h of such hairbreadth 'scapes both by land and
water: though I might (in America especially) mention many more. Then
there are all manner of the ordinary maladies of humanity, which I
pretermit. Carlyle was quite right; it _does_ require "a good deal of
providence" to come to old age.

CHAPTER IX.

YET MORE ESCAPES.

But there are many other sorts of peril in human life to which I may
briefly advert, as we all have had some experiences of the same. Who
does not know of his special financial temptation, some sanguine and
unscrupulous speculator urging him from rock to rock across the rapids
of ruin, till he is engulfed as by Niagara? Or of the manifestly
disinterested and generous capitalist, who gives to some young legatee a
junior partner's free arm-chair, only that he may utilise his money and
keep the house solvent for yet a year or two, utterly unheeding that ere
long the grateful beneficiaire must be dragged down with his chief to
poverty? Or, which of us has not had experience of some unjust will,
stealing our rights by evil influence? Or of the seemingly luckless
accident killing off our intending benefactor just before that promised
codicil? Or of the ruinous investment? Or of the bankrupt Life
Assurance? Or of the unhappy fact of your autograph, "a mere matter of
form," on the back of some dishonoured bill of one's defaulting friend?
Yet all these are providences too,--lessons of life, and parts of our
schools and schoolmasters.

And there are many like social evils besides. Let me delicately touch
one of them. I desire as an Ancient, now nearing the close of my
career, at least in this the caterpillar and soon to be chrysalis
condition of my being, to give my testimony seriously and practically to
the fact (disputed by too many from their own worse experience) that it
is quite possible to live from youth to age in many scenes and under
many circumstantial difficulties, preserving still through them all the
innocent purity of childhood. True, the crown of greater knowledge is
added to the Man; but although it be a knowledge both of evil and of
good, theoretically,--it need not practically be a guilty knowledge. If
one of any age, from the youngest to the oldest, has not the power of
self-control perpetually in exercise, and the good mental help of prayer
habitually at hand to be relied on, he is in danger, and may fall into
sin or even crime, at any hour, unless the Highest Power intervene. But,
if