at do you say to this? You have heard all sorts of things said in
prose and verse about Niagara. Ask our young Doctor there what it
reminds him of. Is n't it a giant putting his tongue out? How can you
fail to see the resemblance? The continent is a great giant, and the
northern half holds the head and shoulders. You can count the pulse of
the giant wherever the tide runs up a creek; but if you want to look at
the giant's tongue, you must go to Niagara. If there were such a
thing as a cosmic physician, I believe he could tell the state of the
country's health, and the prospects of the mortality for the coming
season, by careful inspection of the great tongue, which Niagara is
putting out for him, and has been showing to mankind ever since the
first flint-shapers chipped their arrow-heads. You don't think the idea
adds to the sublimity and associations of the cataract? I am sorry for
that, but I can't help the suggestion. It is just as manifestly a tongue
put out for inspection as if it had Nature's own label to that effect
hung over it. I don't know whether you can see these things as clearly
as I do. There are some people that never see anything, if it is as
plain as a hole in a grindstone, until it is pointed out to them; and
some that can't see it then, and won't believe there is any hole till
they've poked their finger through it. I've got a great many things
to thank God for, but perhaps most of all that I can find something
to admire, to wonder at, to set my fancy going, and to wind up my
enthusiasm pretty much everywhere.

Look here! There are crowds of people whirled through our streets on
these new-fashioned cars, with their witch-broomsticks overhead,--if
they don't come from Salem, they ought to,--and not more than one in a
dozen of these fish-eyed bipeds thinks or cares a nickel's worth about
the miracle which is wrought for their convenience. They know that
without hands or feet, without horses, without steam, so far as they can
see, they are transported from place to place, and that there is nothing
to account for it except the witch-broomstick and the iron or copper
cobweb which they see stretched above them. What do they know or care
about this last revelation of the omnipresent spirit of the material
universe? We ought to go down on our knees when one of these mighty
caravans, car after car, spins by us, under the mystic impulse which
seems to know not whether its train is loaded or empty. We are used to