as 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 w