Music — Poetry — Fiction 



skirted the grounds along the way to the foot-bridge the roar 1886 

 grew in their stunned ears. There, projected out into the night, 

 were the cables of steel holding the frail platform over the abyss 

 of night and terror. Beyond was Canada. There was light 

 enough in the sky to reveal, but not to dissipate, the appalling 

 insecurity. What an impious thing it seemed to them, this 

 trembling structure across the chasm! They advanced upon it. 

 There were gleams on the mill cascades below, and on the mass 

 of the American Fall. Below, down in the gloom, were patches 

 of foam, slowly circling around in the eddy — no haste now, 

 just sullen and black satisfaction in the awful tragedy of the fall. 

 The whole was vague, fearful. Alv/ays the roar, the shudder- 

 ing of the air. I think that a man placed on this bridge at night, 

 and ignorant of the cause of the aerial agitation and the wild 

 uproar, could almost lose his reason in the panic of the scene. 



They walked on; they set foot on Her Majesty's dominions; 

 they entered the Clifton House — quite American, you know, 

 with its new bar and office. A subdued air about everybody 

 here also, and the same quaking, shivering, and impending sense 

 of irresponsible force. Even " two fingers," said the artist, stand- 

 ing at the bar, had little effect in allaying the impression of 

 terror out there. When they returned the moon was coming up, 

 rising and struggling and making its way slowly through ragged 

 masses of colored clouds. The river could be plainly seen now, 

 smooth, deep, treacherous ; the falls on the American side showed 

 fitfully like patches of light and foam; the Horseshoe, mostly 

 hidden by a cold silver mist, occasionally loomed up a white and 

 ghostly mass. They stood for a long time looking down at the foot 

 of the American Fall, the moon now showing clearly the plunge of 

 the heavy column — a column as stiff as if it were melted silver — 

 hushed and frightened by the weird and appalling scene. They 

 did not know at that moment that there where their eyes were 

 riveted, there at the base of the fall, a man's body was churning 

 about, plunged down and cast up, and beaten and whirled, 

 imprisoned in the refluent eddy. But a body was there. In the 



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