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. 
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