S all English people could not get to Niagara, Niagara was brought to them in the shape of an excellent diorama, which proved a great success in London a few years ago. The atmospheric effect in all dioramas is procured by making the visitor first pass through dark passages, fall up unlighted stairs, and tumble about in the tortuous corridors in the blackness; then, brought suddenly face to face with the picture well lit up, the eye is affected by the glare of light, which would not be the case if the spectator walked straight into the diorama from the street. Now, curiously enough, you approach the real Niagara in much the same way—that is, if, as I did, you go from Buffalo, and as was my lot, in the most depressing weather.
A BUFFALO GIRL.
I had to wait for the train to start at Buffalo in a Deepo which eclipsed anything I have seen for gloom. The shoeblack's platform, of more than ordinary proportions, occupied a good fifth of the waiting-room. Its dusky proprietor was in possession of the throne, and was discussing politics with a brother brush whose massive feet were resting on the structure, an advertisement for the operating shoeblack, implying that both the quality and quantity of his shine were superior.
The train was also very gloomy. My vis-à-vis was an old Buffalo girl who must have remembered coming out to "dance by the light of the moon" a couple of generations ago, when that melody was popular.
The exit from the town is made through a hideous quarter—wooden houses and huts, depressing dirty streets, and the sides of the railway covered with the refuse of a generation. Then some miles of open country, with a building here and there which might possibly have added a little picturesqueness to the dismal scene had not those despoilers of all picturesqueness, the advertisers—and, above all, the advertisers of pills—made an eyesore wherever the same was possible. Then through a mile or two of apple orchards and more country with huts advertising pills—probably the apples in those orchards are most particularly sour. The rain came down fast, the train went on slowly; at every station damp people with wet umbrellas came in and made me shudder. Altogether the prospect of my getting a favourable impression of Niagara was a black one. But it so happens the effect was quite the reverse—it was precisely the same as passing through the gloomy passages leading to the diorama.
As I walked to an hotel to have some lunch before seeing the Falls, I was startled to see in wood (everything is either water or wood at Niagara) my old friend Mr. Punch standing outside a cigar shop, smiling as usual; so after I had taken one of his cigars and lighted it, we had a chat about Fleet Street and all his friends there.
