At Home And Abroad | Page 8

gaping tourists loitered, eyeing with their glasses, or sketching on
cards the hoary locks of the ancient river-god. All tended to harmonize
with the natural grandeur of the scene. I gazed long. I saw how here
mutability and unchangeableness were united. I surveyed the
conspiring waters rushing against the rocky ledge to overthrow it at one

mad plunge, till, like toppling ambition, o'er-leaping themselves, they
fall on t' other side, expanding into foam ere they reach the deep
channel where they creep submissively away.
Then arose in my breast a genuine admiration, and a humble adoration
of the Being who was the architect of this and of all. Happy were the
first discoverers of Niagara, those who could come unawares upon this
view and upon that, whose feelings were entirely their own. With what
gusto does Father Hennepin describe "this great downfall of water,"
"this vast and prodigious cadence of water, which falls down after a
surprising and astonishing manner, insomuch that the universe does not
afford its parallel. 'Tis true Italy and Swedeland boast of some such
things, but we may well say that they be sorry patterns when compared
with this of which we do now speak."
CHAPTER II.
THE LAKES.--CHICAGO.--GENEVA.--A
THUNDER-STORM.--PAPAW GROVE.
SCENE, STEAMBOAT.--_About to leave Buffalo.--Baggage coming
on board.--Passengers bustling for their berths.--Little boys persecuting
everybody with their newspapers and pamphlets.--J., S., and M.
huddled up in a forlorn corner, behind a large trunk.--A heavy rain
falling._
_M._ Water, water everywhere. After Niagara one would like a dry
strip of existence. And at any rate it is quite enough for me to have it
under foot without having it overhead in this way.
_J._ Ah, do not abuse the gentle element. It is hardly possible to have
too much of it, and indeed, if I were obliged to choose amid the four, it
would be the one in which I could bear confinement best.
_S._ You would make a pretty Undine, to be sure!
_J._ Nay. I only offered myself as a Triton, a boisterous Triton of the
sounding shell. You, M., I suppose, would be a salamander, rather.

_M._ No! that is too equivocal a position, whether in modern
mythology, or Hoffman's tales. I should choose to be a gnome.
_J._ That choice savors of the pride that apes humility.
_M._ By no means; the gnomes are the most important of all the
elemental tribes. Is it not they who make the money?
_J._ And are accordingly a dark, mean, scoffing ----
_M._ You talk as if you had always lived in that wild, unprofitable
element you are so fond of, where all things glitter, and nothing is gold;
all show and no substance. My people work in the secret, and their
works praise them in the open light; they remain in the dark because
only there such marvels could be bred. You call them mean. They do
not spend their energies on their own growth, or their own play, but to
feed the veins of Mother Earth with permanent splendors, very different
from what she shows on the surface.
Think of passing a life, not merely in heaping together, but making gold.
Of all dreams, that of the alchemist is the most poetical, for he looked
at the finest symbol. "Gold," says one of our friends, "is the hidden
light of the earth, it crowns the mineral, as wine the vegetable order,
being the last expression of vital energy."
_J._ Have you paid for your passage?
_J._ Yes! and in gold, not in shells or pebbles.
_J._ No really wise gnome would scoff at the water, the beautiful water.
"The spirit of man is like the water."
_S._ And like the air and fire, no less.
_J._ Yes, but not like the earth, this low-minded creature's chosen,
dwelling.
_M._ The earth is spirit made fruitful,--life. And its heartbeats are told
in gold and wine.

_J._ Oh! it is shocking to hear such sentiments in these times. I thought
that Bacchic energy of yours was long since repressed.
_M._ No! I have only learned to mix water with my wine, and stamp
upon my gold the heads of kings, or the hieroglyphics of worship. But
since I have learnt to mix with water, let's hear what you have to say in
praise of your favorite.
_J._ From water Venus was born, what more would you have? It is the
mother of Beauty, the girdle of earth, and the marriage of nations.
_S._ Without any of that high-flown poetry, it is enough, I think, that it
is the great artist, turning all objects that approach it to picture.
_J._ True, no object that touches it, whether it be the cart that ploughs
the wave for sea-weed, or the boat or plank that rides upon it, but is
brought at