There was a boy in Glasgow apprenticed to a gentleman who made
telegraphs. The gentleman told me this himself. One day this boy
was up on top of a four-story house with a number of men fixing
up a telegraph-wire. The work was all but done. It was getting
late, and the men said they were going away home, and the boy
was to nip off the ends of the wire himself. Before going down
they told him to be sure to go back to the workshop, when he was
finished, with his master’s tools. “Do not leave any of them
lying about, whatever you do,” said the foreman. The boy climbed
up the pole and began to nip off the ends of the wire. It was
a very cold winter night, and the dusk was gathering. He lost
his hold and fell, upon the slates, slid down, and then over
and over to the ground below. A clothes-rope, stretched across
the “green” on to which he was just about to fall, caught him
on the chest and broke his fall; but the shock was terrible,
and he lay unconscious among some clothes upon the green. An
old woman came out; seeing her rope broken and the clothes all
soiled, thought the boy was drunk, shook him, scolded him, and
went for a policeman. And the boy with the shaking came back to
consciousness, rubbed his eyes, and got upon his feet. What do
you think he did? He staggered, half-blind, away up the stairs.
He climbed the ladder. He got up onto the roof of the house.
He gathered up his tools, put them into his basket, took them
down, and when he got to the ground again, fainted dead away.
Just then the policeman came, saw there was something seriously
wrong, and carried him away to the hospital, where he lay for
some time. I am glad to say he got better. What was his first
thought at that terrible moment? His duty. He was not thinking
of himself; he was thinking about his master.--HENRY
DRUMMOND.
(838)
See GREATNESS; HIGHER LAW.