CHAPTER III.
One o’clock at night, and this is Niagara. It might as well be Boston Frog Pond, for all the enthusiasm has been shook, and jolted, and stunned, and frightened out of us getting to it. And now here it is one o’clock at night. I suppose not a bit of supper is to be had for poor Nelly and me, although we have eaten nothing since we had that scrambling twelve o’clock dinner. What a big hotel! bless us—there is a supper though all ready; for they are used to little accidents, called collisions, this way, and feed the survivors with as much alacrity as they bury the dead; to be sure there is a supper—chicken—oh, Nelly! chicken and hot tea. Sorry figures we cut by the light of the bright gas chandeliers, with our jammed bonnets and torn riding-dresses, but who cares? I am sure black John don’t; he is just as civil as if we were as presentable as a Broadway belle; certainly he is used to it; he is used to seeing ladies emerge from begrimed caterpillar riding-habits into all sorts of gay butterfly paraphernalia; John is charitable; he always suspends his judgment of passengers till the next morning at breakfast; then he knows who is who. If a lady takes diamonds with her coffee, he knows she talks bad grammar, and is not what she would have people think her; he is not surprised to have her find fault with every thing from the omelette to the Indian cake. He expects to see her nose turned up at every thing, just as if she had every thing better at home.
She does not impose on John—he waits upon her with a quiet twinkle in his eye, which says as plain as a twinkle can say: I have not stood behind travelers’ chairs these two years for nothing; that game has been played out here, my lady; but when a lady comes down to breakfast in a modest-colored, quiet-looking breakfast robe, with smooth hair, neatly-slippered feet, and a very nice collar, and speaks civily and kindly to him, John knows he sees a real lady, whether she owns a diamond or not—and her pleasant “Thank you,” when he has taken some trouble to procure her what she desires, wings his feet for many a hard hour’s work that day. I wish ladies oftener thought of this. I wish they did not think it beneath them, or were not too indifferent or thoughtless to attend to it. “What is that noise, John?” “Oh, them’s the Rapids, ma’am.” “Rapids? sure enough, we almost forgot we were at Niagara; how very dismal they sound!” John laughs and says, “You are tired to-night, ma’am; when you look at them in the morning you will like ’em; most ladies does.” But poor Nelly is half asleep over her plate, so we will go to bed. What a little box of a chamber! not a pretty thing in it but Nelly; a table, a chair, a bed, a bureau, and a candle on it; the window shaking as if it had St. Vitus’s dance; the Rapids, as John calls them, roaring like mad under the window. I can’t stand the rattling of that window. I’ll stop it with the handle of a tooth-brush. I suppose I have a tooth-brush left, if the cars did run off the track; oh, yes! “Now tumble into bed, Nelly. What a dismal thing those Rapids are, to be sure. I feel as if I were out at sea in an egg-shell boat. I wonder how they will look in the morning? don’t you, Nelly?” No answer. “Nelly’s asleep; I wish I could sleep, but I’m sure those horrid Rapids will give me the night-mare.”
“Morning? you don’t mean that, Nelly! and you look as bright as if the cars had kept right end up all the way here. Does the sun shine, Nelly? Open the blinds and see. No? what a pity. ‘A great river under the window!’ why, pussy, that river is the Rapids; I don’t wonder they shake the window so; how they tumble about! Now, we will dress and breakfast, and then, no! for the Falls. You and I are not to be frightened at a few rain-drops, Nelly; we have had too many drenchings running to and fro from printing-offices for that. That’s right, Nelly, dip your face into the washbasin, it will make your eyes strong and bright; now smooth your hair, and put on the plainest dress you can find, but let it be very clean. I hope your finger-nails and teeth are quite nice, and then pull your stockings smoothly up; of all things don’t wear wrinkled stockings. Put stout boots on; don’t be afraid of a thick sole, Nelly; every thing looks well in its place; and a thin shoe on Goat Island would be quite ridiculous.
“You are glad to get out of that stifled bed-room? so am I. What a nice wide breezy hall this is! Oh, there are more travelers who have just arrived, and there are some more who are just leaving; and there comes the servant to say breakfast is ready; gongs are out of fashion, I am glad of that; I would run a mile to escape a gong; and beside, no hospitable landlord, I think, would set such a machine in motion to disturb sick and weary travelers, who prefer a longer sleep. Ah, this landlord knows what he is about, I am sure of that; you can generally judge of any house by the manners of the servants. How well trained they are here, how quiet, how prompt! Good fellows; I hope they get well paid, don’t you, Nelly? I hope they have a comfortable place to sleep, when the day is over, don’t you? All black? I am glad of that, too; I like black people; they are such a merry people, they are so easily made happy, they are so affectionate, they are so neat. Oh, what nice bread and coffee! Don’t touch those omelettes, Nelly; take a bit of beefsteak and here’s some milk—real milk; it is so long since I have tasted any, that it seems like cream!
“Who are those people? How do I know, little puss? I dare say they are asking the same question about us! You don’t like that lady’s face? Why not? She don’t look as if she could laugh. That’s a fact, Nelly. She is as solemn as an owl. But perhaps she is in trouble, who knows? We must not laugh about her. Come, Nelly, let us get up and go to the Falls. Tie on your bonnet; what a nice fresh air! See the shops, Nelly! shops at Niagara, who would have thought it? and curiosities of all sorts to sell! Well, never mind them now. Want a carriage? want a cab? Of course we don’t—look at our democratic thick-soled shoes! what’s the use of having feet, if we are not to be allowed to use them? No, of course we don’t want a carriage; we feel, Nelly and I, as if we were just made; don’t you see how we step off? No, keep your carriages for infirm, proud, and lazy people. Carriage—who can run in a carriage? who can skip? This way, Nelly, over the little bridge? Oh—pay toll here! Do we? Twenty-five cents. And please register our names! Oh yes, of course—Mrs. Nelly, and Miss Nelly. What are you laughing at, puss? come along; oh, see this pretty island! now you see the use of thick shoes—off into that grass, and pick me some of those wild-flowers. Oh, Nelly, there are some blue, and pink, and purple—get a handful, Nelly! Oh, how delicious it is to be alive; skip, Nelly, run, Nelly, sing Nelly.
“A real Indian? Where? Oh, that’s not a real Indian, no more than you or I. She’s a pretty little sham Indian; but what are her pin cushions and moccasins to these wild-flowers? No, no, little girl, don’t stop us with those things; we left shopping in New York. Goat Island was not made for that, I’m sure; come Nelly! A boy with crosses made of Table-rock; how they plague us—we don’t want to buy any crosses, we are cross enough ourselves, because you keep bothering us so; we came to see the Falls, not to do shopping. Come away, Nelly! Oh, Nelly—look! look!”
But why describe the Falls to you, when all your school geographies have a picture of it? when your teacher has taken all the school to see a panorama of it? when your Uncle George, and Aunt Caroline, and Cousin James have seen it? and yet no tongue, no pen ever could, ever has described its beauty, its majesty. I would that I had never heard it attempted; I would that I had never heard of Niagara; I would that I had come upon it unawares some glorious morning before Indian girls had peddled moccasins there, or boys, had profaned it by selling pictures and crosses; I would have knelt on that lovely island, and seen God’s majesty in the ceaseless, roaring torrent; God’s smile in the bright rainbow, hung upon the fleecy mist; God’s love in making earth so beautiful, for those who forget to thank Him for it. I would lead him there who says there is no God, that he might hear His voice, and see His glory.
But no two persons look on Niagara with the same eyes. You can not see it through my spectacles; some it animates and makes jubilant; others it depresses and terrifies; some hear in it the thunder and lightning of Sinai; others hear in it the voice of Him who stilled the raging waves with “Peace, be still!”
Yes, I was glad to have seen Niagara, but I was not sorry to leave it. Its rushing torrent threw a shadow over my spirit. Its monster jaws seemed hungry for some victim, other than the unconscious leaves which it whirled so impatiently and disdainfully out of sight. Its never-ceasing roar seemed like the trumpet-challenge to battle, telling of mangled corpses and broken hearts. No;—dearer to me is the silvery little brook, tripping lightly through green meadows, singing low and sweet to the nodding flowers, bending to see their own sweet beauty mirrored in its clear face. I like not that all Nature’s gentle voices should be tyrannically hushed to silence, drowned by a despot’s deafening roar. Give me the low murmur of the trees; I like the hum of the bee; I like the flash of the merry little fish; I like the little bird, circling, darting, singing, skimming the blue above, dipping his blight wings in the blue below; I like the cricket which chirps the tired farmer to sleep; I like the distant bleat of the lamb, the faint lowing of the cow; I lay my head on Nature’s breast, in her gentler moods, and tell her all my hopes and fears, and am not ashamed of my tears. But she drives me from her when she roars and foams, and flashes fierce lightning from her angry eyes; I close my ears to her roaring thunder. But when, clearing the cloud from her brow, she hangs a rainbow on her breast, throws perfume to the pretty flowers, and smiles caressingly through her tears—ah, then I love her; then she is all my own again.
Here I have been running on! and all this while you have been waiting to know the rest of my story. Well, Nelly and I started to go back to New York. Nelly did not like the idea of trusting herself in the cars, nor, to tell the truth, did I; but there was no help for it: besides, it is not wise to be a slave to one’s fears. So we tried to forget all about it. A girl who lived with me once remarked, there is always something happening most days. So we soon found amusement. An old lady in the cars, when she had smelled up all her camphor and eaten all her lozenges, commenced asking me questions faster than I could answer, and looking at Nelly through her spectacles. Some of her questions were very funny, and, from any body but an old lady, would have been impertinent; but we answered them all, for it was very evident she did not ride in the cars every day, and was determined to get her money’s worth. Poor old lady! I suppose she had lived all her life in some small village where there was only a blacksmith’s shop and a meeting-house, and where every body knew what time every body got up, and what they had for breakfast. Nice old lady! I hope somebody gave her a good cup of tea, and a rocking-chair, when she got home, which, I regret to say, was the first stopping-place after we left Niagara.
From the car-windows Nelly and I saw the Catskill Mountains. O the lovely changing hues of their steep and misty sides; the billowy clouds that rolled up, and rolled over, and rolled off;—then the far-off summit, now hidden, now revealed, lying against the sky, tempting us to see from thence the kingdoms of the earth, and the glory of them. And so we will, some day. I will tell you what we see.
Night came, and we had not yet reached New York. Nelly was dusty, and hungry, and tired; but she was a good traveler, and made no complaint. The cars were dashing along through the darkness, close by the edge of the Hudson River, and Nelly clasped my hand more closely as she looked out of the windows upon its dark surface, and sighed as if she feared some accident might tip us all over into it. But no such accident occurred, and by-and-by the bright gas-lights of New York shone and sparkled; and the never-failing gutter odor informed us that we were back again upon its dusty streets.