DANGEROUS LEAP.
The above is a correct sketch of a young man on horseback leaping from a bridge, at Egremont. The bridge was twenty feet high, but neither horse nor rider sustained serious injury. Men after escaping great dangers are often killed by slight causes.
“An earthquake may be bid to spare
The man that’s strangled by a hair.”
JOHN AND JANE,
THE TWO ORPHANS.
ohn and Jane were the children of an Englishman. When they lived in England they were well off, and were well taught by their mother, who took much pains to lead them in the right way, and to teach them how they might be happy
here and hereafter. They lived in a pretty cottage near the sea shore, where they could sometimes hear the waves dash against the rocks in a storm. They played together, ate their meals together, sometimes sharing them with the cat; they often walked together, and frequently rode out with their father and mother.
When Jane was ten years old and John eight, their father lost most of his property, and decided to go to America with his family. They crossed the ocean safely, but soon after they arrived in America their father and mother were both taken sick, and after being sick, the father for a few days, and the mother for several weeks, both died; the little
property they left was seized by their landlord, and John and Jane were left entirely destitute and alone.
Jane knew they had an uncle in a town in Ohio, and they had no other way but to beg their way to him. They traveled several hundred miles on foot to Ohio, begging their way; at first, in the city and until they had traveled to a distance
from it, people were often unkind to them; they went ragged, frequently hungry, and sometimes found it very difficult to learn their way; but after they got into the country towns many pitied them, and not only gave them food, but supplied them with clothes, and took pains to direct them on their way to the place where their uncle lived.
At last they reached their uncle’s; they were kindly received, and their
uncle adopted them as his own children. Their sufferings were then at an end; but they never forgot their sorrowful journey, nor the good things their mother had taught them in their pleasant home in England, and tried not only to remember but to obey her teachings.
