lt quite a local pride in their preference. It was what Isabel
had said twelve years before, on first beholding the lake.

But they did not really see the lake till they had taken the train for
Niagara Falls, after breakfasting in the depot, where the children, used
to the severe native or the patronizing Irish ministrations of Boston
restaurants and hotels, reveled for the first time in the affectionate
devotion of a black waiter. There was already a ridiculous abundance
and variety on the table; but this waiter brought them strawberries
and again strawberries, and repeated plates of griddle cakes with maple
syrup; and he hung over the back of first one chair and then another
with an unselfish joy in the appetites of the breakfasters which gave
Basil renewed hopes of his race. "Such rapture in serving argues a
largeness of nature which will be recognized hereafter," he said,
feeling about in his waistcoat pocket for a quarter. It seemed a pity
to render the waiter's zeal retroactively interested, but in view of the
fact that he possibly expected the quarter, there was nothing else to
do; and by a mysterious stroke of gratitude the waiter delivered them
into the hands of a friend, who took another quarter from them for
carrying their bags and wraps to the train. This second retainer
approved their admiration of the aesthetic forms and colors of the depot
colonnade; and being asked if that were the depot whose roof had fallen
in some years before, proudly replied that it was.

"There were a great many killed, were n't there?" asked Basil, with
sympathetic satisfaction in the disaster. The porter seemed humiliated;
he confessed the mortifying truth that the loss of life was small, but
he recovered a just self-respect in adding, "If the roof had fallen in
five minutes sooner, it would have killed about three hundred people."

Basil had promised the children a sight of the Rapids before they
reached the Falls, and they held him rigidly accountable from the moment
they entered the train, and began to run out of the city between the
river and the canal. He attempted a diversion with the canal boats, and
tried to bring forward the subject of Rudder Grange in that connection.
They said that the canal boats were splendid, but they were looking for
the Rapids now; and they declined to be interested in a window in one
of the boats, which Basil said was just like the window that the Rudder
Granger and the boarder had popped Pomona