LETTER No. IX.
Arrival at Saratoga—Season over—Hotel crowded with Deputies for nomination of a State Governor—Mugwump—Arrival at Niagara—The Falls at midnight and by moonlight—No letter from Frank.
Niagara Falls, Sept., 1885.
We left the "Catskills" on a Monday morning for Saratoga; but the glory of Saratoga had departed; the season was all but over; only a few stragglers of the flock of the summer birds of fashion remained, the others had already migrated southward. The shopkeepers were packing up their goods and shutting up their shops, and resident hibernators were preparing their winter quarters; but the great hotel was not empty. On the contrary, we found it difficult to procure a night's lodging there. The house was crowded, but not with youth and beauty; there was no sound of music and of revelry, but there was a great clatter of the tongues of men—strong, healthy, earnest-looking men, who had come from every village in New York State to "vote their ticket." It was the time of convention for nomination of a Governor for the State.
It was pleasant to me to be afforded an opportunity of seeing such an assemblage of true American men in one hall. I presume that every man I saw in that great crowd was the chosen representative of his own village or parish or township or city; and I own I was agreeably surprised to observe that so very many of them bore such a strong family resemblance to the best of my own countrymen of the like class; the chief difference perhaps being one which I regard as favourable to the Americans, for they did not smoke so much as so many Englishmen would have done, and certainly they drank far less. Indeed, I noticed that many of them confined their drinks to iced water, or tea and coffee. There was very little spitting, and I am pretty sure there was no chewing. Their cheeks were bronzed and healthy, and they had the appearance of intelligent men, quite in earnest respecting the business they had come to do.
I fancy that the men assembled in this hotel were all bent on voting the Republican ticket, while the Democrats had met in other quarters. Here it was that for the first time I learnt the existence of a third party in the State which rejoices in the title of "Mugwump."
I have not been able to find this word in any American dictionary, but it seems to have become so thoroughly imbedded in the American language that you may be quite sure it will be found with its derivation and application fully described and probably illustrated in that grand new dictionary now being prepared by "The Century Company." My present information, however, only enables me to say that a "mugwump" is a man who has earned that appellation on account of his strict adherence to the dictates of his own conscience; he votes for principle, not for party. A "mugwump" is a man who, if he is a Republican, will vote for a good Democrat rather than for a bad Republican, and probably the converse holds good. Of course I repelled the idea that honesty was so rare amongst American politicians as to have led them to invent a new word to represent such an unusual phenomenon as an honest voter; there is, I am sure, a better reason to be found, and I commend the word to the notice of English politicians; the principle it represents may be valuable if largely applied during our own coming elections.
We took a rapid survey, by a drive round the park and the lake, and then went "aboard" the cars for Niagara.
The Falls of Niagara.
We had a long cold ride through the night, and our hotel being on the Canadian side, we caught our first sight of the Falls under unusual circumstances; in fact, through the windows of a large omnibus occupied by ourselves alone, and driven slowly over the Suspension Bridge at two o'clock in the morning. The harvest moon, just at its full, but a little obscured by passing clouds and mists, was shining on the Falls, and, as the horses tramped slowly over the bridge, suspended several hundred feet above the dread waters, we came upon the scene quite unexpectedly: the sight was a stirring one, I assure you. On the bridge we could see the whole of the Falls at once, looking down upon them from our great height.
THE FALLS, FROM THE SUSPENSION BRIDGE.
The Falls looked at in this way, from a moving carriage suspended in the air, were somewhat dwarfed in height; of course we could get but a glimpse in passing in the night. We expected to have been stunned by the roar of the Falls, but our first surprise was at the awful silence; we could hear nothing but the tramp of the horses and the roll of the wheels as our carriage moved slowly along—all else was silent as the grave. Notwithstanding the moonlight, it was not clear enough to distinguish motion in the Falls above us or in the water far down beneath us. The great semicircular Horseshoe, as we passed along in front of it, looked as though a great white sheet had been thrown over its motionless face, and the foam and stir of the water below was fixed and immovable as in a painted picture.
No motion was to be discerned anywhere, the moonlight was too hazy. I assure you that was a weird and grand picture we saw last night; the Falls beheld dimly, indistinctly, and really through a glass darkly—and so we arrived at the Clifton House Hotel.
The next day arose, like every other we have yet seen on this American Continent, bright and beautiful. We had only one day to see everything, so we took a drive round.
I am not going to attempt a description or to rhapsodize over the Falls of Niagara—great authors have done so over and over again. Charles Dickens has moralized about them; Anthony Trollope has described them; William Black has painted their portraits in bright words—why should I attempt to describe them? To me these great waters seem to say, "Men may come and stare at us, and men may go, but we flow on irresistibly and for ever. We care nought for your staring, your admiration, your poetic fancies about us. We are matter-of-fact; stare as much as you please, but come not within our grip. Build your airy roads above us, span us over if you will, but know that death and destruction await him who dares to come within the proscribed limit of our rapids above or our whirlpools below. You may sail on our placid waters up yonder, your 'Maid of the Mist' may approach the outer circle of our Falls below, but come not within that circle, or we shall have you in a grip from which no power on earth shall save you." The scene, the picture, is indelibly impressed on my memory, and there it must remain. I will not spoil that picture by daring to paint it in feeble words.
We did what is usual in our limited time. We drove down to the Whirlpool, we crossed the suspension bridge, we wandered through Goat Island, we descended beneath the Horseshoe Falls to the utmost point allowed by the guide. We had our portraits taken in the subaquatic costume, but so hideously did they come out that we promptly suppressed them.
The people who live at the Falls are quite aware of it. Every individual regards them as his own property; even in the coldest weather dollars melt there like snow in summer's heat; so we were glad to get away from Niagara and its army of vampires.
Here at Niagara I fully expected letters from Frank. I have now been fourteen days in America, and he knows it, and yet not a line of welcome to these shores has he sent me. To-morrow we turn our faces to the West; surely at Chicago, which is 536 miles from hence, I shall get some news of him.
