Their Wedding Journey

pon their handbook. When they named it, there stepped forth a porter of an incredibly cord

uilt, they boldly declared, being at their wit's end for a comparison, and taken with the unhoped-for picturesqueness, that it put them in mind of Verona. Thus they reached their hotel in almost a spirit of foreign travel, and very willing to verify the pleasant porter's assurance that they would like it, for everybody liked it; and it was with a sudden sinking of the heart that Basil beheld presiding over the register the conventional American hotel clerk. He was young, he had a neat mustache and well-brushed hair; jeweled studs sparkled in his shirt-front, and rings on his white hands; a gentle dis

give myself the genteel air of one who has not been stepped upon. But I think homicidal things all the same, and I rejoice that in the safety of print I can cry out against the despot, whom I have not the presence to defy. "You vulgar and cruel little soul," I say, and I imagine myself breathing the words to his teeth, "why do you treat a weary stranger with this ignominy? I am to pay well for what I get, and I shall

s luggage had been put in it seemed useless to protest, and like a true American, like you, like me, he shrank from asserting himself. When the sun went down it

always inspires in its guests, and which our great hotels, far from impairing, enhance in flattering degree; in fact, the clerk once forgotten, I protest, for my own part, I am never more conscious of

they had a bow from the head-waiter, who ran before them and drew out chairs for them at a table, an

hed the table-cloth; a fifth, the youngest of the five, with folded arms stood by and admired the satisfaction the rest were giving. When these had been dispatched for steak, for broiled white-fish of the lakes,-noblest and delicatest of the fish that swim,-for broiled chicken, fo

presently, and leave us empty and forlorn?" plaintively murmured Isabel, as the me

, Basil," she faltered, "that they could have found out we're a bridal party, and that they're serving us s

y our sufferings at the Albany depot, and you exaggerate the blessings we enjoy, though I should be sorry to undervalue them. I suspect it's the custom to use people well at this hotel; or if we are singled out fo

intellectual and moral virtue of Boston. This supper i

fall their dispute,-which ended, of course, in Basil's abject confession that Boston was the best place in the world, and nothing but banishment could make him live elsewhere,-and gave themselves up, as usual, to the delight of being just what and where the

sil answered that the

then, and asked, "Don't you think this is a pretty nice hotel"-hastily adding as a con

armed to have invited his guileless confidence, to have evoked possibly all the simple poetry of his soul; it was what might have happened in Italy, only there so much naivete would have meant money; the

room, and were bowed

Is this Rochester, New York, or is it so

s, for none but lovers, for lovers newly plighted, and they made believe to bemoan themselves that, hold each other dear as they would, the exaltation, the thrill, the glory of their younger love was gone. Some of the houses had gardened spaces about them, from which stole, like breaths of sweetest and saddest regret, the perfume of midsummer flowers,-the despair of the rose for the bud

I wish it wa

edding journey, stood outside, wou

ime was sweet. Pass on; and let us see what ch

e, a university, two commercial colleges, three collegiate institutes, eight or ten newspapers, and a free library. I dare say any respectable resident would laugh at us sentimentalizing over his city. But Rochester is for us, who don't know it at all, a city of any time or country, moonlit, filled

the world wa

'Some things can be done as well as others,' and proved it by jumping over Niagara Falls twice? Spurred on by this belief, he attempted the leap of the Genesee

heerfullest satisfaction. "But what

the Genesee Falls were at Rochester? Upon my word, I'm a

at he had to be ashamed of. "Actually, I believe you would have allowed me to leave Roche

falls. Presently, after threading their way among a multitude of locomotives, with and without trains attached, that backed and advanced, or stood still, hissing impatiently on every side, they passed through the station to a broad planking above

ally made use of the beauty left over, and have built a Bierhaus where they may regale both soul and sense in the presence of the cataract. Our travellers might, in

company to be exulting in the first German triumphs of the war, which were then the day's news; they saw fists shaken at noses in fierce exchange of joy, arms tossed abroad in wild congratulation, and health-pouring goblets of beer lifted in air. Then they stepped into the moonlight again, and heard only the solemn organ stops of the cataract. Through garden-ground they were led by the little maid, their guide, to a small pavilion that stood on the edge of the precipitous shore, and commanded a perfect view of the falls. As they entered this pavilion, a youth and maiden, clearly lovers, passed out, and they were left alone with that sublime presence. Something of definiteness was to be desired in the spectacle, but there was ample compensation in the mystery with which the broad effulgence and the

tal leap; but Isabel refused to admit that tragical figure to the honors of her emotions. "I don't care

onsent to face the music in our simple common names, and put Smith into a lyric and Jones into a tragedy. The Germans are braver than we, and in them you find facts and dreams continually blended and confronted. Here is a fortunate illustration. The people we met coming out of this pavilion were lovers, and they had been here sentimentalizing on this superb cataract, as you call it, with which my heroic

carce the foam of the generous liquor lately brimming them; some shreds of sausage, s

ed upon the falls? On the contrary, I've no doubt that he recalled to her the ballad which a poet of their language made about him. It us

erhauagart

lls of th

ble-Rock in

igure bol

the air

h, the plung

nging banks

ither pulse

t hovers

the moo

mist from

y as ni

I cry to

ince vanis

stretch for

ss hands o

who wrote this. He

ot in the name of Sam

ab

d where he said, I 'Springt der Sam Patsch kuhn and

met at the pavilion door. They were seated at a table; two glasses of beer towered before

h cinders, which also crackled under foot. Dust was on everything, especially the persons of the crumpled and weary passengers of overnight. Those who came aboard at Rochester failed to lighten the spiritual gloom, and presently they sank into the common bodily wretchedness. The train was somewhat belated, and as it drew nearer Buffalo they knew the conductor to have abandoned himself to that blackest of the arts, m

ood out from his head like the handles of a jar, on the other side, about a seat which the Hebrew wanted, and which the others had kept filled with packages on the pretense that it was engaged. It was a loud and fierce quarrel enough, but it won no sort of favor; and when th

he passengers successively with papers, magazines, fine-cut tobacco, and packages of candy. He gave the old man a package of candy, and passed on. The German took it as the bounty of the American people, oddly manifested in a situation where he could otherwise have had little proof of their care. He opened it and was sharing it with his son when the train-boy came back, and metallically, like a part of the machinery, demanded, "Ten cents!" The German star

od heavens! To think of our immortal souls being moved to mirth by such a thing as this,-so stupid, so barren of all reason of l

, pay him back

less stranger, who supposed he had at last met with an act of pure kindness. It's a thing to weep over. Look at these grinning wretches! What a fiendish effect their smiles hav

the train started for Niagara, and in the first moments of tedium, Isabel forgot herself into saying, "Don

I didn't propose

should think you'd have generosity enough to take a little of th

approached from the west by way of Buffalo; and Isabel, who tenderly begrudged his having existed before she knew him,

s I thought last night; we'll come to Buffalo." She found that the place had all the picturesqueness of a sea-port, without the ugliness that attends the rising and falling tides. A delicious freshness breathed from the lake, which lying so smooth, faded into the sky at last, with no line between sharper than that which divides drowsing from dreaming. But the color

this, "and don't let me see another thing till I get to Niagara. N

ch shows itself very nobly from time to time as you draw toward the cataract, with wooded or cultivated islands, and rich farms along its l