slit his own throat while cutting a slate-frame against his chest with a sharp knife; there was a knot in the wood, the knife slipped up, a pinafore was instantaneously covered with blood—­(though the little semisuicide was unconscious of any pain)—­thereafter his neck was quickly strapped with diaculum plaister,—­and to this day a slight scar may be found on the left side of a silvery beard!  Was not this a providential escape?  Again—­a lively little urchin in his holiday recklessness ran his head pell-mell blindly against a certain cannon post in Swallow Passage, leading from Princes Street, Hanover Square, to Oxford Street, and was so damaged as to have been carried home insensible to Burlington Street:  a little more, the doctors said, and it would have been a case of concussion of the brain.  The post is still there “to witness if I lie,” as Macaulay’s Roman ballad has it,—­and here grown to twice its height, thank heaven! am I. Then again, some ten years after, a youth is seen careering on a chestnut horse in Parliament Street, when a runaway butcher’s cart cannoned against his shying steed, the wheel ripping up a saddle-flap, just as the rider had instantaneously shifted his right leg close to the horse’s neck!  But for that providence, death or a crushed knee was imminent.

Yet again, after some twenty years more:  “AEsop Smith” was one dark evening creeping up a hill after a hard ride on his grey mare Brenda, when he was aware of two rough men on the tramp before him, one of whom needlessly crossed over so that they commanded both sides, and soon seemed to be approximating; which when AEsop fortunately noticed, with a quick spur into Brenda he flashed by the rascals as they tried to snatch at his bridle and almost knocked them over right and left whilst he galloped up the hill followed by their curses:  was not this an escape worth being thankful for?

Once more:  the same equestrian has had two perilous dog-cart accidents, noticeable, for these causes; viz.—­broken ribs, and a crushed right hand, have proved to him experimentally how little pain is felt at the moment of a wound; which will explain the unconscious heroism of common soldiers in battle; very little but weakness through loss of blood is ever felt until wounds stiffen:  further, a blow on the head not only dazes in the present and stupefies further on, but also completely takes away all memory of a past “bad quarter of an hour.”  At least I remembered nothing of how my worst misadventure happened; and only know that I crawled home half stunned by moonlight for three miles, holding both sides together with my hands to enable me to breathe:  no wonder,—­all my elasticity was gone with broken ribs.  Though these two accidents cost me, one three months, and the other much longer of a (partly bedridden) helplessness, were they not good providences to make one grateful?  I write my mental thanksgiving with the same healed broken hand.