The following instance of the remarkable escape of a river-driver was related by one who witnessed the affair. I think it happened on the Androscoggin. Among the crew there and then engaged was a young man who prided himself upon his fearlessness of danger; and, to maintain the character he thus arrogated to himself, would unnecessarily encounter perils which the prudent would shun. His frequent boastings rendered his society not a little unpleasant, at times, to the less pretending; and although this dislike was not so great as to lead them to rejoice in seeing him suffer, yet an event which might be likely to cool his courage would not have been unwelcome to the crew. On one occasion he ventured upon a jam of logs just above a rolling dam, over which the spring freshets poured one vast sheet of water, plunging several feet perpendicularly into a boiling cauldron. The jam started so suddenly that he was precipitated with the logs over this fearful place, where not only the fall and under-tow threatened instant death, but the peril was imminent of being crushed by the tumbling logs. No one really expected to see him come out alive, but, to our surprise, he came up like a porpoise, and swam for the shore; but the swift current swept him down, and carried him under a jam of logs which formed below the dam. From previous exertion and exhaustion, we thought this must finish the poor fellow, and we really began to forget his faults, and call to remembrance whatever of virtue he had manifested. Soon a dark object was seen to rise to the surface immediately below the jam. It was our hero, who, elevating his head and striking forward with his arms, swam with a buoyant stroke to a small island just below, where he landed in safety, having sustained no injury, and without having experienced any abatement of his former daring. Seemingly there was not one chance in a thousand for the life of a man making such a fearful voyage. This circumstance brings to mind a poetical sentiment I have somewhere read on the ways of Providence in the disposal of human life: "An earthquake may be bid to spare The man that's strangled by a hair." Men often lose their lives where we have least reason to expect it, and are as often spared, perhaps, where we see no grounds of hope for them. Thus physicians may sometimes be censured as unskillful when they lose a patient, while in fact God has fixed the bounds of mortal life; or be praised for skill when their success is but apparent, while to the Creator's purposes alone are we to look and give credit for such deliverances.