disappointed in them when they
arrive."

In fact, they valued the Rapids very little more than the Hoosac Tunnel,
when they came in sight of them, at last; and Basil had some question in
his own mind whether the Rapids had not dwindled since his former visit.
He did not breathe this doubt to Isabel, however, and she arrived at the
Falls with unabated expectations. They were going to spend only half a
day there; and they turned into the station, away from the phalanx of
omnibuses, when they dismounted from their train. They seemed, as before,
to be the only passengers who had arrived, and they found an abundant
choice of carriages waiting in the street, outside the station. The
Niagara hackman may once have been a predatory and very rampant animal,
but public opinion, long expressed through the public prints, has reduced
him to silence and meekness. Apparently, he may not so much as beckon
with his whip to the arriving wayfarer; it is certain that he cannot
cross the pavement to the station door; and Basil, inviting one of them
to negotiation, was himself required by the attendant policeman to step
out to the curbstone, and complete his transaction there. It was an
impressive illustration of the power of a free press, but upon the whole
Basil found the effect melancholy; it had the saddening quality which
inheres in every sort of perfection. The hackman, reduced to entire
order, appealed to his compassion, and he had not the heart to beat him
down from his moderate first demand, as perhaps he ought to have done.
They drove directly to the cataract, and found themselves in the pretty
grove beside the American Fall, and in the air whose dampness was as
familiar as if they had breathed it all their childhood. It was full now
of the fragrance of some sort of wild blossom; and again they had that
old, entrancing sense of the mingled awfulness and loveliness of the
great spectacle. This sylvan perfume, the gayety of the sunshine, the
mildness of the breeze that stirred the leaves overhead, and the
bird-singing that made itself heard amid the roar of the rapids and the
solemn incessant plunge of the cataract, moved their hearts, and made
them children with the boy and girl, who stood rapt for a moment and then
broke into joyful wonder. They could sympathize with the ardor with which
Tom longed to tempt fate at the brink of the river, and over the tops of
the parapets which have been built along the edge of the precipice, and
t