bargained to do. They strolled about the anomalous
village on foot, and once more marveled at the paucity of travel and the
enormity of the local preparation. Surely the hotels are nowhere else
in the world so large! Could there ever have been visitors enough at
Niagara to fill them? They were built so big for some good reason,
no doubt; 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 "G