University of Virginia Library

2. II.

Everybody who makes the passage of the Erie
canal, stops at the half-way town of Utica, to visit a
wonder of nature fourteen miles to the west of it, called
Trenton Falls. It would be becoming in me, before
mentioning the falls, however, to sing the praises of

Utica and its twenty thousand inhabitants — having
received much hospitality from the worthy burghers,
and philandered up and down their well-flagged trottoir
very much to my private satisfaction. I should
scorn any man's judgment who should attempt to convince
me that the Erie water, which comes down the
canal a hundred and fifty miles, and passes through
the market-place of that pleasant town, has not communicated
to the hearts of its citizens the expansion
and depth of the parent lake from which it is drawn.
I have a theory on that subject with which I intend to
surprise the world whenever politics and Mr. Bulwer
draw less engrossingly on its attention. Will any one
tell me that the dark eyes I knew there, and whose
like for softness and meaning I have inquired for in
vain through Italy, and the voice that accompanied
their gaze — (that Pasta, in her divinest out-gush of
melody and soul, alone recalls to me) — that these, and
the noble heart, and high mind, and even the genius,
that were other gifts of the same marvel among women
— that these were born of common parentage, and
nursed by the air of a demi-metropolis? We were
but the kindest of friends, that bright creature and myself,
and I may say, without charging myself with the
blindness of love, that I believe in my heart she was
the foster-child of the water-spirits on whose wandering
streamlet she lived — that the thousand odors that
swept down from the wilderness upon Lake Erie, and
the unseen but wild and innumerable influences of
nature, or whatever you call that which makes the
Indian a believer in the Great Spirit — that these
came down with those clear waters, ministering to the
mind and watching over the budding beauty of this
noble and most high-hearted woman! If you do not
believe it, I should like you to tell me how else such
a creature was “raised,” as they phrase it in Virginia.
I shall hold to my theory till you furnish me with a
more reasonable.

We heard at the hotel that there were several large
parties at Trenton Falls, and with an abridgment of
our toilets in our pockets, Job and I galloped out of
Utica about four o'clock of as bright a summer's afternoon
as was ever promised in the almanac. We drew
rein a mile or two out of town, and dawdled along the
wild road more leisurely, Job's Green mountain proportions
fitting to the saddle something in the manner
and relative fitness of a skeleton on a poodle. By the
same token he rode safely, the looseness of his bones
accommodating itself with singular facility to the
irregularities in the pace of the surprised animal beneath
him.

I dislike to pass over the minutest detail of a period
of my life that will be rather interesting in my biography
(it is my intention to be famous enough to merit
that distinction, and I would recommend to my friends
to be noting my “little peculiarities”), and with this
posthumous benevolence in my heart, I simply record,
that our conversation on the road turned upon Edith
Linsey — at this time the lady of my constant love — for
whose sake and at whose bidding I was just concluding
(with success I presumed) a probation of three
years of absence, silence, hard study, and rigid morals,
and upon whose parting promise (God forgive her!) I
had built my uttermost gleaning and sand of earthly
hope and desire. I tell you in the tail of this mocking
paragraph, dear reader, that the bend of the rainbow
spans not the earth more perfectly than did the
love of that woman my hopes of future bliss; and the
ephemeral are does not sooner melt into the clouds —
but I am anticipating my story.

Job's extraordinary appearance, as he extricated
himself from his horse, usually attracted the entire attention
of the by-standers at a strange inn, and under
cover of this, I usually contrived to get into the house
and commit him by ordering the dinner as soon as it
could be got ready. Else, if it was in the neighbor
hood of scenery, he was off till Heaven knew when,
and as I had that delicacy for his feelings never to
dine without him, you may imagine the necessity of
my hungry manœuvre.

We dined upon the trout of the glorious stream we
had come to see; and as our host's eldest daughter
waited upon us (recorded in Job's journal, in my possession
at this moment, as “the most comely and gracious
virgin” he had seen in his travels), we felt bound
to adapt our conversation to the purity of her mind,
and discussed only the philosophical point, whether
the beauty of the stream could be tasted in the flavor
of the fish — Job for it, I against it. The argument
was only interrupted by the entrance of an apple-pudding,
so hot that our tongues were fully occupied
in removing it from place to place as the mouth felt
its heat inconvenient, and then, being in a country
of liberty and equality, and the damsel in waiting, as
Job smilingly remarked, as much a lady as the President's
wife, he requested permission to propose her
health in a cool tumbler of cider, and we adjourned to
the moonlight.