ed
as tenderly, and prized as highly as those of the sweeter and far
more beautiful flowers.

NUMBER TWELVE.

WHEN 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 upon 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 employment difficult enough to procure, knowing that
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
my 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 a 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