During "the season" the veriest stranger who has an eye and ear, and
thoughts, must find in London sufficient to occupy his attention; true,
he may start and sigh, to think that of the busy and enormous multitude
around him, not one would care, if, treading on yonder bit of orange peel,
he should slip off the flagway, and falling beneath the wheel of that
immense coal-wagon, have his thigh crushed to atoms, while you'd be
saying "Jack Robinson." But if he do sigh, the more fool he; first,
because "grieving's a folly," as the old sea song hath it; next because
he is mistaken in supposing that no one would feel interested in his
misfortune. There are two upon the very flagway with him, who would
evince the greatest sympathy in his fate; the one is a surgeon's
apprentice, who, with anxious care, would bear him off to _his_
hospital, that he might "try his 'prentice hand" to doctor him while
living, and dissect him when dead; and the other is a running reporter to
one of the morning papers, who would with gentle and soothing accents
inquire his name, condition, and abode, to swell the paragraph, and
increase his pay.--_Blackwood's Magazine._
* * * * *