COSHOCTON COUNTY OHIO - A LETTER FROM DR. HOLMES
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			A LETTER FROM DR. HOLMES
		He tells a little girl of an adventure
			   when he was a boy

	Isabella Graham Murdock contributes to St. Nicholas an
experience of her school day life, in which she quotes the
following interesting letter that she received from Oliver
Wendell Holmes:

					Boston, March 15,1880
	My Dear Miss Isabella -

Here is one little incident of my life which I have never told in
print:
  When I was a little boy, I got upon a raft one day - a few boards laid
together - which floated about in a pond - a very small pond, but 
rather bigger round than a dinner table. It was big enough, anyhow, to 
drown a little boy, and came pretty near doing it, for, while I was 
stooping over the edge of the raft, I slipped and went souse into
the water.
  I remember a great sound in my ears - "guggle, guggle," I said
it was, when they asked me about it - and a desperate struggle,
feeling that I was going to be drowned, just as little Sam Childs
had been, and then all at once my whole past life seemed to flash
before me as a train of cars going a thousand miles an hour - if
such a speed were possible - would pass in one long crwded streak
before the eyes of a person standing by the railroad.
  I had never heard that this was a common experience with
persons who are near drwoning, but I have since heard of many
cases where the same flash of their past lives has come before
drowning people who have been rescued and have told about it.
  You may put this story in your essay, if you like.
  I get a great many letters from young peersons, and it takes a
great deal of my time to answer them, so I think I am quite good
natured this evening to tell you all this. Don't you think so,
dear Miss Isabella? Very truly yours,
					OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES