THE DIVINE ABYSS 



moment that we might have been alone with the 

 glorious spectacle, — that we had hit upon an hour 

 when the public had gone to dinner. The smoking 

 and joking tourists sauntering along in apparent 

 indifference, or sitting with their backs to the great 

 geologic drama, annoyed me. I pity the person who 

 can gaze upon the spectacle unmoved. Some are 

 actually terrified by it. I was told of a strong man, 

 an eminent lawyer from a Western city, who literally 

 fell to the earth at the first view, and could not 

 again be induced to look upon it. I saw a woman 

 prone upon the ground near the brink at Hopi Point, 

 weeping silently and long; but from what she after- 

 ward told me I know it was not from terror or sor- 

 row, but from the overpowering gladness of the in- 

 effable beauty and harmony of the scene. It moved 

 her like the grandest music. Her inebriate soul 

 could find relief only in tears. 



Harriet Monroe was so wrought up by the first 

 view that she says she had to fight against the de- 

 sperate temptation to fling herself down into the soft 

 abyss, and thus redeem the affront which the very 

 beating of her heart had offered to the inviolable 

 solitude. Charles Dudley Warner said of it, "I ex- 

 perienced for a moment an indescribable terror of 

 nature, a confusion of mind, a fear to be alone in 

 such a presence." 



It is beautiful, oh, how beautiful! but it is a 

 beauty that awakens a feeling of solemnity and awe. 



47 



