Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1874-12-31
one foot for a place to plant it below


pike made me look round, and the roots
of the weed upon which I partially de-
pended gave way as was in the act of
! turning. Sir, ones senses are sharpened
in deadly peril; as I live now, l dis
tinctly heard the bells of Trinity chin
ing midnight as l rose to the surface
the next instant, immersed in the stone
caldron, where l must swim for nv life
Hea7en only could tell how IongI
q am capital swimmer; and this
naturally gave me degree of self-pos-
session. Falling as had, l of course
had pitched out some distance from the
sloping parapet. a few strokes brought
me to the edge. | really was not yet GER
tain but that l could Chamber up the face
Of the wall anywhere. l hoped that I
could. l felt certain at least there was
some spot where might get hold with
my hands, ever if I did not ultimately
ascend it.
g / tried the nearest spot. The inci
nation of the wall was so vertical that If
did not even rest me to lean against il
felt with my hands and with nv feet.
Surely, | thought, there must be some
tissure like that in which that ill-omened
weed had found place for its root!
There was none. My fingers became
sore in busying themselves with the harsh
and inhospitable stones. My feet slipped
from the smooth and Shiny masonry be-
meath the water; and several times nv
face came in rude contact with the wall
when my foothold gave way on the in
slant that l seemed to have found some
diminutive rocky cleat upon which I
could stay myself
Sir, did you ever see a rat drowned
in half-filled hogshead-how he swims
round, and round, and round, and after
vainly trying the sides again and again
with his paws fixes his eyes upon the
upper rim as if he would look himself
out of his waterY prison?
thought of the miserable vermin
thought of him as I had often watched
thus his dying agonies when a cruel ur-
chin of eight or ten. Boys are horribly
cruel, sir; boys, women and savages.
All childlike things are cruel; cruel
from want of thought and from per
verse ingenuity, although by instinct
each of these is so tender. You NAV
not have observed it, but a savage is as
tender to its young as a boy is to a favor
lite puppy, the same boy that will tor
ture kitten out of existence. | thought
then, [ say, of the rat drowning in
half-f1led cask of water, and lifting his
gaze out OF the vessel as he grew more
and more desperate, and flung myself
on my back, and, floating thus, fixed my
eyes upon the face of the moon.
" The moon is well enough in her way,
however you may look at her; but her
appearance is, to say the least of it, pc
culiar to a man floating on his back in
the center of stone tank, with a dead
wall of some fifteen or twenty feet ris-
ing squarely on every side of him!"
CThe young man smiled bitterly as he
said this, and shuddered once or twice
before be went on, musingly) "The last
time l had noted the planet with any
was with me; | had brought her out
here one morning to look at the view
from the top of the reservoir. She said
little Of the scene, but as we talked of
our old childish loves | saw that it's fresh
features were incorporating themselves
with tender memories of the past, and I
was content.
There was rich golden haze upon
the landscape, and as my own spirits
rose amid the voluptuous atmosphere
she pointed to the waning planet dis
cernible like a faint cash in the welkin,
and wondered how long it would be be-
fore the leaves would fall Strange
girl! Did she mean to rebuke my joyous
mood, as if we had no right to be happy
while nature, whitening in her pomp, and
the sickly moon wasting in the blaze of
nOOntide, were there to remind us of the
gone forever They will all renew
themselves, dear Mary said ] encour-
agingly, and there is one that will ever
keep tryst alike with thee and nature
through all seasons if thou wilt be true
to one of us and remain as now child
of nature
"a tear sprang to her eye and then,
searching her pocket for her card-case,
she remembered an engagement to be
present at Miss Lawson's opening of fall
bonnets at two o'clock!
And yet, dear, wild, wayward Mary,
l thought of her now. You have prob
ably outlived this sort of thing, sir; but
|, locking at the moon as If1oated there
upturned to her yellow light, thought of
the loved being whose tears l knew
would flow when she heard of my singu-
lar fate at once, so grotesque yet melan-
choly to awfulness.
And how often we have talked, too
Of that Carian shepherd who spent his
damp nights upon the hills gazing as
do upon the lustrous planet! Who will
revel with her amid those old supersti-
tons? Who from our own unlegended
woods will evoke their yet undetected,
ha,,