Produced by David Widger
By William Dean Howells
Contents:
The Outset
A Midsummer-day's Dream
The Night Boat
A Day's Railroading
The Enchanted City, and Beyond
Niagara
Down the St. Lawrence
The Sentiment of Montreal
Homeward and Home
Niagara Revisited Twelve Years after Their Wedding
By William Dean Howells
1871
They first met in Boston, but the match was made in Europe, where theyafterwards saw each other; whither, indeed, he followed her; and therethe match was also broken off. Why it was broken off, and why it wasrenewed after a lapse of years, is part of quite a long love-story, whichI do not think myself qualified to rehearse, distrusting my fitness for asustained or involved narration; though I am persuaded that a skillfulromancer could turn the courtship of Basil and Isabel March to excellentaccount. Fortunately for me, however, in attempting to tell the reader ofthe wedding-journey of a newly married couple, no longer very young, tobe sure, but still fresh in the light of their love, I shall have nothingto do but to talk of some ordinary traits of American life as theseappeared to them, to speak a little of well-known and easily accessibleplaces, to present now a bit of landscape and now a sketch of character.
They had agreed to make their wedding-journey in the simplest andquietest way, and as it did not take place at once after their marriage,but some weeks later, it had all the desired charm of privacy from theoutset.
"How much better," said Isabel, "to go now, when nobody cares whether yougo or stay, than to have started off upon a wretched wedding-breakfast,all tears and trousseau, and had people wanting to see you aboard thecars. Now there will not be a suspicion of honey-moonshine about us; weshall go just like anybody else,—with a difference, dear, with adifference!" and she took Basil's cheeks between her hands. In order todo this, she had to ran round the table; for they were at dinner, andIsabel's aunt, with whom they had begun married life, sat substantialbetween them. It was rather a girlish thing for Isabel, and she added,with a conscious blush, "We are past our first youth, you know; and weshall not strike the public as bridal, shall we? My one horror in life isan evident bride."
Basil looked at her fondly, as if he did not think her at all too old tobe taken for a bride; and for my part I do not object to a woman's beingof Isabel's age, if she is of a good heart and temper. Life must havebeen very unkind to her if at that age she have not won more than she haslost. It seemed to Basil that his wife was quite as fair as when they metfirst, eight years before; but he could not help recurring with aninextinguishable regret to the long interval of their broken engagement,which but for that fatality they might have spent together, he imagined,in just such rapture as this. The regret always haunted him, more orless; it was part of his love; the loss accounted irreparable reallyenriched the final gain.
"I don't know," he said presently, with as much gravity as a man canwhose cheeks are clasped between a lady's hands, "you don't begin verywell for a bride who wishes to keep her secret. If you behave in thisway, they will put us into the 'bridal chambers' at all the hotels. Andthe cars—they're beginning to have them on the palace-cars."
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