The Argosy — page 152: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

In the Black Forest. 137 cascades over a bed of rocks. Hadthe volume of water been greater, so in proportion would have been the effect ; but it was just now even smaller than usual. Very pretty, but not by any means sublime. The situation of the fall is wild and romantic in the extreme, and the rocky heights on either side seem to guard it with angry jealousy. Zig-zag ladders conduct you to the bottom, and sundry rustic bridges span the chasm. ‘The cataract finally empties itself in a small basin, and then flows onward less turbulently on its course to the sea—if, indeed, it does not yield up its life into some other cataract or more rnajestic river. To-night its effect was mournful and desolate. In the growing dark, the surrounding solitude and gloom seemed portentous. ‘The deep blackness of the pines was losing itself in the deeper blackness of night, but one felt that the melancholy trees were there, and their influence remained. The very rocks took weird shapes and forms ; and extending my walk for some short distance beyond the waterfall, a huge road-side stone so caught the outline of a crouching bear that for one moment I stood rooted to the spot in unpleasant doubt. But if at any period of the world’s history it had been endowed with life, all that had long since been petrified, perhaps by one of the good spirits haunting this region. The stone is still there, reader, beside the steep slope, under the shadow of the trees, guarding the way. It may probably see out this century and the next in its present position, and you may satisfy yourself as to the resemblance as you pass that way: But it must be when the very last shades of twilight are expiring — as they were expiring on this occasion—or the charm will be broken, the spell will not work, the weird influence upon the mind will be wanting. For similar effects you must have similar causes ; and if a fair landscape is described to you, all balmy air, and golden suns and tropical flowers, and singing birds, and you visit that fair land- scape in mid-winter, and find it all snow and east winds and leaden skies, do not therefore conclude that the former state of things never existed and will never return. The occasion, and not the writer, must be credited with the change. For, poor frail mortals that we are, we cannot control our sunshine : cannot command a day or an hour, or be certain of a moment: can- not turn one hair white or black, or add one cubit to our stature. We have to take all things as we find them; be thankful for our small mercies as well as our great ; hope for the best ; hope on, hope ever; hold on our little way ; and trust that at the end of the long line of life there is a goal where all will be well; the wrong become right, the crooked be made straight : a sunshine eternal, without fear of any cloud or stormy weather. Groping up the zig-zag ladder as best the darkness allowed, I wended my way back to the settlement (I know no better name for it), whose lights, shining through the gloom, were the only beacon COMMICOOOKS.C©