,
thus: THE SEVEN BLOOMSBURY BROTHERS, DEVIL'S HOLE, and similar
inscriptions. Then to the Beacon Street of Harrisburg, which looks upon
the Susquehanna instead of the Common, and shows a long front of handsome
houses with fair gardens. The river is pretty nearly a mile across here,
but very shallow now. The codling told us that a Rebel spy had been
caught trying its fords a little while ago, and was now at Camp Curtin
with a heavy ball chained to his leg,--a popular story, but a lie, Dr.
Wilson said. A little farther along we came to the barkless stump of the
tree to which Mr. Harris, the Cecrops of the city named after him, was
tied by the Indians for some unpleasant operation of scalping or
roasting, when he was rescued by friendly savages, who paddled across the
stream to save him. Our youngling pointed out a very respectable-looking
stone house as having been "built by the Indians" about those times.
Guides have queer notions occasionally.

I was at Niagara just when Dr. Rae arrived there with his companions and
dogs and things from his Arctic search after the lost navigator.

"Who are those?" I said to my conductor.

"Them?" he answered. "Them's the men that's been out West, out to
Michig'n, aft' Sir Ben Franklin."

Of the other sights of Harrisburg the Brant House or Hotel, or whatever
it is called, seems most worth notice. Its facade is imposing, with a
row of stately columns, high above which a broad sign impends, like a
crag over the brow of a lofty precipice. The lower floor only appeared
to be open to the public. Its tessellated pavement and ample courts
suggested the idea of a temple where great multitudes might kneel
uncrowded at their devotions; but from appearances about the place where
the altar should be, I judged, that, if one asked the officiating priest
for the cup which cheers and likewise inebriates, his prayer would not be
unanswered. The edifice recalled to me a similar phenomenon I had once
looked upon,--the famous Caffe Pedrocchi at Padua. It was the same
thing in Italy and America: a rich man builds himself a mausoleum, and
calls it a place of entertainment. The fragrance of innumerable
libations and the smoke of incense-breathing cigars and pipes shall
ascend day and night through the arches of his funereal monument. What
are the poor dips which flare and flicker on the crowns of spikes that
stand at the corners of St. Genevieve's filigree-cased sarcophagus to
this perpetual