The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1874-12-05

Upon the second day of October, 1856, The
Glasgow Times told the world moving story.
A little boy was drowning in the Clyde.
There was score of people on the bank; but
they only groaned, and glared, and futtered
at the child's screams and struggles; not one
had both the courage an. the skill to plunge
in and rescue him. se- ..s...s
But presently came an elderly man who
was peerless swimmer and diver, and had
saved more than forty lives in that very river.
Alas! he was now stone blind; little girl,
his granddaughter, was leading him by the
hand. fl fltE4 Iet SID
Yet to him his blindness seemed no obsta-
Gle. ''Let me to him! let me to him!' he
cried; 9Th save him yet"
But, in the general dismay and agitation,
his appeal was unheeded at first. Then he
screamed out in generous fury, I'VE daft
Jules. a mCn disna SOON with his cen; just
fling me into the water, and cry me(A) to
hir,, and yell see."
His prayer would have been granted, but
his granddaughter with a girls affection and
unreasoning fears, chung round his knees,
and screamed, ''Na, ma, ye wadna, ye wadna! p
This caused hesitation when there was no
longer moment to lose. The boy sank for
the last time; deep groan from the specta-
tors told the sad end, aud the poor blind hero
q went home, finging his arms about in despair
and crying like child; for as he had after
wards said, in telling the lamentable tale, ut
was laddie flung away; clean flung away"
The chronicler went on to enumerate the
gallant exploits of this very James Lambert
before he lost his sight: and the whole story
set me thinking. l began to weigh the vulgar
griefs of men against James Lambert's high
distress. taxed myself and dissected things
that had made me rage or grieve now they
seemed small and selfish.
From that my mind went into books, and
fell 10 comparing the feats and tears OF Lam
bert with the feats and tears of heroes,
whom history has embalmed, or poetry can
onized.
STANCE to say, it was not my living contem :
porary, but the famous figures of poetry and
history, that paed little in this new cruci-
BILE. often detected some drawback to their
valor, and a faint of egotism in their grief.
This made me suspect that poetry, like its
readers, may have been dazzled by the glare
OF armor and the blare of trumpets, and left
heroic men unsung, who best deserved bard.
For, look below the surfacc-unsung Lam
berts was the highest courage; it was
solitary courage, and no trumpets to
stir it; no armor, no joint enthusiasm !;
often no spectators. Summer and winter he
plunged into the Clyde, and saved men and
women, with his bare body, and at great per-
il to his life; for the best swimmer is dead
man if drowning person clutches him and
cripples him. And what was his reward on
earth? For his benevolent courage he was
stricken blind, through so many sudden inn
mersions of his heated body in icy water.
Was not this poetic calamity, and fit
theme for tenderest verse?
Being thus afflicted, forh:s virtue. he heard
fellow-creature drowning. He was potent
as ever in the water, but impotent on land !;
and they would not help him into the water !;
and SO young lie was flung away, that he
could have saved, and he went home finging
his arms about in agony, and weeping tears,
that angels might be proud to dry with loving
wings. Alas! and is it SO? The eyes, that
can no longer see, can weep. e5o :,
A noble, rare, unseff1sh, and most poetical
distress, though told me in the plain prose of
journal! 1t made me desire to see James
Lambert, and hear his tale from his own lips,
and give him my sympathy. 81 y
But unfortunately, I am Procrastinator.
OF course can do unadvisable things expedi-
tioasly; but when a.wise or good thing is to
be done, s'nOnuna prenaatur in dnnuna,' is my
motto. So, for ten mortal years, and more,
l was always going-gong-goin visit
James Lambert. 1af ~ -
At last, / am ashamed to say when, being
in Selkirkshire, shook off the 'thief of time"
and went into Glasgow to see this man, a hero
in his youth, martyr in old age.
But / had lived long enough to observe that,
when you seek a man, who las alive aud ell
derby twelve years ago, you find that he has
teen dead from four to seven. So, on the
road to Glasgow, blamed myself bitterly for
my besetting sin, and actually said to myself,
very earnestly, -
--from this moment