eached the hotel, I felt a strange indifference about seeing the
aspiration of my life's hopes. I lounged about the rooms, read the stage
bills upon the walls, looked over the register, and, finding the name of
an acquaintance, sent to see if he was still there. What this hesitation
arose from, I know not; perhaps it was a feeling of my unworthiness to
enter this temple which nature has erected to its God.

At last, slowly and thoughtfully I walked down to the bridge leading to
Goat Island, and when I stood upon this frail support, and saw a quarter
of a mile of tumbling, rushing rapids, and heard their everlasting roar,
my emotions overpowered me, a choaking sensation rose to my throat, a
thrill rushed through my veins, "my blood ran rippling to my finger's
ends." This was the climax of the effect which the falls produced upon
me--neither the American nor the British fall moved me as did these
rapids. For the magnificence, the sublimity of the latter I was prepared
by descriptions and by paintings. When I arrived in sight of them I
merely felt, "ah, yes, here is the fall, just as I have seen it in
picture." When I arrived at the terrapin bridge, I expected to be
overwhelmed, to retire trembling from this giddy eminence, and gaze
with unlimited wonder and awe upon the immense mass rolling on and on,
but, somehow or other, I thought only of comparing the effect on my mind
with what I had read and heard. I looked for a short time, and then with
almost a feeling of disappointment, turned to go to the other points of
view to see if I was not mistaken in not feeling any surpassing emotion
at this sight. But from the foot of Biddle's stairs, and the middle of
the river, and from below the table rock, it was still "barren, barren
all." And, provoked with my stupidity in feeling most moved in the wrong
place, I turned away to the hotel, determined to set off for Buffalo
that afternoon. But the stage did not go, and, after nightfall, as there
was a splendid moon, I went down to the bridge, and leaned over the
parapet, where the boiling rapids came down in their might. It was
grand, and it was also gorgeous; the yellow rays of the moon made the
broken waves appear like auburn tresses twining around the black rocks.
But they did not inspire me as before. I felt a foreboding of a mightier
emotion to rise up and swallow all others, and I passed on to the
terrapin bridge. Everything was changed, the misty apparition had taken
off its