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"Come back, you cuss! come back to us! and let the critter be!" I screamed out loud, while the men in a crowd stood gazing at them

and me;

But up they went, and my shots were spent, and I shook as they

disappeared,

One minute more, and we gave a roar, for the Injin had leapt,—and cleared!

A leap for a deer, not a man, to clear,-and the bloodiest grave below!

But the critter was smart and mad with fear, and he went like a bolt

from a bow!

Close after him, came the devil's limb, with his eyes as wild as death, But when he came to the gulch's brim, I reckon he paused for breath !

For breath at the brink! but a white man shrink, when a red had passed so neat?

I knew Phil Blood too well to think he'd turn his back dead beat!
He takes one run, leaps up in the sun, and bounds from the slippery

ledge,

And he clears the hole, but-God help his soul! just touches the t'other edge!

One scrambling fall, one shriek, one call, from the men that stand and stare,

Black in the blue where the sky looks thro', he staggers, dwarf'd up

there

The edge he touches, then sinks, and clutches the rock-ny eyes grow dim

I turn away-what's that they say?-he's a-hanging on to the brin!

. . On the very brink of the fatal chink a wild thin shrub there grew, And to that he clung, and in silence swung betwixt us and the blue, And as soon as a man could run I ran the way I'd seen them flee,And I came mad-eyed to the chasm's side, and-what do you think I see?

All up? Not quite. Still hanging? Right! But he'd torn away the shrub;

With lolling tongue he clutch'd and swung-to what? ay, that's the

rub!

I saw him glare and dangle in air,-for the empty hole he trod,Help'd by a pair of hands up there!-The Injin's? Yes, by!

Now, boys, look here! for many a year I've rough'd in this here land

And many a sight both day and night I've seen that I think grand; Over the whole wide world I've been, and I know both things and

men,

But the biggest sight I've ever seen was the sight I saw jest then.

I held my breath-so nigh to death the cuss swung hand and limb, And it seem'd to me that down he'd flee, with the Panther after him; But the Injin at length puts out his strength, and another minute past,

—And safe and sound to the solid ground he drew Phil Blood at last!

Saved? True for you! By an Injin too!—and the man he meant to kill!

There all alone, on the brink of stone, I see them standing still;
Phil Blood gone white, with the struggle and fright, like a great mad

bull at bay,

And the Injin meanwhile, with a half-skeer'd smile, ready to spring

away.

What did Phil do? Well, I watched the two, and I saw Phil Blood

turn back,

Then he leant to the brink and took a blink into the chasm black, Then, stooping low, for a moment or so, he drew his bowie bright, And he chucked it down the gulf with a frown, and whistled, aná lounged from sight.

Hands in his pockets, eyes downcast, silent, thoughtful, and grim, While the Panther, grinning as he passed, still kept his eyes on him ; Phil Blood strolled slow to his mates below, down by a mountain track,

With his lips set tight and his face all white,—and the Panther at his back.

I reckon they stared when the two appeared! but never a word Phil spoke,

Some of them laughed and others jeered, but he let them have their

joke;

He seemed amazed, like a man gone dazed, the sun in his eyes too

bright,

And, in spite of their cheek, for many a week, he never offer'd to fight.

And after that day he changed his play, and kept a civiller tongue, And whenever an Injin came that way, his contrairy head he hung;

But whenever he heard the lying word, "It's a LIE!" Phil Blood

would groan;

“A Snake is a Snake, make no mistake! but an Injin's flesh and bone!"

DECEMBER 11, 1871.

OUR ACCOUNT WITH POSTERITY.

WHEN in my childhood I used to read or hear read that the Lord God put the man and the woman into a garden and said to them, "Increase and multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it," the words never used to carry any particular meaning with them. What poetry (such as a child could seize) might gather around them was hindered by an ugly though illuminated copy of the arms of the Butchers' Company which happened often to come under my eye, along with the arms of the other city guilds. In this picture, there were oxen and sheep, and butchers and knives, and underneath all the rest, the words "Omnia subjecisti sub pedibus, oves et boves." And when I had learned a very little geography, especially as I was a great maker of maps, planispheres, and all that, a new and uneasy view of the subject came into my mind. I then learned that the earth was only twenty-four thousand miles round, and the speculation, what was to be done when it became full, fascinated me at once. Nor was that all. Where was I to go and plant the New Atlantis which I had, before I was ten years old, elaborated in my own mind? There seemed so very little unappropriated land left or likely to be left, that yes, that I felt the prison-bars which ruffle the beating feathers as much as ever I have done since. You may laugh, but did you ever plan a Utopia?

The whole subject has often troubled me since then. I was in Fleet Street yesterday, and saw several nice-looking people, and several people who were not much to speak of either way-but there were too many of 'em. True, it is very difficult to be practically consistent in these matters. Malthus had children and so have I. The rule of political economy is that in a full country you must not have more children than will replace yourself and your wife when you die; because to have more would be unjust to posterity. But, really, these are very embarrassing subjects. Every man wishes well to his own children, and old people are equally fond even of their grandchildren. A centenarian at once infatuated and productive, would probably be fond even of his great-grandchildren; but yet it seems as if we must draw the line somewhere. We have been often urged by Mr. Mill and others to reduce the national debt in justice to posterity, and people do talk in that way when they get together in Parliament, or when they write books; but if at the time of the last Budget each individual had been asked privately, with an assurance that it should go no farther, whether he would rather

pay the extra twopence of income-tax or roll the burden forward upon posterity, I believe the objections to the latter process would have been immediately denounced as of a doctrinaire description. Who are posterity? Do we know there ever will be any? Even Comte, in propounding the Worship of Humanity or the Great Being, admits that it may at any moment be "compromised "-that is the word through the action of some unforeseen cosmic force. Exactly. Besides, we have now established School Boards, and done all we can to enlighten our own children, and is it not probable that even if we did roll on our odd twopence or so now and then, posterity will by that time-I mean, by some time or other have become clever enough to dodge difficulties of that kind? They may even be able to hand them over to another planet, for what we know. And this brings me back to the original topic of this paper-at least it will when I like to let it. For there are other matters in which we have been asked to exercise a sort of coddling forecast in regard to posterity. We have actually been asked to consider the probability of the exhaustion of our coal-fields. This is monstrous. Surely people could burn something else; or, at the worst, they might wear comforters in cold weather-even if there should in those days ever be any cold weather. But really, if we are to have artificial rain produced by the firing off of hundreds and thousands of artillery, why should we not have hot weather at will in some other way? True, there might be attendant inconveniences; and indeed. that American man of science who has just been petitioning Congress to let him have the use of about ten thousand cannon (is it more or less?) for the purpose of calling down rain, does not appear to have considered the dreadful noise he would make. Yet, if during the illness of the Prince of Wales, some farmer in want of rain at half a mile from Sandringham (supposing there were such a person) had wanted to go on firing off Woolwich Infants day and night till he got a shower, public opinion would at once have interfered. And so with other matters-including, probably, the cosmic force which may at any time compromise us.

Yet there are some things in which I find I cannot help looking forward, and you may say, if you choose, that I am caring for posterity, without the least occasion for care. But even if I do contradict myself, what is that to you? If I may not contradict myself, pray who is it that I may contradict? When I contradict you you may call out, and take your natural remedy in contradicting back again. Anarchy? Very likely; and I contend that "there is much virtue in your" anarchy. The difficulty is that people will never try it long enough.

Besides, if I seem to be taking thought for posterity, it is, after all, in a matter that comes close home to myself in the first instance. A lady of property told me some time ago, quite in a casual way, that

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