the music of the band) in the omnibus
that was to carry our friends back to the station; they caught sight of
several about the shop windows, as that drove through the streets. Thus
the place perpetually renews itself in the glow of love as long as the
summer lasts. The moon which is elsewhere so often of wormwood, or of
the ordinary green cheese at the best, is of lucent honey there from
the first of June to the last of October; and this is a great charm in
Niagara. I think with tenderness of all the lives that have opened so
fairly there; the hopes that have reigned in the glad young hearts;
the measureless tide of joy that ebbs and flows with the arriving and
departing trains. Elsewhere there are carking cares of business and of
fashion, there are age, and sorrow, and heartbreak: but here only youth,
faith, rapture. I kiss my hand to Niagara for that reason, and would I
were a poet for a quarter of an hour.

Isabel departed in almost a forgiving mood towards the weak sisterhood
of evident brides, and both our friends felt a lurking fondness for
Niagara at the last moment. I do not know how much of their content
was due to the fact that they had suffered no sort of wrong there, from
those who are apt to prey upon travellers. In the hotel a placard warned
them to have nothing to do with the miscreant hackmen on the streets,
but always to order their carriage at the office; on the street the
hackmen whispered to them not to trust the exorbitant drivers in league
with the landlords; yet their actual experience was great reasonableness
and facile contentment with the sum agreed upon.

This may have been because the hackmen so far outnumbered the visitors,
that the latter could dictate terms; but they chose to believe it a
triumph of civilization; and I will never be the cynic to sneer at their
faith. Only at the station was the virtue of the Niagarans put in doubt,
by the hotel porter who professed to find Basil's trunk enfeebled by
travel, and advised a strap for it, which a friend of his would sell
for a dollar and a half. Yet even he may have been a benevolent nature
unjustly suspected.

VII. DOWN THE ST. LAWRENCE.

They were to take the Canadian steamer at Charlotte, the port of
Rochester, and they rattled uneventfully down from Niagara by rail. At
the broad, low-banked river-mouth the steamer lay beside the railroad
station; and while Isabel disposed of herself on board, Basil looked to
the transfer of the