t, and who believed that there must be some supernatural
influence in the life radiating from the great orb and bounding through
every half-chilled vein. The inventor of parasols and sun-shades should
have been executed immediately on the announcement of his invention, for
he has been the means of shutting away the faces of more than half the
world, and especially the fairer portion, from their best inanimate
friend, the sun, of making sallow complexions and lack-lustre eyes, and
of causing a demand for cosmetics that would never have been known had
the sun-god been allowed to steal kisses from the cheek of beauty and
leave there the ruddy glow of health as a compensation for the
privilege.

To induce a belief on the part of Richard Crawford that he was well
enough and strong enough to leave the house to which he had been so long
confined, had been found a little difficult. The ice once broken, the
next adventure into the summer sunshine would need far less inducement.
So it proved. And so it happened that within four days from the time
when he believed that he was committing suicide by adventuring to the
Central Park, he permitted himself to be persuaded, under the sanction
of the doctor, into taking a step which was certain to test his powers
of endurance pretty thoroughly--nothing less than _going to Niagara
Falls_.

Of course this movement originated with John Crawford the Zouave, whose
original restlessness had not been a whit quieted by the ever-moving
adventure of a year in the army. The city was growing unendurably hot,
he said, so that he every day expected to find the paving-stones
splitting to pieces with the heat, and the fish boiling in the North
River. It was ten degrees worse, he averred, than he had experienced in
Virginia either season; and such a thing as a hot day had never been
known at Niagara, even by the oldest inhabitant. (Perhaps the young man
altered his opinion on that point, visiting it especially during the
early days of July, 1862!) Dick would grow worse again--he knew he
would--and lose the little strength he had gained, sweltering in such an
unventilated pig-stye as the city. Come!--there were to be no more words
about it!--they should all go to Niagara!

Richard Crawford was at first alarmed--then puzzled--then a little
delighted. Bell, who did not often fall into the peculiarly girlish
weakness of clapping her hands, did so on this occasion. She had missed
Niagara for the previous tw