
 
 169 
 
 alone to the top of the audacious little struc- 
 ture standing on the verge of the cataract, 
 between the smooth curve of the Horse-Shoe 
 and the sculptured front of the Central Fall, 
 with the stormy sea of the rapids behind, and 
 the river, dim seen through the mists, crawl- 
 ing away between its lofty bluffs before. He 
 knew again the awful delight with which so 
 long ago he had watched the changes in the 
 beauty of the Canadian Fall as it hung a 
 mass of translucent green from the brink, 
 and a pearly white seemed to crawl up from 
 the abyss, and penetrate all its substance to 
 the very crest, and then suddenly vanished 
 from it, and perpetually renewed the same 
 effect. The mystery of the rising vapours 
 veiled the gulf into which the cataract 
 swooped ; the sun shone, and a rainbow 
 dreamed upon them. 
 
 Near the foot of the tower, some loose 
 rocks extend quite to the verge, and here 
 Basil saw an elderly gentleman skipping 
 from one slippery stone to another, and 
 looking down from time to time into the 
 abyss, who, when he had amused himself 
 long enough in this way, clambered up on 
 the plank bridge. Basil, who had descended 
 by this time, made bold to say that he 
 thought the diversion an odd one and rather 
 
170 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 dangerous. The gentleman took this in good 
 part, and owned it might seem so, hut added 
 that a distinguished phrenologist had ex- 
 amined his head, and told him he had 
 equilibrium so large that he could go any- 
 where. 
 
 “On your bridal tour, I presume,” he 
 continued, as they approached the bench 
 where Basil had left Isabel. She had now 
 the company of a plain, middle-aged woman, 
 whose attire hesitatingly expressed some in- 
 ward festivity, and had a certain reluctant 
 fashionableness. “Well, this is my third 
 bridal tour to Niagara, and wife ’s been here 
 once before on the same business. We see 
 a good many changes. I used to stand on 
 Table Rock with the others. Now that’s 
 all gone. Well, old lady, shall we move on ?” 
 he asked ; and this bridal pair passed up 
 the path, attended, haply, by the guardian 
 spirits of those who gave the place so many 
 \ sad yet pleasing associations. 
 
 At dinner, Mr. Richard’s party sat at the 
 table next Basil’s, and they were all now 
 talking cheerfully over the emptiness of the 
 spacious dining-hall. 
 
 “ Well, Kitty,” the married lady was say- 
 ing, “ you can tell the girls what you please 
 about the gaieties of Niagara, when you get 
 
NIAGARA. 171 
 
 home. They ’ll believe anything sooner than 
 the truth.” 
 
 “ 0 yes, indeed,” said Kitty, “ I Ve got a 
 good deal of it made up already. I ’ll de- 
 scribe a grand hop at the hotel, with fashion- 
 able people from all parts of the country, 
 and the gentlemen I danced with the most. 
 I ’m going to have had quite a flirtation with 
 the gentleman of the long blonde moustache, 
 whom we met on the bridge this morning, 
 and he’s got to do duty in accounting for 
 my missing glove. It ’ll never do to tell the 
 girls I dropped it from the top of Terrapin 
 Tower. Then you know, Fanny, I really con 
 say something about dining with aristocratic 
 Southerners, waited upon by their black ser- 
 vants.” 
 
 This referred to the sad -faced patrician 
 whom Basil and Isabel had noted in the cars 
 from Buffalo as a Southerner probably com- 
 ing North for the first time since the war. 
 He had an air at once fierce and sad, and a 
 half -barbaric, homicidal gentility of manner 
 fascinating enough in its way. He sat with 
 his wife at a table further down the room, 
 and their child was served in part by a little 
 tan-coloured nurse-maid. The fact did not 
 quite answer to the young lady’s descrip- 
 tion of it, and yet it certainly afforded her a 
 
172 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 ground-work. Basil fancied a sort of bewil- 
 derment in the Southerner, and explained 
 it upon the theory that he used to come every 
 year to Niagara before the war, and was now 
 puzzled to find it so changed. 
 
 “Yes,” he said, “ I can’t account for him 
 except as the ghost of Southern travel, and 
 I can’t help feeling a little sorry for him. I 
 suppose that almost any evil commends itself 
 by its ruin ; the wrecks of slavery are fast 
 growing a fungus crop of sentiment, and they 
 may yet outflourish the remains of the feudal 
 system in the kind of poetry they produce. 
 The impoverished slave-holder is a pathetic 
 figure, in spite of all justice and reason ; the 
 beaten rebel does move us to compassion, 
 and it is of no use to think of Anderson ville 
 in his presence. This gentleman, and others 
 like him, used to be the lords of our summer 
 resorts. They spent the money they did not 
 earn like princes ; they held their heads high ; 
 x they trampled upon the Abolitionist in his 
 lair ; they received the homage of the dough- 
 face in his home. They came up here from 
 their rice-swamps and cotton-fields, and bul- 
 lied the whole busy civilisation of the North. 
 Everybody who had merchandise or prin- 
 ciples to sell truckled to them, and travel 
 amongst us was a triumphal progress. Now 
 
NIAGARA. 
 
 m 
 
 they ’re moneyless and subjugated (as they 
 call it), there ’s none so poor to do them re- 
 verence, and it ’s left for me, an Abolitionist 
 from the cradle, to sigh over their fate. After 
 all, they had noble traits, and it was no great 
 wonder they got to despise us, seeing what 
 most of us were. It seems to me I should 
 like to know our friend. I can ’t help feeling 
 towards him as towards a fallen prince, 
 heaven help my craven spirit ! I wonder 
 how our coloured waiter feels towards him. 
 I dare say he admires him immensely.” 
 
 There were not above a dozen other people 
 in the room, and Basil contrasted the scene 
 with that which the same place formerly 
 presented. “In the old time,” he said, 
 “ every table was full, and we dined to the 
 music of a brass band. I can’t say I liked 
 the band, but I miss it. I wonder if our 
 Southern friend misses it ? They gave us 
 a very small allowance of brass band when 
 we arrived, Isabel. Upon my word, I 
 wonder what’s come over the place,” he 
 said, as the Southern party, rising from the 
 table, walked out of the dining-room, at- 
 tended by many treacherous echoes in spite 
 of an ostentatious clatter of dishes that the 
 waiters made. 
 
 After dinner they drove on the Canada 
 
174 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 shore up past the Clifton House, towards the 
 Burning Spring, which is not the least won- 
 der of Niagara. As each bubble breaks 
 upon the troubled surface, and yields its 
 flash of infernal flame and its whiff of sul- 
 phurous stench, it seems hardly strange that 
 the Neutral Nation should have revered the 
 cataract as a demon ; and another subtle 
 spell (not to be broken even by the business- 
 like composure of the man who shows off 
 the hell-broth) is added to those successive 
 sorceries by which Niagara gradually changes 
 from a thing of beauty to a thing of terror. 
 By all odds, too, the most tremendous view 
 of the Falls is afforded by the point on this 
 drive whence you look down upon the Horse- 
 Shoe, and behold its three massive walls of 
 sea rounding and sweeping into the gulf to- 
 gether, the colour gone, and the smooth brink 
 showing black and ridgy. 
 
 Would they not go to the battle-field of 
 Lundy’s Lane ? asked the driver at a certain 
 point on their return ; but Isabel did not 
 care for battle-fields, and Basil preferred to 
 keep intact the reminiscence of his former 
 visit. “They have a sort of tower of 
 observation built on the battle-ground,” he 
 said, as they drove on down by the river, 
 “and it was in charge of an old Canadian 
 
NIAGARA. 
 
 175 
 
 militia-man, who had helped his countrymen 
 to be beaten in the fight. This hero gave 
 me a simple and unintelligible account of 
 the battle, asking me first if I had ever 
 heard of General Scott, and adding without 
 flinching that here he got his earliest laurels. 
 He seemed to go just so long to every 
 listener, and nothing could stop him short, 
 so I fell into a reverie until he came to an 
 end. It was hard to remember, that sweet 
 summer morning, when the sun shone, and 
 the birds sang, and the music of a piano 
 and a girl’s voice rose from a bowery cottage 
 near, that all the pure air had once been 
 tainted with battle-smoke, that the peaceful 
 fields had been planted with cannon, instead 
 of potatoes and corn, and that where the 
 cows came down the farmer’s lane, with 
 tinkling bells, the shock of armed men had 
 befallen. The blue and tranquil Ontario 
 gleamed far away, and far away rolled the 
 beautiful land, with farm-houses, fields, and 
 woods, and at the foot of the tower lay 
 the pretty village. The battle of the past 
 seemed only a vagary of mine ; yet how 
 could I doubt the warrior at my elbow? — 
 grieved though I was to find that a habit of 
 strong drink had the better of his utterance 
 that morning. My driver explained after- 
 
176 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 wards, that persons visiting the field were 
 commonly so much pleased with the captain’s 
 eloquence, that they kept the noble old sol- 
 dier in a brandy-and- water rapture through- 
 out the season, thereby greatly refreshing 
 his memory, and making the battle bloodier 
 and bloodier as the season advanced and the 
 number of visitors increased. There my 
 dear,” he suddenly broke off, as they came 
 in sight of a slender stream of water that 
 escaped from the brow of a cliff on the Ameri- 
 can side below the Falls, and spun itself into 
 a gauze of silvery mist, “that’s the Bridal 
 Veil ; and I suppose you think the stream, 
 which is making such a fine display, yonder, 
 is some idle brooklet, ending a long course 
 of error and worthlessness by that spectacu- 
 lar plunge. It ’s nothing of the kind ; it ’s an 
 honest hydraulic canal, of the most straight- 
 forward character, a poor but respectable 
 mill-race which has devoted itself strictly to 
 business, and has turned mill-wheels instead 
 of fooling round water-lilies. It can afford 
 that ultimate finery. What you behold in 
 the Bridal Veil, my love, is the apotheosis 
 of industry.” 
 
 “What I can’t help thinking of,” said 
 Isabel, who had not paid the smallest atten- 
 tion to the Bridal Veil, or anything about 
 
NIAGARA. 
 
 177 
 
 it, “ is the awfulness of stepping off these 
 places in the night-time.” She referred to 
 the road which, next the precipice, is un- 
 guarded by any sort of parapet. In Europe a 
 strong wall would secure it, but we manage 
 things differently on our continent, and car- 
 riages go ruining over the brink from time 
 to time. 
 
 “If your thoughts have that direction,” 
 answered her husband, “we had better go 
 back to the hotel, and leave the Whirlpool 
 for to-morrow morning. It ’s late for it to- 
 day, at any rate.” He had treated Isabel 
 since the adventure on the Three Sisters 
 with a superiority which he felt himself to 
 be very odious, but which he could not dis- 
 use. 
 
 “I’m not afraid,” she sighed, “but in 
 the words of the retreating soldier, ‘ I ’m 
 awfully demoralised;’” and added, “You 
 know we must reserve some of the vital 
 forces for shopping this evening.” 
 
 Part of their business also was to buy the 
 tickets for their return to Boston by way of 
 Montreal and Quebec, and it was part of 
 their pleasure to get these of the heartiest 
 imaginable ticket-agent. He was a colonel 
 or at least a major, and he made a polite 
 feint of calling Basil by some military title. 
 
 M 
 
178 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 He commended the trip they were about to 
 make as the most magnificent and beautiful 
 on the whole continent, and he commended 
 them for intending to make it. He said that 
 was Mrs. General Bowder of Philadelphia 
 who just went out ; did they know her ? 
 Somehow, the titles affected Basil as of older 
 date than the late war, and as belonging to 
 the militia period ; and he imagined for the 
 agent the romance of a life spent at a water- 
 ing-place, in contact with rich money-spend- 
 ing, pleasure-taking people, who formed his 
 whole jovial world. The Colonel, who in- 
 cluded them in this world, and thereby 
 breveted them rich and fashionable, could 
 not secure a state-room for them on the boat, 
 — a perfectly splendid Lake steamer, which 
 would take them down the rapids of the St. 
 Lawrence, and on to Montreal without 
 change, — but he would give them a letter to 
 the captain, who was a very particular friend 
 of his, and would be happy to show them as 
 his friends every attention ; and so he wrote 
 a note ascribing peculiar merits to Basil, and 
 in spite of all reason making him feel for the 
 moment that he was privileged by a docu- 
 ment which was no doubt part of every such 
 transaction. He spoke in a loud cheerful 
 voice ; he laughed jollily at no apparent joke ; 
 
NIAGARA. 
 
 179 
 
 lie bowed very low and said, 4 4 Good-even- 
 ing ! ” at parting, and they went away as if 
 he had blessed them. 
 
 The rest of the evening they spent in 
 wandering through the village, charmed 
 with its bizarre mixture of quaintness and 
 commonplaceness ; in hanging about the shop- 
 windows with their monotonous variety of 
 feather fans, — each with a violently red or 
 yellow bird painfully sacrificed in its centre, 
 — moccasins, bead-wrought work-bags, to- 
 bacco-pouches, bows and arrows, and what- 
 ever else the savage art of the neighbouring 
 squaws can invent ; in sauntering through 
 these gay booths, pricing many things, and 
 in hanging long and undecidedly over cases 
 full of feldspar crosses, quartz bracelets and 
 necklaces, and every manner of vase, in- 
 operative pitcher, and other vessel that can 
 be fashioned out of the geological forma- 
 tions at Niagara, tormented meantime by the 
 heat of the gas-lights and the persistence of 
 the mosquitoes. There were very few people 
 besides themselves in the shops, and Isabel’s 
 purchases were not lavish. Her husband 
 had made up his mind to get her some little 
 keepsake ; and when he had taken her to the 
 hotel he ran back to one of the shops and 
 hastily bought her a feather fan, — a magnifi- 
 
180 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 cent thing of deep magenta dye shading into 
 blue, with a whole yellow-bird transfixed in 
 the centre. When he triumphantly displayed 
 it in their room, “ Who’s that for, Basil?” 
 demanded his wife ; “ the cook ?” But see- 
 ing his ghastly look at this, she fell upon 
 his neck, crying, “ 0 you poor old tasteless 
 darling ! You *ve got it for me /” and seemed 
 about to die of laughter. 
 
 “Didn’t you start and throw up your 
 hands, ” he stammered, * 4 when you came to 
 that case-of fans ?” 
 
 “ Yes , — in horror ! Did you think I liked 
 the cruel things, with their dead birds and 
 their hideous colours ? 0 Basil, dearest ! 
 
 You are incorrigible. Can't you learn that 
 magenta is the vilest of all the hues that the 
 perverseness of man has invented in defiance 
 of nature ? Now, my love, just promise me 
 one thing,” she said pathetically. “We’re 
 going to do a little shopping in Montreal, 
 you know ; and perhaps you ’ll be wanting 
 to surprise me with something there. Don’t 
 do it. Or, if you must, do tell me all about 
 it beforehand, and what the colour of it ’s to 
 be ; and I can say whether to get it or not, 
 and then there ’ll be some taste about it, and 
 I shall be truly surprised and pleased.” 
 
 She turned to put the fan into her trunk, 
 
NIAGARA. 
 
 181 
 
 and he murmured something about exchang- 
 ing it. “No,” she said, “we’ll keep it as 
 a — a — monument.” And she deposed him, 
 -with another peal of laughter, from the proud 
 height to which he had climbed in pity of 
 her nervous fears of the day. So completely 
 were their places changed, that he doubted 
 if it were not he who had made that scene 
 on the Third Sister ; and when Isabel said, 
 “ 0, why won’t men use their reasoning facul- 
 ties ? ” he could not for himself have claimed 
 any, and he could not urge the truth : that 
 he had bought the fan more for its barbaric 
 brightness than for its beauty. She would 
 not let him get angry, and he could say 
 nothing against the half-ironical petting with 
 which she soothed his mortification. 
 
 But all troubles passed with the night, 
 and the next morning they spent a charming 
 hour about Prospect Point, and in sauntering 
 over Goat Island, somewhat daintily tasting 
 the flavours of the place on whose wonders 
 they had so hungrily and indiscriminately 
 feasted at first. They had already the feel- 
 ing of veteran visitors, and they loftily mar- 
 velled at the greed with which newer-comers 
 plunged at the sensations. They could not 
 conceive why people should want to descend 
 the inclined railway to the foot of the Ameri- 
 
182 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 can Fall ; they smiled at the idea of going 
 up Terrapin Tower ; they derided the vulgar 
 daring of those who went Out upon the Three 
 Weird Sisters ; for some whom they saw 
 about to go down the Biddle Stairs to the 
 Cave of the Winds, they had no words to 
 express their contempt. 
 
 Then they made their excursion to the 
 Whirlpool, mistakenly going down on the 
 American side, for it is much better seen 
 from the other, though seen from any point 
 it is the most impressive feature of the whole 
 prodigious spectacle of Niagara. 
 
 Here within the compass of a mile, those 
 inland seas of the North, Superior, Huron, 
 Michigan, Erie, and the multitude of smaller 
 lakes, all pour their floods, where they swirl 
 in dreadful vortices, with resistless under- 
 currents boiling beneath the surface of that 
 mighty eddy. Abruptly from this scene of 
 secret power, so different from the thun- 
 derous splendours of the cataract itself, rise 
 lofty cliffs on every side, to a height of two 
 hundred feet, clothed from the water’s edge 
 almost to their crests with dark cedars. 
 Noiselessly, so far as your senses perceive, 
 the lakes steal out of the whirlpool, then, 
 drunk and wild, with brawling rapids roar 
 away to Ontario through the narrow channel 
 
NIAGARA. 
 
 183 
 
 of the river. Awful as the scene is, you 
 stand so far above it that you do not know 
 the half of its terribleness ; for those waters 
 that look so smooth are great ridges and 
 rings, forced, by the impulse of the currents, 
 twelve feet higher in the centre than at the 
 margin. Nothing can live there, and w'ith 
 what is caught in its hold, the maelstrom 
 plays for days, and wdiirls and tosses round 
 and round in its toils, with a sad, maniacal 
 patience. The guides tell ghastly stories, 
 which even their telling does not wholly rob 
 of ghastliness, about the bodies of drowned 
 men carried into the whirlpool and made to 
 enact upon its dizzy surges a travesty of life, 
 apparently floating there at their pleasure, 
 diving and frolicking amid the waves, or 
 frantically struggling to escape from the 
 death that has long since befallen them. 
 
 On the American side, not far below the 
 railway suspension bridge, is an elevator 
 more than a hundred and eighty feet high, 
 which is meant to let people down to the 
 shore below, and to give a view of the rapids 
 on their own level. From the cliff opposite, 
 it looks a terribly frail structure of pine 
 sticks, but is doubtless stronger than it looks ; 
 and at any rate, as it has never yet fallen to 
 pieces, it may be pronounced perfectly safe. 
 
184 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 In the waiting-room at the top, Basil 
 and Isabel found Mr. Richard and his ladies 
 again, who got into the moveable chamber 
 with them, and they all silently descended 
 together. It was not a time for talk of any 
 kind, either when they were slowly and not 
 quite smoothly dropping through the lugu- 
 brious upper part of the structure, where it 
 was darkened by a rough weather-boarding, 
 or lower down, where the unobstructed light 
 showed the grim tearful face of the cliff, 
 bedrabbled with oozy springs, and the auda- 
 cious slightness of the elevator. An abiding 
 distrust of the machinery overhead mingled 
 in Isabel’s heart with a doubt of the value of 
 the scene below, and she could not look for- 
 ward to escape from her present perils by the 
 conveyance which had brought her into 
 them, with any satisfaction. She wanly 
 smiled, and shrank closer to Basil ; while 
 the other matron made nothing of seizing her 
 husband violently by the arm and imploring 
 him to stop it whenever they experienced a 
 rougher jolt than usual. 
 
 At the bottom of the cliff they were helped 
 out of their prison by a humid young English- 
 man, with much clay on him, whose face was 
 red and bathed in perspiration, for it was 
 very hot down there in his little enclosure of 
 
NIAGARA. 
 
 185 
 
 baking pine boards, and it was not much 
 cooler out on the rocks upon which the party 
 issued, descending and descending by re- 
 peated and desultory flights of steps, till 
 at last they stood upon a huge fragment of 
 stone right abreast of the rapids. Yet it 
 was a magnificent sight, and for a moment 
 none of them were sorry to have come. The 
 surges did not look like the gigantic ripples 
 on a river’s course, as they were, but like a 
 procession of ocean billows ; they arose far 
 aloft in vast bulks of clear green, and broke 
 heavily into foam at the crest. Great blocks 
 and shapeless fragments of rock strewed the 
 margin of the awful torrent ; gloomy walls 
 of dark stone rose naked from these, bearded 
 here and there with cedar, and everywhere 
 frowning with shaggy brows of evergreen. 
 The place is inexpressibly lonely and dread- 
 ful, and one feels like an alien presence there, 
 or as if he had intruded upon some mood or 
 haunt of Nature in which she had a right to 
 be for ever alone. The slight, impudent 
 structure of the elevator rises through the 
 solitude, like a thing that merits ruin, yet it 
 is better than something more elaborate, for 
 it looks temporary, and since there must be 
 an elevator, it is well to have it of the most 
 transitory aspect. Some such quality of rude 
 
186 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 impermanence consoles you for the presence 
 of most improvements by which you enjoy 
 Niagara ; the suspension bridges for their 
 part being saved from offensiveness by their 
 beauty and unreality. 
 
 Ascending, none of the party spoke ; Isabel 
 and the other matron blanched in each other’s 
 faces ; their husbands maintained a stolid 
 resignation. When they stepped out of their 
 trap into the waiting-room at the top, 
 “ What I like about these little adventures,” 
 said Mr. Richard to Basil, abruptly, ‘ * is get- 
 ting safely out of them. Good-morning, sir. ” 
 He bowed slightly to Isabel, who returned 
 his politeness, and exchanged faint nods, or 
 glances, with the ladies. They got into their 
 separate carriages, and at that safe distance 
 made each other more decided obeisances. 
 
 “ Well,” observed Basil, “ I suppose we ’re 
 introduced now. We shall be meeting them 
 from time to time throughout our journey. 
 You know how the same faces and the same 
 trunks used to keep turning up in our travels 
 on the other side. Once meet people in 
 travelling, and you can’t get rid of them.” 
 
 “Yes,” said Isabel, as if continuing his 
 train of thought, “I’m glad we’re going 
 to-day.” 
 
 “ 0 dearest ! ” 
 
NIAGARA. 
 
 187 
 
 “ Truly. When we first arrived I felt 
 only the loveliness of the place. It seemed 
 more familiar, too, then ; but ever since, 
 it’s been growing stranger and dreadfuller. 
 Somehow it ’a begun to pervade me and pos- 
 sess me in a very uncomfortable way ; I ’m 
 tossed upon rapids, and flung from cataract 
 brinks, and dizzied in whirlpools ; I ’m no 
 longer yours, Basil ; I ’m most unhappily 
 married to Niagara. My with me, save me 
 from my awful lord !” 
 
 She lightly burlesqued the woes of a primco 
 donna, with clasped hands and uplifted eyes. 
 
 “ That ’ll do very well,” Basil commented, 
 ‘ 4 and it implies a reality that can’t be quite 
 definitely spoken. We come to Niagara in 
 the patronising spirit in which w'e approach 
 everything nowadays, and for a few hours 
 we have it our own way, and pay our little 
 tributes of admiration with as much compla- 
 cency as we feel in acknowledging the exist- 
 ence of the Supreme Being. But after a 
 while we are aware of some potent influence 
 undermining our self-satisfaction ; we begin 
 to conjecture that the great cataract does 
 not exist by virtue of our approval, and to 
 feel that it will not cease when we go away. 
 The second day makes us its abject slaves, 
 and on the third we want to fly from it in 
 
188 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 terror. I believe some people stay for weeks, 
 however, and hordes of them have written 
 odes to Niagara.” 
 
 “I can’t understand it at all,” said Isabel. 
 “I don’t wonder now that the town should 
 be so empty this season, but that it should 
 ever be full. I wish we’d gone after our 
 first look at the Falls from the suspension 
 bridge. How beautiful that was ! I rejoice 
 in everything that I haven’t done. I ’m so 
 glad I haven’t been in the Cave of the Winds ; 
 I ’m so happy that Table Rock fell twenty 
 years ago ! Basil, I couldn’t stand another 
 rainbow to-day. I ’m sorry we went out on 
 the Three Weird Sisters. 0, I shall dream 
 about it ! and the rush, and the whirl, and 
 the dampness in one’s face, and the everlast- 
 ing chir-r-r-r-r of everything ! ” 
 
 She dipped suddenly upon his shoulder for 
 a moment’s oblivion, and then rose radiant 
 with a question : “ Why in the world, if 
 Niagara is really what it seems to us now, 
 do so many bridal parties come here ?” 
 
 ‘ ‘ Perhaps they ’re the only people who Ve 
 the strength to bear up against it, and are 
 not easily dispersed and subjected by it.” 
 
 “ But we Ve dispersed and subjected.” 
 
 “ Ah, my dear, we married a little late. 
 Who knows how it would be if you were nine- 
 
NIAGARA. 
 
 189 
 
 teen instead of twenty-seven, and I twenty- 
 five and not turned of thirty ? ” 
 
 “ Basil, you ’re very cruel.” 
 
 ‘‘No, no. But don’t you see liow it is? 
 We’ve known too much of life to desire any 
 gloomy background for our happiness. 
 We ’re quite contented to have things gay 
 and bright about us. Once we couldn’t 
 have made the circle dark enough. Well, 
 my dear, that ’s the effect of age. We ’re 
 superannuated. ” 
 
 “ I used to think I was, before we were 
 married,” answered Isabel simply; “but 
 now,” she added triumphantly, “I’m res- 
 cued from all that. I shall never be old 
 again, dearest ; never, as long as you — 
 love me !” 
 
 They were about to enter the village, and 
 he could not make any open acknowledgment 
 of her tenderness ; but her silken mantle (or 
 whatever) slipped from her shoulder, and he 
 embracingly replaced it, flattering himself 
 that he had delicately seized this chance of 
 an unavowed caress and not knowing (0 
 such is the blindness of our sex !) that the 
 opportunity had been yet more subtly 
 afforded him, with the art which women 
 never disuse in this world, and which I hope 
 they will not forget in the next. 
 
190 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 They had an early dinner, and looked their 
 last upon the nuptial gaiety of the otherwise 
 forlorn hotel. Three brides sat down with 
 them in travelling-dress ; two occupied the 
 parlour as they passed out; half a dozen 
 happy pairs arrived (to the music of the 
 band) in the omnibus that was to carry our 
 friends back to the station ; they caught 
 sight of several about the shop windows, as 
 they drove through the streets. Thus the 
 place perpetually renews itself in the glow 
 of love as long as the summer lasts. The 
 moon which is elsewhere so often of worm- 
 wood, or of the ordinary green cheese at the 
 best, is of lucent honey there from the first 
 of June to the last of October ; and this is a 
 great charm in Niagara. I think with 
 tenderness of all the lives that have opened 
 so fairly there ; the hopes that have reigned 
 in the glad young hearts ; the measureless 
 tide of joy that ebbs and flows with the 
 arriving and departing trains. Elsewhere 
 there are carking cares of business and of 
 fashion, there are age, and sorrow, and 
 heart-break : but here only youth, faith, 
 rapture. I kiss my hand to Niagara for 
 that reason, and would I were a poet for a 
 quarter of an hour. 
 
 Isabel departed in almost a forgiving mood 
 
NIAGARA. 
 
 191 
 
 towards the weak sisterhood of evident 
 brides, and both our friends felt a lurking 
 fondness for Niagara at the last moment. 
 I do not know how much of their content 
 was due to the fact that they had suffered 
 no sort of -wrong there, from those who are 
 apt to prey upon travellers. In the hotel a 
 placard warned them to have nothing to do 
 with the miscreant hackmen on the streets, 
 but always to order their carriage at the 
 office ; on the street the hackmen whispered 
 to them not to trust the exorbitant drivers 
 in league with the landlords ; yet their 
 actual experience was great reasonableness 
 and facile contentment with the sum agreed 
 upon. This may have been because the 
 hackmen so far outnumbered the visitors, 
 that the latter could dictate terms ; but 
 they chose to believe it a triumph of civilis- 
 ation ; and I will never be the cynic to sneer 
 at their faith. Only at the station was the 
 virtue of the Niagarans put in doubt, by the 
 hotel porter who professed to find Basil’s 
 trunk enfeebled by travel, and advised a 
 strap for it, which a friend of his would sell 
 for a dollar and a half. Yet even he may 
 have been a benevolent nature unjustly sus- 
 pected. 
 
192 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 VII. 
 
 DOWN THE ST. LAWRENCE. 
 
 T HEY were to take the Canadian steamer 
 at Charlotte, the port of Rochester, 
 and they rattled uneventfully down from 
 Niagara by rail. At the broad, low-banked 
 river-mouth the steamer lay beside the rail- 
 road station ; and while Isabel disposed of 
 herself on board, Basil looked to the transfer 
 of the baggage, novelly comforted in the 
 business by the respectfulness of the young 
 Canadian who took charge of the trunks for 
 the boat. He was slow, and his system was 
 not good, — he did not give checks for the 
 pieces, but marked them with the name of 
 their destination ; and there was that in- 
 definable something in his manner which 
 hinted his hope that you would remember 
 the porter ; but he was so civil that he did 
 not snub the meekest and most vexatious of 
 the passengers, and Basil mutely blessed his 
 servile soul. Few white Americans, he said 
 to himself, would behave so decently in his 
 
DOWN THE ST. LAWRENCE. 
 
 193 
 
 place ; and he could not conceive of the 
 American steamboat clerk who would use 
 the politeness towards a waiting crowd that 
 the Canadian purser showed when they all 
 wedged themselves in about his window to 
 receive their state-room keys. He was some- 
 what awkward, like the porter, but he was 
 patient, and he did not lose his temper even 
 when some of the crowd, finding he would 
 not bully them, made bold to bully him. 
 He was three times as long in serving them 
 as an American would have been, but their 
 time was of no value there, and he served 
 them well. Basil made a point of speaking 
 him fair, when his turn came, and the purser 
 did not trample on him for a base truckler, as 
 an American jack-in-office would have done. 
 
 Our tourists felt at home directly on this 
 steamer, which was very comfortable, and 
 in every way sufficient for its purpose, with 
 a visible captain, who answered two or three 
 questions very pleasantly, and bore himself 
 towards his passengers in some sort like a 
 host. 
 
 In the saloon Isabel had found among 
 the passengers her semi-acquaintances of 
 the hotel parlour and the Rapids-elevator, 
 and had glanced tentatively towards them. 
 Whereupon the matron of the party had 
 
 N 
 
194 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 made advances that ended in their all sitting 
 down together, and wondering when the 
 boat would start, and what time they would 
 get to Montreal next evening, with other 
 matters that strangers going upon the same 
 journey may properly marvel over in com- 
 pany. The introduction having thus accom- 
 plished itself, they exchanged addresses, 
 and it appeared that Richard was Colonel 
 Ellison, of Milwaukee, and that Fanny was 
 his wife. Miss Kitty Ellison was of Western 
 New York, not far from Erie. There was 
 a diversion presently towards the different 
 state-rooms ; but the new acquaintances sat 
 vis-a-vis at the table, and after supper the 
 ladies drew their chairs together on the 
 promenade deck, and enjoyed the fresh 
 evening breeze. The sun set magnificent 
 upon the low western shore which they had 
 now left an hour away, and a broad stripe 
 of colour stretched behind the steamer. A 
 few thin, luminous clouds darkened mo- 
 mently along the horizon, and then mixed 
 with the land. The stars came out in a 
 clear sky, and a light wind softly buffeted 
 the cheeks, and breathed life into nerves 
 that the day’s heat had wasted. It scarcely 
 wrinkled the tranquil expanse of the lake, 
 on which loomed, far or near, a full-sailed 
 
DOWN THE ST. LAWRENCE. 
 
 195 
 
 schooner, and presently melted into the 
 twilight, and left the steamer solitary upon 
 the waters. The company was small, and 
 not remarkable enough in any way to take 
 the thoughts of any one off his own comfort. 
 A deep sense of the cosiness of the situation 
 possessed them all, which was if possible 
 intensified by the spectacle of the captain, 
 seated on the upper deck, and smoking a 
 cigar that flashed and fainted like a sta- 
 tionary fire-fly in the gathering dusk. How 
 very distant, in this mood, were the most 
 recent events ! Niagara seemed a fable of 
 antiquity ; the ride from Rochester a myth 
 of the Middle Ages. In this cool, happy 
 world of quiet lake, of starry skies, of air 
 that the soul itself seemed to breathe, there 
 was such consciousness of repose as if one 
 were steeped in rest and soaked through and 
 through with calm. 
 
 The points of likeness between Isabel and 
 Mrs. Ellison shortly made them mutually 
 uninteresting, and, leaving her husband to 
 the others, Isabel frankly sought the com- 
 panionship of Miss Kitty, in whom she found 
 a charm of manner which puzzled at first, 
 but which she presently fancied must be per- 
 fect trust of others mingling with a peculiar 
 self-reliance. 
 
196 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 “ Can’t you see, Basil, what a very flatter- 
 ing way it is ? ” she asked of her husband, 
 when, after parting with their friends for 
 the night, she tried to explain the character 
 to him. “ Of course no art could equal such 
 a natural gift ; for that kind of belief in your 
 good-nature and sympathy makes you feel 
 worthy of it, don’t you know ; and so you 
 can’t help being good-natured and sympa- 
 thetic. This Miss Ellison, why, I can tell 
 you, I shouldn’t be ashamed of her any- 
 where.” By anywhere Isabel meant Boston, 
 and she went on to praise the young lady’s 
 intelligence and refinement, with those 
 expressions of surprise at the existence of 
 civilisation in a westerner which westerners 
 find it so hard to receive graciously. Hap- 
 pily, Miss Ellison had not to hear them. 
 “ The reason she happened to come with 
 only two dresses is, she lives so near Niagara 
 that she could come for one day, and go back 
 the next. The colonel ’s her cousin, and he 
 and his wife go East every year, and they 
 asked her this time to see Niagara with them. 
 She told me all over again what we eaves- 
 dropped so shamefully in the hotel parlour ; 
 and I don’t know whether she was better 
 pleased with the prospect of what ’s before 
 her, or with the notion of making the jour- 
 
DOWN THE ST. LAWRENCE. 197 
 
 ney in this original way. She didn’t force 
 her confidence upon me, any more than she 
 tried to withhold it. We got to talking in 
 the most natural manner ; and she seemed 
 to tell these things about herself because they 
 amused her and she liked me. I had been 
 saying how my trunk got left behind once 
 on the French side of Mont Cenis, and I had 
 to wear aunt’s things at Turin till it could 
 be sent for. ” 
 
 “ Well, I don’t see but Miss Ellison could 
 describe you to her friends very much as 
 you’ve described her to me,” said Basil. 
 
 ‘ c How did these mutual confidences be- 
 gin ? Whose trustfulness first flattered the 
 other’s? What else did you tell about your- 
 self?” 
 
 “ I said we were on our wedding journey, ” 
 guiltily admitted Isabel. 
 
 “ 0, you did ! ” 
 
 “ Why, dearest ! I wanted to know, for 
 once, you see, whether we seemed honey- 
 moon-struck.” 
 
 “ And do we ?” 
 
 “ Ho,” came the answer, somewhat rue- 
 fully. ‘ ‘ Perhaps, Basil, ” she added, ‘ 1 we ’ ve 
 been a little too successful in disguising our 
 bridal character. Do you know,” she con- 
 tinued, looking him anxiously in the face, 
 
198 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 “ this Miss Ellison took me at first for — 
 your sister ! ” 
 
 Basil broke forth in outrageous laughter. 
 “ One more such victory,” he said, <£ and we 
 are undone ; ” and he laughed again immode- 
 rately. “ How sad is the fruition of human 
 wishes ! There ’s nothing, after all, like a 
 good thorough failure for making people 
 happy.” 
 
 Isabel did not listen to him. Safe in a 
 dim corner of the deserted saloon, she seized 
 him in a vindictive embrace ; then, as if it 
 had been he who suggested the idea of such 
 a loathsome relation, hissed out the hated 
 words, “ Your sister /” and released him 
 with a disdainful repulse. 
 
 A little after daybreak the steamer stopped 
 at the Canadian city of Kingston, a hand- 
 some place, substantial to the water’s edge, 
 arid giving a sense of English solidity by the 
 stone of which it is largely built. There 
 was an accession of many passengers here, 
 and they and the people on the wharf were 
 as little like Americans as possible. They 
 were English or Irish or Scotch, with the 
 healthful bloom of the Old World still upon 
 their faces, or if Canadians they looked not 
 less hearty ; so that one must wonder if the 
 line between the Dominion and the United 
 
DOWN THE ST. LAWRENCE. 
 
 199 
 
 States did not also sharply separate good 
 digestion and dyspepsia. These provincials 
 had not our regularity of features, nor the 
 best of them our careworn sensibility of ex- 
 pression ; but neither had they our complex- 
 ions of adobe ; and even Isabel was forced to 
 allow that the men were, on the whole, 
 better dressed than the same number of 
 average Americans would have been in a 
 city of that size and remoteness. The steve- 
 dores who were putting the freight aboard 
 were men of leisure ; they joked in a kindly 
 way with the orange-women and the old 
 women picking up chips on the pier ; and 
 our land of hurry seemed beyond the ocean 
 rather than beyond the lake. 
 
 Kingston has romantic memories of being 
 Fort Frontenac two hundred years ago ; of 
 Count Frontenac’s splendid advent among 
 the Indians ; of the brave La Salle, who 
 turned its wooden walls to stone ; of wars 
 with the savages and then with the New 
 York colonists, whom the French and their 
 allies harried from this point ; of the destruc- 
 tion of La Salle’s fort in the Old French War ; 
 and of final surrender a few years later to the 
 English. It is as picturesque as it is his- 
 torical. All about the city the shores are 
 beautifully wooded, and there are many 
 
200 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 lovely islands, — the first indeed of those 
 Thousand Islands with which the head of 
 the St. Lawrence is filled, and among which 
 the steamer was presently threading her way. 
 They are still as charming and still almost 
 as wild as when, in 1673, Frontenac’s flotilla 
 of canoes passed through their labyrinth and 
 issued upon the lake. Save for a light-house 
 upon one of them, there is almost nothing to 
 show that the foot of man has ever pressed 
 the thin grass clinging to their rocky sur- 
 faces, and keeping its green in the eternal 
 shadow of their pines and cedars. In the 
 warm morning light they gathered or dis- 
 persed before the advancing vessel which 
 some of them almost touched with the plum- 
 age of their evergreens ; and where none of 
 them were large, some were so small that it 
 would not have been too bold to figure them 
 as a vaster race of water-birds assembling 
 and separating in her course. It is curiously 
 affecting to find them so unclaimed yet from 
 the solitude of the vanished wilderness, and 
 scarcely touched even by tradition. But for 
 the interest left them by the French, these 
 tiny islands have scarcely any associations, 
 and must be enjoyed for their beauty alone. 
 There is indeed about them a faint light of 
 legend concerning the Canadian rebellion of 
 
DOWN THE ST. LAWRENCE. 
 
 ‘201 
 
 1837, for several patriots are said to have 
 taken refuge amidst their lovely multitude ; 
 but this episode of modern history is difficult 
 for the imagination to manage, and somehow 
 one does not take sentimentally even to that 
 daughter of a lurking patriot, who long 
 baffled her father’s pursuers by rowing him 
 from one island to another, and supplying 
 him with food by night. 
 
 Either the reluctance is from the natural 
 desire that so recent a heroine should be 
 founded on fact, or it is mere perverseness. 
 Perhaps I ought to say, in justice to her, 
 that it was one of her own sex who refused 
 to be interested in her, and forbade Basil to 
 care for her. When he had read of her ex- 
 ploit from the guide-book, Isabel asked him 
 if he had noticed that handsome girl in the 
 blue and white striped Garibaldi and Swiss 
 hat, who had come aboard at Kingston. She 
 pointed her out, and courageously made him 
 admire her beauty, which was of the most 
 bewitching Canadian type. The young girl 
 was redeemed by her New World birth from 
 the English heaviness ; a more delicate bloom 
 lighted her cheeks ; a softer grace dwelt in 
 her movement ; yet she was round and full, 
 and she was in the perfect flower of youth. 
 She was not so ethereal in her loveliness as 
 
202 
 
 TIIEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 an American girl, but she was not so nervous, 
 and had none of the painful fragility of the 
 latter. Her expression was just a little 
 vacant, it must be owned ; but so far as she 
 went she was faultless. She looked like the 
 most tractable of daughters, and as if she 
 would be the most obedient of wives. She 
 had a blameless taste in dress, Isabel de- 
 clared ; her costume of blue and white striped 
 Garibaldi and Swiss hat (set upon heavy 
 masses of dark brown hair) being completed 
 by a black silk skirt. “ And you can see,” 
 she added, ‘ ‘ that it ’s an old skirt made 
 over, and that she ’s dressed as cheaply as 
 she is prettily. ” This surprised Basil, who 
 had imputed the young lady’s personal 
 sumptuousness to her dress, and had thought 
 it enormously rich. When she got off with 
 her chaperon at one of the poorest-looking 
 country landings, she left them in hopeless 
 conjecture about her. Was she visiting there, 
 or was the interior of Canada full of such 
 stylish and exquisite creatures ? Where did 
 she get her taste, her fashions, her manners ? 
 As she passed from sight towards the shadow 
 of the woods, they felt the poorer for her 
 going ; yet they were glad to have seen her, 
 and on second thoughts they felt that they 
 could not justly ask more of her than to have 
 
DOWN THE ST. LAWRENCE. 
 
 203 
 
 merely existed for a few hours in their pre- 
 sence. They perceived that beauty was not 
 only its own excuse for being, but that it 
 flattered and favoured and profited the world 
 by consenting to be. 
 
 At Prescott, the boat on which they had 
 come from Charlotte, and on which they 
 had been promised a passage without change 
 to Montreal, stopped, and they were trans- 
 ferred to a smaller steamer with the uncom- 
 fortable name of Banshee. She was very 
 old, and very infirm and dirty, and in every 
 way bore out the character of a squalid Irish 
 goblin. Besides, she was already heavily 
 laden with passengers, and, with the addition 
 of the other steamer’s people had now double 
 her complement ; and our friends doubted 
 if they were not to pass the Rapids in as 
 much danger as discomfort. Their fellow- 
 passengers were in great variety, however, 
 and thus partly atoned for their numbers. 
 Among them of course there was a full force 
 of brides from Niagara and elsewhere, and 
 some curious forms of the prevailing infatu- 
 ation appeared. It is well enough, if she 
 likes, and it may even be very noble for a 
 passably good-looking young lady to marry 
 a gentleman of venerable age ; but to inten- 
 sify the idea of self-devotion by furtively 
 
204 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 caressing his wrinkled front seems too re- 
 proachful of the general public ; while, on 
 the other hand, if the bride is very young 
 and pretty, it enlists in behalf of the white- 
 haired husband the unwilling sympathies 
 of the spectator to see her the centre of a 
 group of young people, and him only acknow- 
 ledged from time to time by a Parthian snub. 
 Nothing, however, could have been more 
 satisfactory than the sisterly surrounding of 
 this latter bride. They were of a better 
 class of Irish people ; and if it had been any 
 sacrifice for her to marry so old a man, they 
 were doing their best to give the affair at 
 least the liveliness of a wake. There were 
 five or six of those great handsome girls, 
 with their generous curves and wholesome 
 colours, and they were every one attended 
 by a good-looking colonial lover, with whom 
 they joked in slightly brogued voices, and 
 laughed with careless Celtic laughter. One 
 of the young fellows presently lost his hat 
 overboard, and had to wear the handker- 
 chief of his lady about his head ; and this 
 appeared to be really one of the best things 
 in the world, and led to endless banter. 
 They were well dressed, and it could be 
 imagined that the ancient bridegroom had 
 come in for the support of the whole good- 
 
DOWN THE ST. LAWRENCE. 
 
 205 
 
 looking, healthy, light-hearted family. In 
 some degree he looked it, and wore but a 
 rueful countenance for a bridegroom ; so 
 that a very young newly married couple, 
 who sat next the jolly sister-and-loverhood, 
 could not keep their pitying eyes off his 
 downcast face. 4 4 What if he, too, were 
 young at heart !” the kind little wife’s re- 
 gard seemed to say. 
 
 For the sake of the slight air that was 
 stirring, and to have the best view of the 
 Rapids, the Banshee’s whole company was 
 gathered upon the forward promenade, and 
 the throng was almost as dense as in a six- 
 o’clock horse-car out from Boston. The 
 standing and sitting groups were closely 
 packed together, and the expanded parasols 
 and umbrellas formed a nearly unbroken 
 roof. Under this Isabel chatted at intervals 
 with the Ellisons, who sat near ; but it was 
 not an atmosphere that provoked social feel- 
 ing, and she was secretly glad when after a 
 while they shifted their position. 
 
 It was deadly hot, and most of the people 
 saddened and silenced in the heat. From 
 time to time the clouds idling about over- 
 head met and sprinkled down a cruel little 
 shower of rain that seemed to make the air 
 less breathable than before. The lonely 
 
206 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 shores were yellow with drought ; the 
 islands grew wilder and barrener ; the 
 course of the river was for miles at a 
 stretch through country which gave no 
 signs of human life. The St. Lawrence 
 has none of the bold picturesqueness of the 
 Hudson, and is far more like its far-off 
 cousin the Mississippi. Its banks are low 
 like the Mississippi’s, its current swift, its 
 way through solitary lands. The same senti- 
 ment of early adventure hangs about each : 
 both are haunted by visions of the Jesuit 
 in his priestly robe, and the soldier in his 
 mediaeval steel ; the same gay, devout, and 
 dauntless race has touched them both with 
 immortal romance. If the water were of a 
 dusky golden colour, instead of translucent 
 green, and the shores and islands were 
 covered with cottonwoods and willows in- 
 stead of dark cedars, one could with no 
 great effort believe one’s self on the Missis- 
 sippi between Cairo and St. Louis, so much 
 do the great rivers strike one as kindred in 
 the chief features of their landscape. Only, 
 in tracing this resemblance you do not know 
 just what to do with the purple mountains of 
 Vermont, seen vague against the horizon from 
 the St. Lawrence, or with the quaint little 
 French villages that begin to show themselves 
 
DOWN THE ST. LAWRENCE. 
 
 207 
 
 as you penetrate further down into Lower 
 Canada. These look so peaceful, with their 
 dormer-windowed cottages clustering about 
 their church-spires, that it seems impossible 
 they could once have been the homes of the 
 savages and the cruel peasants who, with 
 fire-brand and scalping-knife and tomahawk, 
 harassed the borders of New England for a 
 hundred years. But just after you descend 
 the Long Sault you pass the hamlet of St. 
 Regis, in which was kindled the torch that 
 wrapt Deerfield in flames, waking her people 
 from their sleep to meet instant death or 
 taste the bitterness of a captivity. The 
 bell which was sent out from France for the 
 Indian converts of the Jesuits, and was cap- 
 tured by an English ship and carried into 
 Salem, and thence sold to Deerfield, where 
 it called the Puritans to prayer, till at last 
 it also summoned the priest-led Indians and 
 habitans across hundreds of miles of winter 
 and of wilderness to reclaim it from that 
 desecration, — this fateful bell still hangs in 
 the church-tower of St. Regis, and has in- 
 vited to matins and vespers for nearly two 
 centuries the children of those who fought 
 so pitilessly and dared and endured so much 
 for it. Our friends would fain have heard 
 it as they passed, hoping for some mournful 
 
208 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 note of history in its sound ; but it hung 
 silent over the silent hamlet, which, as it 
 lay in the hot afternoon sun by the river’s 
 side, seemed as lifeless as the Deerfield burnt 
 long ago. 
 
 They turned from it to look at a gentleman 
 who had just appeared in a mustard-coloured 
 linen duster, and Basil asked, “ Shouldn’t 
 you like to know the origin, personal history, 
 and secret feelings of a gentleman who goes 
 about in a duster of that particular tint ? 
 Or, that gentleman yonder with his eye tied 
 up in a wet handkerchief, do you suppose 
 he ’s travelling for pleasure ? Look at those 
 young people from Omaha : they haven’t 
 ceased flirting or cackling since we left 
 Kingston. Do you think everybody has such 
 spirits out at Omaha? But behold a yet 
 more surprising figure than any we have yet 
 seen among this boat-load of nondescripts !” 
 
 This was a tall, handsome young man, 
 with a face of somewhat foreign cast, and 
 well dressed, with a certain impressive dif- 
 ference from the rest in the cut of his clothes. 
 But what most drew the eye to him was 
 a large cross, set with brilliants, and sur- 
 mounted by a heavy double -headed eagle in 
 gold. This ornament dazzled from a con- 
 spicuous place on. the left lappel of his coat ; 
 
DOWN THE ST. LAWRENCE. 
 
 209 
 
 on his hand shone a magnificent diamond ring, 
 and he bore a stately opera-glass, with which, 
 from time to time, he imperiously, as one 
 may say, surveyed the landscape. As the 
 imposing apparition grew upon Isabel, “ 0 
 here,” she thought, “ is something truly dis- 
 tinguished. Of course, dear,” she added 
 aloud to Basil, “ he ’s some foreign noble- 
 man travelling here ; ” and she ran over in 
 her mind the newspaper announcements of 
 patrician visitors from abroad, and tried to 
 identify him with some one of them. The 
 cross must be the decoration of a foreign 
 order, and Basil suggested that he was per- 
 haps a member of some legation at Washing- 
 ton, who had run up there for his summer 
 vacation. The cross puzzled him, but the 
 double-headed eagle, he said, meant either 
 Austria or Russia ; probably Austria, for 
 the wearer looked a trifle too civilised for a 
 Russian. 
 
 “Yes, indeed! What an air he has! 
 Never tell me, Basil, that there ’s nothing 
 in blood!” cried Isabel, who was a bitter 
 aristocrat at heart, like all her sex, though 
 in principle she was democratic enough. As 
 she spoke, the object of her regard looked 
 about him on the different groups, not with 
 pride, not with hauteur, but with a glance 
 o 
 
210 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 of unconscious, unmistakeable superiority. 
 “ 0, that stare!” she added; “nothing but 
 high birth and long descent can give it ! 
 Dearest, he ’s becoming a great affliction to 
 me. I want to know who he is. Couldn’t 
 you invent some pretext for speaking to 
 him ? ” 
 
 “No, I couldn’t do it decently; and no 
 doubt he’d snub me as I deserved if I in- 
 truded upon him. Let ’s wait for fortune to 
 reveal him. ” 
 
 “ Well, I suppose I must, but it’s dread- 
 ful ; it ’s really dreadful. You can easily 
 see that ’s distinction, ” she continued, as her 
 hero moved about the promenade and gently 
 but loftily made a way for himself among the 
 other passengers and favoured the scenery 
 through his opera-glass from one point and 
 another. He spoke to no one, and she 
 reasonably supposed that he did not know 
 English. 
 
 In the meantime it was drawing near the 
 hour of dinner, but no dinner appeared. 
 Twelve, one, two came and went, and then 
 at last came the dinner, which had been de- 
 layed, it seemed, till the cook could recruit 
 his energies sufficiently to meet the wants 
 of double the number he had expected to 
 provide for. It was observable of the offi- 
 
DOWN THE ST. LAWRENCE. 
 
 211 
 
 cers and crew of the Banshee, that while 
 they did not hold themselves aloof from the 
 passengers in the disdainful American man- 
 ner, they were of feeble mind, and not only 
 did everything very slowly (in the usual 
 Canadian fashion), but with an inefficiency 
 that among us would have justified them in 
 being insolent. The people sat down at 
 several successive tables to the worst dinner 
 that ever was cooked ; the ladies first, and 
 the gentlemen afterwards, as they made con- 
 quest of places. At the second table, to 
 Basil’s great satisfaction, he found a seat, and 
 on his right hand the distinguished foreigner. 
 
 “ Naturally, I was somewhat abashed,” he 
 said in the account he was presently called 
 to give Isabel of the interview, “but I re- 
 membered that I was an American citizen, 
 and tried to maintain a decent composure. 
 For several minutes we sat silent behind 
 a dish of flabby cucumbers, expecting the 
 dinner, and I was wondering whether I 
 should address him in French or German, — 
 for I knew you ’d never forgive me if I let 
 slip such a chance, — when he turned and 
 spoke himself.” 
 
 “ Oh, wlicit did he say, dearest ?” 
 
 “He said, ‘Pretty tejious waitin’, ain’t 
 it ?’ in the best New York State accent.” 
 
212 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 “ You don’t mean it !” gasped Isabel. 
 
 ( ‘ But I do. After that I took courage to 
 ask what his cross and double-headed eagle 
 meant. He showed the condescension of a 
 true nobleman. ‘ 0/ says he, ‘I’m glad you 
 like it, and it’s not the least offence to ask,’ 
 and he told me. Can you imagine what it 
 is ? It ’s the emblem of the fifty-fourth 
 degree in the secret society he belongs to ! ” 
 “ I don’t believe it ! ” 
 
 “ Well, ask him yourself, then,” returned 
 Basil ; “he ’s a very good fellow. ‘ 0, that 
 stare ! nothing but high birth and long de- 
 scent could give it ! ”’ lie repeated, abomin- 
 ably implying that he had himself had no 
 share in their common error. 
 
 What retort Isabel might have made can- 
 not now be known, for she was arrested at 
 this moment by a rumour amongst the pas- 
 sengers that they were coming to the Long 
 Sault Rapids. Looking forward she saw the 
 tossing and flashing of surges that, to the 
 eye, are certainly as threatening as the rapids 
 above Niagara. The steamer had already 
 passed the Deplau and the Galopes, and they 
 had thus had a foretaste of whatever pleasure 
 or terror there is in the descent of these nine 
 miles of stormy sea. It is purely a matter 
 of taste, about shooting the rapids of the 
 
DOWN THE ST. LAWRENCE. 
 
 213 
 
 St. Lawrence. The passengers like it better 
 than the captain and the pilot, to guess by 
 their looks, and the women and children like 
 it better than the men. It is no doubt very 
 thrilling and picturesque and wildly beauti- 
 ful ; the children crow and laugh, the women 
 shout forth their delight, as the boat enters 
 the seething current ; great foaming waves 
 strike her bows, and brawl away to the 
 stern, while she dips, and rolls, and shoots 
 onward, light as a bird blown by the wind ; 
 the wild shores and islands whirl out of 
 sight ; you feel in every fibre the career of 
 the vessel. But the captain sits in front of 
 the pilot-house smoking with a grave face, 
 the pilots tug hard at the wheel ; the hoarse 
 roar of the waters fills the air ; beneath the 
 smoother sweeps of the current you can see 
 the brown rocks ; as you sink from ledge to 
 ledge in the writhing and twisting steamer, 
 you have a vague sense that all this is 
 perhaps an achievement rather than an en- 
 joyment. When, descending the Long Sault, 
 you look back up-hill, and behold those 
 billows leaping down the steep slope after 
 you, “ No doubt,” you confide to your soul, 
 “it is magnificent ; but it is not pleasure.” 
 You greet with silent satisfaction the level 
 river, stretching between the Long Sault 
 
214 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 and the Coteau, and you admire the delight- 
 ful tranquillity of that beautiful Lake St. 
 Francis into which it expands. Then the 
 boat shudders into the Coteau Rapids, and 
 down through the Cedars and Cascades. On 
 the rocks of the last lies the skeleton of a 
 steamer wrecked upon them, and gnawed at 
 still by the white-tusked wolfish rapids. No 
 one, they say, was lost from her. “ But 
 how,” Basil thought, “would it fare with 
 all these people packed here upon her bow, 
 if the Banshee should swing round upon a 
 ledge?” As to Isabel, she looked upon the 
 wrecked steamer with indifference, as did 
 all the women ; but then they could not 
 swim, and would not have to save them- 
 selves. “The La Chine’s to come yet,” 
 they exulted, “ and that ’s the awfullest of 
 all !” 
 
 They passed the Lake St. Louis ; the La 
 Chine Rapids flashed into sight. The cap- 
 tain rose up from his seat, took his pipe 
 from his mouth, and waved a silence with 
 it. “ Ladies and gentlemen,” said he, “ it ’s 
 very important in passing these rapids to 
 keep the boat perfectly trim. Please to 
 remain just as you are.” 
 
 It was twilight, for the boat was late. 
 From the Indian village on the shore they 
 
DOWN THE ST. LAWRENCE. 
 
 215 
 
 signalled to know if he wanted the local 
 pilot ; the captain refused ; and then the 
 steamer plunged into the leaping waves. 
 From rock to rock she swerved and sank ; 
 on the last ledge she scraped with a deadly 
 touch that went to the heart. 
 
 Then the danger was past, and the noble 
 city of Montreal was in full sight, lying at 
 the foot of her dark green mountain, and 
 lifting her many spires into the rosy twilight 
 air ; massive and grand showed the sister 
 towers of the French cathedral. 
 
 Basil had hoped to approach this famous 
 city with just associations. He had meant 
 to conjure up for Isabel’s sake some reflex, 
 however faint, of that beautiful picture Mr. 
 Parkman has painted of Maisonneuve found- 
 ing and consecrating Montreal. He flushed 
 with the recollection of the historian’s phrase ; 
 but in that moment there came forth from 
 the cabin a pretty young person who gave 
 every token of being a pretty young actress, 
 even to the duenna-like, elderly female com- 
 panion, to be detected in the remote back- 
 ground of every young actress. She had 
 flirted audaciously during the day with some 
 young Englishmen and Canadians of her 
 acquaintance, and after passing the La Chine 
 Rapids she had taken the hearts of all the 
 
216 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 men by springing suddenly to her feet, apo- 
 strophising the tumult with a charming atti- 
 tude, and warbling a delicious bit of song. 
 Now as they drew near the city the Victoria 
 Bridge stretched its long tube athwart the 
 river, and looked so low because of its great 
 length that it seemed to bar the steamer’s 
 passage. 
 
 “I wonder,” said one of the actress’s 
 adorers, — a Canadian, whose face was ex- 
 actly that of the beaver on the escutcheon 
 of his native province, and whose heavy gal- 
 lantries she had constantly received with a 
 gay, impertinent nonchalance, — “I wonder 
 if we can be going right under that bridge ?” 
 
 “No, sir!” answered the pretty young 
 actress with shocking promptness, “ we ’re 
 going right over it : — 
 
 “ ‘ Three groans and a guggle. 
 
 And an awful struggle, 
 
 And over we go ! ’ ” 
 
 At this witless, sweet impudence the 
 Canadian looked very sheepish — for a beaver ; 
 and all the other people laughed ; but the 
 noble historical shades of Basil’s thoughts 
 vanished in wounded dignity beyond recall, 
 and left him feeling rather ashamed, — for he 
 had laughed too. 
 
THE SENTIMENT OF MONTREAL. 217 
 
 VIII. 
 
 THE SENTIMENT OF MONTREAL. 
 
 T HE feeling of foreign travel for which 
 our tourists had striven throughout 
 their journey, and which they had known in 
 some degree at Kingston and all the way 
 down the river, was intensified from the first 
 moment in Montreal ; and it was so welcome 
 that they were almost glad to lose money on 
 their greenbacks, which the conductor of the 
 omnibus would take only at a discount of 
 twenty cents. At breakfast next morning 
 they could hardly tell on what country they 
 had fallen. The waiters had but a thin 
 varnish of English speech upon their native 
 French, and they spoke their own tongue 
 with each other ; but most of the meats were 
 cooked to the English taste, and the whole 
 was a poor imitation of an American hotel. 
 During their stay the same commingling of 
 usages and races bewildered them ; the shops 
 were English and the clerks were commonly 
 French ; the carriage-drivers were often Irish, 
 
218 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 and up and down the streets with their pious 
 old-fashioned names tinkled American horse- 
 cars. Everywhere were churches and con- 
 vents that recalled the ecclesiastical and 
 feudal origin of the city ; the great tubular 
 bridge, the superb water-front with its long 
 array of docks only surpassed by those of 
 Liverpool, the solid blocks of business houses, 
 and the substantial mansions on the quieter 
 streets, proclaimed the succession of Pro- 
 testant thrift and energy. 
 
 Our friends cared far less for the modern 
 splendour of Montreal than for the remnants 
 of its past, and for the features that identi- 
 fied it with another faith and another people 
 than their own. Isabel would almost have 
 confessed to any one of the black -robed 
 priests upon the street ; Basil could easily 
 have gone down upon his knees to the white - 
 hooded, pale-faced nuns gliding among the 
 crowd. It was rapture to take a carriage, 
 and drive, not to the cemetery, not to the 
 public library, not to the rooms of the Young 
 Men’s Christian Association, or the grain 
 elevators, or the new park just tricked out 
 with rockwork and sprigs of evergreen, — 
 not to any of the charming resorts of our 
 own cities, but as in Europe to the churches, 
 the churches of a pitiless superstition, the 
 
THE SENTIMENT OF MONTREAL. 219 
 
 churches with their atrocious pictures and 
 statues, their lingering smell of the morn- 
 ing’s incense, their confessionals, their fee- 
 taking sacristans, their worshippers dropped 
 here and there upon their knees about the 
 aisles and saying their prayers with shut or 
 wandering eyes according as they were old 
 women or young ! I do not defend the 
 feeble sentimentality, — call it wickedness if 
 you like, — but I understand it, and I forgive 
 it from my soul. 
 
 They went first, of course, to the French 
 cathedral, pausing on their way to alight 
 and walk through the Bonsecours Market, 
 where the habitans have all come in their 
 carts, with their various stores of poultry, 
 fruit, and vegetables, and where every cart 
 is a study. Here is a simple-faced young 
 peasant-couple with butter and eggs and 
 chickens ravishingly displayed ; here is 
 a smooth-cheeked, black-eyed, black -haired 
 young girl, looking as if an infusion of 
 Indian blood had darkened the red of her 
 cheeks, presiding over a stock of onions, 
 potatoes, beets, and turnips ; there an old 
 woman with a face carven like a walnut, 
 behind a flattering array of cherries and 
 pears ; yonder a whole family trafficking in 
 loaves of brown-bread and maple-sugar in 
 
220 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 many shapes of pious and grotesque device. 
 There are gay shows of bright scarfs and 
 kerchiefs and vari-coloured yarns, and sad 
 shows of old clothes and second-hand mer- 
 chandise of other sorts ; but above all pre- 
 vails the abundance of orchard and garden, 
 while within the fine edifice are the stalls of 
 the butchers, and in the basement below a 
 world of household utensils, glass-ware, hard- 
 ware, and wooden ware. As in other Latin 
 countries, each peasant has given a personal 
 interest to his wares, but the bargains are 
 not clamoured over as in Latin lands abroad. 
 Whatever protest and concession and invo- 
 cation of the saints attend the transaction 
 of business at Bonsecours Market are in a 
 subdued tone. The fat huckster-women 
 drowsing beside their wares, scarce send 
 their voices beyond the borders of their 
 broad-brimmed straw hats, as they softly 
 haggle with purchasers, or tranquilly gossip 
 together. 
 
 At the cathedral there are, perhaps, the 
 worst paintings in the world, and the mas- 
 sive pine-board pillars are unscrupulously 
 smoked to look like marble ; but our tour- 
 ists enjoyed it as if it had been St. Peter’s ; 
 in fact it has something of the barn-like 
 immensity and impressiveness of St. Peter’s. 
 
THE SENTIMENT OF MONTREAL. 221 
 
 They did not ask it to be beautiful or grand ; 
 they desired it only to recall the beloved 
 ugliness, the fondly cherished hideousness 
 and incongruity of the average Catholic 
 churches of their remembrance, and it did 
 this and more ; it added an effect of its 
 own ; it offered the spectacle of a swarthy 
 old Indian kneeling before the high altar, 
 telling his beads, and saying with many 
 sighs and tears the prayers which it cost so 
 much martyrdom and heroism to teach his 
 race. “0, it is only a savage man,” said 
 the little French boy who was showing them 
 the place, impatient of their interest in a 
 thing so unworthy as this groaning bar- 
 barian. He ran swiftly about from object 
 to object, rapidly lecturing their inatten- 
 tion. “ It is now time to go up into the 
 tower,” said he, and they gladly made that 
 toilsome ascent, though it is doubtful if the 
 ascent of towers is not too much like the 
 ascent of mountains ever to be compensatory. 
 From the top of Notre Dame is certainly to 
 be had a prospect upon which, but for his 
 fluttered nerves and trembling muscles and 
 troubled respiration, the traveller might well 
 look with delight, and as it is must behold 
 with wonder. So far as the eye reaches it 
 dwells only upon what is magnificent. All 
 
222 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 the features of that landscape are grand. 
 Below you spreads the city, which has less 
 that is merely mean in it than any other city 
 of our continent, and which is everywhere 
 ennobled by stately civic edifices, adorned 
 by tasteful churches, and skirted by full- 
 foliaged avenues of mansions and villas. 
 Behind it rises the beautiful mountain, 
 green with woods and gardens to its crest, 
 and flanked on the east by an endless fertile 
 plain, and on the west by another expanse, 
 through which the Ottawa rushes, turbid 
 and dark, to its confluence with the St. 
 Lawrence. Then these two mighty streams 
 commingled flow past the city, lighting up 
 the vast champaign country to the south, 
 while upon the utmost southern verge, as on 
 the northern, rise the cloudy summits of far- 
 off mountains. 
 
 As our travellers gazed upon all this 
 grandeur, their hearts were humbled to the 
 tacit admission that the colonial metropolis 
 was not only worthy of its seat, but had 
 traits of a solid prosperity not excelled by 
 any of the abounding and boastful cities 
 of the Republic. Long before they quitted 
 Montreal they had rallied from this weak- 
 ness, but they delighted still to honour her 
 superb beauty. 
 
THE SENTIMENT OF MONTREAL. 223 
 
 The tower is naturally bescribbled to its 
 top with the names of those who have climbed 
 it, and most of these are Americans, who 
 flock in great numbers to Canada in summer. 
 They modify its hotel life, and the objects 
 of interest thrive upon their bounty. Our 
 friends met them at every turn, and knew 
 them at a glance from the native popula- 
 tions, who are also easily distinguishable 
 from each other. The French Canadians 
 are nearly always of a peasant-like common- 
 ness, or where they rise above this have a 
 bourgeois commonness of face and manner ; 
 and the English Canadians are to be known 
 from the many English sojourners by the 
 effort to look much more English than the 
 latter. The social heart of the colony clings 
 fast to the mother-country, that is plain, 
 whatever the political tendency may be ; 
 and the public monuments and inscriptions 
 celebrate this affectionate union. 
 
 At the English cathedral the effect is deep- 
 ened by the epitaphs of those whose lives 
 were passed in the joint service of England 
 and her loyal child ; and our travellers, 
 whatever their want of sympathy with the 
 sentiment, had to own to a certain beauty 
 in that attitude of proud reverence. Here, 
 at least, was a people not cut off from its past, 
 
224 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 but holding, unbroken in life and death, the 
 ties which exist for us only in history. It 
 gave a glamour of olden time to the new 
 land ; it touched the prosaic democratic pre- 
 sent with the waning poetic light of the aris- 
 tocratic and monarchical tradition. There 
 was here and there a title on the tablets, 
 and there was everywhere the formal lan- 
 guage of loyalty and of veneration for things 
 we have tumbled into the dust. It is a 
 beautiful church, of admirable English 
 Gothic ; if you are so happy, you are rather 
 curtly told you may enter by a burly English 
 figure in some kind of sombre ecclesiastical 
 drapery, and within its quiet precincts you 
 may feel yourself in England if you like, — 
 which, for my part, I do not. Neither did 
 our friends enjoy it so much as the Church 
 of the Jesuits, with its more than tolerable 
 painting, its coldly frescoed ceiling, its 
 architectural taste of subdued Renaissance, 
 and its black-eyed peasant-girl telling her 
 beads before a side altar, just as in the 
 enviably deplorable countries we all love ; 
 nor so much even as the Irish cathedral 
 which they next visited. That is a very gor- 
 geous cathedral indeed, painted and gilded 
 a merveille, and everywhere stuck about with 
 big and little saints and crucifixes, and pic- 
 
THE SENTIMENT OF MONTREAL. 225 
 
 tures incredibly bad — but for those in the 
 French cathedral. There is, of course, a 
 series representing Christ’s progress to Cal- 
 vary ; and there was a very tattered old 
 man, — an old man whose voice had been 
 long ago drowned in whiskey, and who now 
 spoke in a ghostly whisper, — who, when he 
 saw Basil’s eye fall upon the series, made 
 him go the round of them, and tediously 
 explained them. 
 
 “ Why did you let that old wretch bore 
 you, and then pay him for it ?” Isabel asked. 
 
 “0, it reminded me so sweetly of the 
 swindles of other lands and days, that I 
 couldn’t help it,” he answered ; and straight- 
 way in the eyes of both that poor, whiskey- 
 fied, Irish tatterdemalion stood transfigured 
 to the glorious likeness of an Italian beggar. 
 
 They were always doing something of this 
 kind, those absurdly sentimental people, 
 whom yet I cannot find it in my heart to 
 blame for their folly, though I could name 
 ever so many reasons for rebuking it. Why, 
 in fact, should we wish to find America like 
 Europe ? Are the ruins and impostures and 
 miseries and superstitions which ^>eset the 
 traveller abroad so precious, that he should 
 desire to imagine them at every step in his 
 own hemisphere ? Or have we then of our 
 
 p 
 
226 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 own no effective shapes of ignorance and 
 want and incredibility, that we must for 
 ever seek an alien contrast to our native 
 intelligence and comfort ? Some such ques- 
 tions this guilty couple put to each other, 
 and then drove off to visit the convent of the 
 Grey Nuns with a joyful expectation which I 
 suppose the prospect of the finest public- 
 school exhibition in Boston could never have 
 inspired. But, indeed, since there must be 
 Grey Nuns, is it not well that there are 
 sentimentalists to take a mournful pleasure 
 in their sad, pallid existence ? 
 
 The convent is at a good distance from the 
 Irish cathedral, and in going to it the tourists 
 made their driver carry them through one of 
 the few old French streets which still remain 
 in Montreal. Fires and improvements had 
 made havoc among the quaint houses since 
 Basil’s first visit ; but at last they came upon 
 a narrow, ancient Bue Saint Antoine, — or 
 whatever other saint it was called after, — 
 in which there was no English face or house 
 to be seen. The doors of the little one-story 
 dwellings opened from the pavement, and 
 within you saw fat madame the mother 
 moving about her domestic affairs, and 
 spare monsieur the elderly husband smok- 
 ing beside the open window ; French babies 
 
THE SENTIMENT OF MONTREAL. 227 
 
 crawled about the tidy floors ; French mar- 
 tyrs (let us believe Lalement or Br4beuf, who 
 gave up their heroic lives for the conversion 
 of Canada) lifted their eyes in high-coloured 
 lithographs on the wall ; among the flower- 
 pots in the dormer-window looking from 
 every tin roof sat and sewed a smooth -haired 
 young girl, I hope, — the romance of each 
 little mansion. The antique and foreign 
 character of the place was accented by the 
 inscription upon a wall of “ Sirop adoucissant 
 de Madame Winslow.” 
 
 Ever since 1692 the Grey Nuns have made 
 a refuge within the ample borders of their 
 convent for infirm old people and for found- 
 ling children, and it is now in the regular 
 course of sight-seeing for the traveller to 
 visit their hospital at noonday, when he be- 
 holds the Sisters at their devotions in the 
 chapel. It is a bare, white-walled, cold- 
 looking chapel, with the usual paraphernalia 
 of pictures and crucifixes. Seated upon low 
 benches on either side of the aisle were the 
 curious or the devout ; the former in greater 
 number and chiefly Americans, who were 
 now and then whispered silent by an old 
 pauper zealous for the sanctity of the place. 
 At the stroke of twelve the Sisters entered 
 two by two, followed by the lady -superior 
 
228 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 with a prayer-book in her hand. She clapped 
 the leaves of this together in signal for them 
 to kneel, to rise, to kneel again and rise, 
 while they repeated in rather harsh voices 
 their prayers, and then clattered out of the 
 chapel as they had clattered in, with re- 
 sounding shoes. The two young girls at the 
 head were very pretty, and all the pale faces 
 had a corpse-like peace. As Basil looked at 
 their pensive sameness, it seemed to him that 
 those prettiest girls might very well be the 
 twain that he had seen there so many years 
 ago, stricken for ever young in their joyless 
 beauty. The ungraceful gowns of coarse 
 grey, the blue checked aprons, the black 
 crape caps, were the same ; they came and 
 went with the same quick tread, touching 
 their brows with holy water and kneeling 
 and rising now as then with the same con- 
 strained and ordered movements. Would 
 it be too cruel if they were really the same 
 persons ? or would it be yet more cruel if 
 every year two girls so young and fair were 
 self-doomed to renew the likeness of that 
 youthful death ? 
 
 The visitors went about the hospital, and 
 saw the old men and the little children to 
 whom these good pure lives were given, and 
 they could only blame the system, not the 
 
THE SENTIMENT OF MONTREAL. 229 
 
 instruments or their work. Perhaps they did 
 not judge wisely of the amount of self-sacri- 
 fice involved, for they judged from hearts to 
 which love was the whole of earth and hea- 
 ven ; but nevertheless they pitied the Grey 
 Nuns amidst the unhomelike comfort of their 
 convent, the unnatural care of those alien 
 little ones. Poor Soeurs Grises ! in their 
 narrow cells ; at the bedside of sickness and 
 age and sorrow ; kneeling with clasped hands 
 and yearning eyes before the bloody spec- 
 tacle of the cross ! — the power of your Church 
 is shown far more subtly and mightily in 
 such as you, than in her grandest fanes or 
 the sight of her most august ceremonies, with 
 praying priests, swinging censers, tapers and 
 pictures and images, under a gloomy heaven 
 of cathedral arches. There, indeed, the 
 faithful have given their substance ; but here 
 the nun has given up the most precious part 
 of her woman’s nature, and all the tenderness 
 that clings about the thought of wife and 
 mother. 
 
 ‘ ‘ There are some things that always 
 greatly afflict me in the idea of a new 
 country,” said Basil, as they loitered slowly 
 through the grounds of the convent toward 
 the gate. “ Of course, it’s absurd to think 
 of men as other than men, as having changed 
 
230 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 their natures with their skies ; but a new 
 land always does seem at first thoughts like 
 a new chance afforded the race for goodness 
 and happiness, for health and life. So I 
 grieve for the earliest dead at Plymouth 
 more than for the multitude that the plague 
 swept away in London ; I shudder over the 
 crime of the first guilty man, the sin of the 
 first wicked woman in a new country ; the 
 trouble of the first youth or maiden crossed 
 in love there is intolerable. All should be 
 hope and freedom and prosperous life upon 
 that virgin soil. It never was so since Eden ; 
 but none the less I feel it ought to be ; and 
 I am oppressed by the thought that among 
 the earliest walls which rose upon this broad 
 meadow of Montreal were those built to 
 immure the innocence of such young girls as 
 these, and shut them from the life we find 
 so fair. Wouldn’t you like to know who 
 was the first that took the veil in this wild 
 new country ? Who was she, poor soul, and 
 what was her deep sorrow or lofty rapture ? 
 You can fancy her some Indian maiden 
 lured to the renunciation by the splendour 
 of symbols and promises seen vaguely through 
 the lingering mists of her native supersti- 
 tions ; or some weary soul, sick from the 
 vanities and vices, the bloodshed and the 
 
THE SENTIMENT OF MONTREAL. 231 
 
 tears of the Old World, and eager for a 
 silence profounder than that of the wilder- 
 ness into which she had fled. Well, the 
 Church knows and God. She was dust long 
 ago.” 
 
 From time to time there had fallen little 
 fitful showers during the morning. Now as 
 the wedding- journey ers passed out of the 
 convent gate the rain dropped soft and thin, 
 and the grey clouds that floated through the 
 sky so swiftly were as far-seen Grey Sisters 
 in flight for heaven. 
 
 “We shall have time for the drive round 
 the mountain before dinner,” said Basil, as 
 they got into their carriage again ; and he 
 was giving the order to the driver, when 
 Isabel asked how far it was. 
 
 “ Nine miles.” 
 
 c ‘ 0, then we can’t think of going with one 
 horse. You know,” she added, “ that we 
 always intended to have two horses for going 
 round the mountain. ” 
 
 “No,” said Basil, not yet used to having 
 his decisions reached without his knowledge. 
 “And I don’t see why we should. Every- 
 body goes with one. You don’t suppose 
 we ’re too heavy, do you ?” 
 
 “ I had a party from the States, ma’am. 
 
232 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 yesterday,” interposed the driver ; “ two 
 ladies, real heavy ones, two gentlemen, 
 weighin’ two hundred apiece, and a stout 
 young man on the box with me. You ’d ’a’ 
 thought the horse was drawin’ an empty 
 carriage, the way she darted along.” 
 
 “ Then his horse must be perfectly worn 
 out to-day,” said Isabel, refusing to admit 
 the poor fellow directly even to the honours 
 of a defeat. He had proved too much, and 
 was put out of court with no hope of repair- 
 ing his error. 
 
 “ Why, it seems a pity,” whispered Basil, 
 dispassionately, “ to turn this man adrift, 
 when he had a reasonable hope of being 
 with us all day, and has been so civil and 
 obliging. ” 
 
 “ 0 yes, Basil, sentimentalise him, do ! 
 Why don’t you sentimentalise his helpless, 
 overworked horse ? — all in a reek of perspira- 
 tion.” 
 
 “ Perspiration ! Why, my dear, it ’s the 
 rain ! ” 
 
 “Well, rain or shine, darling, I don’t 
 want to go round the mountain with one 
 horse ; and it ’s very unkind of you to insist 
 now, when you ’ve tacitly promised me all 
 along to take two.” 
 
 “ Now, this is a little too much, Isabel. 
 
THE SENTIMENT OF MONTREAL. 233 
 
 You know we never mentioned the matter 
 till this moment. ” 
 
 “ It ’s the same as a promise, your not 
 saying you wouldn’t. But I don’t ash you 
 fo keep your word. I don’t want to go round 
 the mountain. I ’d much rather go to the 
 hotel. I ’m tired. ” 
 
 “Very well, then, Isabel, I’ll leave you 
 at the hotel.” 
 
 In a moment it had come, the first serious 
 dispute of their wedded life. It had come 
 as all such calamities come, from nothing, 
 and it was on them in full disaster ere they 
 knew. Such a very little while ago, there 
 in the convent garden, their lives had been 
 drawn closer in sympathy than ever before ; 
 and now that blessed time seemed ages since, 
 and they were further asunder than those 
 who have never been friends. “ I thought,” 
 bitterly mused Isabel, “ that he would 
 have done anything for me.” “ Who could 
 have dreamed that a woman of her sense 
 would be so unreasonable ? ” he wondered. 
 Both had tempers, as I know my dearest 
 reader has (if a lady), and neither- would 
 yield ; and so, presently, they could hardly 
 tell how, for they were aghast at it all, 
 Isabel was alone in her room amidst the 
 ruins of her life, and Basil alone in the one- 
 
234 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 horse carriage, trying to drive away from 
 the wreck of his happiness. All was over ; 
 the dream was past ; the charm was broken. 
 The sweetness of their love was turned to 
 gall ; whatever had pleased them in their 
 loving moods was loathsome now, and the 
 things they had praised a moment before 
 were hateful. In that baleful light, which 
 seemed to dwell upon all they ever said or 
 did in mutual enjoyment, how poor and 
 stupid and empty looked their wedding- 
 journey ! Basil spent five minutes in ar- 
 raigning his wife and convicting her of every 
 folly and fault. His soul was in a whirl, — 
 
 “ For to be wroth with one we love 
 Doth w r ork like madness in the brain/ 
 
 In the midst of his bitter and furious up- 
 braidings he found himself suddenly become 
 her ardent advocate, and ready to denounce 
 her judge as a heartless monster. “ On our 
 wedding journey, too ! Good heavens, what 
 an incredible brute I am ! ” Then he said, 
 “ What an ass I am ! ” And the pathos of 
 the case having yielded to its absurdity, he 
 was helpless. In five minutes more he was 
 at Isabel’s side, the one-horse carriage driver 
 dismissed with a handsome pour-boire , and a 
 pair of lusty bays with a glittering barouche 
 
THE SENTIMENT OF MONTREAL. 235 
 
 waiting at the door below. He swiftly 
 accounted for his presence, which she seemed 
 to find the most natural thing that could be, 
 and she met his surrender with the openness 
 of a heart that forgives but does not forget, 
 if indeed the most gracious art is the only 
 one unknown to the sex. 
 
 She rose with a smile from the ruins of 
 her life, amidst which she had heart- 
 brokenly sat down with all her things on. 
 
 “ I knew you ’d come back,” she said. 
 
 “So did I,” he answered. “I am much 
 too good and noble to sacrifice my preference 
 to my duty. ” 
 
 “I didn’t care particularly for the two 
 horses, Basil,” she said, as they descended 
 to the barouche. “ It was your refusing 
 them that hurt me.” 
 
 “ And I didn’t want the one-horse car- 
 riage. It was your insisting so that pro- 
 voked me.” 
 
 “ Do you think people ever quarrelled 
 before on a wedding journey ? ” asked Isabel 
 as they drove gaily out of the city. 
 
 “ Never ! I can’t conceive of it. I 
 suppose if this were written down, nobody 
 would believe it.” 
 
 “ No, nobody could, ’’said Isabel, musingly ; 
 and she added after a pause, “ I wish you 
 
236 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 would tell me just what you thought of me, 
 dearest. Did you feel as you did when our 
 little affair was broken off, long ago ? Did 
 you hate me ? ” 
 
 ‘ ‘ 1 did, most cordially ; but not half so 
 much as I despised myself the next moment. 
 As to its being like a lover’s quarrel, it 
 wasn’t. It was more bitter ; so much more 
 love than lovers ever give had to be taken 
 back. Besides, it had no dignity, and a 
 lover’s quarrel always has. A lover’s quarrel 
 always springs from a more serious cause, 
 and has an air of romantic tragedy. This 
 had no grace of the kind. It was a poor 
 shabby little squabble.” 
 
 “ 0, don’t call it so, Basil ! I should like 
 you to respect even a quarrel of ours more 
 than that. It was tragical enough with me, 
 for I didn’t see how it could ever be made 
 up. I knew I couldn ’t make the advances. 
 I don’t think it is quite feminine to be the 
 first to forgive, is it ?” 
 
 “I’m sure I can’t say. Perhaps it would 
 be rather unladylike. ” 
 
 “ Well you see, dearest, what I am trying 
 to get at is this : whether we shall love each 
 other the more or the less for it. I think 
 we shall get on all the better for a while, on 
 account of it. But I should have said it was 
 
THE SENTIMENT OF MONTREAL. 237 
 
 totally out of character. It ’s something you 
 might have expected of a very young bridal 
 couple ; but after what we ’ve been through, 
 it seems too improbable.” 
 
 “ Very well,” said Basil, who, having 
 made all the concessions, could not enjoy 
 the quarrel as she did, simply because it 
 was theirs ; “let ’s behave as if it had never 
 been. ” 
 
 “0 no, we can’t. To me, it’s as if we 
 had just won each other.” 
 
 In fact it gave a wonderful zest and fresh- 
 ness to that ride round the mountain, and 
 shed a beneficent glow upon the rest of their 
 journey. The sun came out through the thin 
 clouds, and lighted up the vast plain that 
 swept away north and east, with the purple 
 heights against the eastern sky. The royal 
 mountain lifted its graceful mass beside them, 
 and hid the city wholly from sight. Peasant - 
 villages, in the shade of beautiful elms, dotted 
 the plain in every direction, and at intervals 
 crept up to the side of the road along which 
 they drove. But these had been corrupted 
 by a more ambitious architecture since Basil 
 saw them last, and were no longer purely 
 French in appearance. Then, nearly every 
 house was a tannery in a modest way, and 
 poetically published the fact by the display 
 
238 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 of a sheep’s tail over the front cloor, like a 
 bush at a wine-shop. Now, if the tanneries 
 still existed, the poetry of the sheep’s tails 
 had vanished from the portals. But our 
 friends were consoled by meeting numbers 
 of the peasants jolting home from market in 
 the painted carts, which are doubtless of the 
 pattern of the carts first built there two 
 hundred years ago. They were grateful for 
 the immortal old women, crooked and brown 
 with the labour of the fields, who abounded 
 in these vehicles ; when a huge girl jumped 
 from the tail of her cart, and showed the 
 thick, clumsy ankles of a true peasant-maid, 
 they could only sigh out their unspeakable 
 satisfaction. 
 
 Gardens embowered and perfumed the low 
 cottages, through the open doors of which 
 they could see the exquisite neatness of the 
 life within. One of the doors opened into a 
 school-house, where they beheld with rapture 
 the school-mistress, book in hand, and with 
 a quaint cap on her grey head, and encircled 
 by her flock of little boys and girls. 
 
 By -and -by it began to rain again ; and now 
 while their driver stopped to put up the 
 top of the barouche, they entered a country 
 church which had taken their fancy, and 
 walked up the aisle with the steps that blend 
 
THE SENTIMENT OF MONTREAL. *239 
 
 with silence rather than break it, while they 
 heard only the soft whisper of the shower 
 without. There was no one there but them- 
 selves. The urn of holy water seemed not 
 to have been troubled that day, and no 
 penitent knelt at the shrine, before which 
 twinkled so faintly one lighted lamp. The 
 white roof swelled into dim arches over their 
 heads ; the pale day like a visible hush stole 
 through the painted windows ; they heard 
 themselves breathe as they crept from pic- 
 ture to picture. 
 
 A narrow door opened at the side of the 
 high altar, and a slender young priest ap- 
 peared in a long black robe, and with shaven 
 head. He, too, as he moved with noiseless 
 feet, seemed a part of the silence ; and when 
 he approached with dreamy black eyes fixed 
 upon them, and bowed courteously, it seemed 
 impossible he should speak. But he spoke, 
 the pale young priest, the dark-robed tradi- 
 tion, the tonsured vision of an age and a 
 church that are passing. 
 
 “ Do you understand French, monsieur ? ” 
 ‘ ‘ A very little, monsieur. ” 
 
 “ A very little is more than my English,” 
 he said, yet he politely went the round of 
 the pictures with them, and gave them the 
 names of the painters between his crossings 
 
240 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 at the different altars. At the high altar 
 there was a very fair Crucifixion ; before 
 this the priest bent one knee. “ Fine pic- 
 ture, fine altar, fine church, ” he said in 
 English. At last they stopped near the 
 poor-box. As their coins clinked against 
 those within, he smiled serenely upon the 
 good heretics. Then he bowed, and, as if 
 he had relapsed into the past, he vanished 
 through the narrow door by which he had 
 entered. 
 
 Basil and Isabel stood speechless a moment 
 on the church steps. Then she cried, — 
 
 “ 0, why didn't something happen?” 
 
 “Ah, my dear! what could have been 
 half so good as the nothing that did happen ? 
 Suppose we knew him to have taken orders 
 because of a disappointment in love : how 
 common it would have made him ; everybody 
 has been crossed in love once or twice. ” He 
 bade the driver take them back to the hotel. 
 “ This is the very bouquet of adventure : why 
 should we care for the grosser body ? I dare 
 say if we knew all about yonder pale young 
 priest, we should not think him half so 
 interesting as we do now.” 
 
 At dinner they spent the intervals of the 
 courses in guessing the nationality of the 
 different persons, and in wondering if the 
 
THE SENTIMENT OE MONTREAL. 
 
 241 
 
 Canadians did not make it a matter of con- 
 scientious loyalty to out-English the English 
 even in the matter of pale-ale and sherry, 
 and in rotundity of person and freshness of 
 face, just as they emulated them in the cut 
 of their clothes and whiskers. Must they 
 found even their health upon the health of 
 the mother-country ? 
 
 Our friends began to detect something 
 servile in it all, and but that they were such 
 amiable persons, the loyally perfect digestion 
 of Montreal would have gone far to impair 
 their own. 
 
 The loyalty, which had already appeared 
 to them in the cathedral, suggested itself in 
 many ways upon the street, when they went 
 out after dinner to do that little shopping 
 which Isabel had planned to do in Montreal. 
 The bookseller’s windows were full of Cana- 
 dian editions of our authors, and English 
 copies of English works, instead of our 
 pirated editions ; the dry-goods stores were 
 gay with fabrics in the London taste and 
 garments of the London shape ; here was the 
 sign of a photographer to the Queen, there of 
 a hatter to H. R. H. the Prince of Wales, a 
 barber was * 4 under the patronage of H. R. H. 
 the Prince of Wales, H. E. the Duke of 
 Cambridge, and the gentry of Montreal.” 
 Q 
 
242 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 Ich dien was the motto of a restaurateur ; 
 a hosier had gallantly labelled his stock in 
 trade with Honi soit qui mal y pense. Again 
 they noted the English solidity of the civic 
 edifices, and already they had observed in 
 the foreign population a difference from that 
 at home. They saw no German faces on the 
 streets, and the Irish faces had not that 
 truculence which they wear sometimes with 
 us. They had not lost their native simple- 
 ness and kindliness ; the Irishmen who drove 
 the public carriages were as civil as our own 
 Boston hackmen, and behaved as respect- 
 fully under the shadow of England here, as 
 they would have done under it in Ireland. 
 The problem which vexes us seems to have 
 been solved pleasantly enough in Canada. Is 
 it because the Celt cannot brook equality ; and 
 where he has not an established and recog- 
 nised caste above him, longs to trample on 
 those about him ; and if he cannot be lowest, 
 will at least be highest ? 
 
 However, our friends did not suffer this or 
 any other advantage of the colonial relation 
 to divert them from the opinion to which 
 their observation was gradually bringing 
 them, — that its overweening loyalty placed a 
 great country like Canada in a very silly atti- 
 tude, the attitude of an overgrown unmanly 
 
THE SENTIMENT OF MONTREAL. 243 
 
 boy, clinging to the maternal skirts, and 
 though spoilt and wilful, without any charac- 
 ter of his own. The constant reference of 
 local hopes to that remote centre beyond seas, 
 the test of success by the criterions of a neces- 
 sarily different civilisation, the social and in- 
 tellectual dependence implied by traits that 
 meet the most hurried glance in the Domi- 
 nion, give an effect of meanness to the whole 
 fabric. Doubtless it is a life of comfort, of 
 peace, of irresponsibility they live there, but 
 it lacks the grandeur which no sum of mate- 
 rial prosperity can give ; it is ignoble, like 
 all voluntarily subordinate things. Some- 
 how, one feels that it has no basis in the New 
 World, and that till it is shaken loose from 
 England it cannot have. 
 
 It would be a pity, however, if it should 
 be parted from the parent country merely 
 to be joined to an unsympathetic half- 
 brother like ourselves ; and nothing, fortu- 
 nately, seems to be further from the Canadian 
 mind. There are some experiments no longer 
 possible to us which could still be tried there 
 to the advantage of civilisation, and we were 
 better two great nations side by side than 
 a union of discordant traditions and ideas. 
 But none the less does the American tra- 
 veller swelling with forgetfulness of the 
 
244 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 shabby despots who govern New York, and 
 the swindling railroad kings whose word is 
 law to the whole land, feel like saying to the 
 hulking young giant beyond St. Lawrence 
 and the Lakes, “ Sever the apron-strings of 
 allegiance, and try to be yourself whatever 
 you are.’ 
 
 Something of this sort Basil said, though 
 of course not in apostrophic phrase, nor 
 with Isabel’s entire concurrence, when he 
 explained to her that it was to the colonial 
 dependence of Canada she owed the ability 
 to buy things so cheaply there. 
 
 The fact is that the ladies’ parlour at the 
 hotel had been after dinner no better than 
 a den of smugglers, in which the fair con- 
 trabandists had debated the best means of 
 evading the laws of their country. At heart 
 every man is a smuggler, and how much more 
 every woman ! She would have no scruple 
 in ruining the silk and woollen interest 
 throughout the United States. She is a 
 free-trader by intuitive perception of right, 
 and is limited in practice by nothing but 
 fear of the statute. What could be taken 
 into the States without detection, was the 
 subject before that wicked conclave ; and 
 next, what it would pay to buy in Canada. 
 It seemed that silk umbrellas were most 
 
THE SENTIMENT OF MONTREAL. 245 
 
 eligible wares ; and in the display of such 
 purchases the parlour was given the appear- 
 ance of a violent thunder-storm. Gloves it 
 was not advisable to get ; they were better 
 at home, as were many kinds of fine woollen 
 goods. But laces, which you could carry 
 about you, were excellent ; and so was any 
 kind of silk. Could it be carried if simply 
 cut, and not made up ? There was a differ- 
 ence about this : the friend of one lady had 
 taken home half a trunkful of cut silks ; the 
 friend of another had “ run up the breadths ” 
 of one lone little silk skirt, and then lost it 
 by the rapacity of the customs officers. It 
 was pretty much luck, and whether the offi- 
 cers happened to be in good-humour or not. 
 You must not try to take in anything out of 
 season, however. One had heard of a Boston 
 lady going home in July, who “ had the furs 
 taken off her back, ” in that inclement month. 
 Best get everything seasonable, and put it 
 on at once. “ And then, you know, if they 
 ask you, you can say it’s been worn.” To 
 this black wisdom came the combined know- 
 ledge of those miscreants. Basil could not 
 repress a shudder at the innate depravity of 
 the female heart. Here were virgins nur- 
 tured in the most spotless purity of life, here 
 were virtuous mothers of families, here were 
 
246 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 venerable matrons, patterns in society and 
 the church, — smugglers to a woman, and 
 eager for any guilty subterfuge ! He glanced 
 at Isabel to see what effect the evil conver- 
 sation had upon her. Her eyes sparkled ; 
 her cheeks glowed ; all the woman was on 
 fire for smuggling. He sighed heavily and 
 went out with her to do the little shopping. 
 
 Shall I follow them upon their excursion ? 
 Shopping in Montreal is very much what it 
 is in Boston or Hew York, I imagine, except 
 that the clerks have a more honeyed sweet- 
 ness of manners towards the ladies of our 
 nation, and are surprisingly generous con- 
 structionists of our revenue laws. Isabel 
 had profited by every word that she had 
 heard in the ladies’ parlour, and she would 
 not venture upon unsafe ground ; but her 
 tender eyes looked her unutterable longing 
 to believe in the charming possibilities that 
 the clerks suggested. She bemoaned herself 
 before the corded silks, which there was no 
 time to have made up ; the piece- velvets 
 and the linens smote her to the heart. But 
 they also stimulated her invention, and she 
 bought and bought of the made-up wares in 
 real or fancied needs, till Basil represented 
 that neither their purses nor their trunks 
 could stand any more. “ 0 , don’t be troubled 
 
THE SENTIMENT OF MONTREAL. 247 
 
 about the trunks, dearest,” she cried, with 
 that gaiety which nothing but shopping can 
 kindle in a woman’s heart ,* while he faltered 
 on from counter to counter, wondering at 
 which he should finally swoon from fatigue. 
 At last, after she had declared repeatedly, 
 “There, now, I am done,” she briskly led 
 the way back to the hotel to pack up her 
 purchases. 
 
 Basil parted with her at the door. He 
 was a man of high principle himself, and 
 that scene in the smugglers’ den, and his 
 wife’s preparation for transgression, were 
 revelations for which nothing could have 
 consoled him but a paragon umbrella for 
 five dollars, and an excellent business suit 
 of Scotch goods for twenty. 
 
 When some hours later he sat with Isabel 
 on the forward promenade of the steamboat 
 for Quebec, and summed up the profits of 
 their shopping, they were both in the kind- 
 liest mood towards the poor Canadians, who 
 had built the admirable city before them. 
 
 For miles the water-front of Montreal is 
 superbly faced with quays and locks of solid 
 stone masonry, and thus she is clean and 
 beautiful to the very feet. Stately piles of 
 architecture, instead of the foul old tumble- 
 down warehouses that dishonour the water- 
 
248 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 side in most cities, rise from the broad 
 wharves ; behind these spring the twin 
 towers of Notre Dame, and the steeples of 
 the other churches above the city roofs. 
 
 “ It ’s noble, yes, it ’s noble after the best 
 that Europe can show,” said Isabel, with 
 enthusiasm; “and what a pleasant day 
 we Ve had here ! Doesn’t even our quarrel 
 show conleur de rose in this light ?” 
 
 “ One side of it,” answered Basil, dreamily, 
 “ but all the rest is black.” 
 
 “ What do you mean, my dear ?” 
 
 “ Why, the Nelson Monument, with the 
 sunset on it, at the head of the street there.” 
 The effect was so fine that Isabel could 
 not be angry with him for failing to heed 
 what she had said, and she mused a moment 
 with him. 
 
 “It seems rather far-fetched,” she said 
 presently, “ to erect a monument to Nelson 
 in Montreal, doesn’t it ? But then, it ’s a 
 very absurd monument when you ’re near 
 it,” she added, thoughtfully. 
 
 Basil did not answer at once, for gazing 
 on this Nelson column in Jacques Cartier 
 Square, his thoughts wandered away, not to 
 the hero of the Nile, but to the doughty old 
 Breton navigator, the first white man who 
 ever set foot upon that shore, and who more 
 than three hundred years ago explored the 
 
THE SENTIMENT OF MONTREAL. 249 
 
 St. Lawrence as far as Montreal, and in the 
 splendid autumn weather climbed to the 
 top of her green height and named it. The 
 scene that Jacques Cartier then beheld, like 
 a mirage of the past projected upon the pre- 
 sent, floated before him, and he saw at the 
 mountain’s foot the Indian city of Hochelaga, 
 with its vast and populous lodges of bark, 
 its encircling palisades, and its wide outly- 
 ing fields of yellow maize. He heard with 
 Jacques Cartier’s sense the blare of his fol- 
 lowers’ trumpets down in the open square 
 of the barbarous city, where the soldiers of 
 many an Old-World fight, “ with moustached 
 lip and bearded chin, with arquebuse and glit- 
 tering halberd, helmet, and cuirass,” moved 
 among the plumed and painted savages ; 
 then he lifted Jacques Cartier’s eyes, and 
 looked out upon the magnificent landscape. 
 * ‘ East, west, and north, the mantling forest 
 was over all, and the broad blue ribbon of 
 the great river glistened amid a realm of 
 verdure. Beyond, to the bounds of Mexico, 
 stretched a leafy desert, and the vast hive of 
 industry, the mighty battle-ground of later 
 centuries, lay sunk in savage torpor, wrapped 
 in illimitable woods.” 
 
 A vaguer picture of Champlain, who, seek- 
 ing a westward route to China and the East, 
 some three quarters of a century later, had 
 
250 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 fixed the first trading-post at Montreal, and 
 camped upon the spot where the convent of 
 the Grey Nuns now stands, appeared before 
 him, and vanished with all its fleets of fur- 
 traders’ boats and hunters’ birch canoes, and 
 the watch-fires of both ; and then in the 
 sweet light of the spring morning, he saw 
 Maisonneuve leaping ashore upon the green 
 meadows, that spread all gay with early 
 flowers where Hochelaga once stood, and 
 with the black-robed Jesuits, the high-born, 
 delicately nurtured, and devoted nuns, and 
 the steel-clad soldiers of his train, kneeling 
 about the altar raised there in the wilder- 
 ness, and silent amidst the silence of nature 
 at the lifted Host. 
 
 He painted a semblance of all this for 
 Isabel, using the colours of the historian who 
 has made these scenes the beautiful inheri- 
 tance of all dreamers, and sketched the 
 battles, the miracles, the sufferings, and the 
 penances through which the pious colony 
 was preserved and prospered, till they both 
 grew impatient of modern Montreal, and 
 would fain have had the ancient Villemarie 
 back in its place. 
 
 “ Think of Maisonneuve, dearest, climb- 
 ing in midwinter to the top of the mountain 
 there, under a heavy cross set with the bones 
 of saints, and planting it on the summit, in 
 
THE SENTIMENT OF MONTREAL. 251 
 
 fulfilment of a vow to do so if Villemarie 
 were saved from the freshet ; and then of 
 Madame de la Peltrie romantically receiving 
 the sacrament there, while all Villemarie fell 
 down adoring ! Ah, that was a picturesque 
 people ! When did ever a Boston governor 
 climb to the top of Beacon hill in fulfilment 
 of a vow ? To be sure, we may yet see a 
 New York governor doing something of the 
 kind — if he can find a hill. But this ridi- 
 culous column to Nelson, who never had 
 anything to do with Montreal,” he continued ; 
 “ it really seems to me the perfect expression 
 of snobbish colonial dependence and senti- 
 mentality, seeking always to identify itself 
 with the mother-country, and ignoring the 
 local past and its heroic figures. A column 
 to Nelson in Jacques Cartier Square, on the 
 ground that was trodden by Champlain, and 
 won for its present masters by the death of 
 Wolfe !” 
 
 The boat departed on her trip to Quebec. 
 During supper they were served by French 
 waiters, who, without apparent English of 
 their own, miraculously understood that of 
 the passengers, except in the case of the furi- 
 ous gentleman who wanted English break- 
 fast tea ; to so much English as that their 
 inspiration did not reach, and they forced 
 him to compromise on coffee. It was a 
 
252 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 French boat, owned by a French company, 
 and seemed to be officered by Frenchmen 
 throughout ; certainly, as our tourists in 
 the joy of their good appetites affirmed, 
 the cook was of that culinarily delightful 
 nation. 
 
 The boat was almost as large as those of 
 the Hudson, but it was not so lavishly 
 splendid, though it had everything that 
 could minister to the comfort and self-respect 
 of the passengers. These were of all nations, 
 but chiefly Americans, with some French 
 Canadians. The former gathered on the 
 forward promenade, enjoying what little of 
 the landscape the growing night left visible, 
 and the latter made society after their man- 
 ner in the saloon. They were plain-looking 
 men and women, mostly, and provincial, it 
 was evident, to their inmost hearts ; provin- 
 cial in origin, provincial by inheritance, by 
 all their circumstances, social and political. 
 Their relation with France was not a proud 
 one, but it was not like submersion by the 
 slip-slop of English colonial loyalty ; yet 
 they seem to be troubled by no memories of 
 their hundred years’ dominion of the land 
 that they rescued from the wilderness, and 
 that was wrested from them by war. It is a 
 strange fate for any people thus to have been 
 cut off from the parent-country, and aban- 
 
THE SENTIMENT OF MONTREAL. 253 
 
 doned to whatever destiny their conquerors 
 chose to reserve for them ; and if each of the 
 race wore the sadness and strangeness of 
 that fate in his countenance it would not be 
 wonderful. Perhaps it is wonderful that 
 none of them shows anything of the kind. 
 In their desertion they have multiplied and 
 prospered ; they may have a national grief, 
 but they hide it well ; and probably they 
 have none. 
 
 Later, one of them appeared to Isabel in 
 the person of the pale, slender young ecclesi- 
 astic who had shown her and Basil the pic- 
 tures in the country church. She was con- 
 fessing to the priest, and she was not at all 
 surprised to find that he was Basil in a suit 
 of mediaeval armour. He had an immense 
 cross on his shoulder. 
 
 “ To get this cross to the top of the moun- 
 tain,” thought Isabel, “we must have two 
 horses. Basil,” she added, aloud, “we must 
 have two horses ! ” 
 
 ‘ ‘ Ten, if you like, my dear, ” answered his 
 voice, cheerfully, ‘ 4 though I think we ’d 
 better ride up in the omnibus.” 
 
 She opened her eyes, and saw him smiling. 
 “ We ’re in sight of Quebec, ” he said. ‘ ‘ Come 
 out as soon as you can, — come out into the 
 seventeenth century.” 
 
254 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 V IX. 
 
 QUEBEC. 
 
 I SABEL hurried out upon the forward 
 promenade, where all the other passen- 
 gers seemed to be assembled, and beheld a 
 vast bulk of grey and purple rock, swelling 
 two hundred feet up from the mists of the 
 river, and taking the early morning light 
 warm upon its face and crown. Black - 
 hulked, red-chimneyed Liverpool steamers, 
 gay river- craft and ships of every sail and 
 Hag, filled the stream athwart which the 
 ferries sped their swift traffic-laden shuttles ; 
 a lower town clung to the foot of the rock, 
 and crept, populous and picturesque, up its 
 sides ; from the massive citadel on its crest 
 dew the red banner of Saint George, and 
 along its brow swept the grey wall of the 
 famous, heroic, beautiful city, overtopped 
 by many a gleaming spire and antique roof. 
 
 Slowly out of our work-day, business- 
 suited, modern world the vessel steamed up 
 to this city of an olden time and another 
 
QUEBEC. 
 
 255 
 
 ideal, — to her who was a lady from the first, 
 devout and proud and strong, and who still, 
 after two hundred and fifty years, keeps per- 
 fect the image and memory of the feudal 
 past from which she sprung. Upon her 
 height she sits unique ; and when you say 
 Quebec, having once beheld her, you invoke 
 a sense of mediaeval strangeness and of 
 beauty which the name of no other city 
 could intensify. 
 
 As they drew near the steamboat wharf 
 they saw, swarming over a broad square, a 
 market beside which the Bonsecours Market 
 would have shown as common as the Quincy, 
 and up the odd wooden side-walked street 
 stretched an aisle of carriages and those 
 high swung calashes, which are to Quebec 
 what the gondolas are to Venice. But the 
 hand of destiny was upon our tourists, and 
 they rode up town in an omnibus. They 
 were going to the dear old Hotel Musty in 
 
 Street, wanting which Quebec is not to 
 
 be thought of without a pang. It is now 
 closed, and Prescott Gate, through which 
 they drove into the Upper Town, has been 
 demolished since the summer of last year. 
 Swiftly whirled along the steep winding 
 road, by those Quebec horses which expect 
 to gallop up hill whatever they do going 
 
256 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 down, they turned a corner of the towering 
 weed -grown rock, and shot in under the low' 
 arch of the gate, pierced with smaller door- 
 ways for the foot-passengers. The gloomy 
 masonry dripped with damp, the doors w'ere 
 thickly studded with heavy iron spikes ; old 
 cannon, thrust endwise into the ground at the 
 sides of the gate, protected it against passing- 
 wheels. Why did not some semi-forbidding 
 commissary of police, struggling hard to 
 overcome his native politeness, appear and 
 demand their passports ? The illusion w'as 
 otherwise perfect, and it needed but this 
 touch. How often in the adored Old World, 
 which we so love and disapprove, had they 
 driven in through such gates at that morn- 
 ing hour ! On what perverse pretext, then, 
 was it not some ancient town of Normandy ? 
 
 e( Put a few enterprising Americans in 
 here, and they ’d soon rattle this old wall 
 down and let in a little fresh air !” said a 
 patriotic voice at Isabel’s elbow, and con- 
 tinued to find fault with the narrow, irregu- 
 lar streets, the huddling gables, the quaint 
 roofs, through which and under which they 
 drove on to the hotel. 
 
 As they dashed into a broad open square, 
 ‘ c Here is the French Cathedral ; there is 
 the Upper Tow n Market ; yonder are the 
 
QUEBEC. 
 
 257 
 
 Jesuit Barracks ! ” cried Basil ; and they 
 had a passing glimpse of grey stone towers 
 at one side of the square, and a low, massive 
 yellow building at the other, and, between 
 the two, long ranks of carts, and fruit and 
 vegetable stands, protected by canvas awn- 
 ings and broad umbrellas. Then they dashed 
 round the corner of a street, and drew up 
 before the hotel door. The low ceilings, 
 the thick walls, the clumsy wood-work, the 
 wandering corridors, gave the hotel all the 
 desired character of age, and its slovenly 
 state bestowed an additional charm. In 
 another place they might have demanded 
 neatness, but in Quebec they would almost 
 have resented it. By a chance they had the 
 best room in the house, but they held it only 
 till certain people who had engaged it by 
 telegraph should arrive in the hourly ex- 
 pected steamer from Liverpool ; and more- 
 over, the best room at Hotel Musty was 
 consolingly bad. The house was very full, 
 and the Ellisons (who had come on with 
 them from Montreal) were bestowed in less 
 state only on like conditions. 
 
 The travellers all met at breakfast, which 
 was admirably cooked, and well served, 
 with the attendance of those swarms of flies 
 which infest Quebec, and especially infested 
 R 
 
258 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 the old Musty House, in summer. It had, 
 of course, the attraction of broiled salmon, 
 upon which the traveller breakfasts every 
 day as long as he remains in Lower Canada ; 
 and it represented the abundance of wild 
 berries in the Quebec market ; and it was 
 otherwise a breakfast worthy of the appe- 
 tites that honoured it. 
 
 There were not many other Americans be- 
 sides themselves at this hotel, which seemed, 
 indeed, to be kept open to oblige such tra- 
 vellers as had been there before, and could 
 not persuade themselves to try the new 
 Hotel St. Louis, whither the vastly greater 
 number resorted. Most of the faces our 
 tourists saw were English or English-Cana- 
 dian, and the young people from Omaha, 
 who had got here by some chance, were 
 scarcely in harmony with the place. They 
 appeared to be a bridal party, but which of 
 the two sisters, in buff linen clad from head 
 to foot, was the bride, never became known. 
 Both were equally free with the husband, 
 and he was impartially fond of both : it was 
 quite a family affair. 
 
 For a moment Isabel harboured the desire 
 to see the city in company with Miss Elli- 
 son ; but it was only a passing weakness. 
 She remembered directly the coolness be- 
 
QUEBEC. 
 
 259 
 
 tween friends which she had seen caused by- 
 objects of interest in Europe, and she wisely 
 deferred a more intimate acquaintance till 
 it could have a purely social basis. After 
 all, nothing is so tiresome as continual 
 exchange of sympathy, or so apt to end in 
 mutual dislike, — except gratitude. So the 
 ladies parted friends till dinner, and drove 
 off in separate carriages. 
 
 As in other show cities, there is a routine 
 at Quebec for travellers who come on Satur- 
 day and go on Monday, and few depart from 
 it. Our friends necessarily, therefore, drove 
 first to the citadel. It was raining one of 
 those cold rains by which the scarce -banished 
 winter reminds the Canadian fields of his 
 nearness even in midsummer, though be- 
 tween the bitter showers the air was sultry 
 and close ; and it was just the light in which 
 to see the grim strength of the fortress next 
 strongest to Gibraltar in the world. They 
 passed a heavy iron gateway, and up through 
 a winding lane of masonry to the gate of the 
 citadel, where they were delivered into the 
 care of Private Joseph Drakes, who was to 
 show them such parts of the place as are 
 open to curiosity. But, a citadel which has 
 never stood a siege, or been threatened by 
 any danger more serious than Fenianism, 
 
260 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 soon becomes, however strong, but a dull 
 piece of masonry to the civilian ; and our 
 tourists more rejoiced in the crumbling frag- 
 ment of the old French wall which the English 
 destroyed than in all they had built ; and 
 they valued the latter work chiefly for the 
 glorious prospects of the St. Lawrence and 
 its mighty valleys which it commanded. 
 Advanced into the centre of an amphitheatre 
 inconceivably vast, that -enormous beak of 
 rock overlooks the narrow angle of the river, 
 and then, in every direction, immeasurable 
 stretches of gardened vale, and wooded up- 
 land, till all melts into the purple of the 
 encircling mountains. Far and near are 
 lovely white villages nestling under elms, in 
 the heart of fields and meadows ; and every- 
 where the long, narrow, accurately divided 
 farms stretch downward to the river-shores. 
 The best roads on the continent make this 
 beauty and richness accessible ; each little 
 village boasts some natural wonder in stream, 
 or lake, or cataract : and this landscape, mag- 
 nificent beyond any in eastern America, is 
 historical and interesting beyond all others. 
 Hither came Jacques Cartier three hundred 
 and fifty years ago, and wintered on the low 
 point there by the St. Charles ; here, nearly 
 a century after, but still fourteen years before 
 
QUEBEC. 
 
 261 
 
 the landing at Plymouth, Champlain founded 
 the missionary city of Quebec ; round this 
 rocky beak came sailing the half -piratical 
 armament of the Calvinist Kirks in 1629, 
 and seized Quebec in the interest of the Eng- 
 lish, holding it three years ; in the Lower 
 Town, yonder, first landed the coldly wel- 
 comed Jesuits, who came with the returning 
 French, and made Quebec for ever eloquent 
 of their zeal, their guile, their heroism ; 
 at the foot of this rock lay the fleet of Sir 
 William Phipps, governor of Massachusetts, 
 and vainly assailed it in 1698 ; in 1759 came 
 Wolfe, and embattled all the region, on river 
 and land, till at last the bravely defended 
 city fell into his dying hand on the Plains of 
 Abraham ; here Montgomery laid down his 
 life at the head of the boldest and most 
 hopeless effort of our War of Independence. 
 
 Private Joseph Drakes, with the generosity 
 of an enemy expecting drink-money, pointed 
 out the sign-board on the face of the crag 
 commemorating Montgomery’s death ; and 
 then showed them the officers’ quarters and 
 those of the common soldiers, not far from 
 which was a line of hang-dog fellows drawn 
 up to receive sentence for divers small mis- 
 demeanours, from an officer whose blonde 
 whiskers drooped Dundrearily from his fresh 
 
262 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 English cheeks. There was that immense 
 difference between him and the men in 
 physical grandeur and beauty, which is so 
 notable in the aristocratically ordered mili- 
 tary services of Europe, and which makes 
 the rank seem of another race from the file. 
 Private Drakes saluted his superior, and 
 visibly deteriorated in his presence, though 
 his breast was covered with medals, and he 
 had fought England’s battles in every part 
 of the world. It was a gross injustice, the 
 triumph of a thousand years of wrong ; and 
 it was touching to have Private Drakes say 
 that he expected in three months to begin 
 life for himself, after twenty years’ service 
 of the Queen ; and did they think he could 
 get anything to do in the States ? He 
 scarcely knew what he was fit for, but he 
 thought — to so little in him came the vic- 
 tories he had helped to win in the Crimea, 
 in China, and in India — that he could take 
 care of a gentleman’s horse and work about 
 his place. He looked inquiringly at Basil, 
 as if he might be a gentleman with a horse 
 to be taken care of and a place to be worked 
 about, and made him regret that he was not 
 a man of substance enough to provide for 
 Private Drakes and Mrs. Drakes and the 
 brood of Ducklings, who had been shown to 
 
QUEBEC. 
 
 263 
 
 him stowed away in one of those cavernous 
 rooms in the earthworks where the married 
 soldiers have their quarters. His regret en- 
 riched the reward of Private Drakes’ service, 
 — which perhaps answered one of Private 
 Drakes’ purposes, if not his chief aim. He 
 promised to come to the States upon the 
 pressing advice of Isabel, who, speaking 
 from her own large experience, declared 
 that everybody got on there ; and he bade 
 our friends an affectionate farewell as they 
 drove away to the Plains of Abraham. 
 
 The fashionable suburban cottages and 
 places of Quebec are on the St. Louis Road 
 leading northward to the old battle-ground 
 and beyond it ; but these face chiefly to- 
 wards the rivers St. Lawrence and St. Charles, 
 and lofty hedges and shrubbery hide them in 
 an English seclusion from the highway ; so 
 that the visitor may uninterruptedly medi- 
 tate whatever emotion he will for the scene 
 of Wolfe’s death as he rides along. His lof- 
 tiest emotion will want the noble height of 
 that heroic soul, who must always stand 
 forth in history a figure of beautiful and 
 singular distinction, admirable alike for the 
 sensibility and daring, the poetic pensiveness, 
 and the martial ardour that mingled in him 
 and taxed his feeble frame with tasks greater 
 
26 4 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 than it could hear. The whole story of the 
 capture of Quebec is full of romantic splendour 
 and pathos. Her fall was a triumph for all 
 the English-speaking race, and to us Ameri- 
 cans, long scourged by the cruel Indian wars 
 plotted within her walls or sustained by her 
 strength, such a blessing as was hailed with 
 ringing bells and blazing bonfires throughout 
 the Colonies ; yet now we cannot think with- 
 out pity of the hopes extinguished and the 
 labours brought to naught in her overthrow. 
 That strange colony of priests and soldiers, 
 of martyrs and heroes, of which she was the 
 capital, willing to perish for an allegiance 
 to which the mother-country was indifferent, 
 and fighting against the armies with which 
 England was prepared to outnumber the 
 whole Canadian population, is a magnificent 
 spectacle ; and Montcalm laying down his 
 life to lose Quebec is not less affecting than 
 Wolfe dying to win her. The heart opens 
 towards the soldier who recited, on the eve 
 of his costly victory, the “ Elegy in a Country 
 Churchyard,” which he "would “ rather have 
 written than beat the French to-morrow ; ” 
 but it aches for the defeated general, who, 
 hurt to death, answered, when told how brief 
 his time was, “ So much the better ; then I 
 shall not live to see the surrender of Quebec.” 
 
QUEBEC. 
 
 265 
 
 In the city for which they perished their 
 fame has never been divided. The English 
 have shown themselves very generous victors ; 
 perhaps nothing could be alleged against 
 them, but that they were victors. A shaft 
 common to Wolfe and Montcalm celebrates 
 them both in the Governor’s Garden ; and 
 in the Chapel of the Ursuline Convent a 
 tablet is placed, where Montcalm died, by 
 the same conquerors who raised to Wolfe’s 
 memory the column on the battle-field. 
 
 A dismal prison covers the ground where 
 the hero fell, and the monument stands on 
 the spot where Wolfe breathed his last, on 
 ground lower than the rest of the field ; the 
 friendly hollow that sheltered him from the 
 fire of the French dwarfs his monument ; 
 yet it is sufficient, and the simple inscription, 
 “Here died Wolfe victorious,” gives it a 
 dignity which many cubits of added stature 
 could not bestow. Another of those bitter 
 showers, which had interspersed the morn- 
 ing’s sunshine, drove suddenly across the 
 open plain, and our tourists comfortably 
 sentimentalised the scene behind the close- 
 drawn curtains of their carriage. Here a 
 whole empire had been lost and won, Basil 
 reminded Isabel ; and she said, ‘ ‘ Only think 
 of it ! ” and looked to a wandering fold of 
 
266 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 her skirt, upon which the rain beat through 
 a rent of the curtain. 
 
 Do I pitch the pipe too low? We poor 
 honest men are at a sad disadvantage ; and 
 now and then I am minded to give a loose to 
 fancy, and attribute something really grand 
 and fine to my people, in order to make them 
 worthier the reader’s respected acquaintance. 
 But again, I forbid myself in a higher inte- 
 rest ; and I am afraid that even if I were less 
 virtuous, I could not exalt their mood upon 
 a battle-field ; for of all things of the past a 
 battle is the least conceivable. I have heard 
 men who fought in many battles say that 
 the recollection was like a dream to them ; 
 and what can the merely civilian imagination 
 do on the Plains of Abraham, with the fact 
 that there, more than a century ago, certain 
 thousands of Frenchmen marched out, on a 
 bright September morning, to kill and maim 
 as many Englishmen ? This ground, so green 
 and soft with grass beneath the feet, was it 
 once torn with shot and soaked with the 
 blood of men ? Did they lie here in ranks and 
 heaps, the miserable slain, for whom tender 
 hearts away yonder over the sea were to ache 
 and break ? Did the wretches that fell 
 wounded stretch themselves here, and writhe 
 beneath the feet of friend and foe, or crawl 
 
QUEBEC. 
 
 267 
 
 away for shelter into little hollows, and behind 
 bushes and fallen trees ? Did he, whose soul 
 was so full of noble and sublime impulses, die 
 here, shot through like some ravening beast ? 
 The loathsome carnage, the shrieks, the 
 hellish din of arms, the cries of victory, — I 
 vainly strive to conjure up some image of it all 
 now ; and God be thanked, horrible spectre ! 
 that, fill the world with sorrow as thou wilt, 
 thou still remainest incredible in its moments 
 of sanity and peace. Least credible art thou 
 on the old battle-fields, where the mother of 
 the race denies thee with breeze and sun and 
 leaf and bird, and every blade of grass ! The 
 red stain in Basil’s thought yielded to the 
 rain sweeping across the pasture -land from 
 which it had long since faded, and the words 
 on the monument, “ Here died Wolfe vic- 
 torious,” did not proclaim his bloody triumph 
 over the French, but his self-conquest, his 
 victory over fear and pain and love of life. 
 Alas ! when shall the poor, blind, stupid 
 world honour those who renounce self in the 
 joy of their kind, equally with those who de- 
 vote themselves through the anguish and 
 loss of thousands ? So old a world, and 
 groping still ! 
 
 The tourists were better fitted for the 
 next occasion of sentiment, which was at 
 
268 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 the Hotel Dieu, whither they went after 
 returning from the battle-field. It took all 
 the mal-address of which travellers are mas- 
 ters to secure admittance, and it was not 
 till they had rung various wrong bells, and 
 misunderstood many soft nun-voices speak- 
 ing French through grated doors, and set 
 divers sympathetic spectators doing ineffec- 
 tual services, that they at last found the 
 proper entrance, and were answered in Eng- 
 lish that the porter would ask if they might 
 see the chapel. They hoped to find there 
 the skull of Brebeuf, one of those Jesuit 
 martyrs who perished long ago for the con- 
 version of a race that has perished, and 
 whose relics they had come, fresh from their 
 reading of Parkman, with some vague and 
 patronising intention to revere. An elderly 
 sister with a pale, kind face led them through 
 a ward of the hospital into the chapel, which 
 they found in the expected taste, and ex- 
 quisitely neat and cool, but lacking the 
 martyr’s skull. They asked if it were not 
 to be seen. “ Ah, yes, poor P&re Brebeuf ! ” 
 sighed the gentle sister, with the tone and 
 manner of having lost him yesterday ; “ we 
 had it down only last week, showing it to 
 some Jesuit fathers ; but it ’s in the convent 
 now, and isn’t to be seen.” And there 
 
QUEBEC. 
 
 269 
 
 mingled apparently in her regret for Pere 
 Brebeuf a confusing sense of his actual state 
 as a portable piece of furniture. She would 
 not let them praise the chapel. It was very 
 clean, yes, but there was nothing to see in 
 it. She deprecated their compliments with 
 many shrugs, but she was pleased ; for when 
 we renounce the pomps and vanities of this 
 world, we are pretty sure to find them in 
 some other, — if we are women. She, good 
 and pure soul, whose whole life was given 
 to self-denying toil, had yet something 
 angelically coquettish in her manner, a 
 spiritual-worldliness which was the clarified 
 likeness of this-worldliness. 0, had they 
 seen the Hotel Dieu at Montreal ? Then 
 (with a vivacious wave of the hands) they 
 would not care to look at this, which by 
 comparison was nothing. Yet she invited 
 them to go through the wards if they would, 
 and was clearly proud to have them see the 
 wonderful cleanness and comfort of the 
 place. There were not many patients, but 
 here and there a wan or fevered face looked 
 at them from its pillow, or a weak form 
 drooped beside a bed, or a group of conva- 
 lescents softly talked together. They came 
 presently to the last hall, at the end of 
 which sat another nun, beside a window 
 
270 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 that gave a view of the busy port, and 
 beyond it the landscape of village-lit plain 
 and forest-darkened height. On a table at 
 her elbow stood a rose-tree, on which hung 
 two only pale tea-roses, so fair, so perfect, 
 that Isabel cried out in wonder and praise. 
 Ere she could prevent it, the nun, to whom 
 there had been some sort of presentation, 
 gathered one of the roses, and with a shy 
 grace offered it to Isabel, who shrank back 
 a little as from too costly a gift. “ Take 
 it,” said the first nun, with her pretty 
 French accent ; while the other, who spoke 
 no English at all, beamed a placid smile ; 
 and Isabel took it. The flower, lying light 
 in her palm, exhaled a delicate odour, and a 
 thrill of exquisite compassion for it trembled 
 through her heart, as if it had been the 
 white, cloistered life of the silent nun ; with 
 its pallid loveliness, it was as a flower that 
 had taken the veil. It could never have 
 uttered the burning passion of a lover for 
 his mistress ; the nightingale could have 
 found no thorn on it to press his aching 
 poet’s heart against ; but sick and weary 
 eyes had dwelt gratefully upon it ; at most 
 it might have expressed, like a prayer, the 
 nun’s stainless love of some favourite saint 
 in paradise. Cold, and pale, and sweet, — 
 
QUEBEC. 
 
 271 
 
 was it indeed only a flower, this cloistered 
 rose of the Hdtel Dieu ? 
 
 “ Breathe it,” said the gentle Grey Sister ; 
 1 c sometimes the air of the hospital offends. 
 Not us, no ; we are used ; but you come 
 from the outside.” And she gave her rose 
 for this humble use as lovingly as she de- 
 voted herself to her lowly cares. 
 
 “ It is very little to see,” she said at the 
 end ; * ‘ but if you are pleased, I am very 
 glad. Good-bye, good-bye ! ” She stood with 
 her arms folded, and watched them out of 
 sight with her kind, coquettish little smile, 
 and then the mute, blank life of the nun 
 resumed her. 
 
 From H6tel Dieu to Hotel Musty it was 
 but a step ; both were in the same street ; 
 but our friends fancied themselves to have 
 come an immense distance when they sat 
 down at an early dinner, amidst the clash 
 of crockery and cutlery, and looked round 
 upon all the profane travelling world as- 
 sembled. Their regard presently fixed upon 
 one company which monopolised a whole 
 table, and were defined from the other diners 
 by peculiarities as marked as those of the 
 Soeurs Grises themselves. There were only 
 two men among some eight or ten women ; 
 one of the former had a bad amiable face, 
 
272 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 with eyes full of a merry deviltry ; the other, 
 clean-shaven, and dark, was demure and 
 silent as a priest. The ladies were of various 
 types, but of one effect, with large rolling 
 eyes, and faces that somehow regarded the 
 beholder as from a distance, and with an im- 
 partial feeling for him as for an element of 
 publicity. One of them, who caressed a lap- 
 dog with one hand while she served herself 
 with the other, was, as she seemed to believe, 
 a blonde ; she had pale blue eyes, and her 
 hair was cut in front so as to cover her fore- 
 head with a straggling sandy-coloured fringe. 
 She had an English look, and three or four 
 others, with dark complexion and black, un- 
 steady eyes, and various abandon of back- 
 hair, looked like Cockney houris of Jewish 
 blood ; while two of the lovely company 
 were clearly of our own nation, as was the 
 young man with the reckless laughing face. 
 The ladies were dressed and jewelled with a 
 kind of broad effectiveness, which was to the 
 ordinary style of society what scene-painting 
 is to painting, and might have borne close 
 inspection no better. They seemed the best- 
 humoured people in the world, and on the 
 kindliest terms with each other. The waiters 
 shared their pleasant mood, and served them 
 affectionately, and were now and then invited 
 
QUEBEC. 
 
 273 
 
 to join in the gay talk which babbled on over 
 dislocated aspirates, and filled the air with 
 a sentiment of vagabond enjoyment, of the 
 romantic freedom of violated convention, of 
 something Gil Bias -like, almost picaresque. 
 
 If they had needed explanation it would 
 have been given by the announcement in the 
 office of the hotel that a troupe of British 
 blondes was then appearing in Quebec for 
 one week only. 
 
 After dinner they took possession of the 
 parlour, and while one strummed fitfully 
 upon the ailing hotel piano, the rest talked, 
 and talked shop, of course, as all of us do 
 when several of a trade are got together. 
 
 “ W’at,” said the eldest of the dark-faced, 
 black-haired British blondes of Jewish race, 
 — “ w’at are we going to give at Montrehal ?” 
 
 “We’re going to give ‘Pygmalion’ at 
 Montrehal,” answered the British blonde 
 of American birth, good-humouredly bur- 
 lesquing the erring li of her sister. 
 
 “ But we cahn’t, you know,” said the lady 
 with the fringed forehead ; “ Hagnes is gone 
 on to New York, and there ’s nobody to do 
 Wenus. ” 
 
 “Yes, you know,” demanded the first 
 speaker, “ oo ’s to do Wenus ?” 
 
 “ Bella ’s to do Wenus,” said a third. 
 
274 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 There was an outcry at this, and “ ’Ow ever 
 would she get herself up for Wenus?” and 
 “ W’at a guy she’ll look !” and “ Nonsense ! 
 Bella’s too ’eavy for Wenus !” came from 
 different lively critics ; and the debate 
 threatened to become too intimate for the 
 public ear, when one of their gentlemen came 
 in and said, “ Charley don’t seem so well 
 this afternoon.” On this the chorus changed 
 its note, and at the proposal, ‘ 4 Poor Charley, 
 let ’s go and cheer ’im hup a bit,” the whole 
 good-tempered company trooped out of the 
 parlour together. 
 
 Our tourists meant to give the rest of the 
 afternoon to that sort of aimless wandering 
 to and fro about the streets which seizes a 
 foreign city unawares, and best develops its 
 charm of strangeness. So they went out and 
 took their fill of Quebec with appetites keen 
 through long fasting from the quaint and 
 old, and only sharpened by Montreal, and 
 impartially rejoiced in the crooked up-and- 
 down hill streets ; the thoroughly French 
 domestic architecture of a place that thus 
 denied having been English for a hundred 
 years ; the porte-cocheres beside every house ; 
 the French names upon the doors, and the 
 oddity of the bell-pulls ; the rough-paved, 
 rattling streets ; the shining roofs of tin, and 
 
QUEBEC. 
 
 275 
 
 the universal dormer-windows ; the littleness 
 of the private houses, and the greatness of 
 the high-walled and garden-girdled convents ; 
 the breadths of weather-stained city wall, 
 and the shaggy cliff beneath ; the batteries, 
 with their guns peacefully staring through 
 loop-holes of masonry, and the red-coated 
 sergeants flirting with nursery-maids upon 
 the carriages, while the children tumbled 
 about over the pyramids of shot and shell ; 
 the sloping market-place before the cathe- 
 dral, where yet some remnant of the morn- 
 ing’s traffic lingered under canvas canopies, 
 and where Isabel bought a bouquet of mari- 
 golds and asters of an old woman peasant 
 enough to have sold it in any market-place 
 of Europe ; the small, dark shops beyond the 
 quarter invaded by English retail trade ; the 
 movement of all the strange figures of cleric 
 and lay and military life ; the sound of a 
 foreign speech prevailing over the English ; 
 the encounter of other tourists, the passage 
 back and forth through the different city 
 gates ; the public wooden stairways, drop- 
 ping flight after flight from the Upper to the 
 Lower Town ; the bustle of the port, with 
 its commerce and shipping and seafaring life 
 huddled close in under the hill ; the many 
 desolate streets of the Lower Town, as black 
 
276 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 and ruinous as the last great fire left them ; 
 and the marshy meadows beyond, memorable 
 of Recollets and Jesuits, of Cartier and 
 Montcalm. 
 
 They went to the chapel of the Seminary 
 at Laval University, and admired the Le 
 Brun, and the other paintings of less merit, 
 but equal interest through their suggestion 
 of a whole dim religious world of paintings ; 
 and then they spent half an hour in the 
 cathedral, not so much in looking at the 
 Crucifixion by Vandyck which is there, as 
 in revelling amid the familiar rococo splen- 
 dours of the temple. Every swaggering 
 statue of a saint, every rope-dancing angel, 
 every cherub of those that on the carven 
 and gilded clouds above the high altar float — • 
 
 “ Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders,” — 
 
 was precious to them ; the sacristan dusting 
 the sacred properties with a feather brush, 
 and giving each shrine a business-like nod 
 as he passed, was as a long-lost brother ; 
 they had hearts of aggressive tenderness for 
 the young girls and old women who stepped 
 in for a half-hour’s devotion, and for the men 
 with bourgeois or peasant faces, who stole a 
 moment from affairs and crops, and gave it 
 to the saints. There was nothing in the place 
 
QUEBEC. 
 
 277 
 
 that need remind them of America, and its 
 taste was exactly that of a thousand other 
 churches of the eighteenth century. They 
 could easily have believed themselves in the 
 furthest Catholic South, but for the two great 
 porcelain stoves that stood on either side of 
 the nave near the entrance, and that too 
 vividly reminded them of the possibility of 
 cold. 
 
 In fact, Quebec is a little painful in this 
 and other confusions of the South and North, 
 and one never quite reconciles himself to 
 them. The Frenchmen, who expected to 
 find there the climate of their native land, 
 and ripen her wines in as kindly a sun, have 
 perpetuated the image of home in so many 
 things, that it goes to the heart with a pain- 
 ful emotion to find the sad, oblique light of 
 the North upon them. As you ponder some 
 characteristic aspect of Quebec, — a bit of 
 street with heavy stone houses, opening upon 
 a stretch of the city wall, with a Lombardy 
 poplar rising slim against it, — you say, to 
 your satisfied soul, “ Yes, it is the real 
 thing ! ” and then all at once a sense of that 
 Northern sky strikes in upon you, and makes 
 the reality a mere picture. The sky is blue, 
 the sun is often fiercely hot ; you could not 
 perhaps prove that the pathetic radiance is 
 
278 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 not an efflux of your own consciousness that 
 summer is but hanging over the land, briefly 
 poising on wings which flit at the first dash 
 of rain, and will soon vanish in long retreat 
 before the snow. But somehow, from with- 
 out or from within, that light of the North 
 is there. 
 
 It lay saddest, our travellers thought, 
 upon the little circular garden near Dur- 
 ham Terrace, where every brightness of fall 
 flowers abounded, — marigold, coxcomb, snap- 
 dragon, dahlia, hollyhock, and sunflower. It 
 was a substantial and hardy efflorescence, 
 and they fancied that fainter-hearted plants 
 would have pined away in that garden, where 
 the little fountain, leaping up into the joyless 
 light, fell back again with a musical shiver. 
 The consciousness of this latent cold, of winter 
 only held in abeyance by the bright sun, was 
 not deeper even in the once magnificent, now 
 neglected Governor’s Garden, where there 
 was actually a rawness in the late afternoon 
 air, and whither they were strolling for the 
 view from its height, and to pay their duty 
 to the obelisk raised there to the common 
 fame of Wolfe and Montcalm. The sound- 
 ing Latin inscription celebrates the royal 
 governor-general who erected it almost as 
 much as the heroes to whom it was raised ; 
 
QUEBEC. 
 
 279 
 
 but these spectators did not begrudge the 
 space given to his praise, for so fine a thought 
 merited praise. It enforced again the idea 
 of a kind of posthumous friendship between 
 Wolfe and Montcalm, which gives their mem- 
 ory its rare distinction, and unites them, who 
 fell in fight against each other, as closely as 
 if they had both died for the same cause. 
 
 Some lasting dignity seems to linger about 
 the city that has once been a capital ; and 
 this odour of fallen nobility belongs to 
 Quebec, which was a capital in the Euro- 
 pean sense, with all the advantages of a 
 small vice-regal court, and its social and 
 political intrigues, in the French times. 
 Under the English, for a hundred years it 
 was the centre of Colonial civilisation and 
 refinement, with a governor-general’s resi- 
 dence and a brilliant, easy, and delightful 
 society, to which the large garrison of former 
 days gave gaiety and romance. The honours 
 of a capital, first shared with Montreal and 
 Toronto, now rest with half -savage Ottawa ; 
 and the garrison has dwindled to a regiment 
 of rifles, whose presence would hardly be 
 known, but for the natty sergeants lounging, 
 stick in hand, about the streets and courting 
 the nurse -maids. But in the days of old 
 there were scenes of carnival pleasure in the 
 
280 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 Governor’s Garden, and there the garrison 
 hand still plays once a week, when it is filled 
 by the fashion and beauty of Quebec, and 
 some semblance of the past is recalled. It 
 is otherwise a lonesome, indifferently tended 
 place, and on this afternoon there was no 
 one there but a few loafing young fellows of 
 low degree, French and English, and children 
 that played screaming from seat to seat and 
 path to path and over the too-heavily shaded 
 grass. In spite of a conspicuous warning 
 that any dog entering the garden would be 
 destroyed, the place was thronged with dogs 
 unmolested and apparently in no danger of 
 the threatened doom. The seal of a disagree- 
 able desolation was given in the legend rudely 
 carved upon one of the benches, “ Success to 
 the Irish Republic !” 
 
 The morning of the next day our tourists 
 gave to hearing mass at the French cathedral, 
 which was not different, to their heretical 
 senses, from any other mass, except that the 
 ceremony was performed with a very full 
 clerical force, and was attended by an uncom- 
 monly devout congregation. With Europe 
 constantly in their minds, they were bewil- 
 dered to find the worshippers not chiefly old 
 and young women, but men also of all ages 
 and of every degree, from the neat peasant 
 
QUEBEC. 
 
 281 
 
 in his Sabbath-day best to the modish young 
 Quebecker, who spread his handkerchief on 
 the floor to save his pantaloons during suppli- 
 cation. There was fashion and education in 
 large degree among the men, and there was 
 in all a pious attention to the function in 
 poetical keeping with the origin and history 
 of a city which the zeal of the Church had 
 founded. 
 
 A magnificent beadle, clothed in a gold- 
 laced coat and bearing a silver staff, bowed 
 to them when they entered, and, leading 
 them to a pew, punched up a kneeling peas- 
 ant, who mutely resumed his prayers in the 
 aisle outside, while they took his place. It 
 appeared to Isabel very unjust that their 
 curiosity should displace his religion ; but 
 she consoled herself by making Basil give a 
 shilling to the man who, preceded by the 
 shining beadle, came round to take up a 
 collection. The peasant could have given 
 nothing but copper, and she felt that this 
 restored the lost balance of righteousness in 
 their favour. There was a sermon, very 
 sweetly and gracefully delivered by a young 
 priest of singular beauty, even among clergy 
 whose good looks are so notable as those of 
 Quebec ; and then they followed the orderly 
 crowd of worshippers out, and left the 
 
282 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 cathedral to the sacristan and the odour 
 of incense. 
 
 They thought the type of French-Canadian 
 better here than at Montreal, and they par- 
 ticularly noticed the greater number of pretty 
 young girls. All classes were well dressed ; 
 for though the best dressed could not be 
 called stylish according to the American 
 standard, as Isabel decided, and had only a 
 provincial gentility, the poorest wore gar- 
 ments that were clean and whole. Every- 
 body, too, was going to have a hot Sunday 
 dinner, if there was any truth in the odours 
 that steamed out of every door and window ; 
 and this dinner was to be abundantly gar- 
 nished with onions, for the dullest nose could 
 not err concerning that savour. 
 
 Numbers of tourists, of a nationality that 
 showed itself superior to every distinction 
 of race, were strolling vaguely, and not 
 always quite happily about ; but they made 
 no impression on the proper local character, 
 and the air throughout the morning was full 
 of the sentiment of Sunday in a Catholic 
 city. There was the apparently meaning- 
 less jangling of bells, with profound hushes 
 between, and then more jubilant jangling, 
 and then deeper silence ; there was the de- 
 vout trooping of the crowds to the churches ; 
 
QUEBEC. 
 
 283 
 
 and there was the beginning of the long 
 afternoon’s lounging and amusement with 
 which the people of that faith reward their 
 morning’s devotion. Little stands for the 
 sale of knotty apples and choke-cherries and 
 cakes and cider sprang magically into exist- 
 ence after service, and people were already 
 eating and drinking at them. The carriage - 
 drivers resumed their chase of the tourists, 
 and the unvoiceful stir of the new week had 
 begun again. Quebec, in fact, is but a pan- 
 tomimic reproduction of France ; it is as if 
 two centuries in a new land, amidst the 
 primeval silences of nature and the long 
 hush of the Northern winters, had stilled the 
 tongues of the lively folk and made them 
 taciturn as we of a graver race. They have 
 kept the ancestral vivacity of manner ; the 
 elegance of the shrug is intact ; the talking 
 hands take part in dialogue ; the agitated 
 person will have its share of expression. 
 But the loud and eager tone is wanting, and 
 their dumb show mystifies the beholder 
 almost as much as the Southern architecture 
 under the slanting Northern sun. It is not 
 America ; if it is not France, what is it ? 
 
 Of the many beautiful things to see in 
 the neighbourhood of Quebec, our wedding- 
 journey ers were in doubt on which to bestow 
 
284 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 their one precious afternoon. Should it be 
 Lorette, with its cataract and its remnant of 
 bleached and fading Hurons, or the Isle of 
 Orleans with its fertile farms and its primi- 
 tive peasant life, or Montmorenci, with the 
 unrivalled fall and the long drive through the 
 beautiful village of Beauport ? Isabel chose 
 the last, because Basil had been there before, 
 and it had tc* it the poetry of the wasted 
 years in which she did not know him. She 
 had possessed herself of the journal of his 
 early travels, among the other portions and 
 parcels recoverable from the dreadful past, 
 and from time to time on this journey she 
 had read him passages out of it, with mingled 
 sentiment and irony, and, whether she was 
 mocking or admiring, equally to his confu- 
 sion. Now, as they smoothly bowled away 
 from the city, she made him listen to what he 
 had written of the same excursion long ago. 
 
 It was, to be sure, a sad farrago of senti- 
 ment about the village and the rural sights, 
 and especially a girl tossing hay in the field. 
 Yet it had touches of nature and reality, 
 and Basil could not utterly despise himself 
 for having written it. “ Yes,” he said, “life 
 was then a thing to be put into pretty 
 periods ; now it ’s something that has risks 
 and averages, and may be insured.” 
 
QUEBEC. 
 
 285 
 
 There was regret, fancied or expressed, in 
 his tone that made her sigh, “ Ah ! if I ’d 
 only had a little more money, you might have 
 devoted yourself to literature ; ” for she was 
 a true Bostonian in her honour of our poor 
 craft. 
 
 4 1 0, you ’re not greatly to blame, ” answered 
 her husband, “and I forgive you the little 
 wrong you ’ve done me. I was quits with 
 the Muse, at any rate, you know, before we 
 were married ; and I ’m very well satisfied 
 to be going back to my applications and 
 policies to-morrow.” 
 
 To-morrow ? The word struck cold upon 
 her. Then their wedding journey would 
 begin to end to-morrow ! So it would, she 
 owned with another sigh ; and yet it seemed 
 impossible. 
 
 “There, ma’am,” said the driver, rising 
 from his seat and facing round, while he 
 pointed with his whip towards Quebec, 
 “ that ’s what we call the Silver City.” 
 
 They looked back with him at the city, 
 whose thousands of tinned roofs, rising one 
 above the other from the water’s edge to the 
 citadel, were all a splendour of argent light 
 in the afternoon sun. It was indeed as if 
 some magic had clothed that huge rock, 
 base and steepy flank and crest, with a silver 
 
286 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 city. They gazed upon the marvel with 
 cries of joy that satisfied the driver’s utmost 
 pride in it, and Isabel said, ‘ ‘ To live there, 
 there in that Silver City, in perpetual sojourn ! 
 To be always going to go on a morrow that 
 never came ! To be for ever within one day 
 of the end of a wedding journey that never 
 ended !” 
 
 From far down the river by which they 
 rode came the sound of a cannon, breaking 
 the Sabbath repose of the air. “ That ’s the 
 gun of the Liverpool steamer, just coming 
 in,” said the driver. 
 
 “0,” cried Isabel, “I’m thankful we ’re 
 only to stay one night more, for now we shall 
 be turned out of our nice room by those 
 people who telegraphed for it !” 
 
 There is a continuous village along the 
 St. Lawrence from Quebec, almost to Mont- 
 morenci ; and they met crowds of villagers 
 coming from the church as they passed 
 through Beauport. But Basil was dismayed 
 at the change that had befallen them. They 
 had their Sunday’s best on, and the women, 
 instead of wearing the peasant costume in 
 which he had first seen them, were now 
 dressed as if out of “ Harper’s Bazaar” of 
 the year before. He anxiously asked the 
 driver if the broad straw hats and the bright 
 
QUEBEC. 
 
 287 
 
 sacks and kirtles were no more. “ 0, you ’d 
 see them on week-days, sir,” was the answer, 
 “ but they ’re not so plenty anytime as they 
 used to be.” He opened his store of facts 
 about the habitans, whom he praised for 
 every virtue, — for thrift, for sobriety, for 
 neatness, for amiability ; and his words 
 ought to have had the greater weight, be- 
 cause he was of the Irish race, between 
 which and the Canadians there is no kind- 
 ness lost. But the looks of the passers-by 
 corroborated him, and as for the little houses, 
 open-doored beside the way, with the plea- 
 sant faces at window and portal, they were 
 miracles of picturesqueness and cleanliness. 
 From each the owner’s slim domain, narrow- 
 ing at every successive division among the 
 abundant generations, runs back to hill or 
 river in well-defined lines, and beside the 
 cottage is a garden of pot-herbs, bordered 
 with a flame of bright autumn flowers ; some- 
 where in decent seclusion grunts the fatten- 
 ing pig, which is to enrich all those peas 
 and onions for the winter’s broth ; there is 
 a cheerfulness of poultry about the barns ; 
 I dare be sworn there is always a small girl 
 driving a flock of decorous ducks down the 
 middle of the street ; and of the priest with 
 a book under his arm, passing a way-side 
 
288 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 shrine, what possible doubt? The houses, 
 which are of one model, are built by the 
 peasants themselves with the stone which 
 their land yields more abundantly than any 
 other crop, and are furnished with galleries 
 and balconies to catch every ray of the fleet- 
 ing summer, and perhaps to remember the 
 long-lost ancestral summers of Normandy. 
 At every moment, in passing through this 
 ideally neat and pretty village, our tourists 
 must think of the lovely poem of which all 
 French Canada seems but a reminiscence and 
 illustration. It was Grand Pr6, not Beau- 
 port ; and they paid an eager homage to 
 the beautiful genius which has touched 
 those simple village aspects with an un- 
 dying charm, and which, whatever the 
 land’s political allegiance, is there perpetual 
 Seigneur. 
 
 The village, stretching along the broad 
 intervale of the St. Lawrence, grows sparser 
 as you draw near the Falls of Montmorenci, 
 and presently you drive past the grove shut- 
 ting from the road the country-house in which 
 the Duke of Kent spent some merry days of 
 his jovial youth, and come in sight of two 
 lofty towers of stone, — monuments and wit- 
 nesses of the tragedy of Montmorenci. 
 
 Once a suspension-bridge, built sorely 
 
QUEBEC. 
 
 289 
 
 against the will of the neighbouring habit - 
 ans , hung from these towers high over the 
 long plunge of the cataract. But one morn- 
 ing of the fatal spring after the first winter’s 
 frost had tried the hold of the cable on the 
 rocks, an old peasant and his wife with their 
 little grandson set out in their cart to pass 
 the bridge. As they drew near the middle 
 the anchoring wires suddenly lost their grip 
 upon the shore, and whirled into the air ; 
 the bridge crashed under the hapless pas- 
 sengers, and they were launched from its 
 height upon the verge of the Fall, and thence 
 plunged, two hundred and fifty feet, into 
 the ruin of the abyss. 
 
 The habitans rebuilt their bridge of wood 
 upon low stone piers, so far up the river from 
 the cataract that whoever fell from it would 
 yet have many a chance for life ; and it would 
 have been perilous to offer to replace the 
 fallen structure, which, in the belief of 
 faithful Christians, clearly belonged to the 
 numerous bridges built by the Devil, in 
 times when the Devil did not call himself 
 a civil engineer. 
 
 The driver, with just unction, recounted 
 the sad tale as he halted his horses on the 
 bridge ; and as his passengers looked down 
 the rock-fretted brown torrent towards the 
 T 
 
290 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 Fall, Isabel seized the occasion to shudder 
 that ever she had set foot on that suspension- 
 bridge below Niagara, and to prove to Basil’s 
 confusion that her doubt of the bridges be- 
 tween the Three Sisters was not a case of 
 nerves, but an instinctive wisdom concerning 
 the unsafety of all bridges of that design. 
 
 From the gate opening into the grounds 
 about the Fall two or three little French boys, 
 whom they had not the heart to forbid, ran 
 noisily before them with cries in their sole 
 English, “This way, sir !” and led toward 
 a weather-beaten summer-house that tottered 
 upon a projecting rock above the verge of the 
 cataract. But our tourists shook their heads, 
 and turned away for a more distant and less 
 dizzy enjoyment of the spectacle, though any 
 commanding point was sufficiently chasmal 
 and precipitous. The lofty bluff was scooped 
 inward from the St. Lawrence in a vast irre- 
 gular semicircle, with cavernous hollows, one 
 within another, sinking far into its sides, and 
 naked from foot to crest, or meagrely wooded 
 here and there with evergreen. From the 
 central brink of these gloomy purple chasms 
 the foamy cataract launched itself, and like 
 a cloud, — 
 
 “Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall did 
 seem.” 
 
QUEBEC. 
 
 291 
 
 I say a cloud, because I find it already said 
 to my hand, as it were, in a pretty verse, 
 and because I must needs liken Montmorenci 
 to something that is soft and light. Yet a 
 cloud does not represent the glinting of the 
 water in its downward swoop ; it is like some 
 broad slope of sun-smitten snow ; but snow 
 is coldly white and opaque, and this has a 
 creamy warmth in its luminous mass ; and 
 so, there hangs the cataract unsaid as before. 
 It is a mystery that anything so grand should 
 be so lovely, that anything so tenderly fair 
 in whatever aspect should yet be so large 
 that one glance fails to comprehend it all. 
 The rugged wildness of the cliffs and hollows 
 about it is softened by its gracious beauty, 
 which half redeems the vulgarity of the 
 timber-merchant’s uses in setting the river 
 at work in his saw-mills and choking its out- 
 let into the St. Lawrence with rafts of lumber 
 and rubbish of slabs and shingles. Nay, 
 rather, it is alone amidst these things, and 
 the eye takes note of them by a separate 
 effort. 
 
 Our tourists sank down upon the turf that 
 crept with its white clover to the edge of 
 the precipice, and gazed dreamily upon the 
 Fall, filling their vision with its exquisite 
 colour and form. Being wiser than I, they 
 
292 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 did not try to utter its loveliness ; they were 
 content to feel it, and the perfection of the 
 afternoon, whose low sun slanting over the 
 landscape gave, under that pale, greenish- 
 blue sky, a pensive sentiment of autumn to 
 the world. The crickets cried amongst the 
 grass ; the hesitating chirp of birds came 
 from the tree overhead ; a shaggy colt left 
 off grazing in the field and stalked up to 
 stare at them ; their little guides, having 
 found that these people had no pleasure in 
 the sight of small boys scuffling on the verge 
 of a precipice, threw themselves also down 
 upon the grass and crooned a long, long 
 ballad in a mournful minor key about some 
 maiden whose name was La Belle Adeline. 
 It was a moment of unmixed enjoyment for 
 every sense, and through all their being they 
 were glad ; wdiich considering, they ceased 
 to be so, with a deep sigh, as one reasoning 
 that he dreams must presently awake. They 
 never could have an emotion without desir- 
 ing to analyse it ; but perhaps their rapture 
 would have ceased as swiftly, even if they 
 had not tried to make it a fact of conscious- 
 ness. 
 
 “ If there were not dinner after such 
 experiences as these,” said Isabel, as they 
 sat at table that evening, “ I don’t know 
 
QUEBEC. 
 
 293 
 
 what would become of one. But dinner 
 unites the idea of pleasure and duty, and 
 brings you gently back to earth. You must 
 eat, don’t you see, and there ’s nothing dis- 
 graceful about what you ’re obliged to do ; 
 and so — it ’s all right. ” 
 
 “ Isabel, Isabel,” cried her husband, “you 
 have a wonderful mind, and its workings 
 always amaze me. But be careful, my dear ; 
 be careful. Don’t work it too hard. The 
 human brain, you know ; delicate organ. ” 
 
 “ Well, you understand what I mean ; 
 and I think it ’s one of the great charms 
 of a husband, that you ’re not forced to ex- 
 press yourself to him. A husband,” con- 
 tinued Isabel, sententiously, poising a bit of 
 meringue between her thumb and finger, — 
 for they had reached that point in the repast, 
 — “a husband is almost as good as another 
 woman !” 
 
 In the parlour they found the Ellisons, 
 and exchanged the history of the day with 
 them. 
 
 “ Certainly,” said Mrs. Ellison, at the end, 
 ‘ ‘ it ’s been a pleasant day enough, but what 
 of the night ? You ’ve been turned out, too, 
 by those people who came on the steamer, 
 and who might as well have stayed on board 
 to-night ; have you got another room ? ” 
 
294 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 44 Not precisely,” said Isabel ; 44 we have 
 a coop in the fifth story, right under the 
 roof.” 
 
 Mrs. Ellison turned energetically upon 
 her husband and cried in tones of reproach, 
 44 Richard, Mrs. March has a room !” 
 
 44 A coop, she said,” retorted that amiable 
 Colonel, 44 and we ’re too good for that. The 
 clerk is keeping us in suspense about a room, 
 because he means to surprise us with some- 
 thing palatial at the end. It ’s his joking 
 way.” 
 
 44 Nonsense ! ” said Mrs. Ellison. 44 Have 
 you seen him since dinner ?” 
 
 4 4 I have made life a burden to him for 
 the last half-hour,” returned the Colonel, 
 with the kindliest smile. 
 
 4 4 0 Richard, ” cried his wife, in despair of 
 his amendment, 4 4 you wouldn’t make life a 
 burden to a mouse !” And having nothing 
 else for it, she laughed, half in sorrow, half 
 in fondness. 
 
 4 4 Well, Fanny,” the Colonel irrelevantly 
 answered, 44 put on your hat and things, and 
 let ’s all go up to Durham Terrace for a pro- 
 menade. I know our friends want to go. 
 It ’s something worth seeing ; and by the 
 time we get back, the clerk will have us a 
 perfectly sumptuous apartment.” 
 
QUEBEC. 
 
 295 
 
 Nothing, I think, more enforces the illu- 
 sion of Southern Europe in Quebec than the 
 Sunclay-night promenading on Durham Ter- 
 race. This is the ample space on the brow 
 of the cliff to the left of the citadel, the 
 noblest and most commanding position in 
 the whole city, which was formerly occupied 
 by the old castle of Saint Louis, where dwelt 
 the brave Count Frontenac and his splendid 
 successors of the French regime. The castle 
 went the way of Quebec by fire some forty 
 years ago, and Lord Durham levelled the site 
 and made it a public promenade. A stately 
 arcade of solid masonry supports it on the 
 brink of the rock, and an iron parapet encloses 
 it ; there are a few seats to lounge upon, and 
 some idle old guns for the children to clamber 
 over and play with. A soft twilight had fol- 
 lowed the day, and there was just enough 
 obscurity to hide from a willing eye the 
 Northern and New World facts of the scene, 
 and to bring into more romantic relief the 
 citadel dark against the mellow evening, and 
 the people gossiping from window to window 
 across the narrow streets of the Lower Town. 
 The Terrace itself was densely thronged, and 
 there was a constant coming and going of 
 the promenaders, who each formally paced 
 back and forth upon the planking for a 
 
296 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 certain time, and then went quietly home, 
 giving place to the new arrivals. They were 
 nearly all French, and they were not gene- 
 rally, it seemed, of the first fashion, but 
 rather of middling condition in life ; the 
 English being represented only by a few 
 young fellows and now and then a red-faced 
 old gentleman with an Indian scarf trailing 
 from his hat. There were some fair Ameri- 
 can costumes and faces in the crowd, but 
 it was essentially Quebeckian. The young 
 girls walking in pairs, or with their lovers, 
 had the true touch of provincial unstylish- 
 ness, the young men the ineffectual excess of 
 the second-rate Latin dandy, their elders the 
 rich inelegance of a bourgeoisie in their best. 
 A few better-figured avocats or notaires (their 
 profession was as unmistakeable as if they 
 had carried their well-polished brass door- 
 plates upon their breasts) walked and gravely 
 talked with each other. The non-American 
 character of the scene was not less vividly 
 marked in the fact that each person dressed 
 according to his own taste and frankly in- 
 dulged private preferences in shapes and 
 colours. One of the promenaders was in 
 white, even to his canvas shoes ; another, 
 with yet bolder individuality, appeared in 
 perfect purple. It had a strange, almost 
 
QUEBEC. 
 
 297 
 
 portentous effect when these two startling 
 figures met as friends and joined each other 
 in the promenade with linked arms ; but the 
 evening was already beginning to darken 
 round them, and presently the purple com- 
 rade was merely a sombre shadow beside 
 the glimmering white. 
 
 The valleys and the heights now vanished ; 
 but the river defined itself by the vari- 
 coloured lights of the ships and steamers that 
 lay, dark, motionless bulks, upon its broad 
 breast ; the lights of Point Levis swarmed 
 upon the other shore ; the Lower Town, 
 two hundred feet below them, stretched an 
 alluring mystery of clustering roofs and 
 lamplit windows and dark and shining 
 streets around the mighty rock, mural- 
 crowned. Suddenly a spectacle peculiarly 
 Northern and characteristic of Quebec re- 
 vealed itself ; a long arch brightened over 
 the northern horizon ; the tremulous flames 
 of the aurora, pallid violet or faintly tinged 
 with crimson, shot upward from it, and 
 played with a weird apparition and evanes- 
 cence to the zenith. While the strangers 
 looked, a gun boomed from the citadel, and 
 the wild sweet notes of the bugle sprang out 
 upon the silence. 
 
 Then they all said, “ How perfectly in 
 
298 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 keeping everything has been ! ” and sauntered 
 back to the hotel. 
 
 The colonel went into the office to give 
 the clerk another turn on the rack, and 
 make him confess to a hidden apartment 
 somewhere, while Isabel left her husband to 
 Mrs. Ellison in the parlour, and invited 
 Miss Kitty to look at her coop in the fifth 
 story. As they approached, light and music 
 and laughter stole out of an open door next 
 hers, and Isabel, distinguishing the voices 
 of the theatrical party, divined that this 
 was the sick-chamber, and that they were 
 again cheering up the afflicted member of 
 the troupe. Some one was heard to say, 
 “Well, ’ow do you feel now, Charley?” 
 and a sound of subdued swearing responded, 
 followed by more laughter, and the twanging 
 of a guitar, and a snatch of song, and a stir 
 of feet and dresses as for departure. 
 
 The two listeners shrank together ; as 
 women they could not enjoy these proofs of 
 the jolly camaraderie existing among the 
 people of the troupe. They trembled as 
 before the merriment of as many light- 
 hearted, careless, good-natured young men ; 
 it was no harm, but it was dismaying ; and, 
 “ Dear ! ” cried Isabel, “ what shall we do ?” 
 
 “ Go back,” said Miss Ellison, boldly, and 
 
QUEBEC. 
 
 299 
 
 back they ran to the parlour, where they 
 found Basil and the Colonel and his wife in 
 earnest conclave. The Colonel, like a shrewd 
 strategist, was making show of a desperation 
 more violent than his wife’s, who was thus 
 naturally forced into the attitude of moder- 
 ating his fury. 
 
 “Well, Fanny, that’s all he can do for 
 us ; and I do think it ’s the most outrageous 
 thing in the world ! It ’s real mean ! ” 
 
 Fanny perceived a bold parody of her own 
 denunciatory manner, but just then she was 
 obliged to answer Isabel’s eager inquiry 
 whether they had got a room yet. “Yes, a 
 room,” she said, “ with two beds. But what 
 are we to do with one room ? That clerk — 
 I don’t know what to call him” — (“Call 
 him a hotel-clerk, my dear ; you can’t say 
 anything worse,” interrupted her husband) 
 — “seems to think the matter perfectly 
 settled. ” 
 
 “You see, Mrs. March, ” added the Colonel, 
 “ he ’s able to bully us in this way because 
 he has the architecture on his side. There 
 isn’t another room in the house.” 
 
 “Let me think a moment,” said Isabel, 
 not thinking an instant. She had taken a 
 fancy to at least two of these people from the 
 first, and in the last hour they had all become 
 
300 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 very well acquainted ; now she said, “I’ll 
 tell you ; there are two beds in our room 
 also ; we ladies will take one room, and you 
 gentlemen the other ! ” 
 
 “ Mrs. March, I bow to the superiority of 
 the Boston mind,” said the Colonel, while 
 his females civilly protested and consented ; 
 “ and I might almost hail you as our pre- 
 server. If ever you come to Milwaukee, — 
 which is the centre of the world, as Boston 
 is, — we — I — shall be happy to have you call 
 at my place of business. — I didn’t commit 
 myself, did I, Fanny ? — I am sometimes 
 hospitable to excess, Mrs. March,” he said, 
 to explain his aside. “ And now, let us re- 
 connoitre. Lead on, madam, and the grati- 
 tude of the houseless stranger will follow 
 you.” 
 
 The whole party explored both rooms, and 
 the ladies decided to keep Isabel’s. The 
 Colonel was despatched to see that the wraps 
 and traps of his party were sent to this num- 
 ber, and Basil went with him. The things 
 came long before the gentlemen returned, 
 but the ladies happily employed the interval 
 in talking over the excitements of the day, 
 and in saying from time to time, “ So very 
 kind of you, Mrs. March,” and “I don’t 
 know what we should have done,” and 
 
QUEBEC. 
 
 301 
 
 “Don’t speak of it, please,” and “ I’m sure 
 it ’s a great pleasure to me. 
 
 In the room adjoining theirs, where the 
 invalid actor lay, and where lately there had 
 been minstrelsy and apparently dancing for 
 his solace, there was now comparative silence. 
 Two women’s voices talked together, and 
 now and then a guitar was touched by a 
 wandering hand. Isabel had just put up her 
 handkerchief to conceal her first yawn, when 
 the gentlemen, odorous of cigars, returned to 
 say good-night. 
 
 “It’s the second door from this, isn’t it, 
 Isabel ? ” asked her husband. 
 
 “Yes, the second door. Good-night.” 
 
 “ Good -night.” 
 
 The two men walked off together ; but in 
 a minute afterwards they had returned and 
 were knocking tremulously at the closed 
 door. 
 
 “0, what has happened?” chorused the 
 ladies in woful tune, seeing a certain wild- 
 ness in the faces that confronted them. 
 
 “We don’t know !” answered the others 
 in as fearful a key, and related how they had 
 found the door of their room ajar, and a 
 bright light streaming into the corridor. 
 They did not stop to ponder this fact, but, 
 with the heedlessness of their sex, pushed 
 
302 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 the door wide open, when they saw seated 
 before the mirror a bewildering figure, with 
 dishevelled locks wandering down the back, 
 and in dishabille expressive of being quite 
 at home there, which turned upon them a 
 pair of pale blue eyes, under a forehead re- 
 markable for the straggling fringe of hair 
 that covered it. They professed to have re- 
 mained transfixed at the sight, and to have 
 noted a like dismay on the visage before the 
 glass, ere they summoned strength to fly. 
 These facts Colonel Ellison gave at the com- 
 mand of his wife, with many protests and 
 insincere delays amidst which the curiosity 
 of his hearers alone prevented them from 
 rending him in pieces. 
 
 “ And what do you suppose it was ?” de- 
 manded his wife, with forced calmness, when 
 he had at last made an end of the story and 
 his abominable hypocrisies. 
 
 “ Well, I think it was a mermaid.” 
 
 “ A mermaid !” said his wife, scornfully. 
 * ‘ How do you know ? ” 
 
 ‘ ‘ It had a comb in its hand, for one thing ; 
 and besides, my dear, I hope I know a mer- 
 maid when I see it. ” 
 
 “Well,” said Mrs. Ellison, ‘ 1 it was no mer- 
 maid, it was a mistake ; and I ’m going to see 
 about it. Will you go with me, Richard ?” 
 
QUEBEC. 
 
 303 
 
 “ No money could induce me ! If it’s a 
 mistake, it isn’t proper for me to go ; if it ’s 
 a mermaid, it ’s dangerous.” 
 
 ‘ * 0 you coward ! ” said the intrepid little 
 woman to a hero of all the fights on Sherman’s 
 march to the sea ; and presently they heard 
 her attack the mysterious enemy with a lady- 
 like courage, claiming the invaded chamber. 
 The foe replied with like civility, saying the 
 clerk had given her that room with the un- 
 derstanding that another lady was to be put 
 there with her, and she had left the door 
 unlocked to admit her. The watchers with 
 the sick man next door appeared and con- 
 firmed this speech ; a feeble voice from the 
 bed-clothes swore to it. 
 
 “Of course,” added the invader, “if I’d 
 known ’ow it really was, I never would ’ave 
 listened to such a thing, never. And there 
 isn’t another ’ole in the ’ouse to lay me ’ead,” 
 she concluded. 
 
 “Then it’s the clerk’s fault,” said Mrs. 
 Ellison, glad to retreat unharmed ; and she 
 made her husband ring for the guilty wretch, 
 a pale, quiet young Frenchman, whom the 
 united party, sallying into the corridor, be- 
 gan to upbraid in one breath, the lady in 
 dishabille vanishing as often as she remem- 
 bered it, and reappearing whenever some 
 
304 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 strong point of argument or denunciation 
 occurred to her. 
 
 The clerk, who was the Benjamin of his 
 wicked tribe, threw himself upon their mercy 
 and confessed everything : the house was so 
 crowded, and he had been so crazed by the 
 demands upon him, that he had understood 
 Colonel Ellison’s application to be for a bed 
 for the young lady in his party, and he had 
 done the very best he could. If the lady 
 there — she vanished again — would give up 
 the room to the two gentlemen, he would 
 find her a place with the housekeeper. To 
 this the lady consented without difficulty, 
 and the rest dispersing, she kissed one of the 
 sick man’s watchers with “ Isn’t it a shame, 
 Bella?” and flitted down the darkness of 
 the corridor. The rooms upon it seemed 
 all, save the two assigned our travellers, to 
 be occupied by ladies of the troupe ; their 
 doors successively opened, and she was heard 
 explaining to each as she passed. The 
 momentary displeasure which she had shown 
 at her banishment was over. She detailed 
 the facts with perfect good -nature, and 
 though the others appeared no more than 
 herself to find any humorous cast in the 
 affair, they received her narration with the 
 same amiability. They uttered their sym- 
 
QUEBEC. 
 
 305 
 
 pathy seriously, and each parted from her 
 with some friendly word. Then all was still. 
 
 “ Richard,” said Mrs. Ellison, when in 
 Isabel’s room the travellers had briefly cele- 
 brated these events, * £ I should think you ’d 
 hate to leave us alone up here.” 
 
 ‘ * I do ; but you can’t think how I hate to 
 go off alone. I wish you ’d come part of the 
 way with us, ladies ; I do indeed. Leave 
 your door unlocked, at any rate.” 
 
 This prayer, uttered at parting outside 
 the room, was answered from within by a 
 sound of turning keys and sliding bolts, and 
 a low thunder as of bureaus and washstands 
 rolled against the door. £ The ladies are 
 fortifying their position,” said the Colonel 
 to Basil, and the two returned to their own 
 chamber. <£ I don’t wish any intrusions,” he 
 said, instantly shutting himself in ; £ £ my 
 nerves are too much shaken now. What an 
 awfully mysterious old place this Quebec is, 
 Mr. March ! I ’ll tell you what : it ’s my 
 opinion that this is an enchanted castle, and 
 if my ribs are not walked over by a muleteer 
 in the course of the night, it ’s all I ask. ” 
 
 In this and other discourse recalling the 
 famous adventure of Don Quixote, the 
 Colonel beguiled the labour of disrobing, 
 and had got as far as his boots, when there 
 u 
 
306 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 came a startling knock at the door. With 
 one boot in his hand and the other on his 
 foot, the Colonel limped forward. “I sup- 
 pose it ’s that clerk has sent to say he ’s made 
 some other mistake,” and he flung wide the 
 door, and then stood motionless before it, 
 humbly staring at a figure on the threshold, 
 — a figure with the fringed forehead and 
 pale blue eyes of her whom they had so 
 lately turned out of that room. 
 
 Shrinking behind the side of the doorway, 
 “Excuse me, gentlemen,” she said, with a 
 dignity that recalled their scattered senses, 
 “but will you ’ave the goodness to look if 
 my beads are on your table ? 0 thanks, 
 
 thanks, thanks !” she continued, showing 
 her face and one hand, as Basil blu shingly 
 advanced with a string of heavy black beads, 
 piously adorned with a large cross. “I’m 
 sure, I ’m greatly obliged to you, gentlemen, 
 and I hask a thousand pardons for troublin’ 
 you,” she concluded in a somewhat severe 
 tone, that left them abashed and culpable ; 
 and vanished as mysteriously as she had 
 appeared. 
 
 “Now, see here,” said the Colonel, with 
 a huge sigh as he closed the door again, and 
 this time locked it, “I should like to know 
 how long this sort of thing is to be kept up ? 
 
QUEBEC. 
 
 307 
 
 Because, if it’s to be regularly repeated 
 during the night, I ’m going to dress again.” 
 Nevertheless, he finished undressing and got 
 into bed, where he remained for some time 
 silent. Basil put out the light. “ 0, I ’m 
 sorry you did that, my dear fellow,” said the 
 Colonel ; “ but never mind, it was an idle 
 curiosity, no doubt. It ’s my belief that in 
 the landlord’s extremity of bed-linen, I ’ve 
 been put to sleep between a pair of table- 
 cloths ; and I thought I ’d like to look. It 
 seems to me that I make out a checkered 
 pattern on top and a flowered or arabesque 
 pattern underneath. I wish they had given 
 me mates. It ’s pretty hard having to sleep 
 between odd table-cloths. I shall complain 
 to the landlord of this in the morning. I ’ve 
 never had to sleep between odd table-cloths 
 at any hotel before.” 
 
 The Colonel’s voice seemed scarcely to have 
 died away upon Basil’s drowsy ear, when sud- 
 denly the sounds of music and laughter from 
 the invalid’s room startled him wide awake. 
 The sick man’s watchers were coquetting 
 with some one who stood in the little court- 
 yard five stories below. A certain breadth 
 of repartee was naturally allowable at that 
 distance ; the lover avowed his passion in 
 ardent terms, and the ladies mocked him 
 
308 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 with the same freedom, now and then totally 
 neglecting him while they sang a snatch of 
 song to the twanging of the guitar, or talked 
 professional gossip, and then returning to 
 him with some tormenting expression of 
 tenderness. 
 
 All this, abstractly speaking, was nothing 
 to Basil ; yet he could recollect few things 
 intended for his pleasure that had given 
 him more satisfaction. He thought, as he 
 glanced out into the moonlight on the high- 
 gabled silvery roofs around and on the gar- 
 dens of the convents and the towers of the 
 quaint city, that the sc^ne wanted nothing 
 of the proper charm of Spanish humour and 
 romance, and he was as grateful to those 
 poor souls as if they had meant him a favour. 
 To us of the hither side of the foot-lights, 
 there is always something fascinating in the 
 life of the strange beings who dwell beyond 
 them, and who are never so unreal as in their 
 own characters. In their shabby bestowal 
 in those mean upper rooms, their tawdry 
 poverty, their merry submission to the errors 
 and caprices of destiny, their mutual kind- 
 liness and careless friendship, these unpro- 
 fitable devotees of the twinkling-footed 
 burlesque seemed to be playing rather than 
 living the life of strolling players ; and their 
 
QUEBEC. 
 
 309 
 
 love-making was the last touch of a comedy 
 that Basil could hardly accept as reality, it 
 was so much more like something seen upon 
 the stage. He would not have detracted 
 anything from the commonness and cheap- 
 ness of the mise en scene, for that, he reflected 
 drowsily and confusedly, helped to give it 
 an air of fact and make it like an episode of 
 fiction. But above all, he was pleased with 
 the natural eventlessness of the whole adven- 
 ture, which was in perfect agreement with 
 his taste ; and just as his reveries began to 
 lose shape in dreams, he was aware of an 
 absurd pride in the fact that all this could 
 have happened to him in our commonplace 
 time and hemisphere. “ Why,” he thought, 
 “ if I were a student in Alcala, what better 
 could I have asked ? ” And as at last his soul 
 swung out from its moorings and lapsed down 
 the broad slowly circling tides out in the 
 sea of sleep, he was conscious of one subtle 
 touch of compassion for those poor strollers, 
 — a pity so delicate and fine and tender 
 that it hardly seemed his own, but rather 
 a sense of the compassion that pities the 
 whole world. 
 
310 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 X. 
 
 HOMEWARD AND HOME. 
 
 T HE travellers all met at breakfast and duly- 
 discussed the adventures of the night ; 
 and for the rest, the forenoon passed rapidly 
 and slowly with Basil and Isabel, as regret 
 to leave Quebec, or the natural impatience of 
 travellers to be off, overcame them. Isabel 
 spent part of it in shopping, for she had found 
 some small sums of money and certain odd 
 corners in her trunks still unappropriated, 
 and the handsome stores on the Hue Fabrique 
 were very tempting. She said she would just 
 go in and look ; and the wise reader imagines 
 the result. As she knelt over her boxes, 
 trying so to distribute her purchases as to 
 make them look as if they were old, — old 
 things of hers, which she had brought all 
 the way round from Boston with her, — a 
 fleeting touch of conscience stayed her hand. 
 
 “ Basil,” she said, “ perhaps we J d better 
 declare some of these things. What’s the 
 
HOMEWARD AND HOME. 
 
 311 
 
 duty on those ?” she asked, pointing to cer- 
 tain articles. 
 
 “ I don’t know. About a hundred per 
 cent, ad valorem .” 
 
 “ C’est a dire — 
 
 “As much as they cost.” 
 
 “ 0 then , dearest,” responded Isabel indig- 
 nantly, “it can’t be wrong to smuggle ! I 
 won’t declare a thread ! ” 
 
 “That’s very well for you, whom they 
 won’t ask. But what if they ask me whether 
 there ’s anything to declare ?” 
 
 Isabel looked at her husband and hesitated. 
 Then she replied in terms that I am proud 
 to record in honour of American womanhood : 
 “You mustn’t fib about it, Basil” (heroi- 
 cally) ; “ I couldn’t respect you if you did” 
 (tenderly) ; “ but” (with decision) “ you must 
 slip out of it some way /” 
 
 The ladies of the Ellison party, to whom 
 she put the case in the parlour, agreed with 
 her perfectly. They also had done a little 
 shopping in Quebec, and they meant to do 
 more at Montreal before they returned to 
 the States. Mrs. Ellison was disposed to 
 look upon Isabel’s compunctions as a kind 
 of treason to the sex, to be forgiven only 
 because so quickly repented. 
 
 The Ellisons were going up the Saguenay 
 
312 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 before coming on to Boston, and urged our 
 friends hard to go with them. “No, that 
 must be for another time,” said Isabel. “ Mr. 
 March has to be home by a certain day ; and 
 we shall just get back in season.” Then she 
 made them promise to spend a day with her 
 in Boston, and the Colonel coming to say 
 that he had a carriage at the door for their 
 excursion to Lorette, the two parties bade 
 good-bye with affection and many explicit 
 hopes of meeting soon again. 
 
 “What do you think of them, dearest?” 
 demanded Isabel, as she sallied out with Basil 
 for a final look at Quebec. 
 
 “ The young lady is the nicest ; and the 
 other is well enough, too. She is a good 
 deal like you, but with the sense of humour 
 left out. You ’ve only enough to save you.” 
 
 “ Well, her husband is jolly enough for 
 both of them. He ’s funnier than you, Basil, 
 and he hasn’t any of your little languid airs 
 and affectations. I don’t know but I’m a 
 bit disappointed in my choice, darling ; but 
 I daresay I shall work out of it. In fact, I 
 don’t know but the Colonel is a little too 
 jolly. . This drolling everything is rather 
 fatiguing.” And having begun, they did 
 not stop till they had taken their friends 
 to pieces. Dismayed, then, they hastily re- 
 
HOMEWARD AND HOME. 
 
 313 
 
 constructed them, and said that they were 
 among the pleasantest people they ever 
 knew, and they were really very sorry to part 
 with them, and they should do everything 
 to make them have a good time in Boston. 
 
 They were sauntering towards Durham 
 Terrace, where they leaned long upon the 
 iron parapet and blest themselves with the 
 beauty of the prospect. A tender haze hung 
 upon the landscape and subdued it till the 
 scene was as a dream before them. As in a 
 dream the river lay, and dream-like the 
 shipping moved or rested on its deep, broad 
 bosom. Far off stretched the happy fields 
 with their dim white villages ; further still 
 the mellow heights melted into the low 
 hovering heaven. The tinned roofs of the 
 Lower Town twinkled in the morning sun ; 
 around them on every hand, on that Monday 
 forenoon when the States were stirring from 
 ocean to ocean in feverish industry, drowsed 
 the grey city within her walls ; from the 
 flag-staff of the citadel hung the red banner 
 of Saint George in sleep. 
 
 Their hearts were strangely and deeply 
 moved. It seemed to them that they looked 
 upon the last stronghold of the Past, and 
 that afar off to the southward they could 
 hear the marching hosts of the invading 
 
314 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 Present ; and as no young and loving soul 
 can relinquish old things without a pang, 
 they sighed a long mute farewell to Quebec. 
 
 Next summer they would come again, 
 yes ; but, ah me ! every one knows what 
 next summer is ! 
 
 Part of the burlesque troupe rode down 
 in the omnibus to the Grand Trunk Ferry 
 with them, and were good-natured to the 
 last, having shaken hands all round with the 
 waiters, chambermaids, and porters of the 
 hotel. The young fellow with the bad 
 amiable face came in a calash, and refused 
 to over-pay the driver with a gay decision 
 that made him Basil’s envy till he saw his 
 tribulation in getting the troupe’s luggage 
 checked. There were forty pieces, and it 
 always remained a mystery, considering the 
 small amount of clothing necessary to those 
 people on the stage, what could have filled 
 their trunks. The young man and the two 
 English blondes of American birth found 
 places in the same car with our tourists, and 
 enlivened the journey with their frolics. 
 When the young man pretended to fall 
 asleep, they wrapped his golden curly head 
 in a shawl, and vexed him with many 
 thumps and thrusts, till he bought a brief 
 
HOMEWARD AND HOME. 
 
 315 
 
 truce with a handful of almonds ; and the 
 ladies having no other way to eat them, one 
 of them saucily snatched off her shoe, and 
 cracked them hammerwise with the heel. 
 It was all so pleasant that it ought to have 
 been all right ; and in their merry world of 
 outlawry perhaps things are not so bad as 
 we like to think them. 
 
 The country into which the train plunges 
 as soon as Quebec is out of sight is very 
 stupidly savage, and our friends had little else 
 to do but to watch the gambols of the players, 
 till they came to the river St. Francis, 
 whose wandering loveliness the road follows 
 through an infinite series of soft and beauti- 
 ful landscapes, and finds everywhere glassing 
 in its smooth current the elms and willows of 
 its gentle shores. At one place, where its calm 
 broke into foamy rapids, there was a huge saw- 
 mill, covering the stream with logs and 
 refuse, and the banks with whole cities of 
 lumber ; which also they accepted as no 
 mean elements of the picturesque. They 
 clung the most tenderly to traces of the 
 peasant life they were leaving. When some 
 French boys came aboard with wild rasp- 
 berries to sell in little birch-bark canoes, 
 they thrilled with pleasure, and bought them, 
 but sighed then, and said, “What thing 
 
316 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 characteristic of the local life will they sell 
 us in Maine when we get there ? A section 
 of pie poetically wrapt in a broad leaf of the 
 squash-vine, or pop-corn in its native tissue- 
 paper, and advertising the new Dollar Store 
 in Portland ? ” They saw the quaintness 
 vanish from the farm-houses ; first the 
 dormer-windows, then the curve of the steep 
 roof, then the steep roof itself. By-and-by 
 they came to a store with a Grecian portico 
 and four square pine pillars. They shud- 
 dered and looked no more. 
 
 The guiltily dreaded examination of bag- 
 gage at Island Pond took place at nine 
 o’clock, without costing them a cent of duty 
 or a pang of conscience. At that charming 
 station the trunks are piled higgledy-piggledy 
 into a room beside the track, where a few 
 inspectors with stifling lamps of smoky 
 kerosene await the passengers. There are 
 no porters to arrange the baggage, and each 
 lady and gentleman digs out his box, and 
 opens it before the lordly inspector, who 
 stirs up its contents with an unpleasant hand 
 and passes it. He makes you feel that you 
 are once more in the land of official insolence, 
 and that, whatever you are collectively, you 
 are nothing personally. Isabel, who had sent 
 her husband upon this business with quaking 
 
HOMEWARD AND HOME. 
 
 317 
 
 meekness of heart, experienced the bold indig- 
 nation of virtue at his account of the way people 
 were made their own baggage-smashers, and 
 would not be amused when he painted the 
 vile terrors of each husband as he tremblingly 
 unlocked his wife’s store of contraband. 
 
 The morning light showed them the broad 
 elmy meadows of western-looking Maine ; 
 and the Grand Trunk brought them, of 
 course, an hour behind time into Portland. 
 All breakfastless they hurried aboard the 
 Boston train on the Eastern Road, and all 
 along that line (which is built to show how' 
 uninteresting the earth can be when she is 
 ennuyee of both sea and land), Basil’s life 
 became a struggle to construct a meal from 
 the fragmentary opportunities of twenty 
 different stations where they stopped five 
 minutes for refreshments. At one place he 
 achieved two cups of shameless chicory, at 
 another three sardines, at a third a dessert 
 of elderly bananas. 
 
 “ Home again, home again, from a foreign shore ! ” 
 
 they softly sang as the successive courses of 
 this feast were disposed of. 
 
 The drouth and heat, which they had 
 briefly escaped during their sojourn in 
 Canada, brooded sovereign upon the tiresome 
 
318 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 landscape. The red granite rocks were as if 
 red-hot ; the banks of the deep cuts were 
 like ash-heaps ; over the fields danced the 
 sultry atmosphere ; they fancied that they 
 almost heard the grasshoppers sing above the 
 rattle of the train. When they reached 
 Boston at last, they were dustier than most 
 of us would like to be a hundred years hence. 
 The whole city was equally dusty ; and they 
 found the trees in the square before their 
 own door grey with dust. The bit of Vir- 
 ginia- creeper planted under the window 
 hung shrivelled upon its trellis. 
 
 But Isabel’s aunt met them with a refresh- 
 ing shower of tears and kisses in the hall, 
 throwing a solid arm about each of them. 
 “ 0 you dears !” the good soul cried, “ you 
 don’t know how anxious I ’ve been about you ; 
 so many accidents happening all the time. 
 I ’ve never read the 4 Evening Transcript’ 
 till the next morning, for fear I should find 
 your names among the killed and wounded.” 
 
 “0 aunty, you’re too good, always!” 
 whimpered Isabel ; and neither of the women 
 took note of Basil, who said, “Yes, it’s 
 probably the only thing that preserved our 
 lives. ” 
 
 The little tinge of discontent, which had 
 coloured their sentiment of return faded now 
 
HOMEWARD AND HOME. 
 
 319 
 
 in the kindly light of home. Their holiday 
 was over, to be sure, but their bliss had but 
 begun ; they had entered upon that long 
 life of holidays which is happy marriage. 
 By the time dinner was ended they were 
 both enthusiastic at having got back, and 
 taking their aunt between them walked up 
 and down the parlour with their arms round 
 her massive waist, and talked out the glad- 
 ness of their souls. 
 
 Then Basil said he really must run down 
 to the office that afternoon, and he issued all 
 aglow upon the street. He was so full of 
 having been long away and of having just 
 returned, that he unconsciously tried to im- 
 part his mood to Boston, and the dusty 
 composure of the street and houses, as he 
 strode along, bewildered him. He longed 
 for some familiar face to welcome him, and 
 in the horse-car into which he stepped he 
 was charmed to see an acquaintance. This 
 was a man for whom ordinarily he cared 
 nothing, and whom he would perhaps rather 
 have gone out upon the platform to avoid 
 than have spoken to ; but now he plunged 
 at him with effusion, and wrung his hand, 
 smiling from ear to ear. 
 
 The other remained coldly unaffected, 
 after a first start of surprise at his cordiality, 
 
320 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 
 and then reviled the dust and heat. “But 
 I ’m going to take a little run down to New- 
 port, to-morrow, for a week,” he said. “ By 
 the way, you look as if you needed a little 
 change. Aren’t you going anywhere this 
 summer ?” 
 
 “So you see, my dear,” observed Basil, 
 when he had recounted the fact to Isabel at 
 tea, “ our travels are incommunicably our 
 own. We had best say nothing about our 
 little jaunt to other people, and they won’t 
 know we ’ve been gone. Even if we tried, we 
 couldn’t make our wedding- journey theirs.” 
 
 She gave him a great kiss of recompence 
 and consolation. “ Who wants it, ” she de- 
 manded, “ to be Their Wedding Journey ?” 
 
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