It is not the place for a bad man to ponder; it is not the atmosphere for foul thoughts, or weak ones.  A man is never better than when he has the humblest sense of himself:  he is never so unlike the spirit of Evil as when his pride is utterly vanished.  You linger, looking upon the stream of fading sunlight that plays across the rapids, and down into the shadow of the depths below, lit up with their clouds of spray;—­yet farther down, your sight swims upon the black eddying masses, with white ribbons streaming across their glassy surface; and your dizzy eye fastens upon the frail cockle-shells—­their stout oarsmen dwindled to pygmies—­that dance like atoms upon the vast chasm, or like your own weak resolves upon the whirl of Time.

Your thought, growing broad in the view, seems to cover the whole area of life:  you set up your affections and your duties; you build hopes with fairy scenery, and away they all go, tossing like the relentless waters to the deep gulf that gapes a hideous welcome!  You sigh at your weakness of heart, or of endeavor, and your sighs float out into the breeze, that rises ever from the shock of the waves, and whirl, empty-handed, to Heaven.  You avow high purposes, and clench them with round utterance; and your voice, like a sparrow’s, is caught up in the roar of the fall, and thrown at you from the cliffs, and dies away in the solemn thunders of nature.  Great thoughts of life come over you—­of its work and destiny—­of its affections and duties, and roll down swift—­like the river—­into the deep whirl of doubt and danger.  Other thoughts, grander and stronger, like the continuing rush of waters, come over you, and knit your purposes together with their weight, and crush you to exultant tears, and then leap, shattered and broken, from the very edge of your intent into mists of fear!

The moon comes out, and gleaming through the clouds, braids its light fantastic bow upon the waters.  You feel calmer as the night deepens.  The darkness softens you; it hangs—­like the pall that shrouds your mother’s corpse—­low and heavily to your heart.  It helps your inward grief with some outward show.  It makes the earth a mourner; it makes the flashing water-drops so many attendant mourners.  It makes the Great Fall itself a mourner, and its roar a requiem!

The pleasure of travel is cut short.  To one person of the little company of fellow-voyagers you bid adieu with regret; pride, love, and hope point toward her, while all the gentler affections stray back to the broken home.  Her smile of parting is very gracious, but it is not, after all, such a smile as your warm heart pines for.

Ten days after, you are walking toward the old homestead with such feelings as it never called up before.  In the days of boyhood there were triumphant thoughts of the gladness and the pride with which, when grown to the stature of manhood, you would come back to that little town of your birth.  As you have bent with your dreamy resolutions over the tasks of the cloister life, swift thoughts have flocked on you of the proud step, and prouder heart, with which you would one day greet the old acquaintances of boyhood; and you have regaled yourself on the jaunty manner with which you would meet old Dr. Bidlow, and the patronizing air with which you would address the pretty, blue-eyed Madge.