The individual to whom I allude, was appointed the General Agent of "the Society for promoting Manual Labor in Literary Institutions," which was formed in the city of New York in July of 1831, "under the conviction," as their committee remark, "that a reform in our seminaries of learning was greatly needed, both for the preservation of health, and for giving energy to the character by habits of useful and vigorous exercise." Shortly after entering upon the prosecution of his object, in an extensive tour of observation in the northern and western states, the journey of the agent,[2] as his employers relate, was interrupted by serious accidents which befel him, one of which (and we notice the narrative as an apt and striking illustration of the excellency of that system of training to which he had been accustomed, and which it was the design of his agency to recommend,) was the carrying away of the stage in Alum Creek, near Columbus, in the state of Ohio. "The creek," as they inform us, "being swollen by the great flood, in crossing, at midnight, the swiftness of the current forced the whole down the stream, till the stage-wagon came to pieces, and the Agent was thrown directly among the horses. After being repeatedly struck down by their struggles, he became entangled in the harness, and hurried with them along the current. At length, released from this peril, he reached the shore, and grasped a root in the bank; but it broke, and again the stream bore him on to the middle of the channel. At length he espied a tree which had fallen so that its top lay in the water, and by the most desperate efforts, all encumbered as he was with his travelling garments, he succeeded in reaching a branch; but his benumbed hands refused their grasp, and slipped, and then he was swept among some bushes in an eddy, where his feet rested on the ground. Here in the dead of night, in the forest, ignorant whether there was a house or a human being within many miles, bruised and chilled in the wintry stream, he seems calmly to have made up his mind to die, sustained by the hopes of the religion which he professed. But Providence had determined otherwise, and reserved him for farther usefulness. His cries were heard by a kind hearted woman on the opposite side of the stream, who wakened her husband; and, after a few days detention, he {246} proceeded on his journey. From the accounts (the committee continue,) which are already before the public, it seems plain that _nothing but a constitution invigorated by manual labor_, and a soul sustained by the grace of God, could have survived the hardships of that night." [Footnote 2: Mr. Weld.]