furnish you with
a case in point, showing that a man may get into a very unpleasant
predicament, where he runs a great risk and gets some hard knocks, and
yet be able to thank God for it, in perfect earnestness of spirit. A
case of the kind came under my own observation, and while there was
not much philosophy, or abstract speculation about it, there was a
great deal of hard practical fact. It happened when I was a boy, at
the old homestead, in the valley that stretches to the southwest from
the head of Crooked Lake. That valley is hemmed in by high and steep
hills, and at the tune of which I speak, was much more beautiful in my
view than it is now. There was no village there then, and the farms
which stretched from hill to hill were greatly less valuable than they
are now; but the woods and pastures, and meadows, lay exactly in the
right places, and had among them partridges, and squirrels, and
pigeons, and cattle, and sheep enough to make things pleasant;
besides, there were plenty of trout in those days, in the stream that
flows along through the valley midway between the hills. On the north
side, coming down through a gorge, or 'the gulf,' as we used to call
it, was a stream which, in the dry season of the year, was a little
brook, trickling over the rocks, but which, in the spring freshets, or
when the clouds emptied themselves on the mountain, was a wild,
foaming, roaring, and resistless torrent. In following this stream
into 'the gulf,' you walked on a level plain between walls of rock,
rising two or three hundred feet on either hand, and a dozen or more
rods apart, until you came to 'the falls,' down which the stream
rushed with a plunge and a roar, when its back was up, or over which,
in the dry season, it quietly rippled. These 'falls' were not
perpendicular, but steep as the roof of a Dutch barn, and it was a
great feat to climb them when the stream was low. Ascending about
fifty feet, you came to a broad flat rock, large and smooth as a
parlor floor, and which in the summer season was dry. Well, one day,
in company with a boy who was visiting me, I went up to the 'falls,'
and we concluded to climb the shelving rocks to the 'table;' and
taking off our shoes and stockings, entered upon the perilous
ascent--for such to some extent it was. Hands and feet, fingers and
toes, were all put in requisition. My friend began the ascent before I
did, and was half way up when I started. I ought to have said, that at
the