Our Niagara visit was in great measure spoiled by my father’s illness. He was suffering from one of his worst sick headaches. He dragged himself painfully to the usual spot near the hotel whence the fall is commanded, and, having looked, got back to his bed. I had plenty of hours at my disposal for rambling in all directions, but, as usual with me, had not a coin of any sort in my pocket. The fall and its environs were not as jealously locked and gated and guarded as has been the case since; but I was assured that I should be very unwise to attempt to penetrate below and behind the fall without a guide, and I should have been most willing to employ one had I possessed the means. But to lose the opportunity of enjoying a sight to which I had so eagerly looked forward, was out of the question; and I did succeed in making my way by the slippery and rather terrible path behind the fall, rewarded by an effect of the sun on the sheet of falling water as perfect and admirable as if it had been ordered expressly for me, and none the worse for the enterprise save returning to the inn as thoroughly drenched as if I had been dragged through the fall! Little enough I cared for that--in those days! I may mention here one of those singular coincidences which, though in reality so frequently occurring, are objected to in a novelist’s pages as passing the bounds of credibility. Many years after the date of my visit to Niagara the mother of my present wife was there, and saw from the balcony of the hotel a boat with two rowers in it, who had incautiously approached too near the fall, carried over it! Her account of the horror of the sight, and of the sudden and evident despair of the frantically struggling rowers was very impressive, and hardly less so when I heard it for the second time from an American met by chance in Italy, who, sitting in that same balcony at that same hour, had witnessed the same catastrophe! At New York we were again most kindly and cordially received by Mr. Wilkes, who gave my father much advice respecting his projected Cincinnati venture--advice wholly, as I take it, ignored. Taught by experience, however, my father did not attempt a second steerage passage. We came back comfortably enough, and had an entirely prosperous voyage, the result being that my remembrances of it are very far less vivid than those of my steerage experience. We reached England in March, and again took up our abode at Harrow Weald, where I, with such very imperfect means and appliances as were at my disposition, was to employ the abundant hours in preparing, in accordance with my own unassisted lights, for the university.