Yet slowly, surely, steadily, in the course of my fifteen visits, the
proportions adjusted themselves to the facts, and I came at last to
realize that a waterfall a hundred and sixty-five feet high and a quarter
of a mile wide was an impressive thing. It was not a dipperful to my
vanished great vision, but it would answer.
I know that I ought to do with the Taj as I was obliged to do with
Niagara--see it fifteen times, and let my mind gradually get rid of the
Taj built in it by its describers, by help of my imagination, and
substitute for it the Taj of fact. It would be noble and fine, then, and
a marvel; not the marvel which it replaced, but still a marvel, and fine
enough. I am a careless reader, I suppose--an impressionist reader; an
impressionist reader of what is not an impressionist picture; a reader
who overlooks the informing details or masses their sum improperly, and
gets only a large splashy, general effect--an effect which is not
correct, and which is not warranted by the particulars placed before me
particulars which I did not examine, and whose meanings I did not
cautiously and carefully estimate.
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