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THE CHILDREN'S CORNER.

The Children's Corner.

THE LAZY LAD.

I KNOW a lazy lad as soon as I see one, and I will tell you how. If I am walking behind him I can tell he is a lazy fellow by the way in which he walks, for he goes creeping along like a snail. The snail, poor thing, has no legs, so it must creep; but he uses his as if they did not belong to him, or as if he were lame in both his feet. I am nearly seventy, but I often overtake such a creeper, pass by him, and ¦ leave him far behind, thinking to myself-that awkward lad must mend his pace, or he will be behind all the days of his life.

If I meet him on some fine morning I can tell he is lazy by his looks. He never seems wide awake. He seems so sleepy and stupid, that I feel sure he has never washed his face that morning. A lazy lad hates cold water, and I need not put on my spectacles to see that those dirty places on his face have been there for three or four days at least; and as for his hair, it does not look as if a comb or a brush had disturbed it for a fortnight.

If I stop and speak to him, he hangs down his head and mumbles something in a low voice, and in such a sulky tone, that I cannot tell what it is that he does say, and I feel sure that he dont want me to know; for before he has done speaking he moves on, just turning his heavy head round once to stare at me with a look that says, What business had you to speak to me?

Whenever I happen to meet with such a lazy lad, I cannot help feeling sorry for him. Whose fault it is, whether his own or his parents, I may not be able to know, but I pity him, for I feel sure that no one would be willing to take a lad like that into his employment. From work of any kind such a lad as that would skulk whenever he could. And it is painful to think what sort of a man he will be; for it is not hard to guess. It is just of such stuff as these lads that those men are made, who always do as little work as they can, and spend more of what wages they may get at the beer-shop than they take home for wife and children, and abuse them cruelly into the bargain.

I hope the lads who read this will never be lazy, for lazy lads make lazy men. I shall tell you about the smart active lad next time, for they are the lads for me.

BURSTING OF THE BRADFIELD RESERVOIR.

TWELVE years ago the populous village of Holmfirth, near Huddersfield, was nearly destroyed, and many lives lost, by the bursting of the reservoir at Bilberry. That was a terrible calamity, but this was far more terrible. We sit down, three days after the dreadful event, to give some of the reports which have already reached us. It is a painful task.

The great reservoir for the supply of water to the grinding mills in the valley of the Don above Sheffield was situate at Bradfield, six miles above the town. The works were said to be stronger than those which burst at Bilberry in 1852. But, as one writer observes-" The weight and force of the inundation were far greater, and the consequent demolition more sweeping, more astounding, and more ruinous. The terror was aggravated by the hour of the visitation. The people of the neighbourhood, mostly of a hard-working order, whose day of labour is followed by a heavy sleep, had been for some time in their beds; midnight had not long passed, and they lay tranquil, little dreaming of dangers and deluges as intruders even beneath quiet English roofs; when suddenly, in the very darkest and most silent hour, the whole population is awakened by a sharp, intense, hissing noise, a roaring rush of waters, and the crashing flood falls on the whole valley, bursting into the houses, and drowning the people in their very beds. Buildings, walls, houses, bridges, give way; the rolling billows bear with them the floating wreck; and in the accumulated piles of spoils lie mingled timbers, furniture, and the dead-men, women, and children, as well as brutes, being swept like flies into the common heaps of rubbish."

This brief and fearful description is, alas, too true! How distressing to think that this vast reservoir of water, built up by man and intended to be a blessing to the population of a busy valley, becomes suddenly a mighty instrument of destruction, more fearful than engines of war, and rivalling the earthquake and the avalanche in its overwhelming and resistless power.

Another writer says "We have to record an occurrence the consequences of which have been so disastrous as to make it rank amongst those appalling catastrophes which from time to time fill a whole nation with consternation and dismay. The great reservoir at Bradfield, about six miles from Sheffield, the bursting of

BURSTING OF THE BRADFIELD RESERVOIR.

which was the immediate cause of the sudden inundation of the valley of the Don, had only recently been completed. Its area was seventy-six acres, and it is reported that some time before it gave way it exhibited indications of being unable to sustain the immense pressure of the water within it, the volume of which had been greatly increased by the late heavy rains. When the eventful moment at length came, between twelve and one o'clock on Saturday morning, March 12, 1864, the waters swept everything before them-human beings, domestic animals, houses, great stacks of timber, trees, carts, and furniture of all kinds. Soon after half-past twelve that morning the inhabitants of Sheffield were aroused by the roar of mighty waters, and on running to the banks of the swollen Don the evidences of the occurrence of some dreadful calamity were at once visible. Shooting along on the boiling surface of the discoloured waters were the wrecks of whole villages, while up against the piers of Lady's Bridge, piled as high as the stonework of the parapet, were household and other goods, rafters, floorings, planks, timber, straw, and an immense collection of miscellaneous articles, which had come down in such quantities as to block up the archways. But, sure and certain indices as these were of the destruction which must have been accomplished, the actual nature of the catastrophe far exceeded the gloomiest forebodings of those who watched the wrecks of a hundred households floating by that morning on the waters. As the morning wore on, the waters diminished, but beyond the sight of wet people thronging the streets of Sheffield, or gathering round the fire in the police-station, there was for a time nothing to induce any general belief that life had been lost. About two o'clock the flood in the river had diminished considerably, and the curious proceeded to inspect the neighbourhood of Blonk Street, where the water had been very high. In that street the first evidence that the flood had not been unattended with loss of life was afforded. The body of a man, clinging to a lamppost, was found. To save himself from being carried away by the water which had rushed through the street like a torrent, he had seized hold of the lamp-post, and perished rather from cold than from actual drowning. In the same street the dead bodies of domestic animals, and whole beds of débris, showed what the furious waters had been doing. In Bridge Street the flood had risen as high as the tops of the shop-windows, and, after it had subsided, dead animals, a quantity of broken furniture, and a deep,

BURSTING OF THE BRADFIELD RESERVOIR.

unctuous coating of mud, that almost pulled the boots from the feet, were some of the signs of mischief discernible by the light of the torches and gas. Corporation and other streets were found impassable with water and wreck, and in various quarters of the town similar scenes were presented."

A newspaper correspondent, writing on the spot and before anything like the full extent of the mischief was known, says :"The Iron Bridge and the Hillfoot Bridge both gave way, and the Lady's Bridge trembled under the assault of the timber, that came down upon it with the force of so many battering-rams. As the arches became choked with the labyrinth of rubbish brought down, the water rose in a few minutes to the level of the bridge. We fear that, as daylight breaks, many dead bodies will be found among the mass of wood and wreck that blocks the upper side of the bridge. We have heard numberless stories of fatalities, persons being drowned in their beds; of dead bodies found by threes and fours in the track of desolation left by the flood; of hairbreadth 'scapes,' and of perilous adventures in desperate attempts to rescue those overtaken by the rising waters, and who were helplessly struggling against the death which too many, alas! have last night died."

·

At a still later hour in the morning, further particulars of the flood were collected and published in a second edition of the Sheffield Daily Telegraph-" Whole villages have been swept down the valley of the Don. All the way down from the dam at Bradfield to Sheffield the flood has levelled a pathway for itself, and where busy villages stood there is now nothing but an expanse of slimy mud, with here and there a dead horse, a tree barked white, and a few mill wheels, the only remnants of mills. Where last night hundreds of people slept in confidence, they and their houses have gone down the stream; their beds floating on the top of the rushing current have spread alarm, and the trustful sleepers now sleep the long sleep of death. Never, perhaps, was there a more melancholy change. Where long streets stood yesterday at Malin Bridge, to-day not so much as a brick remains to mark the site. The great farm-house of Mr. Trickett is gone, with all its eleven occupants and stacks. The well-known publichouses are gone, the two factories, and the wire-workers shop are gone; the corn mill has disappeared; the trees, walls, fences, no longer exist, and all that can be found this morning of what was a considerable village is a long, smooth expanse of mud, like

BURSTING OF THE BRADFIELD RESERVOIR.

what one sees on the banks of the Humber at extreme low tides. The scene is one of annihilation. The double village of Malin Bridge is wiped out, and the place where it stood knows it no more. The force of the flood has even changed the bed of the river, and the oldest inhabitant of the village, were he returning to it, would at first sight be puzzled to make out whereabouts in the broad expanse of brown mud the houses of his neighbourhood stood. In the centre of the village was a large new publichouse, and that public-house has left the arched crown of its cellar, under which some barrels may be seen. Near to the fragment of an outbuilding that formerly belonged to the farm some dead horses are lying, and a number of large trees stripped of all their covering, and looking as blanched as the bones of skeletons left on some field of death, lie, with their branches torn off and their roots washed clean, about the adjoining fields. At Owlerton the houses low down near the water have shared the fate of the Malin Bridge houses, while of those which stand higher some have had their sides removed; others have lost their gable ends; and the rooms as they stand look like so many tea chests placed one over another, on their sides with their lids off, to show the various colours of their linings. The flood swept all the bridges clean out of its road.

It appears that the dam gave some intimation of its approaching break-down, for at the near village of Damflask the people were called up by workmen from the dam, and a number of houseless people were applying for admission at the public-house on the top of the hill. But lower down the river there was no warning. The great body of water advanced with all its terrific momentum, and made entire villages collapse like things of pasteboard. In some cases a solitary gable stands tall and white as a monument erected in memory of the departed. The flood has come upon this low-lying neighbourhood like a thief in the night, and the water-mark shows that some of the houses have been submerged nearly to the roof, some have been filled up to the level of the second storey, and in others which stand a little higher the water mark is about shoulder height; and when we note these facts we cannot help but wonder what became of the people who were soundly asleep in the lower rooms, and what of the night wanderers whom the deluge caught in the streets."

Since the above reports were published many distressing and harrowing details have been furnished of how whole families

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