odes to Niagara."

"I can't understand it, at all," said Isabel. "I don't wonder now that
the town should be so empty this season, but that it should ever be
full. I wish we'd gone after our first look at the Falls from the
suspension bridge. How beautiful that was! I rejoice in everything that
I haven't done. I'm so glad I haven't been in the Cave of the Winds; I'm
so happy that Table Rock fell twenty years ago! Basil, I couldn't stand
another rainbow today. I'm sorry we went out on the Three Weird Sisters.
O, I shall dream about it! and the rush, and the whirl, and the dampness
in one's face, and the everlasting chirr-r-r-r of everything!"

She dipped suddenly upon his shoulder for a moment's oblivion, and then
rose radiant with a question: "Why in the world, if Niagara is really
what it seems to us now, do so many bridal parties come here?"

"Perhaps they're the only people who've the strength to bear up against
it, and are not easily dispersed and subjected by it."

"But we're dispersed and subjected."

"Ah, my dear, we married a little late. Who knows how it would be if you
were nineteen instead of twenty-seven, and I twenty-five and not turned
of thirty?"

"Basil, you're very cruel."

"No, no. But don't you see how it is? We've known too much of life to
desire any gloomy background for our happiness. We're quite contented
to have things gay and bright about us. Once we couldn't have made
the circle dark enough. Well, my dear, that's the effect of age. We're
superannuated."

"I used to think I was before we were married," answered Isabel simply;
"but now," she added triumphantly, "I'm rescued from all that. I shall
never be old again, dearest; never, as long as you love me!"

They were about to enter the village, and he could not make any open
acknowledgment of her tenderness; but her silken mantle (or whatever)
slipped from her shoulder, and he embracingly replaced it, flattering
himself that he had delicately seized this chance of an unavowed
caress and not allowing (O such is the blindness of our sex!) that the
opportunity had been yet more subtly afforded him, with the art which
women never disuse in this world, and which I hope they will not forget
in the next.

They had an early dinner, and looked their last upon the nuptial gayety
of the otherwise forlorn hotel. Three brides sat down with them in
travelling-dress; two occupied the parlor as they passed out; half a
dozen happy pairs arrived (to