268 



THE SEA. 



It is to Mr. Charles Reade, the distinguished novelist, poet, and playwright, that we owe 

 a " true and accurate account of the heroic feats and sad calamity of James Lambert, a living 

 man." * Mr. Reade had read in the Glasgow Times of October 2nd, 1856, how, when a little 

 boy was drowning in the Clyde, an elderly blind man would have dived in but for his grand- 

 daughter, who with a girl's affection and unreasoning fears, had clung to his knees and utterly 

 spoiled his good intentions. The boy was drowned. The poor blind hero went home crying 

 like a child, saying, " It was a laddie flung away ; clean flung away." 



Mr. Reade, after long and weary searching, found Lambert in a wretched lodging 



CAPTAIN WEISU'S AKRIVAL AT CALAIS. 



in Calton, a suburb of Glasgow, and easily extracted from him a fund of anecdote, a part 

 only of which can be presented here. 



The " first case " Lambert had attended to was a twenty-stone " drooning " baker, who 

 gripped him tight to his breast, and nearly succeeded in drowning him. Lambert was then a 

 youth of about fourteen. Another was of a poor old washerwoman who had overbalanced 

 herself in the water, and who when saved wanted to go and pawn her tub that she might 

 reward him. Instead of which her rescuer "clappit a shellin'" in her hand, and promised 

 to repeat the kindness each Saturday from his own meagre wages. 



* The brochure which Mr. Reade wrote with the view of raising a fund for poor Lambert is entitled, "A Hero and 

 a Martyr." It was printed mainly for private circulation. 



