“The night now grew dark apace, and R., being driven out to sea, was parted from the wreck, and could distinguish nothing but the flashing waves around him. His limbs began to grow cold, and he feared that his strength would be insufficient to enable him to keep upon the spar. His anxiety increased; an awe of death which he had never felt before sprung up in his bosom, and an intense desire of life, that thing which he had so recently spurned as worthless, burned in his bosom. So little do we know ourselves until adversity has taught us reflection, that R., a few hours before fancying that he was willing and prepared to die, now yearned for safety, for deliverance, for life, with an agony he could not control. His feelings, however, did not overpower him. Using every effort of strength and skill, and rubbing his chilled limbs from time to time, he was able to sustain himself till morning. He could then perceive that the vessel had become a complete wreck, and that the fragments were floating on the waves; he could not discern a single human being, and was left to infer that all beside himself had perished.
“In this situation, benumbed with the cold, faint and exhausted with exertion, he was on the point of yielding himself a prey to the waves, when a pilot-boat came into view. It gradually approached the place where he was, and at last seemed so near him as almost to be within the reach of his voice. At this critical moment she made preparations to tack, and thus change her direction. R. noticed these movements with indescribable anxiety: if she were to advance a few rods more, he should be discovered and saved; if she were to change her route ever so little, she would pass by, and he, unobserved and helpless, would perish. The experience of years seemed now crowded into one moment of agony. Weary, cold, exhausted, the poor sufferer wished not now to die, but to live. ‘Help, help!’ cried he with all his strength. ‘O God, send me deliverance from these waves!’ This earnest and agonizing petition was the first prayer he had uttered for years, and it was in behalf of that existence which, in the days of luxury and splendor, he had thought a burden and a curse.
“Watching the pilot-boat with the keenest interest, poor R. now sat upon the spar, almost incapable of moving, on account of his sufferings and his weakness. He saw at last the helm put down; he saw the vessel obey the impulse; he saw her swing round, the sail flapping in the wind, and then filling again; he then saw her shoot off in another direction, thus leaving him destitute of hope. His heart sank within him, a sickness came over his bosom, his senses departed, and he fell forward into the waves. It was at this moment that he was discovered by the pilot. The vessel immediately steered towards him, and he was taken on board. In a few hours, he was at New York, and put under the care of persons who rendered him every assistance which he needed for his immediate comfort.”
Do as you would be done unto.—The horse of a pious man living in Massachusetts, happening to stray into the road, a neighbor of the man who owned the horse put him into the pound. Meeting the owner soon after, he told him what he had done; “and if I catch him in the road again,” said he, “I’ll do it again.” “Neighbor,” replied the other, “not long since I looked out of my window in the night and saw your cattle in my meadow, and I drove them out and shut them in your yard, and I’ll do it again.” Struck with the reply, the man liberated the horse from the pound, and paid the charges himself. “A soft answer turneth away wrath.”
Money.—He who expends money properly, is its master; he who lays it up, its keeper; he who loves it, a fool; he who fears it, a slave; and he who adores it, an idolater.
Country of the Samoides.—Aurora Borealis.