“Yes,” he said, “I can’t account for him except as the ghost of Southern travel, and I can’t help feeling a little sorry for him.  I suppose that almost any evil commends itself by its ruin; the wrecks of slavery are fast growing a fungus crop of sentiment, and they may yet outflourish the remains of the feudal system in the kind of poetry they produce.  The impoverished slave-holder is a pathetic figure, in spite of all justice and reason, the beaten rebel does move us to compassion, and it is of no use to think of Andersonville in his presence.  This gentleman, and others like him, used to be the lords of our summer resorts.  They spent the money they did not earn like princes; they held their heads high; they trampled upon the Abolitionist in his lair; they received the homage of the doughface in his home.  They came up here from their rice-swamps and cotton-fields, and bullied the whole busy civilization of the North.  Everybody who had merchandise or principles to sell truckled to them, and travel amongst us was a triumphal progress.  Now they’re moneyless and subjugated (as they call it), there’s none so poor to do them reverence, and it’s left for me, an Abolitionist from the cradle, to sigh over their fate.  After all, they had noble traits, and it was no great wonder they got, to despise us, seeing what most of us were.  It seems to me I should like to know our friend.  I can’t help feeling towards him as towards a fallen prince, heaven help my craven spirit!  I wonder how our colored waiter feels towards him.  I dare say he admires him immensely.”

There were not above a dozen other people in the room, and Basil contrasted the scene with that which the same place formerly presented.  “In the old time,” he said, “every table was full, and we dined to the music of a brass band.  I can’t say I liked the band, but I miss it.  I wonder if our Southern friend misses it?  They gave us a very small allowance of brass band when we arrived, Isabel.  Upon my word, I wonder what’s come over the place,” he said, as the Southern party, rising from the table, walked out of the dining-room, attended by many treacherous echoes in spite of an ostentatious clatter of dishes that the waiters made.

After dinner they drove on the Canada shore up past the Clifton House, towards the Burning Spring, which is not the least wonder of Niagara.  As each bubble breaks upon the troubled surface, and yields its flash of infernal flame and its whiff of sulphurous stench, it seems hardly strange that the Neutral Nation should have revered the cataract as a demon; and another subtle spell (not to be broken even by the business-like composure of the man who shows off the hell-broth) is added to those successive sorceries by which Niagara gradually changes from a thing of beauty to a thing of terror.  By all odds, too, the most tremendous view of the Falls is afforded by the point on the drive whence you look down upon the Horse-Shoe, and behold its three massive walls of sea rounding and sweeping into the gulf together, the color gone, and the smooth brink showing black and ridgy.