What do you say to this?  You have heard all sorts of things said in prose and verse about Niagara.  Ask our young Doctor there what it reminds him of.  Is n’t it a giant putting his tongue out?  How can you fail to see the resemblance?  The continent is a great giant, and the northern half holds the head and shoulders.  You can count the pulse of the giant wherever the tide runs up a creek; but if you want to look at the giant’s tongue, you must go to Niagara.  If there were such a thing as a cosmic physician, I believe he could tell the state of the country’s health, and the prospects of the mortality for the coming season, by careful inspection of the great tongue, which Niagara is putting out for him, and has been showing to mankind ever since the first flint-shapers chipped their arrow-heads.  You don’t think the idea adds to the sublimity and associations of the cataract?  I am sorry for that, but I can’t help the suggestion.  It is just as manifestly a tongue put out for inspection as if it had Nature’s own label to that effect hung over it.  I don’t know whether you can see these things as clearly as I do.  There are some people that never see anything, if it is as plain as a hole in a grindstone, until it is pointed out to them; and some that can’t see it then, and won’t believe there is any hole till they’ve poked their finger through it.  I’ve got a great many things to thank God for, but perhaps most of all that I can find something to admire, to wonder at, to set my fancy going, and to wind up my enthusiasm pretty much everywhere.

Look here!  There are crowds of people whirled through our streets on these new-fashioned cars, with their witch-broomsticks overhead,—­if they don’t come from Salem, they ought to,—­and not more than one in a dozen of these fish-eyed bipeds thinks or cares a nickel’s worth about the miracle which is wrought for their convenience.  They know that without hands or feet, without horses, without steam, so far as they can see, they are transported from place to place, and that there is nothing to account for it except the witch-broomstick and the iron or copper cobweb which they see stretched above them.  What do they know or care about this last revelation of the omnipresent spirit of the material universe?  We ought to go down on our knees when one of these mighty caravans, car after car, spins by us, under the mystic impulse which seems to know not whether its train is loaded or empty.  We are used to force in the muscles of horses, in the expansive potency of steam, but here we have force stripped stark naked,—­nothing but a filament to cover its nudity,—­and yet showing its might in efforts that would task the working-beam of a ponderous steam-engine.  I am thankful that in an age of cynicism I have not lost my reverence.  Perhaps you would wonder to see how some very common sights impress me.  I always take off my hat if I stop to speak to a stone-cutter at his work.  “Why?” do you ask me?  Because I know