H. What! did you fight a bear when you were no bigger than I am?
J. No, my boy; but I was wonderfully preserved when I fell from the top of a very lofty precipice.
“How was it?” said both the children at once. “Do tell us all about it.”
J. In the country where I was born, which is many miles from this place, there is a very high mountain. One side of it is quite a precipice, and people go thither to hunt the Chamois and the Marmots, which abound in that place. One day I went there with some of my companions, and we saw a Marmot creep into a cleft in the side of the rock.
I was one of the most courageous of the band and was foolhardy enough to say, “I’ll go and pull him out of his hole.” “No, no, John,” they all cried out, “it is not safe; his hole is on the edge of the precipice; if your foot slips nothing can save you.” They tried all they could to dissuade me, but in vain—I was rash enough to determine to have my own way.
I let myself down over the edge of the rock. The Marmot was just within his hole, behind a plant of wild geranium. I saw him plain enough, and determined to try to reach him, though I was hanging over a precipice a thousand feet deep.
I ought to have given up this foolish design, and to have remembered that there is no real courage in exposing oneself to a useless danger. But I was young and foolish. I then knew nothing of the Lord. I thought my life was in my own power, and that I might do whatever I chose. Well, I rested one foot upon a stone, I bent forward, and stretched out my arm to lay hold of the Marmot. All at once I was gone! I recollected nothing more till I found myself in the cottage of a charcoal burner, lying upon his bed. I was in pain all over, and my mother was watching me.
