“I dream, and straightway there before me lies
A valley beautifully green and fair;
Bright, sparkling lakes, blue as the summer skies,
And trees and flowers dot it here and there.
“I wake, and straightway all familiar things
Display new beauty to my wondering gaze.
My soul refreshed by wandering, folds her wings
And finds contentment in life’s common ways.”
To all these beautiful pictures of memory many a Chautauquan adds the remembrance of one indescribable scene—a look at the great fall.
A short trip to Niagara is indeed one of the features of a summer’s sojourn at the city in the woods. Every week a crowd of excursionists leaves with reluctance the delights of the fair lake and takes a day’s jaunt to the Falls, which are distant about eighty miles from Chautauqua. Many of you, my readers, remember that trip—the magnificent views of Lake Erie, which you got from time to time, on the way to Buffalo. Then the run down from that city along Niagara River, past Fort Erie and Black Rock, historic names. You remember how your heart beat a little faster when the brakeman called, “Niagara Falls,” and you realized that you were soon to stand in sight of one of the wonders of the world. Of course you remember the clamoring hackmen, once heard not easily forgotten. Then have you forgotten that short walk or drive down a shaded street, past many shops filled with feathers and Indian temptations? Do you recall that dull, booming sound which suddenly broke upon your ear, and can you not now sense that delicious, fresh smell of the water as you turned into Prospect Park, and ah! can you ever forget when you at last stood within hand reach of that awful presence, when your bewildered and startled eyes glanced now at the shouting, leaping, laughing, maddening, scornful rapids; now at that overwhelming mass which flung itself over that tremendous precipice into a seemingly bottomless pit? Was it a pleasant day when you were there? Do you then remember the exquisite coloring of the water, the dazzling white, the vivid green, the pellucid blue? How the sun seemed to catch up every drop of that vast volume, and shine through it, giving a tiny rainbow effect to every crystalline particle? How the rapids called aloud to each other in glee, and chased one another in a mad race, as to which should first make that mighty leap? Or was it a dull, gloomy day? Then did they not shriek aloud in horror, and hurl themselves in black and hissing despair to their awful plunge?