The Lamoille news. (Hyde Park, Vt.) 1877-1881, 1878-11-20
SNATCHED FROM NIAGARA.

l guess Niagara beats creation for big
ness. You curiosity-hunters can't find a
dip of water better worth cycling over in
all your iaunts anywhere. Well, you
see, it's just an ocean, as it were, rolling
over that limestone ledge. Foam, spray
and thunder-one dull, eternal, awful
roar, spanned by shifting rainbows-
that's it.
It's like an entertainment provided
for those who house at our hotels; some.
thing to draw customer and tot up
jolly return for the capital invested.
That's it, isn't it? 1t gives you pleas.
are to talk about and pay for, and brings
dollars to those that let you lodgings.
Come. it is up to your notions, ie it not,
stranger p
Can't you see something beyond
dollars and cents in this wonder of
wonders p l said. "I know Familiarity
breeds contempt toward most things,
but / rather expected to find Niagara
beyond this customary result"
Well. to say the plain truth, don't
go in for outlandish howlings about this
roarer; but when you talk of my having
any sort of contempt for it, [ tell you my
iancies about Old Thunderer are some
thing particularly different to that.
5lall tell you why Are you in
listening fit Yes? Then for once I'll
let out story I have in my memory,
and no living man, native or foreign,
has anything to pair off with it as re-
spects this tumbler below u.s." So, with
the dread music in my ears OF this mighty
mass of fashing-down waters, I listened
to tale that has ever since formed part
of my reoollections of Niagara.
"I'm toughish still, you see. Oldish
rather, for sixty odd years I've lived
hereabout; for here I was born. I know
this place pretty well, 1 guess; every
foot of every rock, of every track for
long miles away-up to Erie and down
to Ontario. Field and forest know my
shoe leather all through these parts.
"When | was thirty, or thereRbout,
I hutted up this river some four miles
or so away. You've tracked it down
maybe to here. You'd hardly think we
were coming upon this. The country
up river is fiattish. The river slides
along quiet enough, too. No crags, no
precipices, no darksome forests; all
is fertile and good to the eye of man
just peace and plenty. 1t is different,
though, as the sound of thunder ahead
grows upon you-dull, awful, everlast-
ing, that has sounded on from creation,
and will outlast you and me, stranger,
and thousands of generations yet to
come.
GLOW does it strike you? You see
it, I dare say, as saw it two score years
ago. To you it is terrible, but not all
terror. It's lovely, too. And to me ?
well, to me it is horror only; it has
been SO since that day when I hung on
its very brink for hours, and thought OF
it as one might think in nightmare
dream of some hideous thing, incon-
ceivable, unutterable, that held one in
it's awful grasp. But mine was no
vision OF the night, to laugh at when
awakened. Those hours grizzled the
then brown of my young head into the
iron gray you see now. Their iron
entered into my soul, as they say. 1t
has lived there ever since, night and
day. season and season. There it will
stay till the death-rattle kills the mem
ory of all this side of my coffin.
ST hunted and fshed then. That's
how lived. Visitors then came pretty
plentiful to see this wonder. l could
get ready sale for what 1 caught,
whether it was fur or fin. l had canoed
| il from when could recollect anything,
| and was pretty spry, tell you, with the
paddles, and pretty venturesome, too, ]
became, till I thought I was strong
enough and skilled enough to run risks
hereabout that others would have shud
dered from.
ST thought I knew Niagara too vel
to BIZ in any danger from it. ! was sc
familiar with 1T, I thought of it witt
none of the scare newcomers found il
| it. used to laugh at their genuine
fears at the very sight and sound OF it
knew it by night when the calm moon
light poured down light through tn