It seems that my
business here will be finished much sooner than I expected, and then I
am off on the quickest steamer for New York, in the hope of seeing
Niagara Falls. I have met with one disappointment, however. Jack says
he cannot possibly accompany me to the United States. I have failed to
arouse in him the faintest interest about the electric works at
Niagara. He insists that he is on the verge of a most important
discovery, the nature of which he does not confide in me. I think he
is working too hard, for he is looking quite haggard and overdone, but
that is always the way with him. He throws himself heart and soul into
any difficulty that confronts him, and works practically night and day
until he has solved it.
"Yesterday he gave the whole street a fright. I had just returned from
the Foreign Office, and had gone upstairs to my room, when there
occurred an explosion that shook the building from cellar to roof, and
sent the windows of our blacksmith's shop rattling into the street.
Jack had a most narrow escape, but is unhurt, although that fine beard
of his was badly singed. He has had it shaved off, and now sports
merely a mustache, looking quite like a man from New York. You
wouldn't recognize him if you met him on Broadway. The carpenters and
glaziers are at work to-day repairing the damage. I told Jack that if
this sort of thing kept on I'd be compelled to patronize another
hotel, but he says it won't happen again.
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