MISADVENTURES OF A LOVER. 549 



hours when my friends became uneasy about me. A few hours more 

 elapsed, and they became so much alarmed for my safety as to be 

 unable to conceal their fears from the neighbours. A search was 

 proposed. But in what direction was the search to be made ? The 

 world is wide; so is the district around my native town. While tiius 

 undecided as to what direction they should take, some stupid, talka- 

 tive, impertinent old maid, who had returned from bleaching clothes 

 on the banks of the river, mentioned to my friends that she had seen 

 me " walking backwards and forwards" along the river side, mani- 

 festly discomposed. " Gracious heavens ! '' exclaimed my father, 

 " he means to do away with himself!" " Run, run, or he'll be 

 drowned already!'' shrieked my mother. The circumstance of my 

 taking no supper the previous night, no breakfast that morning, 

 my unusually absent demeanour for the last twenty hours — all these 

 rushed into the minds of my parents and made them conclude the 

 worst. Mother fainted ; but father bore up under the apprehended 

 catastrophe with wonderful fortitude. " Not a moment is to be lost, 

 let us be off directly,'' said one of the neighbours : and imme- 

 diately they all started — they were twenty-one in number — and 

 bounded as " fast as their feet could carry them," to the particular 

 spot at the river's banks where I had been last seen by the aforesaid 

 long-tongued antiquated virgin. It was now twilight, and no object 

 could be distinctly seen at any distance. The side, too, of the river 

 on which I had been seen by the washer-woman — and to which con- 

 sequently, as already mentioned, my alarmed relatives and acquaint- 

 ances directed their precipitate steps — was, at that particular spot, 

 studded with a plantation of well-grown firs. It was impossible 

 therefore, for two causes, that the party could see any distance in 

 the locality in question. It is of importance to mention this, because 

 it will prepare the reader for the fact that the aforesaid posse of 

 officious friends were close by me before they saw me ; and then 

 they only saw a fraction of my person, the whole man, with the ex- 

 ception of the head, being immersed in the river. In yet plainer 

 language, if that be necessary, I was at that moment plunging about 

 up to the neck in the water, gasping for breath, and every instant 

 like to go down to rise no more. A better picture of a drowning 

 man, I have been subsequently told, was never witnessed. I can 

 add, from my own knowledge, that a more narrow escape from a 

 watery death-bed, if there be propriety in the expression,, was 

 never — could not be — made by mortal. "He's in life yet!" ex- 

 claimed one. " He'll be gone this moment !'' shouted another of the 

 party. " In, in to his aid ! " vociferated the whole batch, in discord- 

 ant chorus, and with a strength of lungs which might have awoke the 

 dead in their graves, were that possible. The last quoted words 

 were no sooner howled out than five or six persons dashed into the 

 river at the same instant, for the philanthropic purpose of saving my 

 life, though at the imminent hazard of their own. Two of the 

 most active and tallest of these did reach me and dragged me out, 

 the one by the hair of the head and the other by the left arm. I 

 might have perished for the others. Their solicitude for my salva- 

 tion vanished the moment they put their feel in the water. They 



