forts, I was, at about the age of ten, able
to read to myself, and my attention was at once directed to a class of
stories congenial to my reputation. It would hardly be fair to inflict
upon the patient reader a digest of my studies, but the one impression
they left upon my mind was that a young man, if he is to be worth the
name, must on every possible occasion both be a hero and show it.

This conclusion rather distressed me; for while the first condition was
easy and natural enough, the second was no joke. I knew I was a hero; I
could not doubt it, for I had been brought up to the business, and to
question it would be to question the veracity of every relative I had.
But try all I would I couldn't manage to show it.

After a considerable amount of patient study, my conceptions of a hero
had resolved themselves into several leading ideas, which it may be of
use to the reader if I repeat here:--

1. He must save one life or more from drowning.

2. He must stop runaway horses.

3. He must rescue people from burning houses.

4. He must pull some one from under the wheels of a train.

5. He must encounter and slay a mad dog in single combat.

6. He must capture a burglar; and 7. He must interpose his body
between the pistol of the assassin and the person of some individual of
consequence.

In my researches I had collected a mass of information under each of
these heads, and was perfectly acquainted with what was becoming in a
hero in each emergency.

But, as I have said, try all I would the chance never came.

I was full of hopes when we went to the seaside that emergency number
one at least might make an opening for me. I spent hours every morning
on the beach watching the bathers, and longing to hear the welcome shout
of distress. I sat with my boots unlaced and my coat ready to fling off
at a moment's notice. I tempted my sisters to go and bathe where the
shore shelved rapidly and the ebb washed back strongly. They went, and
to my chagrin were delighted with the place, and learned to swim better
than I could.

There was a man who went out every morning to bathe from a boat. I was
always at the pier-head watching him, but he went into the water and
scrambled out of it again over the stern of the boat with ruthless
regularity, and quite mistook my interest in him for admiration, which
was the very last sentiment I harboured.

Once I made sure my chance had come. It was a warm day, and the sh