Faithful among the
faithless, may we not hope that his grandeur and strength of purpose,
and downright, fearless honesty, will have their appropriate reward,
both here and hereafter?
FOOTNOTES:
[1] And here I may as well mention a curious incident. When I wrote my
poem, I had never seen Niagara; but we agreed to go together on a
pilgrimage at our earliest convenience. One thing and another happened,
until I had been abroad and returned, without our seeing it together. At
last, being about to go to the South of Europe, I made a new arrangement
with him; but just as we--my wife and I--were ready to go, he was called
away to consecrate some church in the West, and we started on a journey
of two thousand miles through portions of our country I had never seen,
and was ashamed to go abroad again without seeing. On my way back we
stopped in Buffalo, and as I stood in the piazza I saw a little card on
one of the pillars saying that the Rev. Mr. Pierpont would preach in the
evening somewhere. I found him, and we went _together_ at last, and saw
Niagara together, as we had agreed to do forty years before. And that
night the heavens rained fire upon us, and the great November
star-shooting occurred, and our landlord, being no poet, was unwilling
to disturb us, so that we missed the show altogether.
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