DEAR PUNCHINELLO:--Having been reminded, by your recent notes on
Niagara, that there is a cataract of that name, possessed of height and
depth and breadth and volume and other well-known characteristics of a
genuine Waterfall, I thought I would go and see it for myself. Not that
I doubted your statements--which, indeed, are handsomely supported by
familiar statistics,--but certainly there is a charm in treading the
ground once trod by Greatness, breathing--well not the same air, I hope,
but some of the same kind,--viewing the identical scenes, and being
swindled by the self-same parties, that had just occasioned your
animated comments.
I don't know a charm at all comparable with that of being swindled in
the midst of fine scenery, when the funds and enthusiasm still hold out,
and the sense of actually getting the worth of one's money is not yet so
blunted by transactions calculated to awaken Thought, as to have lost
the power of increasing one's felicity. That the intelligent lad who
drove me was in league with every one of the parties who were stationed
here and there with the sole apparent purpose of receiving fifty cents
from visitors, I was loth to believe, though nothing could have been
plainer, if one had happened to think of it from the start.
Is it not funny, the way they serve their Congress Water at the Cataract
House? They put a big lump of ice in a tumbler, take a bottle from a
shelf, pour the warm, stale fluid, (tasting like _perspiration_, as one
might fancy,) into this glass, and expect you to wait till it has grown
cool enough to be palatable. Well, if you wait, you lose what little
life there is left in the stuff; and if you don't, you'll be sorry you
hadn't done so.
One may say, "You needn't have ordered any Congress Water." Very well,
but why not, provided I liked it? The clerk said they kept Vichy, also,
but I learned they were "out." I wish they had been out of Congress too.
"All right!" said I, "I shall enjoy my breakfast all the more, for I
know _that_ will make amends!" And it did. The "salmon trout" was dry,
as usual, but that breakfast was a good thing. I enjoyed it, and my two
niggers and my New York paper of day before, (for which I paid a cute
looking boy in the hall ten cents, on my way to breakfast,) and was
happy.
Not, my dear P., till I reached the "other side," and had been inveigled
into the Museum Hotel, and persuaded into those vile wrappings of
oil-cloth, with the ponderous rubbers over my thick boots, and had stood
around for some time, awaiting the pleasure of the very leisurely guide,
sweating at every pore, (or _nearly_ every one, for there are several
millions, I believe, and I so hate exaggeration,) and trying to evade
the glances of the amused bystanders, did I begin to realize the
enormity of the imposition that had been practised on me. Just fancy
_yourself_, Mr PUNCHINELLO, in such a costume, taking a seemingly
interminable walk in a hot sun, down ever so many steps, encased in
those nasty articles of gear, in the company of several other helpless
unfortunates, wishing with all your might yon were already there!"
"But the grandeur and glory of the adventure will console me!" I
murmured. Grandeur be hanged! A fig for the "glory!" What! do you call
this "going under the Falls,"--that renowned journey, so full of peril?
Pooh! merely standing in a bath-tub and letting somebody pull the
string! You don't get quite so wet; that's all. Where's the "danger,"
where's the "glory," of merely stepping under a little spirt from one
end of the Falls, with plenty of room to stand, and no darkness, no
mystery, no nothing. Nothing but an overwhelming sense of being a cussed
fool, and a simpleton, and a stupid, _and_ a dunce!
Oh, the going back, after that! in the same loathed costume, inwardly
justifying the laughter of the knowing loungers as you ascend among
them, and cursing yourself as the chief among ten thousand
(ninnies,)--the one altogether idiotic.
Except for this enormous swindle, dear P., I should have enjoyed
Niagara, and Niagara would doubtless have enjoyed me. But this
preposterous, disgusting, outrageous, ridiculous, contemptible,
disgraceful, _unsurpassable_ swindle prevented anything like a mutual
understanding. I saw green in the Falls, the Falls saw green in me. The
Falls kept coming down; I had already come down, (with my dollars,) and,
in fact, was perpetually descending, with sums varying from twenty-five
cents to four dollars and a half.
My sole object, friend PUNCHINELLO, in addressing you on this subject,
is to beg and beseech that you will warn the too-credulous and
too-generous public against this unmatchably atrocious swindle of Going
Under the Falls. It is too much for proud Humanity, Mr. P.! It is
crushing! It is withering! It is annihilating! What! "Annex" this fraud?
Never!--NEVER!