but it is no
more apparent than why all these magnificent equipages are waiting about
the empty streets for the people who never come to hire them.

"It seems to me that I don't see so many strangers here as I used," Basil
had suggested to their driver.

"Oh, they have n't commenced coming yet," he replied, with hardy
cheerfulness, and pretended that they were plenty enough in July and
August.

They went to dine at the modest restaurant of a colored man, who
advertised a table d'hote dinner on a board at his door; and they put
their misgivings to him, which seemed to grieve him, and he contended
that Niagara was as prosperous and as much resorted to as ever. In fact,
they observed that their regret for the supposed decline of the Falls as
a summer resort was nowhere popular in the village, and they desisted in
their offers of sympathy, after their rebuff from the restaurateur.

Basil got his family away to the station after dinner, and left them
there, while he walked down the village street, for a closer inspection
of the hotels. At the door of the largest a pair of children sported in
the solitude, as fearlessly as the birds on Selkirk's island; looking
into the hotel, he saw a few porters and call-boys seated in statuesque
repose against the wall, while the clerk pined in dreamless inactivity
behind the register; some deserted ladies flitted through the door of the
parlor at the side. He recalled the evening of his former visit, when he
and Isabel had met the Ellisons in that parlor, and it seemed, in the
retrospect, a scene of the wildest gayety. He turned for consolation into
the barber's shop, where he found himself the only customer, and no busy
sound of "Next" greeted his ear. But the barber, like all the rest, said
that Niagara was not unusually empty; and he came out feeling bewildered
and defrauded. Surely the agent of the boats which descend the Rapids of
the St. Lawrence must be frank, if Basil went to him and pretended that
he was going to buy a ticket. But a glance at the agent's sign showed
Basil that the agent, with his brave jollity of manner and his impressive
"Good-morning," had passed away from the deceits of travel, and that he
was now inherited by his widow, who in turn was absent, and temporarily
represented by their son. The boy, in supplying Basil with an
advertisement of the line, made a specious show of haste, as if there
were a long queue of tourists waiting behind him to be served with