It now behoves me to detail with great accuracy the circumstances surrounding his immersion, the degree of danger that he ran, and how he was saved. In the first place, Mr. Thorpe fell in at the last of the ebb, so that there was no tide to sweep him out to sea; in the second place, the depth of water at that spot was exactly five feet two inches, so that he could--had he but known it--have walked ashore (for he was, of course, over six feet in height); in the third place, the river has here a good gravelly bed, as you ought to know, for the clay doesn’t begin till you get beyond Battersea Bridge--and, by the way, this gravel accounts for the otherwise inexplicable phenomenon of the little boys that will dive for pennies at low tide opposite the shot tower; in the fourth place, the water, as one might have imagined at that season of the year, was warm and comfortable; in the fifth place, there lay but a few yards from him a Police Pier, crowded with lines, lifebuoys, boats, cork-jackets, and whatnot, and decorated, as to its Main Room, with a large placard entitled “First help to the drowning,” the same being illustrated with cuts, showing a man of commonplace features fallen into the hands of his religious opponents and undergoing the torture. Therefore it is easy to see that he could have either saved himself or have been saved by others without difficulty. Indeed, for Mr. Thorpe to have drowned, it would have been necessary for him to have exercised the most determined self-control, and to have thought out the most elaborate of suicidal plans; and, as a fact, he was within forty-three seconds of his falling in pulled out again by a boat-hook, which was passed through the back of his frock coat: and that is a lesson in favour of keeping one’s coat buttoned up like a gentleman, and not letting it flap open like an artist or an anarchist, or a fellow that writes for the papers. But I digress. The point is, that Mr. Thorpe was immediately saved, and there (you might think) was an end of the matter. Indeed, the thing seems to come to a conclusion of its own, and to be a kind of epic, for it has a beginning where Mr. Thorpe falls into the water (and, note you, the beginning of all epics is, or should be, out of the text); it has a middle or “action,” where Mr. Thorpe is floundering about like a sea monster, and an end, where he is pulled out again. They are of larger scope than this little story, and written in a pompous manner, yet the _Iliad_, the _Æneid_, Abbo’s _Siege of Paris_, the _Chanson de Roland_, _Orlando Furioso_, _Thalaba the Destroyer_, and Mr. Davidson’s shorter lyrics have no better claim to be epics in their essentials than has this relation of _The Accident to Mr. Thorpe_. So, then (you say), that is the end; thank you for the story; we are much obliged. If ever you have another simple little story to tell, pray publish it at large, and do not keep it for the exquisite delight of your private circle. We thank you again a