They walked out into the moonlit city, up and down streets that seemed very stately and fine, amidst a glitter of shop-window lights; and then, Less of their own motion than of mere error, they quitted the business quarter, and found themselves in a quiet avenue of handsome residences,—­the Beacon Street of Rochester, whatever it was called.  They said it was a night and a place for lovers, 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.  As they passed a certain house, a song fluttered out of the open window and ceased, the piano warbled at the final rush of fingers over its chords, and they saw her with her fingers resting lightly on the keys, and her graceful head lifted to look into his; they saw him with his arm yet stretched across to the leaves of music he had been turning, and his face lowered to meet her gaze.

“Ah, Basil, I wish it was we, there!”

And if they knew that we, on our wedding journey, stood outside, would not they wish it was they, here?”

“I suppose so, dearest, and yet, once-upon-a-time was sweet.  Pass on; and let us see what charm we shall find next in this enchanted city.”

“Yes, it is an enchanted city to us,” mused Basil, aloud, as they wandered on, “and all strange cities are enchanted.  What is Rochester to the Rochesterese?  A place of a hundred thousand people, as we read in our guide, an immense flour interest, a great railroad entrepot, an unrivaled nursery trade, 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 with lovers hovering over piano-fortes, of a palatial hotel with pastoral waiters and porter,—­a city of handsome streets wrapt in beautiful quiet and dreaming of the golden age.  The only definite association with it in our minds is the tragically romantic thought that here Sam Patch met his fate.”

“And who in the world was Sam Patch?

“Isabel, your ignorance of all that an American woman should be proud of distresses me.  Have you really, then, never heard of the man who invented the saying, ‘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 Falls.  The leap was easy enough, but the coming up again was another matter.  He failed in that.  It was the one thing that could not be done as well as others.”

“Dreadful!” said Isabel, with the cheerfullest satisfaction.  “But what has all that to do with Rochester?”