498 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, xxxi 



Fiske, at their summer home. Among the other visitors 

 were the eminent musical composer Mr. Paine, the poet 

 Cranch, and daughters of Hawthorne and Longfellow, so 

 that they found themselves in the midst of a particularly 

 cheerful and delightful party. From Petersham they pro- 

 ceeded to Buffalo, the meeting-place that year of the Ameri- 

 can Association for the Advancement of Science, which my 

 father had promised to attend. Here they stayed with Mr. 

 Marshall, a leading lawyer, who afterwards visited them in 

 England. 



A week was spent at Niagara, partly in making holiday, 

 partly in shaping the lectures which had to be delivered at 

 the end of the trip. As to the impression made upon him 

 by the Falls — an experience which, it is generally presumed, 

 every traveller is bound to record — I may note that after 

 the first disappointment at their appearance, inevitable 

 wherever the height of a waterfall is less than the breadth, 

 he found in them an inexhaustible charm and fascination. 

 As in duty bound, he, with my mother, completed his experi- 

 ences by going under the wall of waters to the " Cave of the 

 Winds." But of all things nothing pleased him more than 

 to sit of an evening by the edge of the river, and through 

 the roar of the cataract to listen for the under-sound of the 

 beaten stones grinding together at its foot. 



Leaving Niagara on September 2, they travelled to Cin- 

 cinnati, a 20-hours' journey, where they rested a day ; on the 

 4th another lo hours took them to Nashville, where they 

 were to meet his sister, Mrs. Scott. Though ii years his 

 senior, she maintained her vigour and brightness undimmed, 

 as indeed she did to the end of her life, surviving him by 

 a few weeks. As she now stood on the platform at Nash- 

 ville, Mrs. Huxley, who had never seen her, picked her out 

 from among all the people by her piercing black eyes, so 

 like those of her mother as described in the Autobiograph- 

 ical sketch (Coll. Ess. i.). 



Nashville, her son's home, had been chosen as the meet- 

 ing-place by Mrs. Scott, because it was not so far south nor 

 so hot as Montgomery, where she was then living. Never- 

 theless in Tennessee the heat of the American summer was 



