aters before you, forcing their passage through the
rocky bed, with the waving trees on each side, their branches feathering
to the water's edge, or dipping and rising in the stream, you might
imagine yourself far removed from your fellow-men, and you feel that in
such a beauteous spot you could well turn anchorite, and commune with
Nature alone. But turn round with your back to the Fall--look below,
and all is changed: art in full activity--millions of reels whirling in
their sockets--the bright polished cylinders incessantly turning, and
never tiring. What formerly was the occupation of thousands of
industrious females, who sat with their distaff at the cottage door, is
now effected in a hundredth part of the time, and in every variety, by
those compressed machines which require but the attendance of one child
to several hundreds. But machinery cannot perform everything, and
notwithstanding this reduction of labour, the romantic Falls of the
Passaic find employment for the industry of thousands.

We walked up the banks of the river above the Fall, and met with about
twenty or thirty urchins who were bathing at the mouth of the cut, made
for the supply of the water-power to the manufactories below. The river
is the property of an individual, and is very valuable: he receives six
hundred dollars per annum for one square foot of water-power; ten years
hence it will be rented at a much higher price.

We amused ourselves by throwing small pieces of money into the water,
where it was about a fathom deep, for the boys to dive after; they
gained them too easily; we went to another part in the _cut_, where it
was much deeper, and threw in a dollar. The boys stood naked on the
rocks, like so many cormorants, waiting to dart upon their prey; when
the dollar had had time to sink to the bottom the word was given--they
all dashed down like lightning and disappeared. About a minute elapsed
ere there was any sign of their re-appearance, when they came up, one by
one, breathless and flushed (like racers who had pulled up), and at last
the victor appeared with the dollar between his teeth. We left these
juvenile _Sam Patches_, and returned to the town. [Sam Patch, an
American peripatetic, who used to amuse himself and astonish his
countrymen by leaping down the different falls in America. He leaped
down a portion of the Niagara without injury; but one fine day, having
taken a drop too much, he took a leap too much. He went do