A YOUNG HERO.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 1, Issue 46, 10 January 1880, Page 3

A YOUNG HERO.

The hoy who, at the Nile, “ stood on the burning deck whence all but he had fled,” has been justly immortalised in song and story, and now another hoy, under very different circumstances (says the “ Daily Telegraph ”) mutely claims a like reward. No sou of a warrior sire he —no inheritor of a proud name m hicli the youngest bearer is constrained to preserve untarnished, but only a mechanic’s child, who worked in a factory by the side of his father. Nobody, we may be sure, thought him a hero, as in cap and apron he trudged to and from his daily labor through the streets of Birmingham, but at that time the opportunity had not come without which the greatest is, in the world’s eye, even as the least. It came at last, at the very last, poor lad ; for when passing near one of the iron monsters amid whose ruthless shafts and wheels is worked, his apron was caught, and he himself was drawn through the machinery to certain death. Help quickly arrived, and the poor lad was disentangled from the horrible embrace into which bo had fallen; To the surprise of all it was found he still lived and retained his consciousness. And of what does the pitying reader suppose he thought ? Of his own young life so suddenly and mercilessly cut short I Of his lacerated frame and horrible anguish 1 No ; rather of the pain it would give his father to see him rent and torn, for as gentle hands lifted and bore him away he was heard to murmur, “Don’t let my father see me.” If it be heroic to consider others before self oven in the direst strait, then was this Birmingham factory