Niagara Falls 



1886 morning a man's overcoat was found on the parapet at the angle 

 Warner G f the fall. Some one then remembered that in the evening, just 



before the park gate closed, he had seen a man approach the angle 

 of the wall where the overcoat was found. The man was never 

 seen after that. Night first, and then the hungry water, swal- 

 lowed him. One pictures the fearful leap into the dark, the mid- 

 way repentance, perhaps, the despair of the plunge. A body 

 cast in here is likely to tarry for days, eddying round and round, 

 and tossed in that terrible maelstrom, before a chance current 

 ejects it, and sends it down the fierce rapids below. King went 

 back to the hotel in a terror of the place, which did not leave 

 him so long as he remained. His room quivered, the roar filled 

 all the air. Is not life real and terrible enough, he asked himself, 

 but that brides must cast this experience also into their honey- 

 moon? 



The morning light did not efface the impressions of the night, 

 the dominating presence of a gigantic, pitiless force, a blind pas- 

 sion of nature, uncontrolled and uncontrollable. Shut the win- 

 dows and lock the door, you could not shut out the terror of it. 

 The town did not seem safe; the bridges, the buildings on the 

 edge of the precipices with their shaking casements, the islands, 

 might at any moment be engulfed and disappear. It was a thing 

 to flee from. 



I suspect King was in a very sensitive mood ; the world seemed 

 for the moment devoid of human sympathy, and the savageness 

 and turmoil played upon his bare nerves. The artist himself 

 shrank from contact with this overpowering display, and said 

 that he could not endure more than a day or two of it. It needed 

 all the sunshine in the face of Miss Lamont and the serenity of 

 her cheerful nature to make the situation tolerable, and even her 

 sprightliness was somewhat subdued. It was a day of big, 

 broken, high-sailing clouds, with a deep blue sky and strong sun- 

 light. The slight bridge to Goat Island appeared more pre- 

 sumptuous by daylight, and the sharp slope of the rapids above 

 it gave a new sense of the impetuosity of the torrent. As they 



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