Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 April 1875 — Niagara Falls. [ARTICLE]

Niagara Falls.

There’s water enough to make them a perfect success. I learned from the depot-master that Nature made the Falls, but he wouldn’t commit himself when I inquired as to the hackmcn, landlords and relic-sellers. I thought I had strength enough to walk from the depot to a hotel, a matter of three or four hundred feet, but seven or eight hackmcn rushed at me, and yelled : *• H —a—cks—hacks!” After the police had stopped the fight I started for the hotel, followed by six hackmcn in line. Some thought it was a funeral procession, and others took me for a lord. When I reached the hotel the hackmen demanded fifty cents each, saying that it was the same fare whether I rede or walked. “ But how could I ride up here in six hacks at once?" They replied that I couldn’t bluft them with any rule of addition, division or multiplication, and rather than seem penurious I paid them three dollars. The hotel clerks at Niagara are alone a sight worth traveling from Detroit to see. They look down upon a common traveler as a Newfoundland dog would gaze at a pinhead. At the hotel where I halted, I had to take oil' my hat, assume a reverential expression of countenance, and address the clerk as follows “ Most high and noble duke of the. register, would you condescend to permit a poor humble worm of the dust like me to ask you what time the train from the West is due here?”

from the ceiling, turn around on his stool, flash his diamonds into my eyes and point to the time-card on the wall; but if he didn’t feel like it he wouldn’t pay the least attention. The Niagara hotel-waiter is only one peg beneath the clerk. He has heard about John Jacob Astor and the Rothschilds, but he wouldn’t compromise his reputation by saying that he was intimately acquainted with them. I didn't know how to take him at first, and was reckless enough to put a dollar bill beside my plate at supper time. “ What is that?” he inquired, as he picked it up. “That? That, sir, is lucre—-dross—-money—a greenback,” I responded. “Humph! you’d better keep it—you might want to buy the Falls,” he retorted. I thought some of handing him my wallet, but as I didn’t I had to make my supper out of pepper, salt, celery and crackers. The guide is another feature of Niagara. The one who took me around showed me Goat Island from fourteen different points, and wanted two dollars a point, and when I growled about the price he sneeringly replied that if I had come there to get a one-horse view’ of the Falls I should have brought a tent and some crackers and cheese along, and camped out on the commons. The relic-sellers came at me in a body. I at first refused to buy Thomas Jeflerson’s arm-chair and Washington's cane, but the guide told me a story about a miserly fellow who was thrown over the Falls for refusing to purchase relics, and I felt compelled to select twelve Indian canoes, six Revolutionary muskets, a quart of Mexican war bullets, several war clubs, and an armful of tomahawks. I left Niagara with only one thing to console me. It has been ascertained that the Falls are wearing away at the rate of an inch every 300 years, and it won’t be long before the cataract will be completely w’drn out.—Jf. Quad, in Eireside Friend.