; and so, there hangs the cataract
unsaid as before. It is a mystery that anything so grand should be so
lovely, that anything so tenderly fair in whatever aspect should yet be
so large that one glance fails to comprehend it all. The rugged wildness
of the cliffs and hollows about it is softened by its gracious beauty,
which half redeems the vulgarity of the timber-merchant's uses in setting
the river at work in his saw-mills and choking its outlet into the St.
Lawrence with rafts of lumber and rubbish of slabs and shingles. Nay,
rather, it is alone amidst these things, and the eye takes note of them
by a separate effort.

Our tourists sank down upon the turf that crept with its white clover to
the edge of the precipice, and gazed dreamily upon the fall, filling
their vision with its exquisite color and form. Being wiser than I, they
did not try to utter its loveliness; they were content to feel it, and
the perfection of the afternoon, whose low sun slanting over the
landscape gave, under that pale, greenish-blue sky, a pensive sentiment
of autumn to the world. The crickets cried amongst the grass; the
hesitating chirp of birds came from the tree overhead; a shaggy colt left
off grazing in the field and stalked up to stare at them; their little
guides, having found that these people had no pleasure in the sight of
small boys scuffling on the verge of a precipice, threw themselves also
down upon the grass and crooned a long, long ballad in a mournful minor
key about some maiden whose name was La Belle Adeline. It was a moment of
unmixed enjoyment for every sense, and through all their being they were
glad; which considering, they ceased to be so, with a deep sigh, as one
reasoning that he dreams must presently awake. They never could have an
emotion without desiring to analyze it; but perhaps their rapture would
have ceased as swiftly, even if they had not tried to make it a fact of
consciousness.

"If there were not dinner after such experiences as these," said Isabel,
as they sat at table that evening, "I don't know what would become of
one. But dinner unites the idea of pleasure and duty, and brings you
gently back to earth. You must eat, don't you see, and there's nothing
disgraceful about what you're obliged to do; and so--it's all right."

"Isabel, Isabel," cried her husband, "you have a wonderful mind, and its
workings always amaze me. But be careful, my dear; be careful. Don't work
it too hard. The human brain,