SUNDRY PROVIDENCES.
Carlyle somewhere gives utterance to a truism, which the present scribe
at least can most gratefully countersign, that "it takes a great deal of
providence to bring a man to threescore years and ten." Not only are we
in peril every time we take breath, both from the action of our own
uncertain hearts and from the living germs of poison floating in the
air, but from all sorts of outer accidents (so-called, whereas they all
are "well ordered and sure") wherewith our little life is compassed
from, cradle to grave; in truth, trifles seem to rule us: "the turning
this way or that, the casual stopping or hastening hath saved life or
destroyed it, hath built up or flung down fortunes." Every inch and
every instant, we are guided and guarded, whether we notice it or not:
"the very hairs of our heads are all numbered." Here shall follow some
personal experiences in proof. Nearly seventy years ago I knew a small
schoolboy of seven who accidentally slit his own throat while cutting a
slate-frame against his chest with a sharp knife; there was a knot in
the wood, the knife slipped up, a pinafore was instantaneously covered
with blood--(though the little semisuicide was unconscious of any
pain)--thereafter his neck was quickly strapped with diaculum
plaister,--and to this day a slight scar may be found on the left side
of a silvery beard! Was not this a providential escape? Again--a lively
little urchin in his holiday recklessness ran his head pell-mell blindly
against a certain cannon post in Swallow Passage, leading from Princes
Street, Hanover Square, to Oxford Street, and was so damaged as to have
been carried home insensible to Burlington Street: a little more, the
doctors said, and it would have been a case of concussion of the brain.
The post is still there "to witness if I lie," as Macaulay's Roman
ballad has it,--and here grown to twice its height, thank heaven! am I.
Then again, some ten years after, a youth is seen careering on a
chestnut horse in Parliament Street, when a runaway butcher's cart
cannoned against his shying steed, the wheel ripping up a saddle-flap,
just as the rider had instantaneously shifted his right leg close to the
horse's neck! But for that providence, death or a crushed knee was
imminent.
Yet again, after some twenty years more: "Æsop Smith" was one dark
evening creeping up a hill after a hard ride on his grey mare Brenda,
when he was aware of two rough men on the tramp before him, one of whom
needlessly crossed over so that they commanded both sides, and soon
seemed to be approximating; which when Æsop fortunately noticed, with a
quick spur into Brenda he flashed by the rascals as they tried to snatch
at his bridle and almost knocked them over right and left whilst he
galloped up the hill followed by their curses: was not this an escape
worth being thankful for?
Once more: the same equestrian has had two perilous dog-cart accidents,
noticeable, for these causes; viz.--broken ribs, and a crushed right
hand, have proved to him experimentally how little pain is felt at the
moment of a wound; which will explain the unconscious heroism of common
soldiers in battle; very little but weakness through loss of blood is
ever felt until wounds stiffen: further, a blow on the head not only
dazes in the present and stupefies further on, but also completely takes
away all memory of a past "bad quarter of an hour." At least I
remembered nothing of how my worst misadventure happened; and only know
that I crawled home half stunned by moonlight for three miles, holding
both sides together with my hands to enable me to breathe: no
wonder,--all my elasticity was gone with broken ribs. Though these two
accidents cost me, one three months, and the other much longer of a
(partly bedridden) helplessness, were they not good providences to make
one grateful? I write my mental thanksgiving with the same healed broken
hand.
So much of perils by land, by way of sample: here are three or four by
sea, to match them. Do I not remember how a rash voyager was nearly
swept off the _Asia's_ slippery deck in a storm, when a sudden lurch
flung him to cling to the side rail of a then unnetted bulwark, swinging
him back again by another lurch right over the yawning waves--like an
acrobat? Had I let go, no one would have known of that mystery of the
sea,--where and when a certain celebrity then expected in America, had
disappeared! Captain Judkin after that always had his bulwarks netted;
so that was a good result of my escape: I was the only passenger on
deck, a favoured one,--the captain being on his bridge, two men at the
wheel in their covered house, the stormy wind all round in a cyclone,
and the raging sea beneath,--and so all unseen I had been swept
away,--but for good providence.
Once again; do I not shudderingly recollect how nearly the little
Guernsey steamer was run over by an American man-of-war in the Channel,
because a tipsy captain would "cross the bows of that d---- d
Yankee:"--the huge black prow positively hung over us,--and it was a
miracle that we were not sunk bodily in the mighty waters. What more?
Well, I will here insert an escaped danger that tells its own tale in a
sonnet written at the time, the place being Tenby and the sea-anemone
caverns there, accessible only at lowest neap tide.
"An hour of peril in the Lydstep caves:
Down the steep gorge, grotesquely boulder-piled
And tempest-worn, as ocean hurrying wild
Up it in thunder breaks and vainly raves,--
My haste hath sped me to the rippled sand
Where, arching deep, o'erhang on either hand
These halls of Amphitrité, echoing clear
The ceaseless mournful music of the waves:
Ten thousand beauteous forms of life are here;
And long I linger, wandering in and out
Among the seaflowers, tapestried about
All over those wet walls.--A shout of fear!
The tide, the tide!--I turned and ran for life,
And battled stoutly through that billowy strife!"
Perhaps this is enough of such hairbreadth 'scapes both by land and
water: though I might (in America especially) mention many more. Then
there are all manner of the ordinary maladies of humanity, which I
pretermit. Carlyle was quite right; it _does_ require "a good deal of
providence" to come to old age.