_June 4, '80_.--For really seizing a great picture or book, or piece of
music, or architecture, or grand scenery--or perhaps for the first time
even the common sunshine, or landscape, or may-be even the mystery
of identity, most curious mystery of all--there comes some lucky
five minutes of a man's life, set amid a fortuitous concurrence of
circumstances, and bringing in a brief flash the culmination of years of
reading and travel and thought. The present case about two o'clock this
afternoon, gave me Niagara, its superb severity of action and color and
majestic grouping, in one short, indescribable show. We were very slowly
crossing the Suspension bridge-not a full stop anywhere, but next to
it--the day clear, sunny, still--and I out on the platform. The
falls were in plain view about a mile off, but very distinct, and no
roar--hardly a murmur. The river tumbling green and white, far below
me; the dark high banks, the plentiful umbrage, many bronze cedars, in
shadow; and tempering and arching all the immense materiality, a clear
sky overhead, with a few white clouds, limpid, spiritual, silent. Brief,
and as quiet as brief, that picture--a remembrance always afterwards.
Such are the things, indeed, I lay away with my life's rare and blessed
bits of hours, reminiscent, past--the wild sea-storm I once saw one
winter day, off Fire island--the elder Booth in Richard, that famous
night forty years ago in the old Bowery--or Alboni in the children's
scene in Norma--or night-views, I remember, on the field, after battles
in Virginia--or the peculiar sentiment of moonlight and stars over the
great Plains, western Kansas--or scooting up New York bay, with a stiff
breeze and a good yacht, off Navesink. With these, I say, I henceforth
place that view, that afternoon, that combination complete, that five
minutes' perfect absorption of Niagara--not the great majestic gem
alone by itself, but set complete in all its varied, full, indispensable
surroundings.