in it and as its moving power was the great kindness of my father. That I had graduated at all under any conditions was gratifying, and so was the fact that it was not in reality without the so-called Second Honour, despite my low grade. And the pitiable condition of my health was considered. During the last year I had taken lessons in dancing and fencing, which helped me a little, and I looked as if I might become strong with a change of life. So my father took my mother and me on a grand excursion. We went to Stonington, New York, and Saratoga, where I attended a ball—my first—and then on to Niagara. On the way we stopped at Auburn, where there was a great State-prison, which I visited alone. There was among its attractions a noted murderer under sentence of death. There were two or three ladies and gentlemen who were shown by the warder with me over the building. He expressed some apprehension as to showing us the murderer, for he was a very desperate character. We entered a large room, and I saw a really gentlemanly-looking man heavily ironed, who was reading a newspaper. While the others conversed with him, I endeavoured to make unobserved a sketch of his face. The warder noticing this, called me to the front to make it boldly, and the prisoner, smiling, told me to go on with it; which I did, and that not so badly—at least, the sitter approved of it.
So we went up the beautiful Hudson, which far surpasses the Rhine, and yields the palm only to the Danube, stopping at Poughkeepsie and Albany, and so on to Niagara Falls. On the way we passed through a burning forest. My awe at this wonderful sight amused some one present to whom it was a familiar thing. Which reminds me that about the time when I first went to college, but while staying at Congress Hall, I there met a youth from Alabama or Mississippi, who was on his way to Princeton to join our ranks. To him I of course showed every attention, and by way of promoting his happiness took him to the top of the belfry of the State House, whence there is a fine view. While there I casually
remarked what a number of ships there were in the river, whereupon he eagerly cried, “Oh, show me one! I never saw a ship in all my life!” I gazed at him in utter astonishment, as if I would say, “What manner of man art thou?” and then recalling myself, said, “Well, we are just equal, for you never saw a ship, and I never saw a cotton-field.” The young man smiled incredulously, and replied, “Now I know that you are trying to humbug me, for how could you grow up without ever seeing cotton-fields?”
We arrived at Niagara about noon, and I at once went to see the Falls. There was a very respectable-looking old gentleman, evidently from the far South, with two young ladies, one a great beauty, advancing just before. I heard him say, “Now, keep your eyes closed, or look down till you can have a full view.” I did the same, and when he cried “Look up!” did so. It was one of the great instants of my life.
I know not how it was, but that first glance suggested to me something chivalric. It may have been from Byron’s simile of the tail of the white horse and the cataract, and the snow-white steed of that incarnation of nobility, Crescentius, and there rang in my memory a mystical verse—
“My eye bears a glance like the gleam of a lance
When I hear the waters dash and dance;
And I smile with glee, for I love to see
The sight of anything that’s free!”
But it was a mingled sense of nobility, and above all of freedom, which impressed me in that roaring mist of waters, in the wild river leaping as in reckless sport over the vast broad precipice. It is usual, especially for those who have no gift of description, to say that Niagara is “utterly indescribable,” and the Visitors’ Book has this opinion repeated by the American Philistine on every page. But that is because those who say so have no proper comprehension of facts stated, no poetic faculty, and no imagination. Of course no mere description, however perfect, would give the same conception of even a pen or a button as would the sight thereof;
but it is absurd and illogical to speak as if this were peculiar to a great thing alone. For my part, I believe that the mere description to a poet, or to one who has dwelt by wood and wold and steeped his soul in Nature, of a tremendous cataract a mile in breadth and two hundred feet high, cleft by a wooded island, and rushing onward below in awful rocky rapids with a mighty roar, would, could, or should convey a very good idea of the great sight. For I found in after years, when I came to see Venice and the temples on the Nile, that they were picturesquely or practically precisely what I had expected to see, not one shade or nuance of an expression more or less. As regards Rome and all Gothic cathedrals, I had been assured so often, or so generally, by all “intelligent tourists,” that they were all wretched rubbish, that I was amazed to find them so beautiful. And so much as to anticipations of Niagara, which I have thrice visited, and the constant assertion by cads unutterable that it is “indescribable.”
While at Niagara for three days, I walked about a great deal with a young lady whose acquaintance we had made at the hotel. As she was, I verily believe, the very first, not a relative, with whom I had ever taken a walk, or, I may almost say, formed an acquaintance, it constituted an event in my life equal to Niagara itself in importance. I was at this time just twenty-one, and certain I am that among twenty-one thousand college graduates of my age in America, of the same condition of life, there was not another so inexperienced in worldly ways, or so far behind his age, or so “docile unto discipline.” I was, in fact, morally where most boys in the United States are at twelve or thirteen; which is a very great mistake where there is a fixed determination that the youth shall make his own way in life. We cannot have boys good little angels at home and devils in business abroad.—Horum utrum magis velim, mihi incertum est.