elsewhere so often of wormwood, or of the
ordinary green cheese at the best, is of lucent honey there from the
first of June to the last of October; and this is a great charm in
Niagara. I think with tenderness of all the lives that have opened so
fairly there; the hopes that have reigned in the glad young hearts; the
measureless tide of joy that ebbs and flows with the arriving and
departing trains. Elsewhere there are carking cares of business and of
fashion, there are age, and sorrow, and heartbreak: but here only youth,
faith, rapture. I kiss my hand to Niagara for that reason, and would I
were a poet for a quarter of an hour.

Isabel departed in almost a forgiving mood towards the weak sisterhood of
evident brides, and both our friends felt a lurking fondness for Niagara
at the last moment. I do not know how much of their content was due to
the fact that they had suffered no sort of wrong there, from those who
are apt to prey upon travellers. In the hotel a placard warned them to
have nothing to do with the miscreant hackmen on the streets, but always
to order their carriage at the office; on the street the hackmen
whispered to them not to trust the exorbitant drivers in league with the
landlords; yet their actual experience was great reasonableness and
facile contentment with the sum agreed upon.

This may have been because the hackmen so far outnumbered the visitors,
that the latter could dictate terms; but they chose to believe it a
triumph of civilization; and I will never be the cynic to sneer at their
faith. Only at the station was the virtue of the Niagarans put in doubt,
by the hotel porter who professed to find Basil's trunk enfeebled by
travel, and advised a strap for it, which a friend of his would sell for
a dollar and a half. Yet even he may have been a benevolent nature
unjustly suspected.

DOWN THE ST. LAWRENCE.

They were to take the Canadian steamer at Charlotte, the port of
Rochester, and they rattled uneventfully down from Niagara by rail. At
the broad, low-banked river-mouth the steamer lay beside the railroad
station; and while Isabel disposed of herself on board, Basil looked to
the transfer of the baggage, novelly comforted in the business by the
respectfulness of the young Canadian who took charge of the trunks for
the boat. He was slow, and his system was not good,--he did not give
checks for the pieces, but marked them with the name of their
destination; and there was that indefi