ch changed the current of his life, gave him a purpose, and
made him a man.

One dark midnight, as the boat on which he was employed was leaving one
of those long reaches of slackwater which abound in the Ohio and
Pennsylvania Canal, he was called up to take his turn at the bow.
Tumbling out of bed, his eyes heavy with sleep, he took his stand on the
narrow platform below the bow-deck, and began uncoiling a rope to steady
the boat through a lock it was approaching. Slowly and sleepily he
unwound it, till it knotted, and caught in a narrow cleft in the edge of
the deck. He gave it a sudden pull, but it held fast; then another and a
stronger pull, and it gave way, but sent him over the bow into the
water. Down he went into the dark night and the still darker river; and
the boat glided on to bury him among the fishes. No human help was near.
God only could save him, and He only by a miracle. So the boy thought,
as he went down saying the prayer his mother had taught him.
Instinctively clutching the rope, he sunk below the surface; but then it
tightened in his grasp, and held firmly. Seizing it hand over hand, he
drew himself up on deck, and was again a live boy among the living.
Another kink had caught in another crevice, and saved him! Was it that
prayer, or the love of his praying mother, which wrought this miracle?
He did not know, but, long after the boat had passed the lock, he stood
there, in his dripping clothes, pondering the question.

Coiling the rope, he tried to throw it again into the crevice; but it
had lost the knack of kinking. Many times he tried,--six hundred, says
my informant,--and then sat down and reflected. "I have thrown this
rope," he thought, "six hundred times; I might throw it ten times as
many without its catching. Ten times six hundred are six thousand,--so,
there were six thousand chances against my life. Against such odds,
Providence only could have saved it. Providence, therefore, thinks it
worth saving; and if that's so, I won't throw it away on a canal-boat.
I'll go home, get an education, and be a man."

He acted on this resolution, and not long afterwards stood before a
little log cottage in the depths of the Ohio wilderness. It was late at
night; the stars were out, and the moon was down; but by the fire-light
that came through the window, he saw his mother kneeling before an open
book which lay on a chair in the corner. She was reading; but her eyes
were off the page, looking up to