New Ulm weekly review. [volume] (New Ulm, Minn.) 1878-1892, 1878-12-04

most two wild with terror to think at all.
Yet the brain seemed fevered with life in
such moments.
sShould [ be starved? Should / slide
into the rushing tide from cold and ex-
haustion2 Would sheer, unbearable ter
ror fling me to death from my utter in
ability to endure the horror that possessed
me?
"What could be done for me? Was res
cue possible? Could boat be foated in
any way down to me? Even if it could be
guided to SO small q point, could dare
to trust myself to it?
"Would any rope be strong enough to
bear the force that the mighty food would
require it to endure and overcome2
An instant's relaxation of the strain on
the rope that might hold it till it towed
it to shore, and |, if not it, would be
where my own canoe had gone.
would human strength, could human
endeavor, snatch me from the doom that
had so nearly already ingulfed me?
Cali these thoughts were in nv brain
in that instant, even while the very power
to think seemed frozen in me.
''How could I dare to see? l shrieked
to be senseless. Oh, for madness. ifmad-
ness would rid me Of the terror in my
brain, in my very blood, thai was, as it
seemed, my life-that so possessed me,
that existence had room for nothing but
unutterable horror!
81 looked to this very rock on which
we stand. Here, on this spot, I saw q
throng Of excited spectators. I was seen !;
and who could see human being in
such peril, and not family share the
terror that felt?
II could hear the calls of men to me TO
have heart I could catch cries to me
that I should be saved. I could see
women wild with pity. All, what could
their pity do for me? Yet that, perhaps,
was the saving of my life. Any thing
any thing-to make me forget the ever
rus..---, waters tina Increasingly flashed
by my feet and disappeared.
"Men were crowding the river bank.
They were consulting, could see. ex-
citedly, debating what should be Gone.
"There is a rush of some from the
crowd. Time passes ages to me, in my
agony. At last boat comes borne on the
shoulders of boatmen alta run. They lay
it at the waters edge. Delay! delay
Oh, God! Oh, God! There is rush of
others with a coil of cable, not rope: rope
they knew would be murder.
IL see them boring the boats sides
passing the cable throl gh-knetting it.
mailing it securely.
''rhe boat is towed along the still side
atorf ar +bo ctr f>1
low it. What will they do? God! what
will they do? What sane being will ven
ture his life to save mine? Delay delay
They have stopped. Talk! chatter! will
they never act? Oh, dear God, help him
: bless him! A canoe pulls out from
shore, with the boat in tow. The canoe
as we'll as the boat, has cable secured to
it, by which those on the bank regulate
Its drift down stream. How strongly it
struggles up and out into the full flood
Both cables are secured round trees and
paid out by numbers.
Fighting up and across the tide, drift
ed 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 holds it are in
line with my feet. The set of some cur
rent drifted me to the rock I stand on.
The boat is detached, straining on the ca
bic, guided, too, by a rope from the nea
ly stationary canoe. The current sets it
toward me. 1t is brought UP by the
strain of the cable ashore. Still it drifts
nearer and nearer.
"There are moments in life that swal-
low up all the rest of existence in our
memories. They haunt us awake. We
dream them always. If I should be a
Methuselah with centuries of breath it
seems to me one thought would always
absorb all others, as Aaron's snake de-
voured Pharoah's magician's serpents.
l remember nothing else but that I
woke out of dream Of hell in bed at
Forsyth's was told I had been in a death
agony with BRAIN fever. What mattered
that2 I was out of the torment of the
damned. felt the blessedness of peace,
ofsafety, Of life wrung from death.
They dared not tell me it was real
that all am now telling you had been
awful reality--that I had dared as the
boat drifted abreast of me to risk a leap
into it--that, On the very edgd 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, I had been lifted senseless
from the boat and borne to enjoy brain
fever safely in the hotel yonder.
'sDo you think I have told you lie or
a bellevable truth-the bare fact2 1 know
it is plain truth, and yet only half credit
myself. Well, stranger, dream or truth,
never forget it; it's part Of lne always.
.sGnd save anv one from ever truino in