“After the operation was over, my master returned to tell me that I should want for nothing. Never shall I forget the humanity with which he treated me. I do not remember that I had ever heard him speak to me before this time; but now his voice and manner were so full of compassion and kindness, that I looked up to him as to a new sort of being. “His goodness wakened and warmed me to a sense of gratitude--the first virtuous emotion I was conscious of having ever felt. “I was attended with the greatest care, during my illness, by the benevolent surgeon, Mr. Y----. The circumstance of my having been intoxicated, when I took the leap, had been concealed by the man who gave me the dram; who declared that I had fallen by accident, as I was looking down the hole for a _gad_ that I had dropped. I did not join in this falsehood: for, the moment my master spoke to me with so much goodness about my mishap, my heart opened to him, and I told him just how the thing happened. “Mr. Y---- also heard the truth from me, and I had no reason to repent having told it, for this gave him, as he said, hopes that I might turn out well, and was the cause of his taking some pains to instruct me. He observed to me, that it was a pity a lad like me should so early in my days take to dram-drinking; and he explained the consequences of intemperance, of which I had never before heard or thought. “While I was confined to my bed, I had leisure for many reflections. The drunken and brutal among the miners, with whom I formerly associated, never came near me in my illness; but the better sort used to come and see me often, and I began to take a liking to their ways, and to wish to imitate them. “As they stood talking over their own affairs in my hut, I learned how they laid out their time and their money; and I now began to desire to have, as they had, a little garden, and property of my own, for which I knew I must work hard. So I rose from my bed with very different views from those which I had when I was laid down upon it; and from this time forward I kept company with the sober and industrious as much as I could. I saw things with different eyes: formerly I used, like my companions, to be ready enough to take any advantage that lay in my way of my employer; but my gratitude to him who had befriended me in my helpless state wrought such a change in me, that I now took part with my master on all occasions, and could not bear to see him wronged--so gratitude first made me honest.