'HOW could it appear to a short-sighted sinner, That my life should be saved by the loss of my dinner.'
The simple '_Working-Man's Lesson_' involved in this anecdote, and the 'fulness of faith' which it embodies, are not unworthy of remembrance and of heed. It impressed _us_ forcibly. * * * 'TOM HOOD' once mentioned, 'in his own way,' his experience in crossing the Great Desert. He 'came to grief in the journey by means of 'getting off the track' of antecedent camelian-caravans. They had nothing to eat and less to drink, on their hot and toilsome journey. They encountered a 'simoom,' which a Yankee sailor described as 'a Boston East Wind _boiled_;' there was a mirage, too, in which they saw, far off on the level rim of the desert, camels and 'men as trees walking.' Long was their journey over the burning sands: and HOOD narrates that the travellers were reduced to the greatest straits. HUNGER and THIRST--terrible tyrants--asserted their prerogatives. 'On the dim, faint line toward Cairo,' says HOOD, 'we _thought_ we saw a well in the desert: for much people were gathered together far beyond us upon the level, sultry plain. We approached; we joined them: but only to be again, for the third time, most grievously disappointed.' 'It is no joke,' he adds, 'to be without food or water in an Egyptian desert. When we were at the worst, we went in ballast with the soles and uppers of the newest shoes in the caravan; and we were enabled to slake our burning thirst by a second-hand 'swig' at the cistern of a freshly-deceased and still warm camel, which had 'given _out_' early in the journey, and had now 'given _in_:'' This was certainly a bad state of affairs; but when we read the hardships of recent African travel, as recorded by the German African explorer, Dr. KRAPF, in his '_Researches in Eastern Africa_,' we could no longer deem the story fabulous. The good DOCTOR had succeeded in making his escape from an attack, which had been made upon himself and his party, by a band of sable 'salvages;' he had wandered far: was 'weary and way-worn,' and had lain down behind a bush, for protection against the keen wind which blew over the plain, from which he had no protection save the dry grass which he spread under and over his body. After a fitful slumber, he awoke unrefreshed, 'and started again.' 'I felt,' he says, 'the pangs of hunger and thirst: the water in my telescope-case ran out, and that in the barrels of my gun, which I had not drunk, had been lost on my way, as the bushes had torn out the grass stoppers, and so I lost a portion of the invaluable fluid, which, in spite of the gunpowder flavor imparted to it by the barrels, thirst had rendered delicious. My hunger was so great that I tried to chew leaves, roots, and elephant's excrement to stay it: and when day broke, to break my fast on ants.' Night came on; and he travelled on until day-light. Soon after day-break, he saw four immense rhinoceroses feeding behind some bushes ahead of him: they 'stared at him, but did not move.' 'Coming presently,' he mentions, to a 'sand-pit,' with a somewhat _moistish_ surface, 'like as a hart panteth for the water-brooks,' I anticipated the precious fluid; I dug into the sand for it, but only to meet with disappointment: so I put some of the _wet sand_ in my mouth, which only increased my thirst.' What ensues could not be better told than in the brave explorer's own words: 'About noon I came upon the dry and sandy bed of the river, which we must have crossed to the south-west only a few days before. Scarcely had I entered its bed when I heard the chattering of monkeys, a most joyful sound, for I knew that there must be water wherever monkeys appear in a low-lying place. I followed the course of the bed, and soon came to a pit dug by the monkeys in the sand, in which I found the priceless water. I thanked GOD for this great gift; and having quenched my thirst, I first filled my powder-horn, tying up the powder in my handkerchief, and then my telescope-case, and the barrels of my gun. To still the pangs of hunger, I took a handful of powder and ate it with some shoots of a young tree which grew near the water; but they were very bitter.' Such 'experiences' as these will serve to show how much the world owes to our indefatigable modern explorers, self-denying, self-abrogating men, like LIVINGSTONE and KRAPF, who scarcely 'set their life at a pin's fee' in pursuing unwearied their laborious and painful researches. * * * OBSERVE now how this old friend of ours _could_ write, if he _would_.