out of when they took her for
a burglar.

"You spoil those children, Basil," said his wife, as they clambered over
him, and clamored for the Rapids.

"At present I'm giving them an object-lesson in patience and
self-denial; they are experiencing the fact that they can't have the
Rapids till they get to them, and probably they'll be disappointed in
them when they arrive."

In fact, they valued the Rapids very little more than the Hoosac Tunnel,
when they came in sight of them, at last; and Basil had some question in
his own mind whether the Rapids had not dwindled since his former visit.
He did not breathe this doubt to Isabel, however, and she arrived at the
Falls with unabated expectations. They were going to spend only half a
day there; and they turned into the station, away from the phalanx
of omnibuses, when they dismounted from their train. They seemed, as
before, to be the only passengers who had arrived, and they found an
abundant choice of carriages waiting in the street, outside the station.
The Niagara hackman may once have been a predatory and very rampant
animal, but public opinion, long expressed through the public prints,
has reduced him to silence and meekness. Apparently, he may not so much
as beckon with his whip to the arriving wayfarer; it is certain that he
cannot cross the pavement to the station door; and Basil, inviting one
of them to negotiation, was himself required by the attendant policeman
to step out to the curbstone, and complete his transaction there. It was
an impressive illustration of the power of a free press, but upon the
whole Basil found the effect melancholy; it had the saddening quality
which inheres in every sort of perfection. The hackman, reduced to
entire order, appealed to his compassion, and he had not the heart to
beat him down from his moderate first demand, as perhaps he ought to
have done. They drove directly to the cataract, and found themselves in
the pretty grove beside the American Fall, and in the air whose dampness
was as familiar as if they had breathed it all their childhood. It was
full now of the fragrance of some sort of wild blossom; and again they
had that old, entrancing sense of the mingled awfulness and loveliness
of the great spectacle. This sylvan perfume, the gayety of the sunshine,
the mildness of the breeze that stirred the leaves overhead, and the
bird-singing that made itself heard amid the roar of the rapids and the
solemn incessant plunge of