my life, during the few weeks in
which I have moved amongst the scenes of your eventful history.

And then, leaving the past for the present, a new field opens before me.
There are two impressions which are fixed upon my mind as to the leading
characteristics of the people among whom I have passed, as the almanac
informs me, but two short months. On the one hand I see that everything
seems to be fermenting and growing, changing, perplexing, bewildering.
In that memorable hour--memorable in the life of every man, memorable as
when he sees the first view of the Pyramids, or of the snow-clad range
of the Alps--in the hour when for the first time I stood before the
cataracts of Niagara, I seemed to see a vision of the fears and hopes of
America. It was midnight, the moon was full, and I saw from the
Suspension Bridge the ceaseless contortion, confusion, whirl, and chaos,
which burst forth in clouds of foam from that immense central chasm
which divides the American from the British dominion; and as I looked
on that ever-changing movement, and listened to that everlasting roar,
I saw an emblem of the devouring activity, and ceaseless, restless,
beating whirlpool of existence in the United States. But into the
moonlight sky there rose a cloud of spray twice as high as the Falls
themselves, silent, majestic, immovable. In that silver column,
glittering in the moonlight, I saw an image of the future of American
destiny, of the pillar of light which should emerge from the
distractions of the present--a likeness of the buoyancy and hopefulness
which characterize you both as individuals and as a nation.

You may remember Wordsworth's fine lines on "Yarrow Unvisited," "Yarrow
Visited," and "Yarrow Revisited." "America Unvisited"--that is now for
me a vision of the past; that fabulous America, in which, before they
come to your shores, Englishmen believe Pennsylvania to be the capital
of Massachusetts, and Chicago to be a few miles from New York--that has
now passed away from my mind forever. "America Visited"; this, with its
historic scenes and its endless suggestions of thought, has taken the
place of that fictitious region. Whether there will ever be an "America
Revisited" I cannot say; but if there should be, it will then be to me
not the land of the Pilgrim Fathers and Washington, so much as the land
of kindly homes, and enduring friendships, and happy recollections,
which have now endeared it to me. One feature of this visit I