Page:The aquarium - an unveiling of the wonders of the deep sea.djvu/41

16 days came up to my recollection, and I involuntary repeated—

Lucky stone! lucky stone! go over my head, And bring me some good luck before I go to bed!"

For it was one of the superstitions of my childhood, taught and believed by credulous schoolfellows, that the boy who found such a perforated stone, and threw it over his head with the above doggerel rhyme, would not fail to reap a swift harvest of "luck." What a strange faculty is memory! I had not thought of this rhyme nor of its associations for perhaps thirty years; and yet the sight of the pebble brings up perfect recollection, as if it had been only yesterday that I had played at canal-digging and boat-sailing on Westbutts shore! Perhaps nothing, be it good, bad, or indifferent, (especially the latter two) is really lost when once the mind has apprehended it; so lost as that it may not be recalled, voluntarily or involuntarily, by some association or other, at some time or other. And possibly in eternity, when God will bring every secret thing to judgment, we may find every thing perfectly presented to our remembrance that has ever occurred to us, with all its causes, results, and connexions. "For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid that shall not be known." Terrible, indeed, would be the anticipation of such an unveiling of the past, were it not for the blood of the Great Atoning Lamb of God, in which the guiltiest conscience may find refuge.

Standing here once more at the verge of the sea, with its gentle waves kissing my feet, about to resume,