MARK TWAIN

gets credit for. This is why Niagara is always a disap-
pointment when one sees it for the first time. One's imag-
ination has long ago built a Niagara to which this one is
a poor dribbling thing. The ocean "with its waves running
mountain high" is always a disappointment at first sight;
the imagination has constructed real mountains, whereas
these when swelling at their very biggest and highest are
not imposing. The Taj is a disappointment though people
are ashamed to confess it. God will be a disappointment
to most of us, at first. I wish I could see the Niagaras and
Tajs which the human imagination has constructed, why
then, bless you, I should see Atlantics pouring down out
of the sky over cloud ranges, and I should see Tajs of a
form so gracious and a spiritual expression so divine and
altogether so sublime and so lovely and worshipful that-
well—St. Peter's, Vesuvius, Heaven, Hell, everything that
is much described is bound to be a disappointment at first
experience.

Tuesday, June 16. Lying at anchor before East London,
Norham Castle, a large and very fine ship. Smythe and I
came aboard yesterday afternoon, although we are due to
sail this afternoon; but the tug might not be aBle to cross
the bar if a great sea should be running, and there is a
considerable sea today; it dashes itself against the big
stone breakwater near the mouth of the river and bursts
up in a vast white volume with laced edges, apparently
100 feet high.

Thursday, June 18. Cablegram saying the Drummond
Castle has gone down off Plymouth, 400 lives lost. This at
Port Elizabeth.

What ought to be done to the man who invented the
celebrating of anniversaries? Mere killing would be too
light. Anniversaries are very well up to* a certain point,

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