The children thought this moral was a joke at their expense, and as they were a little sleepy they permitted themselves the luxury of feeling trifled with.  But they woke, refreshed and encouraged, from slumbers that had evidently been unbroken, though they both protested that they had not slept a wink the whole night, and gave themselves up to wonder at the interminable levels of Western New York over which the train was running.  The longing to come to an edge, somewhere, that the New England traveler experiences on this plain, was inarticulate with the children; but it breathed in the sigh with which Isabel welcomed even the architectural inequalities of a city into which they drew in the early morning.  This city showed to their weary eyes a noble stretch of river, from the waters of which lofty piles of buildings rose abruptly; and Isabel, being left to guess where they were, could think of no other place so picturesque as Rochester.

“Yes,” said her husband; “it is our own Enchanted City.  I wonder if that unstinted hospitality is still dispensed by the good head waiter at the hotel where we stopped, to bridal parties who have passed the ordeal of the haughty hotel clerk.  I wonder what has become of that hotel clerk.  Has he fallen, through pride, to some lower level, or has he bowed his arrogant spirit to the demands of advancing civilization, and realized that he is the servant, and not the master, of the public?  I think I’ve noticed, since his time, a growing kindness in hotel clerks; or perhaps I have become of a more impressive presence; they certainly unbend to me a little more.  I should like to go up to our hotel, and try myself on our old enemy, if he is still there.  I can fancy how his shirt front has expanded in these twelve years past; he has grown a little bald, after the fashion of middle-aged hotel clerks, but he parts his hair very much on one side, and brushes it squarely across his forehead to hide his loss; the forefinger that he touches that little snapbell with, when he doesn’t look at you, must be very pudgy now.  Come, let us get out and breakfast at, Rochester; they will give us broiled whitefish; and we can show the children where Sam Patch jumped over Genesee Falls, and—­”

“No, no, Basil,” cried his wife.  “It would be sacrilege!  All that is sacred to those dear young days of ours; and I wouldn’t think of trying to repeat it.  Our own ghosts would rise up in that dining-room to reproach us for our intrusion!  Oh, perhaps we have done a wicked thing in coming this journey!  We ought to have left the past alone; we shall only mar our memories of all these beautiful places.  Do you suppose Buffalo can be as poetical as it was then?  Buffalo!  The name does n’t invite the Muse very much.  Perhaps it never was very poetical!  Oh, Basil, dear, I’m afraid we have only come to find out that we were mistaken about everything!  Let’s leave Rochester alone, at any rate!”

I’m not troubled!  We won’t disturb our dream of Rochester; but I don’t despair of Buffalo.  I’m sure that Buffalo will be all that our fancy ever painted it.  I believe in Buffalo.”