n, and projected outside
his trowsers. Over him hung his wife, with the utmost solicitude, the
blood running down from a severe cut received on her head, and kneeling
by his side was his sister, who was also much injured. The poor women
were lamenting over him, and thinking nothing of their own hurts; and
he, it appears, was also thinking nothing about his injury, but only
lamenting the delay which would be occasioned by it.

"Oh! my dear, dear Isaac, what can be done with your leg?" exclaimed the
wife in the deepest distress.

"What will become of my leg!" cried the man. "What's to become of my
business, I should like to know?"

"Oh! dear brother," said the other female, "don't think about your
business now; think of getting cured."

"Think of getting cured--I must think how the bills are to be met, and I
not there to take them up. They will be presented as sure as I lie
here."

"Oh! never mind the bills, dear husband--think of your precious leg."

"Not mind the bills! but I must mind the bills--my credit will be
ruined."

"Not when they know what has happened, brother. Oh! dear, dear--that
leg, that leg."

"D---n the leg; what's to become of my business," groaned the man,
falling on his back from excess of pain.

Now this was a specimen of true commercial spirit. If this man had not
been nailed to the desk, he might have been a hero.

I shall conclude this chapter with an extract from an American author,
which will give some idea of the indifference as to loss of life in the
United States.

"Every now and then is a tale of railroad disaster in some part of the
country, at inclined planes, or intersecting points, or by running off
the track, making splinters of the cars, and of men's bones; and
locomotives have been known to encounter, head to head, like two rams
fighting. A little while previous to the writing of these lines, a
locomotive and tender shot down the inclined plain at Philadelphia, like
a falling star. A woman, with two legs broken by this accident, was put
into an omnibus, to be carried to the hospital, but the driver, in his
speculations, coolly replied to a man, who asked why he did not go on?--
that he was waiting for a _full load_."

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Note 1. The railroads finished in America in 1835 amounted in length to
1,600 miles; those in progress, and not yet complete, to 1,270 miles
more. The canals completed we