306 George Caiman's Random Records. [MARCH/ 



seen my peril before I finally disappeared, and had to work up against 

 a strong tide to come to my assistance. At length he gained the spot 

 where I had gone down. I do not think that I had quite reached the 

 bottom. He was however obliged to dive for ms, when he caught me 

 by the hair, and with great risk of his own life, kind-hearted fellow as 

 he was, brought me to shore. But I was insensible, and on my return 

 to a perception of what was passing, I found myself stretched on my 

 stomach along the benches of a wherry drawn up on dry land, while 

 Dicky Roberts was applying hearty smacks with the flat end of a scull 

 to that part of my person which had so often smarted under the dis- 

 cipline of Doctor Vincent. This, no doubt, was Dicky's principle of 

 restoring the animal functions, though it may safely be presumed that 

 he had never studied Harvey on the Circulation of the .Blood." 



We are not sure that we are doing any service to the world in elu- 

 cidating the theory of hanging ; but coming from so high an authority 

 in all that " comes home to the hearts and bosoms of men," we cannot 

 prevail on ourselves to deprive the curious in suspension of the fa- 

 vourite dramatist's opinion. " I think that the sensation of drowning must 

 be something like that of hanging : for I felt the sensation of tightness 

 about the throat which I conjecture must be experienced by those who 

 undergo the severest sentence of the English law. Yet, in the alarm 

 and agitation of the moment I was not conscious of any great pain. A 

 blaze of light flashed upon my eyes. This I imagine to have arisen from 

 the blood rushing to the brain, though it might be occasioned by the 

 sunbeams which were then playing in full force upon the water/' 



The subject is so attractive to all, and may be so interesting to certain 

 individuals even of the class of marching intellect, that we must indulge 

 our philosophy in a few sentences on the funicular close of the troubles 

 of this very troublesome world. The sensation of drowning is a feeling 

 of suffocation, sharpened by the rapidly growing belief that we are going 

 to the bottom, there to lie. Of this sensation every one may have a fore- 

 taste who is absurd enough to dive, and may have the full fruition who 

 dives too long. No amateur of swimming, who feels himself ten or 

 twelve feet deep in a river, or arm of the ocean, with his last breath 

 bubbling out, is to be envied. Nor is the situation increased in its com- 

 forts, by the consciousness that his feet are entangled in a mesh of weeds 

 as inflexible as the Gordian knot, or encumbered by the branches of some 

 monarch of the woods, fallen a century before into the bosom of the 

 stream ; or that he is whirled along by an under-current, that twists 

 round him like a boa constrictor, pursuing the even tenor of its way to 

 the brow of a precipice fifty feet perpendicular, the boasted ornament of 

 my lord's demesne, and wonder of the country for fifty miles round. 

 The truth is, that drowning is a disagreeable mode of shaking off ( life's 

 coil/ and that hanging has little better to recommend it, except the 

 publicity. The declarations of those who have recovered from the ope- 

 ration of the law, in less expert times, go for little with us. They 

 generally make little of the affair. But, in the first place, their business 

 is bravado; in the next, they forget it in the first carouse, which is 

 generally evidenced by their putting themselves in the way of it again 

 on the first opportunity ; and thirdly, we are not in the habit of giv- 

 ing the deepest reliance to any thing that they say. ' Evita funem' 

 therefore, as the philosophic Seneca said , and the maxim is worthy of 

 his knowledge of the world. 



