it were, in
a pretty verse, and because I must needs liken Montmorenci to something
that is soft and light. Yet a cloud does not represent the glinting
of the water in its downward swoop; it is like some broad slope of
sun-smitten snow; but snow is coldly white and opaque, and this has a
creamy warmth in its luminous mass; 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