so tenderly fair in whatever aspect should yet be so large that one glance fails to comprehend it all.  The rugged wildness of the cliffs and hollows about it is softened by its gracious beauty, which half redeems the vulgarity of the timber-merchant’s uses in setting the river at work in his saw-mills and choking its outlet into the St. Lawrence with rafts of lumber and rubbish of slabs and shingles.  Nay, rather, it is alone amidst these things, and the eye takes note of them by a separate effort.

Our tourists sank down upon the turf that crept with its white clover to the edge of the precipice, and gazed dreamily upon the fall, filling their vision with its exquisite color and form.  Being wiser than I, they did not try to utter its loveliness; they were content to feel it, and the perfection of the afternoon, whose low sun slanting over the landscape gave, under that pale, greenish-blue sky, a pensive sentiment of autumn to the world.  The crickets cried amongst the grass; the hesitating chirp of birds came from the tree overhead; a shaggy colt left off grazing in the field and stalked up to stare at them; their little guides, having found that these people had no pleasure in the sight of small boys scuffling on the verge of a precipice, threw themselves also down upon the grass and crooned a long, long ballad in a mournful minor key about some maiden whose name was La Belle Adeline.  It was a moment of unmixed enjoyment for every sense, and through all their being they were glad; which considering, they ceased to be so, with a deep sigh, as one reasoning that he dreams must presently awake.  They never could have an emotion without desiring to analyze it; but perhaps their rapture would have ceased as swiftly, even if they had not tried to make it a fact of consciousness.

“If there were not dinner after such experiences as these,” said Isabel, as they sat at table that evening, “I don’t know what would become of one.  But dinner unites the idea of pleasure and duty, and brings you gently back to earth.  You must eat, don’t you see, and there’s nothing disgraceful about what you’re obliged to do; and so—­it’s all right.”

“Isabel, Isabel,” cried her husband, “you have a wonderful mind, and its workings always amaze me.  But be careful, my dear; be careful.  Don’t work it too hard.  The human brain, you know:  delicate organ.”

“Well, you understand what I mean; and I think it’s one of the great charms of a husband, that you’re not forced to express yourself to him.  A husband,” continued Isabel, sententiously, poising a bit of meringue between her thumb and finger,—­for they had reached that point in the repast, “a husband is almost as good as another woman!”

In the parlor they found the Ellisons, and exchanged the history of the day with them.

“Certainly,” said Mrs. Ellison, at the end, “it’s been a pleasant day enough, but what of the night?  You’ve been turned out, too, by those people who came on the steamer, and who might as well have stayed on board to-night; have you got another room?”