A CASE IN POINT. 277 



doubtless true. Men are destroyed by accident, and their 

 lives are sometimes saved by it. And if you'll put away 

 metaphysics, come out of the cloud in which you have hid 

 yourself in your dreamy speculations, I will furnish you with 

 a case in point, showing that a man may get into a very 

 unpleasant predicament, where he runs a great risk and gets 

 some hard knocks, and yet be able to thank God for it, in 

 perfect earnestness of spirit. A case of the kind came under 

 my own observation, and while there was not much philoso- 

 phy, or abstract speculation about it, there was a great deal 

 of hard practical fact. It happened when I was a boy, at 

 the old homestead, in the valley that stretches to the south- 

 west from the head of Crooked Lake. That valley is 

 hemmed in by high and steep hills, and at the time of which 

 I speak, was much more beautiful in my view than it is now. 

 There was no village there then, and the farms which 

 fetched from hill to hill were greatly less valuable than 

 they are now ; but the woods and pastures, and meadows, 

 lay exactly in the right places, and had among them par- 

 tridges, and squirrels, and pigeons, and cattle, and sheep 

 enough to make things pleasant ; besides, there were plenty 

 of trout in those days, in the stream that flows along through 

 the valley midway between the hills. On the north side, 

 coming down through a gorge, or ' the gulf,' as we used to 

 call it, was a stream which, in the dry season of the year, 

 was a little brook, trickling over the rocks, but which, in 

 the spring freshets, or when the clouds emptied themselves 

 on the mountain, was a wild, foaming, roaring, and resistless 



