What is that sublime and awful thing in the falling of water? It is a noise which has not been set to any music, but it must take its place somewhere among the harmonies. It has in it a sublimity that always moves the soul. Neither does it require the cultured ear to be enthralled by it. You simply stand still and in silence. You wonder as it sways you, without knowing why. The savage will stand by the cataract and listen to its roar till his superstitions drive him away. My childish spirit was taken up into the fearful splash and roar of that artificial cataract. In the steep embankment of solid clay these two boys had cut steps, forming a sort of stairway leading down to the water's edge. I was much attracted by this terraced work in going down, but lost thought of it in the roar of the water. To my consternation, as soon as I was down the two boys turned on me for a quarrel. One of them said:

"Bub, do you want to fight?"

"Not down here, where I am scared at this water."

"Then you are a coward."

"No, I am not a coward."

"O, we will see! We will put you into this

water.

This place is ours down here anyhow."

TH PUBLIC

TILDEN F

With that, they caught me, each boy taking an arm and a leg, and they dipped me down in the water till I was thoroughly wet. Then they stood me in the edge of the canal with my back to the water, and each boy put his foot on one of mine. Mashing both my feet in the mud, they would push me backward into the water. Then they took each a foot and a hand again, and began to swing me out over the water towards the cataract. Once they swung

me, and then they said:

"Now, next time we will let you go-here you go now."

no more.

That was death to me as deeply as I ever expect to feel it. I suffered a death without meeting it. With the second swing out, I knew I was suddenly in a strange and glorious place-trees, birds, sunshine, happy people, landscapes of beauty, swards of green as smooth as velvet carpet, and entrancing music. I was enraptured with every vision that met my childish eyes. On a silk rug at my feet I saw, snugged up together, the four kittens we had drowned at the bridge the day before. I became drowsy and tired, and I lay down on the silk rug, and bent myself around the four kittens, and went to sleep.

The next I knew I was at home in the high

bed, and my mother was bending over me, asking:

"How is my boy now?"

"I do n't know."

"How did my child fall in the water?"

"I did not fall in the water."

Mother did not hear my screams for help; but when she was ready for home she came to hunt me, and found me lying on the bank, unconscious. The boys told her that I had fallen in the water, and they had taken me out.

The whole affair came to me, and I told her how it was. Mother went to the door, and called father from the field. They held a short conversation at the door. Father's face turned ashen pale. He put his ax down by the step, handed his coat to mother, and started for town. Mother said:

"See about it, Reuben; but keep your senses when you see Jack Hardy."

Before he reached town his better judgment was enthroned; so he found Jack, who was half drunk. He gave him the case, and told him to go home and punish his two scamps. Jack was sober enough to know what that meant, and he followed directions to the letter; but it did no good. The fact is, when that sort of thing is in children who are old enough to know right from