"I never suspected it till I saw your son laughing to himself, and then I guessed something was wrong. It was a great shame of those rude fellows to amuse themselves at our expense; but your son is quite a different person--so handsome and gentlemanly. We admire him so much. Is he married?"
"His wife is my daughter."
I can't tell why my answer struck the fair inquirer dumb; she drew back suddenly into her chamber, and closed the door without bidding me good night, and that was the last time I saw or heard of her and her companion.
"A summer spent at the Clifton House would elicit more extraordinary traits of character than could be gathered from the chit-chat of a dozen novels," thought I, as I paced on to No. 50, the last room on the long tier.
I was up by daybreak the next morning to see the Falls by sunrise, and was amply repaid for leaving my warm bed, and encountering the bright bracing morning air, by two hours' enjoyment of solemn converse alone with God and Niagara. The sun had not yet lifted his majestic head above the pine forest, or chased with his beams the dark shadows of night that rested within the curved sides of the great Horse-shoe. The waters looked black as they rolled in vast smooth masses downward, till, meeting the projecting rocks, they were tossed high into the air in clouds of dazzling foam--so pure, so stainlessly white, when contrasted with the darkness, that they looked as if belonging to heaven rather than to earth. Anon, that dancing feathery tumult of foam catches a rosy gleam from the coming day. A long stream of sunlight touches the centre of the mighty arch, and transforms the black waters into a mass of smooth transparent emerald green, and the spray flashes with myriads of rubies and diamonds; while the American Fall still rolls and thunders on in cold pure whiteness, Goat Island and its crests of dark pines shrouding it in a robe of gloom. The voice of the waters rising amidst the silence that reigns at that lovely calm hour, sounds sonorous and grand. Be still, O my soul! earth is pouring to her Creator her morning anthem of solemn praise!
Earth! how beautiful thou art! When will men be worthy of the paradise in which they are placed? Did our first father, amidst the fresh young beauty of his Eden, ever gaze upon a spectacle more worthy of his admiration than this? We will except those moments when he held converse with God amid the cool shades of that delicious garden.
"That's a sublime sight!" said a voice near me.
I turned, and found the old American gentleman at my side.
"I can see a change in the appearance of these Falls," he continued, "since I visited them some forty years ago. Time changes everything; I feel that I am changed since then. I was young and active, and clambered about these rugged banks with the careless hardihood of a boy who pants for excitement and adventure, and how I enjoyed my visit to this place! A change has taken place--I can scarcely describe in what respect; but it looks to me very different to what it did then."
"Perhaps," I suggested, "the fall of that large portion of the table-rock has made the alteration you describe."