cular wall
forty feet high and into the river. Three children were approaching; one
of them, a little girl, about eight years old, was running; when pretty
close to us she stumbled and fell, and her feet shot under the rail of
the fence and for a moment projected over the stream. It gave us a
sharp shock, for we thought she was gone, sure, for the ground slanted
steeply, and to save herself seemed a sheer impossibility; but she
managed to scramble up, and ran by us laughing.

We went forward and examined the place and saw the long tracks which her
feet had made in the dirt when they darted over the verge. If she had
finished her trip she would have struck some big rocks in the edge of
the water, and then the torrent would have snatched her downstream among
the half-covered boulders and she would have been pounded to pulp in two
minutes. We had come exceedingly near witnessing her death.

And now Harris's contrary nature and inborn selfishness were strikingly
manifested. He has no spirit of self-denial. He began straight off, and
continued for an hour, to express his gratitude that the child was not
destroyed. I never saw such a man. That was the kind of person he was;
just so HE was gratified, he never cared anything about anybody else. I
had noticed that trait in him, over and over again. Often, of course, it
was mere heedlessness, mere want of reflection. Doubtless this may have
been the case in most instances, but it was not the less hard to bar
on that account--and after all, its bottom, its groundwork, was
selfishness. There is no avoiding that conclusion. In the instance under
consideration, I did think the indecency of running on in that way might
occur to him; but no, the child was saved and he was glad, that was
sufficient--he cared not a straw for MY feelings, or my loss of such a
literary plum, snatched from my very mouth at the instant it was
ready to drop into it. His selfishness was sufficient to place his own
gratification in being spared suffering clear before all concern for
me, his friend. Apparently, he did not once reflect upon the valuable
details which would have fallen like a windfall to me: fishing the child
out--witnessing the surprise of the family and the stir the thing would
have made among the peasants--then a Swiss funeral--then the roadside
monument, to be paid for by us and have our names mentioned in it. And
we should have gone into Baedeker and been immortal. I was silent. I was
too