hen I was a young man, working at my trade as a mason, I met with a
severe injury by falling from a scaffolding placed at a height of
forty feet from the ground. There I remained, stunned and bleeding, on
the rubbish, until my companions, by attempting to remove me, restored
me to consciousness. I felt as if the ground on which I was lying
formed a part of myself; that I could not be lifted from it without
being torn asunder; and with the most piercing cries, I entreated my
well-meaning assistants to leave me alone to die. They desisted for
the moment, one running for the doctor, another for a litter, others
surrounding me with pitying gaze; but amidst my increasing sense of
suffering, the conviction began to dawn on my mind, that the injuries
were not mortal; and so, by the time the doctor and the litter
arrived, I resigned myself to their aid, and allowed myself, without
further objection, to be carried to the hospital.

There I remained for more than three months, gradually recovering from
my bodily injuries, but devoured with an impatience at my condition,
and the slowness of my cure, which effectually retarded it. I felt all
the restlessness and anxiety of a labourer suddenly thrown out of an
employment difficult enough to procure, knowing there were scores of
others ready to step into my place; that the job was going on; and
that, ten chances to one, I should never set foot on that scaffolding
again. The visiting surgeon vainly warned me against the indulgence of
such passionate regrets--vainly inculcated the opposite feeling of
gratitude demanded by my escape: all in vain. I tossed on my fevered
bed, murmured at the slowness of his remedies, and might have thus
rendered them altogether ineffectual, had not a sudden change been
effected in my disposition by another, at first unwelcome, addition to
our patients. He was placed in the same ward with me, and insensibly I
found my impatience rebuked, my repinings hushed for very shame, in
the presence of his meek resignation to far greater privations and
sufferings. Fresh courage sprang from his example, and soon--thanks to
my involuntary physician--I was in the fair road to recovery.

And he who had worked the charm, what was he? A poor, helpless old
man, utterly deformed by suffering--his very name unnoticed, or at
least never spoken in the place where he now was; he went only by the
appellation of No. 12--the number of his bed, which was next to my
own. This bed ha