great feat of engineering. Basil drew a pretty moral from their
experience. "If you rode upon a comet you would be disappointed. Take my
advice, and never ride upon a comet. I shouldn't object to your riding on
a little meteor,--you would n't expect much of that; but I warn you
against comets; they are as bad as tunnels."

The children thought this moral was a joke at their expense, and as they
were a little sleepy they permitted themselves the luxury of feeling
trifled with. But they woke, refreshed and encouraged, from slumbers that
had evidently been unbroken, though they both protested that they had not
slept a wink the whole night, and gave themselves up to wonder at the
interminable levels of Western New York over which the train was running.
The longing to come to an edge, somewhere, that the New England traveler
experiences on this plain, was inarticulate with the children; but it
breathed in the sigh with which Isabel welcomed even the architectural
inequalities of a city into which they drew in the early morning. This
city showed to their weary eyes a noble stretch of river, from the waters
of which lofty piles of buildings rose abruptly; and Isabel, being left
to guess where they were, could think of no other place so picturesque as
Rochester.

"Yes," said her husband; "it is our own Enchanted City. I wonder if that
unstinted hospitality is still dispensed by the good head waiter at the
hotel where we stopped, to bridal parties who have passed the ordeal of
the haughty hotel clerk. I wonder what has become of that hotel clerk.
Has he fallen, through pride, to some lower level, or has he bowed his
arrogant spirit to the demands of advancing civilization, and realized
that he is the servant, and not the master, of the public? I think I've
noticed, since his time, a growing kindness in hotel clerks; or perhaps I
have become of a more impressive presence; they certainly unbend to me a
little more. I should like to go up to our hotel, and try myself on our
old enemy, if he is still there. I can fancy how his shirt front has
expanded in these twelve years past; he has grown a little bald, after
the fashion of middle-aged hotel clerks, but he parts his hair very much
on one side, and brushes it squarely across his forehead to hide his
loss; the forefinger that he touches that little snapbell with, when he
doesn't look at you, must be very pudgy now. Come, let us get out and
breakfast at, Rochester; they will give u