The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1843-09-19 00:00:00

them— never before them; seize either the back of the
neck, or even a lock of the back hair, particularly if long
hair, will be quite sufficient to hold them, and to urge
them before you to shore—holding them by one hand,
and swimming with the other. (Parties should practist
swimming with either hand alone, and they will be
more fitted, having tested their own resources this way,
to rely upon their ability for any attempt to rescue others.)
Sometimes the foot can be readiest seized : this will do,
though not so well. Always keep clear of their arms
and hands, with one exception perhaps—the back of their
arm, or grasping the shoulders round and under the arm-
pit from behind. They must be made your prisoner in
one of these ways, which are the chief, or else you
may be made, however unintentionally, theirs, which,
as we have said, is fatal to both ; the reverse being a
happy success in your object. Alas ! h w many noble
endeavours, on the part even of good swimmers, are
worse than thrown away, by not attending to this—how
often does there result a double loss of life, deepening
into horror the earlier part of the catastrophe—as our
newspaper records show almost day by day. A per-
son had better not jump in to help, under the prompt-
ings of a noble anxiety, unless he can with presence of
mind put these precautions into practice. If in his praise-
worthy efforts to save the struggler, or the lifeless body,
from a " watery grave," he finds his own strength fail-
ing, and the hope he bravely cherished impossible to
realise, then he must consign his prisoner to his fate,
and save his own life, however distressing to desert
a drowning fellow-creature. This duty to himself he
cannot discharge if he have allowed himself to become im-
prisoned in the drowning man's death-grasp : for though
magnaniminis courage may call him to make an attempt
at rescuing a fellow-creature from fatal danger, and none
would keep this in more distinct view than the writer, as a
moral obligation ; yet it is no less true that an attempt so
to do without the probability of accomplishing it through
adequate and properly-directed means, is, however amia-
ble a trait of enthusiastic feeling for another's jeopardy,
condemned as rash by prudence, as an infringement of or-
ganic and inorganic laws, amounting to a temptation of
Providence, though in the loveliest garb rash profligacy
of your own existence can be found to wear ! Yet it is a
mistaken building of a tower without having counted the
cost,' the prosecution of which can only be left off by doing
as we have said, ere the weight of its falling mass and
scaffold crushes such builder under its destruc-
tive ruins. Coolness is never more emphatically
the handmaiden of courage than here ; and let
us engrave these rules by another word begin-
ning with the letter C, that is—Caution ; like the Irish-
man taking prisoners— be always surrounding them— (a
push now :nd then will be all needed often). Courage
to attempt their rescue ; coolness to apply knowledge ;
caution to crown with success a heroism well begun. If
but one life more were rescued through our suggestions,
this book may be, " like bread cast upon the waters,"
found after many days—many years it may be—useful
for once, and the author will be immeasurably repaid.

" What is a man,
If his chief good, and market of his time,
Be but to sleep, and feed ; a beast. no more.
Sure, He that made us with such large discourse
Looking before, and after, gave us not
That capability, and vdlike reason,
To fust in us, unused."

SHAIESPEARE

" Idleness is the badge of gentry, the bane of body and mind,
the nurse of naughtiness, the stepmother of discipline, the chief
author of all mischief, one of the seven deadly sins, the cushion
upon which the devil chiefly reposes, and a great cause not only
of melancholy, but of many other diseases ; for the mind is na-
turally active, and if it be not occupied about some honest bu-
siness, it rushes into mischief. or sinks into melancholy ."

BURTON

" Who says, the wan autumnal sun
Beams with too faint a smile
To light up Nature's face again,
And, though the year be on the wane,
With thoughts of Spring the heart beguile ?

" Waft him. thou soft September breeze,
And gently lay him down
Within some circling woodland wall,
Where bright leaves. reddenning ere they fall,
Wave gaily o'er the waters brown.

" And let some graceful arch be there
With wreathed mullions proud,
With burni h'd ivy for its screen,
And moss, that slows as fresh and green
As though beneath an April cloud."

" How divine
fhe liberty, for frail, for mortal man,
To roam at large among unpeopled glens,
And mountainous retirements, only trod
By devious footsteps l—Regions consecrate
To oldest time!—And reckless of the storm
That keeps the raven quiet in his nest,
Be as a presence or a motion—one
Among the many there."

THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD