No employment that I am aware of threatens the life and health more than river-driving. Many a poor fellow finds his last resting-place on the bank of some wild stream, in whose stifling depths his last struggle for life was spent; where the wild wood skirts its margin--where, too, the lonely owl hoots his midnight requiem. I have visited many spots that were, from facts called up by retrospection, lonely and painfully silent, but have never been so spell-bound, so extremely oppressed with a feeling of sadness, as while standing over the little mound which marked the resting-place of a river-driver on the banks of a lonely stream, far away from the hearth of his childhood and the permanent abodes of civilization. The silent ripple of the now quiet stream (for the spring floods were past), the sighing of the winds among the branches of trees which waved in silence over the unconscious sleeper, rendered the position too painful for one predisposed to melancholy. When in those wild regions we have the misfortune to lose one of our number, after the body is recovered, we place it in a coffin composed of two empty flour barrels. One is passed over the head and shoulders, the other receives the lower extremities, when the two are brought together and fastened, his grave-clothes generally being some of his common wearing apparel. Seldom, if ever, does the voice of prayer rise over their bier under these circumstances; in silence the corpse is committed to its rude burial, while now and then a half-suppressed sigh is heard, and the unbidden tears steal down the sunburned cheeks of his manly associates. Events of this kind generally come suddenly, though, when in dangerous circumstances, are often anticipated. After such an occurrence, an air of sobriety pervades the company; jokes are dispensed with, the voice of song is hushed, and for several days the deportment of the men is characterized with a degree of cautiousness unusual, except when reminded by some such impressive example of the frailty and uncertainty of human life. But with most the impression soon wears off, and their accustomed cheerfulness is regained; their exertions marked with the same daring as before the accident, or as though a life had never been lost in the business. Lower down the river, in the vicinity of new settlements, the usual ceremonies on funeral occasions are practiced when an itinerant clergyman chances to pass that way. The following notice of such an occurrence was cut from the Bangor Courier: "Passing into the town of Passadumkeag late one evening during the past summer, a crowd had gathered in the street. It proved to be the funeral of a river-driver. His body had been taken from the water and shrouded in the open air. Many of the sympathetic villagers were there; and a pious elder, who chanced that way, breathed a prayer over his remains before they were borne to their final place of rest." BURIAL OF A RIVER-DRIVER.