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by issuing ‘Hungarian bonds,’ as they were called, down to a dollar, to serve as tickets of admission.
The whole number of his addresses has been about six hundred; the whole sum he has collected in all ways, about ninety thousand dollars. . . . . But he is a brilliant orator and rhetorician; showing marvellous power in different languages not his own, almost as if he had the gift of tongues; and acting sometimes on the masses as if he were magnetizing them. . . . . I did not see him in private; indeed, he was hardly seen by anybody, his time being wholly given to his great public objects. . . . .
Whenever you arrive, you must come directly to our house, whether we are at home or not; for in any event, I think, you would be better off than you would be at the Tremont.
Most of our servants will be there . . . .
Yours, always faithfully,
To G. T. Curtis, Esq.
Clifton House [Canada], Niagara Falls, July 29, 1852.
my dear George,—I received, some days ago, your note written at Newport.
We were then on the other side of the river, where we stayed ten days, our rooms—or at least the balcony before them overhanging the Rapids, right opposite Goat Island, . . . . making the island our great resort, seeing the sunset there daily, and passing two evenings of superb moonlight there.
Five days ago we came over here, and established ourselves in a neat, cheerful little cottage, with a large garden before it; the only thing there is between us and the excellent hotel where we get our meals.
We have it all to ourselves, and live in great quiet, with the awful grandeur of the Falls before us whenever we lift our eyes, and their solemn roar forever in our ears . . . .
Last night Frankenstein, a painter from Ohio,—whom we had known before,—took us in a boat, and rowed us about for near an hour.
Nobody has done such things before; not because they are dangerous, but because no eye for picturesque effect had ever detected its power.
The moon was nearly full, and I cannot describe the awful solemnity, magnificence, and in one instance preternatural gorgeous glories, of the scene.
We went quite near the American Falls, and when we emerged from the shade of the grim shores, and the moon began to illumine the edge of the waters above us, as they plunged down, there was a quivering mass of molten silver, that ran 