My Schools and Schoolmasters; Or, The Story of My EducationMiller, Hugh
Philosophy
My Schools and Schoolmasters; Or, The Story of My Education
Miller, Hugh
Education -- Scotland -- History -- 19th century; Geologists -- Scotland -- Biography; Miller, Hugh, 1802-1856 -- Knowledge and learning
have otherwise enjoyed was, however, marred in some degree by his wife's
great delicacy of constitution, and ultimately blighted by two unhappy
accidents.
He had not lost the nature which had been evinced at an early age beside
the pond: for a man who had often looked death in the face, he had
remained nicely tender of human life, and had often hazarded his own in
preserving that of others; and when accompanied, on one occasion, by his
wife and her mother to his vessel, just previous to sailing, he had
unfortunately to exert himself in her presence, in behalf of one of his
seamen, in a way that gave her constitution a shock from which it never
recovered. A clear frosty moonlight evening had set in; the pier-head
was glistening with new-formed ice; and one of the sailors, when engaged
in casting over a haulser which he had just loosed, missed footing on
the treacherous margin, and fell into the sea. The master knew his man
could not swim; a powerful seaward tide sweeps past the place with the
first hours of ebb; there was not a moment to be lost; and, hastily
throwing off his heavy greatcoat, he plunged after him, and in an
instant the strong current swept them both out of sight. He succeeded,
however, in laying hold of the half-drowned man, and, striking with him
from out the perilous tideway into an eddy, with a Herculean effort he
regained the quay. On reaching it, his wife lay insensible in the arms
of her mother; and as she was at the time in the delicate condition
incidental to married women, the natural consequence followed, and she
never recovered the shock, but lingered for more than a twelve-mouth,
the mere shadow of her former self; when a second event, as untoward as
the first, too violently shook the fast ebbing sands, and precipitated
her dissolution.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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