Luxury of Danger 



The suspense, while you are in the scrape, is perhaps 

 about evenly balanced by the consciousness of skill which 

 wrestles with the difficulty ; but when one is fairly through, 

 one congratulates one's self so cordially, and common earth 

 seems such a luxury to one's feet ; besides a certain rebel- 

 lious triumph over the detracting whisper of Prudence, who 

 certainly has the best of the argument, when to Rashness 

 making the boast, " I have done it ! " she answers — " Yes ! 

 but you had no business to try." 



But how very flat the world would be if one only did 

 what one has any business to do. I never had such a climb 

 since a pleasant precipice at Niagara, nine years ago, when 

 I was seventeen, and had very near as much of the better 

 part of valour as at present. 



Now that I was at the top, I sat down on the edge of a 

 broad mass of rock overhanging the precipice, which fell 

 away about 200 feet in a plumb-line. Between this and 

 another similar rock-head was the fissure, whose irregu- 

 larities of surface had been the rounds of my ladder. Below 

 lay huge lumps, forty or fifty feet square, which had fallen 

 off the brow in ages past. 



In the narrow glen below, the edges of the precipice on 

 either side had formed the horizon : but from the height to 

 which I had climbed, I now saw that from the brow above 

 the abrupt crags, sloped back a considerable forehead of 

 rugged mountain, sprinkled with great boulder-stones, many 

 of which had apparently rolled down to the very verge, and 

 been hesitating for centuries whether to go over or not. 

 The foamy Jucar roaring through its rocks, 500 feet below 

 me, made a pleasant solemn murmur in the still windless 

 abyss, which began to darken down below, as the sun 

 declined towards the mountain-flank. 



When the blood is heated, and the mind excited 



323 X 



