The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1878-11-16

uoom mat had so nearly already en-
quilted me?
All these thoughts were in nv
brain at that instant, even while the
very power to think seemed frozen in
me.
How could dare to see? | shrieked
to be senseless. o, for madness, if
madness would rid me of the terror in
my brain, in my very blood, that was,
as 1t seemed, my life-that so possessed
me, that existence had room fol- moth
ing but unutterable horrOrl
81 looked to this very rock on which
we stand. Here, on this spot l saw
throng of excited spectators | was
seen; and who could see human be-
ing in such peril, and not family share
the terror that felt?
81 could hear the calls of men to me
to have heart. | could catch cries to
me that should be saved. | could see
women wild with pity. All, what could
their pity do for me! Yet that, per-
haps, was the saving of my life. Any
thing to make me forget the
ever rushing waters that increasingly
flashed by my feet and disappeared.
"Men were crowding the river bank
They were consulting, | could see, ex-
citedly debating what should be done.
"There is rush Of some from the
crowd. Time passes, ages to me, in
my agony. AT last boat comes,
borne on the shoulders of boatmen at a
run. They lay it at the waters edge.
Delay! delay! o God! o God! There
is rush of others with coil of cable,
not rope; rope they knew would be
murder.
"The boat is towed along the still
side water far up the stream. The
crowd follow it. What will they do?
What sane being will venture his life
to save mine? God! what will they do?
Delay! delay! They have stopped. Talk!
chatter will they never act? 0, dear
God, help MINDLESS him! A canoe
pulls out from the shore with boat in
tow. The canoe, as well as the boat,
has cable secured to it, by which
those on the bank regulate its drift
down the stream. How strongly it
struggles up and down into the flood:
Both cables are secured round trees
and paid out by numbers.
"Fighting up and across the tide,
drifted down it as the cables slack their
length, | watch-with what hungering
eyes! The canoe steals inch by inch to
where it and the boat it holds are in
line with my feet. The set of some
current drifted me to the rock | stand
on. The boat is detached, straining on
the cable guided by a rope from the
nearly stationary canoe. The current
sets it toward me. 1t is brought up
by the strain of cable ashore. Still it
drifts nearer and nearer.
There are moments in life that
swallow up all the rest of existence in
our memories. They haunt us awake.
We dream them always. If | should be
a Methuselah with centuries of breath it
seems to me one thought would always
| absorb all others, as Aaron snake de-
voured Pharaoh's magician's serpents.
6 remember nothing else, but that
awoke out of dream of hell in bed at
Forsyth's. | was told that | had been
in death agony with a brain fever.
What mattered that? | was out of the
torments of the damned. | felt the
blessedness of peace, of safety, of life
wrung from death.
"They dared not tell me it was real
that all | am now telling you had
been awful reality-that | had dared as
the boat drifted abreast of me to risk a
! leap in it-that, on the very edge and
, utter brink of perdition, the strength of
scores ashore had overpowered the
rushing flood-that amid the shouts
and tears and sobs not of women only,
but of bearded, iron-nerved men, | had
been lifted senseless from the boat and
borne to enjoy brain fever safely in the
hotel yonder.
"Do you think | have told you lie,
or believable truth-the bare fact?
know it is plain truth, and yet only
half credit it myself. Well, stranger,
dream or truth, never forget it; it's a
part of me always.
Good save any one from ever trying,
in fact or fancy, such an experience as
mine!
"Now you know why I don't see any
thing of beauty in Niagara. l leave
that to be discovered by those who
never came so near to being q real part
of it as | did. "-BelgraUia.