WHERE CAPTAIN WEBB WAS KILLED.
Subsequently I had to make use of another "elevator," which, judging by the velocity of the ascent and descent, is probably worked by a detachment of specially-trained tortoises. Down by the rapids I made the pleasing discovery that after all I had some sense of the sublime left, for I was roused to further anticipated flights of enthusiasm by the magnificent spectacle of the vast volumes of water foaming, rushing, eddying, swirling along on their onward course with rush impetuous and irresistible as the whirlwind, and I felt for my pocket-book to complete my ode to mighty Niagara.
I had not noticed until that moment two commercial-looking individuals, obviously British, seated close by and gazing biliously upon the marvellous rapids; but I heard one remark to the other:
"'Enery, that's where Webb 'it 'is 'ed, hain't it?"
I disappeared rapidly in the direction of the "helevator," and fled the disenchanted scene.
Blondin vulgarised Niagara; Jonathan is going to turn it into a colossal mill-sewer. So make hay while the sun shines, or rather when the rain falls, and see it soon.
TOURISTS.
To us in England who are in the habit of rushing to a station to demand a ticket for a journey across England, or to the North of Scotland, or to the West of Ireland, and expect as a matter of course to find the necessary accommodation, it seems strange that the Americans are so "previous" in their arrangements. The sale of tickets, which is here conducted with ease and despatch at the various termini, or, if you desire to be "previous," at the depots of the companies in the centre of the town, is in the States made a means of causing "corners" in speculation. There are, I am informed, actually brokers who buy up the tickets for the express mail trains, and whose prices rise and fall like the stocks on 'Change.
For instance, in Chicago there is a whole street of these brokers. I wanted to go to Buffalo. I got a prominent citizen to escort me to the railway, and I felt some honour had been conferred upon me when I paid the full fare and had a corner seat in the Pullman allotted to me. When I arrived at the station I discovered that next to me was a mother with two children, who were already climbing over my armchair instead of their own, and fighting for and tearing the papers and magazines I had just purchased. There was another horror I hadn't noticed at my first glance, moreover. This took the shape of an infant of some months, which immediately began to squeal with a shrillness that forcibly reminded me of the siren on the Atlantic. No craft ever flew before the siren of an approaching Atlantic liner more quickly than did I from that infant. I at once abandoned my seat.