“It may be safer, papa,” said Julia, “but”—
“But what, my love?”
“It is not half so natural.”
“Nor so pleasant,” interposed Edward.
“Well, my children, I hope you will make it habitual, and then it will be natural. For the present I am satisfied that you speak frankly your opinions and feelings, without disguise or affectation.”
Thus these vigilant parents extracted some moral good from every object and every scene; and at that early age, when most children are thoughtless of the future, theirs were constantly directed to virtue, which they were taught is immortal in its nature, is man's support and solace through all the vicissitudes of life, and his crown of glory when the ‘terrestrial puts on the celestial.’
Our travellers remained at the Falls for a week, that they might become familiar with them, see them by the rising and the setting sun; by daylight, and moonlight, and starlight, in all the radiance of the clear, full day, and in mists and storm; and then, after offering a Te Deum from the temple of their hearts, they left them with beautiful and imperishable pictures traced on their memories.
In following the windings of the Niagara to Newark, they passed the celebrated heights of Queenstown, ‘where ceas'd the swift their race, where fell the strong;’ but even then, though then so recent, there were no traces of the disastrous battle fought there. The children, whose home was in a hill-country, and who valued a mountain as much as a New-Englander does a ‘water privilege,’ rambled over the heights, and gazed delighted on the green Niagara, which, escaped from its rocky prison, rejoices in its freedom, sweeps freely and gracefully around the bluff promontories that indent its course, flows past the headland, where Fort Niagara guards the American shore, and enters Lake Ontario, which stretches, sparkling in the distance,
“To where the sky
Stoops, and shuts in th' exploring eye.”
Edward had, in common with most spirited boys, a natural taste for military exploits. “I think,” he said to his mother, “that a coward might play the hero on these heights, or at Lundie's-lane. Only think, mother, of fighting within the sound of the roaring of the Falls: would it not give you grand feelings?”