end at once the life which is so burdensome to
me.

It would, perhaps, be wearisome to detail my
life at Bethlehem. I might, had I the skill,
delineate many scenes that would amuse, as also
many incidents that would pain the reader. But
it must content me to record the following facts,
and to add that to all, as to me, equal attention
and kindness were shown.

Everything was done to amuse and interest
me. I was sent, under the charge of an
attendant, to numerous places of amusement. I
was encouraged to employ myself, and books
were lent to me by the head physician. Also
he spent much of his time in reasoning with me,
always kindly and feelingly, as a father might
reason upon the folly and wickedness of my
impatience of life. I was an uninteresting, a
wearying, for some time an incorrigible patient;
but the patience of my guardians never ceased,
and at length I was discharged well. I entered
the hospital without tears, but I left it sorrowfully,
knowing that in the wide wide world there
were none who would treat me with so much
consideration, none who would so tend and console
me, should it please God again to afflict
me, as the kind friends who reside within the
dear walls of Bethlehem. To each of them I
offer upon paper the thanks which I have never
been able to utter; to each of them I say as
each one has said to me in sincerity and
confidence,

                  God bless you!

MAN IN!

IT was the endeavour of your Eye-witness in
his last report to call the attention of those
whom it might concern to a consideration of
what steps might be taken to diminish the number
of accidents, and injuries to life and limb,
which the setting in of a frost usually brings
about. It may be, that in dwelling on the apparently
unnecessary depth of the lakes in our
different parks, the E.-W. was influenced by the
recollection of an experience of his own, passed
through many years ago, which has left an impression,
as vivid now as it was fourteen years since,
and as it will be, if the writer live, fourteen
years hence. And perhaps a narrative of all
that the E.-W. remembers of a break through
the ice, an inmersion in ten feet of water, a
rescue by the icemen belonging to the Royal
Humane Society, and an account of the course
of treatment which the sufferer by an ice
accident goes through at the receiving-house in
Hyde Park, will serve to draw increased attention
to the merits of that admirable society, to
whose agency the Eye-witness owes it that he
is an Eye-witness, and through whose
instrumentality it happens that the hand which writes
these lines is at this moment other than a little
heap of crumbling bones and dust.

A child blowing at an extinguished torch,
with the motto, "Some little spark may
be hidden here yet," is the device of the
Royal Humane Society; and indeed the
spark must be a very faint one, if the treatment
adopted by the servants and officers
of the establishment fail to fan it into a
flame. The accredited instances of the
resuscitation of those apparently drowned are most
extraordinary, and seem to show that until such
actual signs of dissolution as stiffness of the
limbs, and other unmistakable symptoms, are
developed, a hopeful use of the various means
of restoring animation should not be given
up.

Cases are even on record of a restoration of
life after its total suspension for five hours; and
it is difficult to imagine a more intense gratification
than those must experience who, after hours
of labour, see at last some hint of life appearing
in their patient. As they observe the first
convulsive catchings of the chest muscles, the first
feeble gasp for breath, the first faint sob or sigh
which follows; as they note the slight relaxing of
the jaws, the weak flutter of the heart and
pulse; the excitement must be extreme, and
the anxiety lest the hold obtained on the
hardly recovered life should loosen. There is
danger even when, with the restoration of the
circulation, the senses return. Sometimes, the
patient will screech out in alarm, as consciousness
revives; at other times, convulsions take
place and suddenly cause death.

The writer, in giving his own experience
of the efficiency of the Royal Humane Society,
will — for the greater convenience of narration—
ask leave to tell his story in the first person.

It was fourteen or fifteen years ago at least, and
I was then an eager skater: a student of the higher
walks (or rather strokes) of the art of skating: a
diligent cultivator of that mystery which is at
the root of all advancement in this exercise, the
mystic "outside edge."

The Round Pond was crowded to inconvenience.
The Round Pond is, as most Londoners
know, just in front of Kensington Palace; it
is rumoured that it was once a gravel pit, and
that in consequence its waters are in some parts
of very great depth. The number of skaters on
this piece of water on the day in question was
so great, that there was scarcely a possibility of
carrying out a single stroke to completeness. So
constant were the collisions between the skaters,
and so completely was one's attention absorbed
by the necessity of steering clear of other
people, that it was hardly possible to enjoy the
amusement; I was on the point of giving
the thing up and taking off my skates, when
it occurred to me that there was one part
of the pond on the opposite side, which I
had not tried, and which seemed to be less
covered with skaters than the other portions of
the ice.

Distance is a thing very soon disposed of
in skating, and an approach to this more
deserted region was the affair of a very few
moments. As I drew nearer, I found that
my first impression was not an incorrect one;
there were fewer people here. Fewer people on