Music — Poetry — Fiction 

 sion bridges for their part being saved from offensiveness by their 1871 



bj pi Howell* 



eauty and unreality. 



11 We come to Niagara in the patronizing spirit in 

 which we approach everything nowadays, and for a few hours 

 we have it our own way, and pay our little tributes of admiration 

 with as much complacency as we feel in acknowledging the exist- 

 ence of the Supreme Being. But after a while we are aware of 

 some potent influence undermining our self-satisfaction ; we begin 

 to conjecture that the great cataract does not exist by virtue of our 

 approval, and to feel that it will not cease when we go away. 

 The second day makes us its abject slaves, and on the third we 

 want to fly from it in terror. I believe some people stay for 

 weeks, however, and hordes of them have written odes to 

 Niagara." 



. The moon which is elsewhere so often of wormwood, 

 or of the ordinary green cheese at the best, is of lucent honey 

 there from the first of June to the last of October; and this is a 

 great charm in Niagara. I think with tenderness of all the lives 

 that have opened so fairly there ; the hopes that have regained in 

 the glad young hearts; the measureless tide of joy that ebbs and 

 flows with the arriving and departing trains. Elsewhere there 

 are carking cares of business and of fashion, there are age, and 

 sorrow, and heartbreak; but here only youth, faith, rapture. 

 I kiss my hand to Niagara for that reason, and would I were a 

 poet for a quarter of an hour. 



Palacio, Don Vicente Riva and Mateos, Don Juan A. 1871 

 La cataracta del Niagara. (In their Dramatic works. Mexico City. Palacio md 

 1871.) Maleo * 



The time of this drama, written in verse, is 1847. The first two acts 

 are set in Mexico City, and the third at Niagara. 



1872 



BlDDLE, HORACE P. Niagara. (In his Poems. N. Y.: Riverside 1872 

 Press. 1872. P. 237.) Biddle 



773 



