Margaret had answered Mr. Mallock's question before it was asked.

* * * * *

Margaret's summer on the Lakes was the summer of 1843. Her first records
of it date from Niagara, and give her impressions of the wonderful
scene, in which the rapids impressed her more than the cataract itself,
whether seen from the American or from the Canadian side.

"Slowly and thoughtfully I walked down to the bridge leading to Goat
Island, and when I stood upon this frail support, and saw a quarter of a
mile of tumbling, rushing rapids, and heard their everlasting roar, my
emotions overpowered me. A choking sensation rose to my throat, a thrill
rushed through my veins, my blood ran rippling to my fingers' ends. This
was the climax of the effect which the falls produced upon me."

At Buffalo she embarked for a voyage on Lake Erie. Making a brief stop
at Cleveland, the steamer passed on to the St. Clair River. The sight of
an encampment of Indians on its bank gave Margaret her first feeling of
what was then "the West."

"The people in the boat were almost all New Englanders, seeking their
fortunes. They had brought with them their cautious manners, their love
of polemics. It grieved me to hear Trinity and Unity discussed in the
poor, narrow, doctrinal way on these free waters. But that will soon
cease. There is not time for this clash of opinions in the West, where
the clash of material interests is so noisy. They will need the spirit
of religion more than ever to guide them, but will find less time than
before for its doctrine."

The following passage will show us the spirit which Margaret carried
into these new scenes:--

"I came to the West prepared for the distaste I must experience at its
mushroom growth. I know that where 'Go ahead!' is the motto, the village
cannot grow into the gentle proportions that successive lives and the
gradations of experience involuntarily give.... The march of peaceful,
is scarcely less wanton than that of war-like invention. The old
landmarks are broken down, and the land, for a season, bears none,
except of the rudeness of conquest and the needs of the day. I have come
prepared to see all this, to dislike it, but not with stupid narrowness
to distrust or defame. On the contrary, I trust by reverent faith to woo
the mighty meaning of the scene, perhaps to foresee the law by which a
new order, a new poetry, is to be evoked from this chaos."

Charles Dickens's "Amer